Lessons Learned in Iraq Show Up in Army Classes

At the Command and General Staff College, Army instructor Stuart Lyon teaches a seminar on the theory of counterinsurgency. Officers know, Lyon said, that when they return to Iraq, "they've got to be smarter about it." (Photo By Thomas E. Ricks -- The Washington Post)

Officers here said they see a strong cultural shift at work for the Army, whose self-image still sometimes seems based on charging across Europe toward Berlin in 1944 and blasting Saddam Hussein's tanks in the Arabian Desert 47 years later.

"What we're trying to do is change the culture, to modify that culture, that solving the problem isn't just a tactical problem of guns and bombs and maneuver," said retired Army Col. Clinton J. Ancker III, director of the "doctrine"-writing office here that defines how the Army does what it does. He is involved in an effort to restructure the Army's "interim" manual on insurgency, which some insiders see as a mediocre stopgap.

Unusually, the Army and the Marines are collaborating on the new manual and also asking for input from the British army, which has had centuries of experience in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

Conscious that it largely walked away from counterinsurgency after the Vietnam War -- the subject was not mentioned in the mid-1970s version of the Army's key fighting manual -- the service now is trying to ensure that the mistake is not repeated. Spearheading that effort is Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, whose doctoral dissertation at Princeton was on the Vietnam War and who later commanded the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. "I think the changes are very broad," Petraeus said. He oversees several of the Army's training bases and schools" with his new job here.

"This is about institutional change, and the whole Army is included. It is kind of a generational change," he said. Indeed, in the next few years, officers who joined the Army after the end of the Cold War will begin to take command of battalions.

The new approach can also be seen in the field, where the Army trains soldiers to fight. The biggest change there has been the admission that counterinsurgency is exceedingly difficult, and that the Army has not been preparing its people well for it, officials said.

"We used to say that if you could do the war fighting, the other stuff was a 'lesser included case,' " said Dennis Tighe, deputy director of an office here that manages Army training. "What we've learned the hard way is that the other stuff is much more difficult."

Also, other Army experts add, because Army commanders lacked the expertise to conduct counterinsurgency campaigns, in 2003 and 2004 they often employed inappropriate tactics, such as big "cordon and sweep" operations that detained thousands of neutral Iraqis and proved to be counterproductive.

Now, in addition to teaching how to fight battles, the Army's training centers teach commanders how to deal with crowds, how to negotiate with local political figures, how to speak through an interpreter, how to oversee the emergency distribution of food.

Earlier this month, 19 officers pondered such questions in Lyon's seminar. Most were Iraq veterans.

When the military detains civilians, they agreed, it is important to treat them well. When addressing a problem, try to go with an Iraqi's solution, not yours. "Put an Iraqi face on it," summarized one major.

And because insurgencies are always political, politics can be more important than combat. "We can go in and kill insurgents, but it's the political piece that will bite you on the butt," noted another officer.

Most of all, they said, the key to victory is not defeating the enemy but winning the support of Iraqis and making the insurgents irrelevant. "When the people start ratting out the insurgents, that's a quantifiable way of measuring your support," said a third officer.

Petraeus said he thinks that the younger officers studying here this year are being given the tools to make a difference in the war next year.

"What we hope to have in Iraq is guys going over there with the broad skill sets to do everything from encouraging a sheik to participate in the political process to economic development to elections, to still being able to go out and get the bad guys, but in a way that is precise and exploits intelligence, and is sensitive to the culture," he said.