Iraq War: Reflections of a Pundit

It was a rather cool, clear day at Fort Drum, NY. Twenty-years, 4 months, and 13 days of military service was coming to a close. My brigade had just returned from the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, LA. Our training focused heavily on the urban fight - the close contact, bloody fighting that was predicted to unfold in Iraq. When I walked out of my brigade headquarters for the last time as the their Command Sergeant Major, the senior enlisted troop of a 3500 hundred man brigade combat team, I thought the war on terrorism was behind me. My family had traveled to northern Virginia and a new chapter was unfolding - war with Iraq the furthest thing from my mind.

Little did I know Iraq would become a huge part of my life. When FOX News Channel approached me in November 2002 we had just begun retirement leave and were still unpacking boxes. Agreeing to a single interview discussing special operations strategy in Iraq, I soon found myself on a whirlwind media frenzy fully engulfed in the run up to the Iraqi invasion and broader war on terrorism.

After hundreds of television appearances and more than a year after President George W. Bush announced "mission accomplished," the US – led coalition of the willing struggled daily to win the peace in Iraq. Despite monumental gains in humanitarian assistance, infrastructure development, and economic improvement initiatives, I was concerned that Iraqi insurgents continued to deal the coalition wild card upon wild card. By any standard of measurement, security was well out of hand, the future of Iraq was questionable, and the reputation of the world´s only super-power was at stake.

For several years, hardly a news broadcast aired that didn´t have some military pundit attempting to answer the most salient questions. "How long will it take to win the peace and pacify Iraq." "How will we know it´s time to disengage?" "How will our military measure success?" "What signifies peace and stability in Iraq?" These very questions were etched into my subconscious as I struggled to offer millions of viewers an informed and coherent opinion...often in 30 seconds or less. Bottom line, those deployed had Moms and Dads, and they wanted answers.

The lack of real answers was a sure indication that our counter-insurgency strategy was failing to produce desired results. Insurgent violence and its steady stream of casualties chipped away at American and coalition resolve, patience, and compassion. Meanwhile, we tried to put the best spin on a very difficult situation. As we engaged an increasingly frustrated audience, violence in Iraq continued to plague military forces, private contractors, pro-coalition Iraqi´s, and non-governmental organizations. During all of this chaos, I consider it an honor to have been a small part of the FOX News Channel team.

For years analysts offered compelling and conflicting reasons why coalition initiatives had been unsuccessful in quelling the insurgency. The predominant wisdom ostensibly led to ideological differences. However, my analysis pointed like a homing beacon toward the Iraqi culture, tribal environment, and tribal ethos as multiple points of embedded friction and missed opportunities for counter-insurgency course changes. Something that General David Petraeus knew well when he took over the reins from General George Casey in 2006.

As a pundit and professor of unconventional warfare heavily involved in studying the Iraq war, I came to realize that Saddam Hussein understood the key to his long-term security outside the city walls of Baghdad and Tikrit rested heavily on the tribes. More than 75% of the population belongs to these tribes, containing a variety of religious and ethnic loyalties - Kurds, Arab, Sunni, Shia, Persian, Christian, etc. Saddam realized early in his dictatorship that to pacify the spread of hatred for his beloved Ba´ath part ideology and brutal tactics, he needed a strategy to mollify the resistance of the tribal leaders. On many occasions, he engaged these leaders in short-term security initiatives while planning on the peripheral for long-term measures. Shortly after the Ba´athist overthrew the ruling junta in 1968, Saddam realized the value of exploiting the tribal confederacies to ensure acquiescence. He managed to implement processes that extended his span of control - Committee's of Tribes were formed and members were placed in various positions of hierarchy. Essentially, the genesis to the rapid rise of the Ba´ath party lied inside these tribes.

First, Saddam knew that his future rested in the people. It relied heavily on winning the populace (key to counter-insurgency as well) and the more he engaged the tribal elite the more he found that kinship networks extended his parties narrow reach, stabilized elements of power, and became an endless pool of manpower which fed the infrastructure of the Sunni triangle. This is what transformed his home town of Tikrit from an impoverished desert villa to a Mecca of Arabian excellence and symbol of wealth and power. Iraq nationalism and Islamic solidarity runs as deep inside these tribes as patriotism and American values permeate our ranks. This is a culture of unequivocal honor, lineage of revenge, and warrior hood. Democracy has little legitimacy within these ranks.

Iraq's a geographic land mass of several provinces ruled by tribal elders, not a nation-state that values its sovereignty as many might imagine. They embody their religious affiliation and consider the elder Sheiks as the omnipotent rulers of the holy land. They are Shia, Sunni, Kurds, and Arabs first, and Iraqi's a very distant second. Regime change in Iraq simply dissolved the central government; it did not change the tribal hierarchy or state-tribe relations.

Closely observing the war it became obvious in early 2004 that the experts in Washington misread the tribes. Thus, the strategy for security and stability was flawed before the first tank rolled across the Kuwaiti border. This became transparent a few days after President Bush's famous speech on the USS Lincoln. The mission was far from accomplished and several contributing factors fueled the rampant spread of unrest, looting, and violence. A pre-planned and well implemented tribal engagement strategy would have quickly leveraged the elder leaders and empowered them to take control of their destiny.

Instead, we ignored this dynamic, causing the tribal elites to lose face with their constituents and opening the door for Al Qaeda and foreign fighters to exploit. The Coalition Provisional Authority refused to provide funds to tribes nor deal directly with tribal power brokers. Humiliated, forced to take a back seat to the future of Iraq, and left to their own devices, the embryo formed that ultimately gave birth to the early "strategic defensive" phase of this protracted popular insurgency (Mao's strategy of protracted popular warfare in China, 1930-1940's, resulted in defeating the Japanese invaders and subsequently the Kuomintang).

When General Petraeus hit the ground in Iraq, he modified our counter-insurgency efforts to focus on returning honor to the populace, engaging tribal elders, and exercising authority within cultural norms, vice against tribal ethos, to shape a future democratic Iraqi nation. He knew exactly what many of us pundits were saying, "Unless we change course in Iraq, we will continue to fail forward reacting to each attack as mere isolated incidents by a disenfranchised few rather than recognition of its broader implications."

As we witness our last combat troops leave Iraq, it´s evident that the new strategy worked in concert with the Iraqi government to reach out to the tribes, to appreciate the magnitude of kinship, to conceptualize tribal power and its ability to influence security, and to craft a long-term solution to the widening abyss. In Iraq, we learned a valuable lesson – kin and strangers...these are the lenses of tribal culture. I trust someone records this lesson or we will revisit it in Afghanistan.