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| Iraq-Jordan |
| NCOs will be the backbone of the new Iraqi army |
| 2005-02-08 |
| Mark Bowden, Wall Street Journal EFL. On building Iraq's "New Model Army." On the 11th anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu, which I wrote about in "Black Hawk Down," Maj. James Lechner was again fighting an urban battle, this one in Samarra, Iraq. . . . "There must be something about me and the first week in October," Maj. Lechner wrote me in an e-mail shortly after his forces helped retake the city. . . . Maj. Lechner was upbeat after the assault on Samarra: "It was very interesting and a big success," he wrote. "It was the first time an Iraqi Army unit was given its own objective to take and fought side by side with U.S. units (previously in Najaf, infantry assault units came in behind U.S. units). The story details are a combination of modern war and Aladdin." . . . But it had not been easy training the 7th Battalion to perform so well, and the main problem was not with Iraqi soldiers. These he found both in training and battle to be courageous, smart, motivated and willing to endure harsh and difficult conditions to accomplish their missions. "Given time to rehearse and tape drill, there were almost no tasks or complexity of operations the soldiers could not have performed," Maj. Lechner wrote. No, his problem was not with foot soldiers, it was with their officers. One of the central problems with training up an Iraqi force is a military culture fostered by Saddam. The problem is not lingering loyalty to the toppled tyrant, but loyalty to the way he ran his army. Maj. Lechner noticed that the Iraqi commanders in his battalion tended to equate rank more with privilege than with responsibility. They were reluctant to stay on duty with their units for any length of time without "special passes or extended leaves," he said. The higher up the chain of command, the worse the problem. Just prior to going into action in Samarra, the Iraqi battalion commander took a leave. He didn't return until the city was secured. Up and down the officer ranks Maj. Lechner found a marked propensity to steal from their units, falsifying records, embezzling funds and even extorting money from their own men. . . . The old Saddam-era officers were both reluctant to assume responsibility and to share authority, so they resisted American efforts to train competent Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs), the experienced sergeants who are the first line of command in today's military. Strong NCO leadership gives units in battle far greater flexibility to respond to unexpected situations and to demonstrate initiative. Under the Saddam model, authority is jealously guarded and reluctantly exercised. Decisions are passed up the chain of command by field officers unwilling to take risks. . . . It has become generally accepted wisdom that it was a mistake for the Coalition Provisional Authority to disband Saddam's army after American forces took Baghdad two years ago. If Maj. Lechner's experience is typical, then retaining the old force would have just created a whole different set of problems, and might well have further set back efforts to create a flexible, effective Iraqi army. Solving the problem in the 7th Battalion ultimately required rooting out nearly all of those officers who had served under the old regime. . . . |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #14 Looking at history, the armies that have outeperfoemd all others are solid at the NCO level. Teh primary history lessons I learned were gleaned from the Germans in WW2 - their NCO corps kept them cohesive and functional far beyond any other nationality's limits. US Units "broke" sooner, but rallied far quicker due to their NCOs. In the 80's, we tried to incorporate both elements - gaining the staying power and professional cohesion of German NCO's of WW2 and the flexibility and initiative of US NCOs in WW2, in order to take advantage of the resiliance and ingenuity of the "average" US Soldier/Marine. It's paid off handsomely in 91 in Kuwait, in Haiti, and recently in Afghanistan and in Iraq. If we teach the Iraqis hw to run squads and platoons well, they will have an enormous impact in the region: not only because they will be the most effective non-Israeli force native to the region, but also because the impact these NCOs will have on their society in terms of breaking social molds and the tacit "caste" system. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2005-02-08 7:46:30 PM |
| #13 Looking at history, the armies that have outeperfoemd all others are solid at the NCO level. Teh primary history lessons I learned were gleaned from the Germans in WW2 - their NCO corps kept them cohesive and functional far beyond any other nationality's limits. US Units "broke" sooner, but rallied far quicker due to their NCOs. In the 80's, we tried to incorporate both elements - gaining the staying power and professional cohesion of German NCO's of WW2 and the flexibility and initiative of US NCOs in WW2, in order to take advantage of the resiliance and ingenuity of the "average" US Soldier/Marine. It's paid off handsomely in 91 in Kuwait, in Haiti, and recently in Afghanistan and in Iraq. If we teach the Iraqis hw to run squads and platoons well, they will have an enormous impact in the region: not only because they will be the most effective non-Israeli force native to the region, but also because the impact these NCOs will have on their society in terms of breaking social molds and the tacit "caste" system. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2005-02-08 7:46:30 PM |
| #12 Looking at history, the armies that have outeperfoemd all others are solid at the NCO level. Teh primary history lessons I learned were gleaned from the Germans in WW2 - their NCO corps kept them cohesive and functional far beyond any other nationality's limits. US Units "broke" sooner, but rallied far quicker due to their NCOs. In the 80's, we tried to incorporate both elements - gaining the staying power and professional cohesion of German NCO's of WW2 and the flexibility and initiative of US NCOs in WW2, in order to take advantage of the resiliance and ingenuity of the "average" US Soldier/Marine. It's paid off handsomely in 91 in Kuwait, in Haiti, and recently in Afghanistan and in Iraq. If we teach the Iraqis hw to run squads and platoons well, they will have an enormous impact in the region: not only because they will be the most effective non-Israeli force native to the region, but also because the impact these NCOs will have on their society in terms of breaking social molds and the tacit "caste" system. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2005-02-08 7:46:30 PM |
