Will U.S. Military Advisors Face ‘Mission Creep’ in Iraq?

This article originally appeared in Cicero Magazine on 23 June 2014.

President Obama announced as many as 300 U.S. military advisers may be deployed to Iraq to assist the government in fighting the Sunni extremist group ISIS, which has invaded areas of western Iraq. The White House is also considering airstrikes. In 2012 President Obama withdrew the last U.S. troops from Iraq, keeping a campaign pledge to end the American presence there. The President has promised that “American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq” and that military advisers will only be there to assist Iraqi forces to repel the ISIS invaders. But some have called this misleading and pointed out that U.S. military advisors certainly have engaged in combat in the past and will again if sent back to Iraq. But would the deployment of U.S. military advisers mean U.S. troops will be engaged in combat in Iraq again?

I served as a U.S. military adviser while attached to a Military Transition Team (MiTT) in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. Our job was to provide for our assigned Iraqi infantry battalion what they did not have themselves–namely medical evacuation capability (MEDEVAC), air and artillery support, and certain forms of intelligence. We also facilitated training in administration, logistics, equipment and weapons maintenance, electronic communications, and operational and tactical strategy—all the skills of professional soldiers. We acted as liaison between our Iraqi battalion and its sister U.S. battalion responsible for the same sector. We also evaluated and reported on the readiness of the Iraqi unit to function autonomously. We were certainly engaged in combat, accompanying Iraqi units on patrols and cordon and search operations. Several U.S. members of our unit were killed and seriously injured in combat operations, along with scores of Iraqi soldiers.

Throughout WWII, U.S. military adviser General ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell and his staff provided high-level military assistance to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and commanded Chinese and Western troops as Chiang’s Chief of Staff. Though their role was originally envisioned to be purely advisory in nature, the United States pushed for Stilwell to be placed in charge of all allied forces in the Chinese theatre, something Chiang resisted until the last. Stilwell and his staff had to fight their way out of Burma following Chinese defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1941, and Stilwell spent the rest of his time in China fighting with Chiang rather than the Japanese.

The re-deployment of U.S. military advisors to Iraq will not automatically mean putting American troops back into combat. But it could.

Perhaps the clearest example of U.S. military advisors becoming engaged in combat comes from Vietnam. Following the 1945 Japanese surrender, France attempted to regain control of its pre-war colony, Indochina. They returned to strong nationalist and communist resistance in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos which they lacked the understanding or will to fight. A small contingent of U.S. advisers were first dispatched to Indochina in 1950 to support the French military, still recovering from WWII and desperately trying to fight the communist insurgency with antiquated equipment. The U.S. mission was to train French forces on new military equipment the U.S. had supplied them to aid France in its fight against the communists.

After the final French defeat of the First Indochina War at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the U.S. began to directly advise the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem in its fight against communist North Vietnam and their indigenous Viet Cong allies. From 1955 to 1960, the U.S. mission grew to as many as 1,500 military advisors. As the Viet Cong insurgency grew in the South, the number of U.S. military advisors grew exponentially, with over 16,000 U.S. military advisors in South Vietnam by 1963. In an extreme example of ‘mission creep’, the soldiers of the Military Assistance Advisory Group-Vietnam (MAAG-V) and the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MAC-V) from 1950 to 1973 moved from a small advisory role to an allied Western military to an open combat role in a grinding Cold War counterinsurgency. They did much more than engage in ‘self-defence’, as once claimed by the Kennedy administration.

Not all U.S. military advisory missions have led to U.S. troops engaging in combat, however. Following WWII, U.S. military advisors assisted in the rebuilding of Germany, the implementation of the Marshall Plan in Europe, and reconstruction efforts in Japan, China and Korea. Throughout the Cold War, U.S. military advisers trained South American military forces to stabilise their governments against communist rebels during Foreign Internal Defense (FID) missions. More recently, the United States has increased its military advisory presence in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. U.S. military advisers have trained troops and advised governments in Nigeria, South Sudan, Chad, Congo, the Central African Republic, Somalia, Yemen and the Philippines, among others, in recent years. Civilian civil servants with the U.S. Department of Defense also engage in military advisory missions through programs such as the Ministry of Defense Advisors Program (MoDA). The U.S. has frequently deployed civilian and military defence advisors during peacetime to assist allies through structures such as NATO in Europe and the defunct Cold War-era SEATO in Asia. The re-deployment of U.S. military advisors to Iraq will not automatically mean putting American troops back into combat.

