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thedrifter
09-03-07, 09:03 AM
Books: Pre-deployment must-reads
By Rob Colenso Jr. - rcolenso@militarytimes.com
Posted : September 10, 2007

Amid the sea of recent publications focusing on the challenges of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the insurgencies there, it’s easy to overlook some of the older books that point up the lessons history offers.

Here’s a look at three that should be on your packing list for your next deployment:
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

By T.E. Lawrence, 1926

If all you know about T.E. Lawrence is what you saw in the movie “Lawrence of Arabia,” you’re missing much of the story of his efforts to organize Arab forces during World War I. It’s not an easy read, but the little gems you’ll pick up along the way make this one worth the effort.

His observations — “Better the Arab forces do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war and you are to help them, not win it for them” — still resonate today. In fact, that passage is quoted in the new Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual. Those involved in training Iraqi forces, take note.
Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice

By David Galula, 1964

A French military officer who saw combat in World War II and Algeria, Galula also witnessed the Greek civil war and Communists in action in China. His book is on the Army’s Command and General Staff College reading list, and you should read it, too. “He provides the best description available of how insurgency differs from war,” the college notes.

His work also is heavily cited in the new counterinsurgency manual, including a passage that succinctly captures the demands placed on front-line grunts in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The soldier must be prepared to become ... a social worker, a civil engineer, a schoolteacher, a nurse, a Boy Scout. But only for so long as he cannot be replaced, for it is better to entrust civilian tasks to civilians.”
Small Wars Manual

Marine Corps, 1940

The Marine Corps’ experience between the two world wars, serving in numerous Caribbean hot spots, was key to shaping the role the service plays today.

Some of the material in the manual is time-and-place, such as the extensive instructions on how to handle pack mules (though the Corps still has a small mule-team operation). But overall, it remains strikingly relevant to today’s fight.

Ellie

thedrifter
09-03-07, 09:04 AM
Books: Old-school intel
A slim WWII manual is packed with lessons for today’s fight
By William H. McMichael - bmcmichael@militarytimes.com
Posted : September 10, 2007

No matter what one thinks of the decision to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein, books, reports and studies have made it clear that once that job was done, the military occupation force did not understand the culture and, once the insurgency grew, showed it had largely forgotten how to fight a guerrilla war.

Fighting a counterinsurgency, as the belatedly updated 2006 Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual points out, means gaining the trust of the general populace so insurgents can be rooted out and eliminated. This means understanding the culture and, when possible, reaching out to local leaders.

Well before the 2003 invasion — 64 years ago, to be precise — a simple booklet written for soldiers spelled out how to survive military service in Iraq and, most pertinent to the current war, how to win friends and influence people.

The Army published “Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq During World War II” in 1943 as a handy, easy-to-read guide for U.S. troops assigned to bolster the British occupation in Iraq and help keep the Nazis out.

This booklet, so full of helpful advice and so applicable today, was set aside after the war and forgotten.

“It is a delicious irony of history,” said Army Lt. Col. John A. Nagl, a former West Point professor and a guerrilla warfare expert.

Now, it’s back. The University of Chicago Press has resurrected the booklet, exactly as it was originally published. It’s written in a folksy, conversational style — as if, say, the late actor Jimmy Stewart, portraying a wise Iraq veteran, is walking you down the street, arm around your shoulder, passing on what he’s learned in his exaggerated yet matter-of-fact style.
Quick reading

No weighty tome, this. It takes less than a half-hour to read the 30-page text, supplemented by a 14-page word and phrase guide to Iraqi Arabic.

But its lessons are timeless and relevant — sometimes, painfully so.

“That tall man in the flowing robe you are going to see soon, with the whiskers and the long hair, is a first-class fighting man, highly skilled in guerrilla warfare,” the booklet states. “Few fighters in any country, in fact, excel him in that kind of situation.

“If he is your friend, he can be a staunch and valuable ally. If he should happen to be your enemy — look out!”

Lately, U.S. military leaders in Iraq have touted the promising alliance they’ve forged with local sheiks in Anbar province, which has helped drive out al-Qaida extremists. It took four years of war for that to happen.

Waiting that long was a big mistake, the little guide points out. “Nomads are divided into tribes headed by sheikhs (SHAYKH). These leaders are very powerful and should be shown great consideration.”

The booklet is full of other cultural insights, as well as a brief history of the region and descriptions of the economy, the harsh climate and the now all-too-evident diversity of Iraq’s people.

“The Iraqis have some religious and tribal differences among themselves,” the booklet soberly notes.

Nagl is trying to impart such lessons to U.S. troops headed overseas, many of them from the young-adult demographic. In the U.S., more than half of 18- to 24-year-olds cannot locate Iraq on a world map.

A member of the team that wrote the new U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, Nagl is one of four battalion commanders in 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, out of Fort Riley, Kan., that trains Military Transition Teams — the troops who embed with and train Iraqi and Afghan security forces. He was also operations officer for 1-34 Task Force Armor when it operated in the Anbar city of Khalidiyah from September 2003 to September 2004.

That was when, he noted, the insurgency was on the rise, the Army had no counterinsurgency doctrine or training and “an awful lot was left to the discretion of individual commanders.”

Although there were exceptions, units generally employed heavy-handed techniques such as “cordon-and-sweep” operations that scooped up large swaths of people with the intent of letting interrogators sort them out. Most had no intelligence value, the military later concluded.

Nagl’s unit was “somewhere in the middle” between trying to win hearts and minds and using overwhelming force.

“We drank a lot of cups of tea,” said Nagl, the author of “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife,” an examination of counterinsurgency lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. “We also kicked in a lot of doors at 2 o’clock in the morning. And what we found was that the more cups of tea we drank, the better relations we developed with the local people, the more accurate we were at kicking in the right door and bringing in the right person.”

That’s the whole point of the booklet, as well as the counterinsurgency strategy Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq and a co-author of the 2006 manual, is now trying to launch, Nagl said.

He admits his own gaps in understanding the Sunni tribal culture. “I got better at it over time,” Nagl said. “But I wish I’d had the insights in this little book to help me get over that initial hump in learning.”

The Army isn’t likely to reissue the booklet — particularly with politically incorrect notations such as, “Prostitutes do not walk the streets but live in special quarters of the cities.”

But the text is in the public domain. And its contents would appear to be an invaluable entry on the unofficial reading list.

Nagl is one step ahead of the game. “We’re literally photocopying pages and handing some to soldiers bound for service in Iraq today, right here at Fort Riley,” he said. “It’s a fun little book. And because it’s fun, it’s more likely to be remembered.”

..........

Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq During World War II. U.S. Army. The University of Chicago Press. 44 pages. $10.

Ellie