On Thursday, the U.S. Army released a long-awaited history of its operational combat experience in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. The study, titled The U.S. Army in the Iraq War – Volume 1: Invasion – Insurgency – Civil War, 2003-2006 and The U.S. Army in the Iraq War – Volume 2: Surge and Withdrawal, 2007-2011, was published under the auspices of the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute.
This reflects its unconventional origins. Under normal circumstances, such work would be undertaken by either the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute (CSI), which is charged with writing quick-turnaround “instant histories,” or the U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH), which writes more deeply researched “official history,” years or decades after the fact.[1] Instead, these volumes were directly commissioned by then-Chief of the Staff of the Army, General Raymond Odierno, who created an Iraq Study Group in 2013 to research and write them. According to Odierno, his intent was “to capture key lessons, insights, and innovations from our more than 8 years of conflict in that country.[I]t was time to conduct an initial examination of the Army’s experiences in the post-9/11 wars, to determine their implications for our future operations, strategy, doctrine, force structure, and institutions.”
CSI had already started writing contemporary histories of the conflict, publishing On Point: The United States Army in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (2004) and On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign (2008), which covered the period from 2003 to January 2005. A projected third volume was advertised, but never published.
Although the Iraq Study Group completed its work in June 2016 and the first volume of the history was scheduled for publication that October, its release was delayed due to concerns within the Army historical community regarding the its perspective and controversial conclusions. After external reviewers deemed the study fair and recommended its publication, claims were lodged after its existence was made public last autumn that the Army was suppressing it to avoid embarrassment. Making clear that the study was not an official history publication, current Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley added his own forward to Odierno’s, and publicly released the two volumes yesterday.
NOTES
[1] For a discussion of the roles and mission of CSI and CMH with regard to history, see W. Shane Story, “Transformation or Troop Strength? Early Accounts of the Invasion of Iraq” Army History, Winter 2006; Richard W. Stewart, “‘Instant’ History and History: A Hierarchy of Needs” Army History, Winter 2006; Jeffrey J. Clarke, “The Care and Feeding of Contemporary History,” Army History, Winter 2006; and Gregory Fontenot, “The U.S. Army and Contemporary Military History,” Army History, Spring 2008.
I have just downloaded it and started reading the Conclusion to get an overview. It is an interesting, well written and insightful document. Many lessons to be learned. It may be premature to comment at this stage but I cannot help but remark on what seems to be a major theme.
I get a strong impression that the fundamental problem was that the Coalition political and military leaders did not understand the local political, religious and ethnic issues. This is not surprising considering how they come from a very different environment. They recognised their mistakes eventually but probably too late.
I wonder does the same apply in Afghanistan and with the statistical analysis I saw on this blog a few days ago.
That is a fair assessment. The growing awareness that the U.S. lacked a realistic understanding of local society and politics is what eventually led to the Human Terrain program. For a variety of reasons, that effort ended in failure, but it seems pretty clear that the entire U.S. counterinsurgent effort was limited by a poor understanding of the insurgency.
The big open question in TDI’s 2004 estimate of the duration and outcome of the Iraqi insurgency hinged on the question as to whether its ideology was of limited/factional nature, or broad, overarching, and popular. That same question is what underpins Chris’s analysis of the Afghan insurgency. It is telling that over 17 years in, the answer is still not clearly understood.