D -
Here is a response from my friend in Baghdad regarding the Herb Meyer and Lawrence Peter article. Kurt is going on his 45th month over there & know his stuff. Read on! Ken ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------ Ken - I find it more than interesting...comments are both refreshing in candor and disturbing in that they are correct. I read about the PhD brain-pool a couple days ago. This Aussie wizard: --Has no Middle East experience but has spent time in East Timor and Cyprus (according to his CV) --Based his observations on a study of Indonesian Muslims which he intends to apply in Iraq, which is akin to claiming expertise about US Baptists because you've studied Ireland's Roman Catholics...both Christian, hardly similar. Indonesian Muslims are of a different stripe than Arab Muslims, are overwhelmingly Sunni, only have a 200+ year history in Indonesia, and invoke Islam to establish union; Iraq is 67% Arab Shia'a (vs 88+% Indonesian Sunni), the two countries have significantly dissimilar histories and other resident ethnic groups (most notably the Kurds in Iraq) to bring into doubt applying the lessons of one state to resolve the situation in the other, and Iraqi Shia'a/Sunni sectarianism has led to Iraq's fracturing, not its union. However, I'm just a Mid East guy trying to get home alive (caught in a cross-fire near Taji two days ago; no leaks) and will certainly bow to Asia experts who wish to dissent with my assessment. Further, the Aussie's below "dicta" do not reach the "amazing...why didn't I think of that?" standard. Maybe one or two show some insights, but they're like "inevitable discovery:" think about the subject for a moment, and the "revelation" will come to you naturally. I think its called common sense. I give him credit for capturing these thoughts in a single document, but you and I could have done that over a beer and club sandwich. FYI: Petraeus didn't write the COIN manual for which he is taking credit; my roommate at WP, (now Mr) Clint Ancker wrote it. Petraeus is a Princeton PhD and has encapsulated and buffeted himself with like-minded folks. He's the boss, he doesn't need "like-minded" advisors, he needs dissenters to bring other thoughts to the argument, like Eisenhower had Montgomery and deGaulle (and even Patton). And who thinks a grizzled US 2-star field commander will listen intently to an Aussie (or US) staff LTC or COL whose claim to legitimacy is that he spent years in academia? (NB: OK...some of these guys have combat experience, but they're here because of their academic creds.) I've spent 25 years in the Mid East, and I'm starting to understand these people, but I've learned that the more you think you know, the less you really understand. What the indig understand is the brutal application of force; the touchy-feely liberal "can we please get you a new Quran?" approach is viewed as a sign of softness and great weakness to be exploited. The bad guys went to ground when we arrived because they assumed we'd chop off heads, rape, pillage, and plunder, like they do and because they were told that's what we would do (as an incentive to fight). The first bad guy to emerge from under his rock likely thought, "hey, this isn't too bad...I can make something of this." The rest is history and 3000+ US's finest KIA. This is a very complicated part of the world, and on-the-ground experience, not academic PhDs, is needed to pull this rabbit out of the hat. The highly vaunted Baghdad Crack-down is about to kick off, disaster to follow, and I doubt you heard it here first. 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