Pentagon “Drafts” a Manual on Fighting in Iraq

The New York Times reports this morning that “two of the Pentagon’s smartest and most experienced generals, David Petraeus of the Army and Jim Mattis of the Marines, have overseen the production of a new counterinsurgency manual — called the FM 3-24/FMFM 3-24 in Pentagon-speak — for fighting these irregular wars.” A Rumsfeld response to negativity over FM 3-24/FMFM 3-24 would no doubt go like this: “Well, my goodness! Is it too late? Yes it is. When will the manual be provided to our troops? Not any time soon. Will it help to win the war in Iraq? Probably not, but it will be helpful in our future wars with Iran and Cuba, unless, of course, shit happens and the insurgencies change their modus operandi.” This “draft” for a manual on fighting insurgencies is a 241-page “work in progress”. The NYT reports that “it amounts to an introductory course in the history of insurgency and counterinsurgency.” Right. It’s a draft. And it’s nowhere near finished. And already NYT Op-Ed Contributors Richard H. Schultz, Jr. and Andrea J. Dew have found three egregious flaws: 1) You must know your enemy. The manual does not address the biggest problem of the Rumsfeld/Cheney war in Iraq: The neocons didn’t have a clue (nor did they care) about the history and culture of the people in Iraq. Nor does this new manual "provide a framework for profiling the organization and operational tendencies of these armed groups, to learn their strengths and weaknesses.” 2) The manual claims that “intelligence drives operations”. Yet the document provides no organizational blueprint for collecting such intelligence. 3) Even though the Rumsfeld/Cheney model for winning the war in Iraq stressed winning the “hearts and minds” of the people, and even though three-and-a-half years later, the Iraqis despise the US more than the day we invaded their country, the new manual also “overstresses” winning the “hearts and minds” of the people. But the real problem with the Pentagon’s manual is that it’s a Pentagon manual. By the time the Pentagon’s invalid, ineffective, irrelevant and inept manual is fully vetted, re-written, released, and read by commanders in Iraq, the US will no longer be in Iraq. And a new US president and new administration will be trying to figure out how to defend the US against attacks that were provoked by the Bush administration. As in, who are these people lobbing nuclear weapons at us? Where are they? What are they up to? And who gives a fuck about their hearts and minds?