The SysAdmin learns the hard way, and under the worst conditions in Iraq, but he's learning

ARTICLE: "In Iraq, an Army Officer Battles to Open a Bank: Military Shifts Fight to Local Politics; Gunfire Outside Hall," by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal 29 March 2007, p. A1.

Another stellar piece by Jaffe, who I--in my complete bias--consider the best reporter out there on military change.

Killer bit on "war within the context of war" yielding to "war within the context of everything else":

For decades, the U.S. military has defined warfare as separate from politics. When politics failed, war was necessary and the military took the lead. The attitude was one of the after-effects of the Vietnam War, in which the Army told itself that it had lost because politicians prevented the general from fighting the war they longed to fight.

"After Vietnam, we redefined officers as nothing but warrior-trainers," focused on teaching soldiers how to operate increasingly sophisticated weapons systems, says Lt. Col. Dough Ollivant, an Army strategist in Baghdad who has helped shape the current surge strategy. "We had a very restricted view of warfare."

The story itself revolves around a colonel's persistent effort to reopen a bank branch in a bad part of town.

Like I said in BFA: the Iraq war changes nothing in the U.S. military, but the Iraq postwar changes everything.

Comments

[PamC]

I was watching the History Channel when something you said clicked with the TV program... In the U.S. Civil War, the reconstruction was terribly botched. There were violent uprisings of resistance fighters in Vicksburg, New Orleans, other cities... There were cries of "illegal occupation by Northern forces"... Why'd we miss the lesson then?

[Mike in VA]

A note in Lessons Learned? dept: Perhaps Jaffe draws the wrong, if conventional in many quarters, lesson from the Vietnam process. A legit argument can be made that US political military (proto sysadmin) Vietnamization did achieve a "win" end state, as the North, bleeding profusely and crippled from wounds from the 1972 Easter offensive and the 1968 Tet, not to forget the Linebackers, signed a "peace" treaty. Then, from 1973 to 1974, Congress cut funds and US military support to RVN military. As the North took the gift, we got a look at how some in Congress learned to end wars. Obviously, we are not close to a "win" end state in Iraq, but the Reid/Pelosi campaign is familiar, especially to those who remember, like Kerry, Biden, Kennedy, Murtha, Leahy, Byrd, Levin, etc, etc. How many times has their version of the Vietnam icon been evoked by this lineup? Why wouldn't they see 1973-74 as sufficient precedent?