Today’s Washington Post excerpt from Thomas Ricks’s Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq deals principally with allegations surrounding over-the-top counterinsurgency tactics by various units of the 4th Infantry Division, which came to Iraq for occupation duty after the war had ended:
Today, the 4th Infantry and its commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, are best remembered for capturing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, one of the high points of the U.S. occupation. But in the late summer of 2003, as senior U.S. commanders tried to counter the growing insurgency with indiscriminate cordon-and-sweep operations, the 4th Infantry was known for aggressive tactics that may have appeared to pacify the northern Sunni Triangle in the short term but that, according to numerous Army internal reports and interviews with military commanders, alienated large parts of the population.
The unit, a heavy armored division despite its name, was known for “grabbing whole villages, because combat soldiers [were] unable to figure out who was of value and who was not,” according to a subsequent investigation of the 4th Infantry Division’s detainee operations by the Army inspector general’s office. Its indiscriminate detention of Iraqis filled Abu Ghraib prison, swamped the U.S. interrogation system and overwhelmed the U.S. soldiers guarding the prison.
Lt. Col. David Poirier, who commanded a military police battalion attached to the 4th Infantry Division and was based in Tikrit from June 2003 to March 2004, said the division’s approach was indiscriminate. “With the brigade and battalion commanders, it became a philosophy: ‘Round up all the military-age males, because we don’t know who’s good or bad.’ ” Col. Alan King, a civil affairs officer working at the Coalition Provisional Authority, had a similar impression of the 4th Infantry’s approach. “Every male from 16 to 60″ that the 4th Infantry could catch was detained, he said. “And when they got out, they were supporters of the insurgency.”
The unit’s tactics were no accident, given its commanding general, according to his critics. “Odierno, he hammered everyone,” said Joseph K. Kellogg Jr., a retired Army general who was at Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led occupation agency.
The article goes on to account several instances where various units of 4th Infantry troops engaged in what can only be described as indiscriminate, and in at least one case arguably, criminal conduct that was seemingly excused by commanding officers.
I’m generally reluctant to criticize military tactics after the fact. Its easy for those of us who are reading about it in the newspaper or watching it on television to say that this or that should have been done differently. But, as the article points out, other members of the military were expressing concern about the decisions that commanders in the 4th Infantry were making at the time they were being made, to no avail. Undoubtably some of those tactics helped engender resentment amount Iraqis who should have been cheering the overthrow of the man who had been opressing them for two decades.
Much damage has been done in the last three years, the question is whether it can be undone.
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