Why Iraq Was America's Best-Run War by John Arquilla, Foreign Policy.
It is an axiom that generals tend to fight the last war, but the truth is that, as often as not, they would like to forget the last war. Witness Vietnam, in the wake of which it took more than three decades for a new counterinsurgency manual to be written by General David Petraeus and others. Happily, the military waited only five years to commence work on an update of the Petraeus version. As this new effort unfolds, based on the latest experience in Afghanistan, it might prove useful to incorporate the kind of analysis that the late Harry Summers, a soldier and strategist par excellence, employed in his study of the debacle in Vietnam, published a scant seven years after the fall of Saigon. Given the fresh attention being focused on military options in Syria, as outlined in General Martin Dempsey's letter to the Senate on Monday, there is even more reason to remember Harry Summers...
Comments
I would challenge the notion that the US adhered to the principle of mass in either Iraq or Afghanistan. In Iraq, we simply did not have sufficient troops at the outset to gain effective control of the country. And we never really had enough to finish the job once and for all. Afghanistan was a better situation, since the Taliban were a weak opponent and it took time for them to recover and regroup. Once the insurgency got going, we never put in enough men to defeat it, based on the ratios COIN experts demand. Too much wishful thinking. Not a serious approach to strategy.
I am a big fan of the Principles. But the article is very misleading about the principles. The discussion of Mass is completely off base. Mass isn't contradictory to Economy of Force. One can mass with an economical force. This is because the principle of Mass refers to massing of combat power at decisive points, not the actual "mass" of firepower deployed. Thus, a prudent tactician employing the principles will be able to mass a more economical force than a weak tactician who at his worst would dilute a large force.
In this context, in Iraq, the Multinational force "massed" in Baghdad. Whether they had sufficient numbers to be effective across the whole country is debatable (rightfully so). Economy of Force as a principle isn't about doing most with less, it is about being maximally effective with the forces available without drawing off other forces from other missions.
As a tactician I have always found the principles very useful. From the basic essays I did as a cadet to planning missions in Iraq. This article does not explain them appropriately. If anything, Libya is an excellent example of mass and economy of force. Of maneuver too, to the extent that Libya's military was ever any meaningful threat and maneuver applies in the air just as well as on the ground. Iraq, on the other had, is a contorted mass of confusion about when to mass and how to economize. From the successes of Falluja (eventually) and Tal Afar, to the absurdity of the cluster that was the Triangle of Death and most of Baghdad (pre-Sunni Awakening).
One more note...the Principles are weak when it comes to strategy. They are tactical dictums to guide actions. By the time you are in a position to apply the principles of war, you had better have a decent strategy about why you are there and how you are going about it. Otherwise they just serve to make you better at whack-a-mole. So I find applying them to entire wars rather than just tactical engagements and operations uninstructive at best.