But it could. U.S. Special Operations Forces, especially U.S. Army Green Berets, were originally conceived with the intent of training and organising indigenous troops to become a competent and coherent fighting force to engage in unconventional warfare or to train allied government troops in Foreign Internal Defence or counter-insurgency missions. Building an effective fighting force can hardly be done solely in a theoretical, classroom environment, and even field training under simulated fighting conditions is no substitute for real combat. Special Operations Forces often provide theoretical instruction, followed by field training, and progressing into leading, advising and evaluating performance in combat operations when necessary. If U.S. military advisers are deployed to Iraq, they will likely be Special Operations Forces who possess language and cultural skills and years of previous experience on the ground in Iraq. Anonymous U.S. officials have said the Pentagon would ask for U.S. Special Operations Forces to be on the ground in order to support advisory and intelligence operations there.

The U.S. has already invested billions of dollars, scores of American lives, and six years into training and equipping Iraqi government troops. That is more years of U.S. military training and experience than I had when I first deployed to Iraq myself in 2003. The Iraqi military has been engaged in a counterinsurgency battle on their home turf for years so are not novices to combat. They have already been trained by U.S. advisors. Difficulties in agreeing to an acceptable SOFA agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki are the reason there has been no U.S. military advisory presence in Iraq since 2012. Now al-Maliki and the Iraqi government want U.S. forces to return.

There is a historical danger a renewed U.S. military advisory mission in Iraq could “creep” from helping Iraq to help itself into doing it for them. The U.S. may launch airstrikes against ISIS forces—something President Obama has announced he is considering—but they could not do so effectively without trained American controllers on the front lines, which would necessarily place them ‘in combat’—something the President has promised not to do. During the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, President Obama promised there would be no U.S. presence on the ground and that the U.S. would take a backseat to its European allies. Behind the scenes, paramilitary forces from U.S. intelligence were indeed on the ground in Libya and the U.S. military played a much larger role than was publicly acknowledged.

JCS Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, once in overall charge of the American effort to train police and military forces in Iraq, warned that the U.S. does not have the intelligence capability to effectively lead and target airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. The Iraqi army was not trained or equipped with communications equipment which would enable them to effectively guide U.S. airstrikes. The U.S. was rightly hesitant to train and equip a foreign military with that capability. Arguably only U.S. boots on the ground—filled by troops trained in combat air control—could make the difference.

In sum, U.S. military advisors have historically been deployed in both combat and non-combat roles. While there is a precedent, it does not necessarily follow that the re-deployment of U.S. military advisors to Iraq will lead to “mission creep” or putting American troops into combat there again. For the option of U.S. airstrikes being employed against ISIS in Iraq to be effective, however, U.S. controllers would most likely have to be on the ground at the front lines. So how does one definitively determine if U.S. troops are “in combat”? This is probably the question that is easiest answer. Forget what the President, Congress, the lawyers, the experts or the media say on the issue. To quote one of Murphy’s Laws: “If you are being shot at, you are in combat.”

A Quick Primer on Chechnya

This article originally appeared on PolicyMic on 19 April 2013.

Chechnya is a region in the large isthmus between the Black and Caspian Seas north of the Georgia and Armenia in the North Caucuses Mountains. It can be said to stand on the gate between east and west, with Russia to the north and Iran and Turkey only several hundred miles south. Most ethnic Chechens, by far the largest ethnic group, adhere to Sunni Islam. Ethnic Russians, mostly of transplanted Cossack origin, are predominantly Orthodox Christians. The region is also home to other smaller populations of eastern Caucuses peoples. Chechnya was part of the Ottoman Empire and then the Persian Empire until the early 19th century when it was ceded to Russia following their victory in the Russo-Persian War in 1813.

Chechnya has been host to conflict for centuries because of its strategic position between Russia and far eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire and the Middle or Near East. It sits atop the natural barrier of the Caucuses Mountains between two seas. Chechnya has been the site of many instances of brutal ethnic and religious oppression by the Ottomans, Persians, Russian Empire, the USSR, and the Russian Republic, as well as by regional separatist or independence leaders, in an effort to control or keep hold of the region. As a result, inhabitants are quite divided between political, ethnic, and religious allegiances. Roughly speaking, Chechnya has a history similar to regions such as Bosnia and Kosovo, which are subject to much the same tensions.