| #11 When I learned a bit about the American Armed Forces I was surprised by how differnt relations between men and officers were, respective to my experience with the French Army. NCOs didn't get half the reponsabilities and respect from officers (1) they had in America, they had little chances to become officers were limited and only for low rank (Bigeard went from private to four star general but it was the British who made him an officer while in America I know from at least two Chieffs of Staff who started as privates, Gaving being one of them), soldiers were told to obey, not think and in many ways were treated like valets. It was not as bad as in Arab Armies: our officers ate the same meals, carried their rucksacks, worked harder than men and were expected to preceed men into battle not to trail them like Arab officers but we weren't a band of brothers. In Napoleonic armies French officers were close to men and privates could hope to become Marshalls. I strongly believe that this was a factor in Napoeleonic victories. I strongly believe that the model of a distant French officer looking to his men with contempt, modelled after 1815, has been a major factor in the mediocre performance of post-Napoleonic French armies: people don't fight well when they think their officers would lose little sleep over useless deaths. (1) Significantly NCOs are named subofficers. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-02-08 3:45:43 PM |
| #10 In other breaking news: "Fire hot!" |
| Posted by: mojo 2005-02-08 2:54:23 PM |
| #9 There is absolutely a "caste" system in most, if not all, Arab armies. My brother-in-law was with the Marines who went into Kuwait in the first Gulf War. They captured a company, about 150 men, whose achilles tendons had been cut by their CO so they couldn't run then the officers skeedadled. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2005-02-08 9:50:00 AM |
| #8 Moshe Dayan was once asked what the secret of his success was and reputedly replied, "Fight Arab armies." Even when Arabs have effective NCO corps (Jordanians in the West Bank in 1967) the corruption and incompetence of their officer corps allowed the Israelis to make relatively short work of them, even though some units fought effectively at the platoon and company level. They couldn't coordinate combined arms and between units. When I was in IOBC, we had perhaps a dozen Arab officers there as part of some military assistance program or another. They were beyond contemptible. Once they realized how physical the training was, most field excercises miraculously began to coincide with "Islamic holy days." Tensions began to rise and the names of several of the Arabs became slang for sloth and incompetence. One of the Arabs finally lost it in the middle of a field problem: "This is fucking bullshit. In my army, private carry fucking rucksack. Officer ride in jeep. Private dig fucking hole. Not officer." Kind of sums it all up, don't it? |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2005-02-08 9:31:42 AM |
| #7 Somebody remind me why that's a good thing - Iran |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-02-08 9:20:19 AM |
| #6 Moose is on the point. When the US sent Military Assistance Groups to the former Soviet colonies of Eastern Europe, the leadership of those militaries were taken aback by the amount of authority and responsibility the Americans placed in their NCOs. The comment I recall from Afghanistan is that the Taliban fighters complained that with the Russians, all they had to do was shot the officer and the troops would retreat, but the Americans would just keep coming. |
| Posted by: Phique Spoluper4664 2005-02-08 9:01:24 AM |
| #5 If we get this right the world might actually see the first Arab army that can win something. Somebody remind me why that's a good thing. |
| Posted by: BH 2005-02-08 8:42:36 AM |
| #4 I suspect the legacy is less Saddam's than Soviet. Literally, since the Battleship Potempkin incident, the Soviet Union was terrified of a professional NCO "class" in their military. So NCOs were a rarity, with most forward units being officers and junior enlisted. The concept was that enlisted personnel were just fairly mindless extremeties to the officers, like extra arms. Needless to say, this had myriad problems, especially in routine maitenance and normal operations in peacetime. It was exacerbated by an extreme unwillingness to tolerate initiative below flag officer rank. So a big emphasis, even in WWII, was to take out any C&C headquarters unit--which could, and many times did, neutralize a major unit for 48-72 hours, until a new commander could be sent to them. If a Soviet unit had not been ordered to engage the enemy, unless they were fired on, they would just sit there waiting for further orders, within sight of the enemy--making them a superb target for ToT artillery. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-02-08 8:15:19 AM |
| #3 No brainer here. NCOs are the backbone of any army. The "strategic corporal" as we say, that 20 yr old kid that's going to have to make the tough decision that has the chance to make either a good or bad CNN moment. This is proof that we made the right call in disbanding the Iraqi army. The problem was we should've just fired all the senior SNCOs and officers and kept all the non-comm's & non-rates. We should've promoted from within that left over group based on initiative, integrity, intellect, and leadership potential. Seems we are getting on the right track now. |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2005-02-08 7:33:21 AM |
| #2 Someone asked the other day what the endgame in Iran looked like. IMO it features a professional Iraqi military, in a Shiia/Kurdish run Iraq, redressing the injustices against their bretheren across the Iranian border. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-02-08 6:43:11 AM |
| #1 As den Beste pointed out long ago, it's not Saddam's legacy but Arab militaries in general. If we get this right the world might actually see the first Arab army that can win something... |
| Posted by: someone 2005-02-08 6:03:40 AM |