Ollivant, who has a doctorate in political science from Indiana University and taught political theory at West Point, was philosophical about the last scrubbed mission, which was yanked back by Allawi's announcement that Iraqi forces would lead the way in Najaf.
"Actually, in the long term, putting on my theory cap, it's a good sign," he said. "You've got a prime minister now who's actually countering Sadr's call."
U.S. Army soldiers aim from an abandoned hotel during a gun battle with insurgents in Najaf. American troops have been fighting a stop-and-go battle with the Mahdi Army militia while the Iraqi government tries to negotiate a truce.
(Jim Macmillan -- AP)
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But now, the theory cap was off and night-vision goggles were on for a mission that, for the first time, brought U.S. armor to the militia's backdoor, punching holes in a section of a parking garage not 400 yards behind the shrine. By 1 a.m., Ollivant and his battalion commander were looking down on the assault from the eerie beauty of tombs silhouetted by the colored lights draping the shrine's minarets.
Then a red line arced across the starry sky -- tracer fire from a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, answering a machine gun deep in the warren of mausoleums. A series of mortar explosions quickly followed as the militia homed in on the Bradley.
So it went for more than an hour, fire to the left, fire to the right, and from down the hill a rainbow of stuttering light -- now red, now yellow, now white white white -- as the Cavalry's armor detonated a string of roadside booby traps and lurched toward the target.
Edging closer to the action, the five command Humvees crawled through a narrow cemetery road when the machine gun opened up again. "Back up!" Ollivant shouted, as a rocket-propelled grenade detonated nearby and the Humvee's gunner ducked down from his turret. "Now!"
But the entire column had to back up in unison at an excruciating crawl, flanked by rows of tombs with their doors standing open. "You know what that was, Brian?" the major asked his intelligence officer back at the base, with the Cavalry armor headed home from a mission accomplished with no casualties. "That was a good old-fashioned cowboy raid!"
And that, apparently, is what Iraq's prime minister wanted. As the weeks have passed in Najaf and more ambitious military plans have been detailed, rehearsed and, in every case, set aside, Allawi has made his wishes clear. Accordingly, U.S. forces have calibrated an extremely slow but steady tightening of the armored noose around the shrine and Sadr's militia, while the government continually insists "a few hours" remain for Sadr to agree to a negotiated peace.
"This is classic, what Karl von Clausewitz said about war being politics advanced by other means," Ollivant said the morning after, referring to the Prussian military theorist. "And if I was to hazard a guess, I'd say that's what I was doing last night -- using violence to make a political point.
"And in the end, that's what we do. Whether patrolling or occupying or overthrowing governments, we advance politics."
Textbook stuff?
"It's partly what I was teaching," Ollivant said. "More what I've picked up in the last couple years."
Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad contributed to this report.