Chechnya has been fighting on-and-off for independence from Russia for over 200 years. It was briefly independent following the Russian Revolution in 1921. Following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1940, Chechnya again declared independence until Stalin re-established control in 1944, followed by a brutal purge and mass Siberian deportations. The years following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 were particularly violent as many Chechen groups fought again for independence from the Russian Republic, though the region has been under firm Russian control since 1999. However, this control has led some Chechen separatist groups to turn to terrorism.

Since 1999, Chechnya-linked groups have been involved in at least a dozen terror attacks, the majority of which have taken place in or been aimed at Russia. A Chechen group seized a grade school in Beslan, Russia in 2004, resulting in the deaths of 330 hostages, most of them children. In 2008, Chechen rebels took 130 hostages in a movie theatre in Moscow, all of whom died along with their captors following a botched rescue attempt by Russian security forces. In 2010, two female suicide bombers killed 39 in an attack at a train station near the Moscow headquarters of the FSB, Russia’s main intelligence agency.

There is evidence that some Chechen separatist groups may have links to Al-Qaeda. Many ethnic Chechen fighters fought alongside the mujahedeen, including Osama Bin Laden, in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Chechens also fought alongside the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan against the U.S. and Northern Alliance fighters in 2001. The Taliban government was one of the few in the world to recognize Chechen independence. Russia has claimed it holds direct evidence of links between Chechen rebels and Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Many question this link and cite it as a ploy to ensure the west sees Chechen rebels as terrorists and the west elicits no resistance in return from Russia when it pursues its own terrorists elsewhere.

The U.S. government lists the Islamic Independent Peacekeeping Brigade as a source for funding for Islamist Chechan rebels and has ties to Al-Qaeda. America also lists the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment and Riyadus-Salikhin Brigade of Chechen Martyrs as terror groups.

Rand Paul is Wrong; International Development is Vital to U.S. National Security

This article originally appeared on PolicyMic on 18 March 2013.

It's not a stretch to say that there is a lot of dishonesty in our political discourse in America. One of the most brazen but overlooked examples comes from the wing of one of our major political parties that claims to believe in no or very little government, yet is led by figures who spend their entire careers working in government under the questionable claim that they do so to protect the rest of us. To expect figures such as Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to be good shepherds of government policy and programs they ideologically oppose is the same as trusting a cat with your gold fish bowl. Fortunately, the vast majority of Americans accept government has a role to play in our lives, especially regarding our national security. Unfortunately, blind ideological allegiance to slashing government in ignorance of this vital role threatens our national defense.

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and we should not ignore the lessons we learned from our struggle there. I served two tours in Baghdad and often the best metrics we had to measure the impact of our security operations and reconstruction was to measure how many hours of electricity were provided each day, how many shops were open, if the water, sewage, and trash removal were working, and how long the gasoline lines were. We learned that we can never ignore the aftermath of military actions and simply hope for the best. However, we also should have already picked up this lesson following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, as made famous by Charlie Wilson’s War. Had we spent money on international development then, perhaps we wouldn't be fighting there now. It would be more than a mistake to make the same mistakes twice.

Our troops were forced into the role of international aid workers, social workers, and public works directors. Though they certainly rose to meet the challenge, such work is best left to professionals who are experienced in such matters so our troops can concentrate on winning the fight. Our military leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan learned through experience on the ground that providing public works and educational and economic development is just as valuable as performing traditional military operations. They requested funding for such programs. CENTCOM Commander Gen. James Mattis recently testified before Congress, "If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition." That is quite an endorsement and these hard-learned lessons should not be ignored now.

Unfortunately, small government zealots such as Paul are doing just that. Just recently here on PolicyMic and elsewhere Paul has lumped spending on important international development programs in with the massive amount spent upon the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an example of out-of-control spending that needs to be cut. Rather ironically, it was Paul's own party that pushed hard for America to enter into these long and costly wars. It seems to be a dishonest attempt to capitalize on the misunderstanding the public have on the amount spent on "foreign aid" to lump these two very different categories together. It is just as dishonest for Paul and others to lump international development in with our trade and borrowing deficit with China, a wholly unrelated issue.

In fact, the U.S. spends less than 1% of its entire budget on international development. Spending on international development returns much more benefit than military spending. Those truly concerned about getting the best for taxpayer dollars spent should take heed. It costs over half a million dollars to put one soldier in the field in places like Iraq or Afghanistan for one year. The effect of spending an equal amount to build schools or water treatment plants or a new local market lasts decades longer than a soldier's one year tour and the effect multiplies as local conditions are improved. It also keeps our troops out of harm's way when it works. If Paul or others are concerned with how America spends its money, they should welcome these programs.

