Trust Me, the Iraqi ‘War’ is Going as Well as Expected

SAY WHAAAAT?

`We are making progress everyday in Iraq', is what we heard this week and last from the WH press secretary and from the DOD podium.

Do you feel like you have enough information to know whether OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) is going well or not? I don't.

I'm talking about decision-quality information.

By that, I mean sufficiently comprehensive, systematic, accurate information, not just ad-hoc reporting of this particular area of sectarian violence, this-or-that town, or the latest backward-looking body count?

YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO GET IT

It is time to start challenging the notion that the remainder of this struggle in Iraq needs to be classified "secret" in order to win it. I've put together a potential starting point at the end of this post for what I have in mind. Everyone should consider what is on their own list, however. This is not dogma!

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Here is what I want from my government, for the sake of my Army and for the sake of a government by The People, not by The Experts. I hope you do was well.

REQUIRED WAR REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, bi-weekly

OIF Strategy: CLEAR - HOLD - BUILD

PROGRESS REPORTING, Percent completed

• Five metrics of progress for each segment of "Clear", "Hold" and "Build".
• An overall % completed guesstimate
• Breakdown for each Province, 18 in all. Breakdown by other, smaller groups (by sheik, by jurisdiction, by sharia court if one has been set up for a local area, by any group with significant influence in an area).
• Requested field resourcing.
• Breakdown of the assessment of what materials, equipment, and political support are needed at each stage, for example:
  
  CLEAR - troop levels and skills unique to `Clear', weaponry, intelligence, time-phased troop levels and skills, required Iraqi expertise (troop levels, cooperation/coordination, equipment, etc.); Foreign cooperation and expertise;
  
  HOLD - troop levels and skills and levels unique to `Hold', buildup of army forces, alliances, political certainty on issues, Iraqi expertise (build-out of army and police units, vertical and horizontal political consolidation of power/influence, short-term economic improvements); Foreign support (material and nonmaterial);
  
  BUILD - troop levels and skills, maintenance of political alliances/cooperation, electricity, water, all things USAID; U.N.

ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN IN THE MILITARY

1. A disclosure on the what personnel design strategy has been chosen to ensure that cross-functional teams that are meant to solve the problems that are known to exits at each stage of clear-hold-build. Some of these tasks require long-term commitments; others, short-term.
   
   This may imply different incentives, longer tours and commitments for advisers, different training needs - the list is very, very long.
   
   
2. We ought to significantly challenge the notion that all coordinated effort (and information) be limited to the military chain of command, Period.
   
   This may involve a redefinition of the unit level to include civilians of one type or another, including State Department or USAID people or others who need to be part of competent, cross-functional teams.
   
   
3. Metrics on the processing of requests and a top-Brass accountability `track' that ensures that important field-requests and information are not slipping through the cracks of the bureaucracy.
   
   This may mean that the military has to get more publicly `exposed' than they are used to in peacetime. If we need to elect one of their own in 2008 to get them to do, so be it.

REFOCUS THE OLD DEBATES IN A NEW LIGHT

We ought to be able to end or attenuate the exhausting debate about `troop levels' in this way.

Field-level raw requests for troops will give a bottom-up range, low to high, of the requested troop levels. How the Brass chooses to `modify 'those requests and the rational can also be laid bare. At least this decision process will finally be made plain enough that we can stop saying "trust me" and start arguing tactics, which may not result in agreement, but at least it will end radical doubt and maybe even create some buy-in.

INFORMED CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED

Without a fact-based sense of retreat or advance, a policy of `hope' cannot be sustained, even if aptly put. No amount of repeating the threats, the so-called lessons of 9-11, or harping on "the stakes" (that were not initially laid plain or made clear), is going to be ultimately sufficient.

During World War II, people knew of grave dangers, they knew when the Germans were advancing and when there was a battlefield retreat or difficulty. They had Roosevelt and Churchill to offer words to help keep the faith.

Today, instead, we have an amorphous war with threats of failure keeping us going rather than a calm, technical approach to counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency on which we can publically debate.

It is time to demand better for the Republic, don't you think?