In north-central Iraq, battalion by battalion, the Army is shifting its tactics. Recognizing that the consent of the local populace is the foundation of progress, battalions are taking pains to make friends.
This means talking (and listening) to local leaders, keeping armored vehicles out of crowded cities, handing out goodies like pencils and medicine and generally treating Iraqis with the same respect you might treat a fellow American. And that means not shooting at them unless you have to.
Some battalions have a softer touch than others. In a recent issue of Spokane’s The Inlander newspaper, I profiled Echo Company, 1–8 Infantry, a unit that has taken a softer approach than most:
“It’s been suggested that the reason we don’t get hit as much is because we’re nicer to people,” [Echo Co. 1st Lt. Derek] Austin says. Other units shoot up the countryside to test their weapons — and as a show of force. But not Echo. “We don’t do test fires. You don’t know where that round’s going to go.” He says the unit that Echo replaced accidentally shot an Iraqi woman during a test fire.
While Echo has fired warning shots at cars that get too close to their convoys, they’ve done so as a last resort — and only twice in two months. Austin says one of the key tenets of Echo’s strategy for winning the support of everyday Iraqis is that “we just don’t shoot at them.
Read the article here.
– David Axe
The Softer Touch
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
It took three years to learn that lesson. Embaressing.
We need to ship some of these guys stateside and turn them into instructors ASAP. Winning this thing is gonna take alot of this kind of work.
For the Canadian Military the respectfull behaviour described above is an common, everyday event by every member deployed overseas and has been for decades. It is probably due to the differences in the way we look at the world versus the way Americans look at the world.
Bernhard: I didn’t want to be the first to say it, but yeah. It would be a happy story if we hadn’t heard this logic before: before the war, from Vietnam vets; at the beginning of the Occupation, from the British officers who were shocked at what was going on in Baghdad; when the insurgency started, from startled diplomats who were trying to piece together a consensus.
I’m hoping this lesson might be useful in the next war, but they’ve learned and relearned it so many times already, how can we have any confidence that it will take? Can you imagine a National Guard unit going out to somebody’s farm and testing their weapons by shooting them off into the distance? Why did it take them three years to figure out that was going to piss off the neighbors?
Being a gentleman. In times of war, as history has proven, it is the soldier who is the gentleman that wins the hearts and minds of the people – and rightly the enemey.
While the British burned churches and razed cities during the American Revoloution; it was the gentleman in Washington that brought the war to the outcome we all enjoy today.
Yes, somewhere in history we American’s lost that gentleman character in our fighting uniforms. (Granted it may exist in some folks of the fighting type, but in quite the fewer numbers then there should be.)
Well they’re gentlemanly enough in public and at home, in non-combat situations most of out GIs are quite polite. But most haven’t learned how to apply manners and respectfulness in place of the combat mentality when called for.
So now the US Army is “…shifting its tactics…” because it is “…recognizing that the consent of the local populace is the foundation of progress…”, and consequently the US Army will now be “…generally treating Iraqis with the same respect you might treat a fellow American”.
Should we rejoice that they have FINALLY seen the light, or be depressed that it took them so bloody long ?
The only way we can do any kind of good in Iraq (good to the Iraqis, that is, not to US political and financial interests) is by being the good guys. And that means acting like the good guys. And if that’s too difficult, go home.
Thomas
perhaps things have simmered down there to an extant where adopting a ‘kinder, gentler’ persona has become an attractive alternative. You wouldn’t think so from the ‘all jihad all body count all the time’ news networks, but apparently the folk on the ground are thinking differently. Now why would that be? Hmmm? Perhaps quagmire is in the eye of the beholder…
I am glad to see that some units are doing this, but still worried that this is so uncommon it is note worthy. The British have been trying to explain this to the Americans for some time.