Though its benefit is harder to quantify than the number of terrorists captured or killed, it has a real recognizable impact and for a longer period. The question should not be "can we afford to build a school in Afghanistan and not in America," but rather "is it more cost effective to build a school there now to avoid possibly having to send our troops there later?" Those concerned with spending our security dollars in the most effective way possible understand this.

Such spending also builds a positive image for America, as opposed to conducting armed house-to-house searches that, though often necessary, receive a negative response. A national security operation that builds a positive image and costs far less than fighter jets and smart bombs should be a welcome tool. Our military understands why international development funding is important, but some in Congress are not listening to them. They cannot honestly claim to know better.

The world today is a complex place and America cannot afford to retreat within its own borders as isolationists. Sen. Paul and his followers want a "little America" that has a smaller role in world events and that willfully gives up its mantle as world power. Such behavior will not make threats and our problems go away and they'll show up on our doorstep sooner or later whether we like it or not. The world is a safer place with America active in it. We cannot afford to ignore the lessons our troops fought and paid so dearly to learn. International development paired with the proper application of military force when necessary is an effective tool America should fully fund and apply. We cannot afford to ignore these lessons or to relearn them again the hard way.

September 11 2001: The Day Everything Changed for the US Military

This article originally appeared on PolicyMic on September 11 2012.

For many who spent time in uniform on 9/11/01, life is very much a story of before and after. I listened to the broadcast of the attacks on BBC radio while on an Army field exercise in Graefenwoehr, Germany. Much was different for soldiers before that day and much has changed since then.

Before, we trained with deployments to places like Bosnia or Kosovo in mind, not Afghanistan or Iraq. We wore Cold War-era equipment and woodland camouflage uniforms and slept in tents in the woods or in soft-sided military vehicles. Being stationed in Germany, we were all more practiced at fighting a Warsaw Pact enemy in the snow, mud, and rain of Europe than the urban or desert terrain of the Middle East. The Army life was generally as routine as military life can be. You get a new assignment and pack your bags for someplace new about every two years.

As we listened to the towers fall, still hoping it was some kind of an accident, we didn’t know how much things were about to change. Our exercise was cut short and we loaded into our vehicles and headed back to our post the next morning. An image I will always remember from that convoy is of Germans driving past waving small American flags out of the windows of their cars and shouting slogans of support. If any country knows what good the U.S. military has done in the world, it is Germany. Fifty six years before, America and its allies had rolled over the Nazis and then spent the next several decades rebuilding our former enemy under the Marshall Plan. U.S. soldiers stationed in Germany have been supporting the economy and our NATO ally since 1945. It may have been a rocky relationship since 2003, but I’ll always remember the faces of those German men and women waving the flag in support of America, in support of a country not their own and to people they would never meet.

Less than two years later our convoy was greeted again with waves from smiling citizens, but this time we were rolling into Baghdad. The results of ‘shock and awe’ were still very apparent. The people there were glad to see us at first. They all said thanks and then asked when we were leaving. Over the coming months we would all come to learn much about Iraq, Islam, Baathists, IEDs, snipers, and ambushes on city streets. The learning curve was steep. As we rolled back down to Kuwait on the way home 15 months of combat later, we did so with 10 of our brothers dead and four times as many, including myself, wounded in action.

One image that is forever burned into my memory is of two kids in an alley way near the bank of the Tigris. As I pulled security at the end of the alley, they snuck up on a mangy stray dog asleep in the sunshine, one of them holding a cup of gasoline and the other a lit piece of newspaper. They threw it on the dog and laughed as it cried and burned and died. Kids play with dogs; they don’t kill them. The things you want to remember, you forget; the things you’d like to forget, you always remember. Some people would call American soldiers savages, but there are worse things in this world.

We went home for a year and came back again. This time we flew in and slept in air-conditioned trailers and had showers and Burger King. But the streets outside were still the same, if not worse. I was assigned to a small team embedded with an Iraqi army unit we were to train and support. As the sectarian war raged, I remember getting a call from the U.S. battalion paired with our unit. They had found six bodies and five heads and needed us to come out. That wasn’t the first time I took a call like that or the last.

Three days before we all flew home, on the last mission he was to go on, we lost a platoon mate. The mixture of sorrow and joy left you feeling almost drunk. We sat around in the gravel, numb under our ponchos in the rain, and smoked and talked about what we were going to do when we got home. At that point, I was supposed to have been out the Army for three months already, but they had ‘stop-lossed’ me. They let me go three months later and I decided to make a clean break of it. I went to college on the GI Bill. I finished my degree in 2010. I’m starting grad school next week.

9/11 changed a lot in my life and in a lot of other lives. Everyone that went to war knows someone that didn’t make it back. A lot of veterans left a piece of themselves there. A lot of young men and women saw more than most others will see in a lifetime. Many soldiers came home to empty houses or drank themselves to sleep at night or worse. Families split up. Kids have grown up without a parent. People politely thank me for my service and I politely thank them back, but talking about the wars makes people back home uncomfortable. Usually I don’t offer up that I’m a veteran, but most know by looking at me.

Everything is different after 9/11. If you told me I could throw a magic switch and take back 9/11 and stop the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I would do it in a heartbeat. No question. But if you said that I could only take back my own part in the fighting, I wouldn’t do it. It was the most terrible time in my life, but it was also the best time of my life. It made me who I am. I know that is hard to understand for most people. I have trouble understanding it myself. But there it is. 9/11 changed everything for our soldiers.

Lightly Arming Syrian Opposition U.S.' Best Option

This article appeared on the Truman Doctrine and The Diplomat in August 2012.

The media presents daily reports of the escalating violence in Syria. There have been confirmed reports of mass executions by the regime. Women are being raped and men are disappearing.

Thousands of civilians and combatants are dying from shelling and firefights every day. The cities of Homs, Damascus, and Aleppo, among others, stand in ruins. Russia and China continue to block UN action in the Security Council. Thus far in the Arab uprisings, America has taken the successful approach of developing the situation from the outside to ensure the revolutions maintain their own national character. The threat of chemical weapons makes any ground intervention more difficult. America should build on past success and break the Syria stalemate by arming the Syrian opposition with anti-tank weaponry and non-lethal supplies.

It is well-known the Assad regime possesses a large stockpile of chemical weapons. They’ve been manufacturing them domestically for decades. A regime spokesman stated chemical weapons could be used against any outside invasion force, though the statement was later walked back. Even for well-equipped and trained militaries such as America’s, conducting operations in a lethal nerve agent environment multiplies the difficulty level and will greatly increase casualties in ground combat. An invasion of Syria is a much more difficult prospect than some imagine.

The same regime spokesman asserted Syria would not use chemical weapons on their own people, no matter the situation. Contaminating large swathes of countryside, effective when necessary against outside invasions, is undesirable domestically. It can present short and long-term contamination hazards for people, animals, crops, and water, not to mention the international mores it would break. Outside of Saddam Hussein, even brutal dictators have hesitated to use these weapons. The Syrian regime using nerve agents could lead to evaporation of Russian or Chinese support.

Arming the Syrian opposition is a better option. The Assad regime has shown no hesitation in using artillery and armor against the Syrian people. Equipping Syrian rebels with light anti-tank weapons such as RPG-7s will allow them to combat the regime’s T-55 and T-72 tanks. RPG-7s and lighter anti-tank weaponry are not capable of penetrating U.S. M1 Abrams tanks.

The Middle East is already awash in such weaponry so America wouldn’t be introducing anything new. Getting them quickly and directly into the hands of Syrian resistance fighters will bring the timely turning point needed to end the violence. Keeping an eye on the future after the Assad regime falls, America should stop short of providing small-arms weaponry, such as machine guns which may be used in the turmoil after the regime falls.

The U.S. should provide the opposition with non-lethal effects as well. Providing radio and other equipment to opposition commanders will allow them to coordinate their forces locally and nationally. Medical and food supplies are vital as well as the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Providing such supplies directly to Syrians already on the ground will get them closer to those who need them as America and its allies develop a coordinated response to the humanitarian situation following the fighting.

Providing light anti-tank weaponry and other non-lethal support for the opposition combined with continued international diplomatic and economic pressure on the regime, followed by a coordinated international humanitarian response to the aftermath, is America’s best course to end the Syria stalemate.

How We Think of Terrorism

What does a terrorist or insurgent look like? When asked, most people will respond with a variant of one of the following: 1) the old 'They're Arabs, Muslims' or 2) the politically correct 'They can be anyone of any color of any religion of any sex', etc, etc. Both answers are wrong. We know that not all terrorists are Arabs or Muslims. Even people who make this statement know it is incorrect. However, the politically correct version that 'it can be anyone' is equally, if not more false.

A major but oft-overlooked cause of Terrorism is idleness and unemployment in third world countries where the majority of the population is under thirty years old. That is a severe oversimplification, but a good starting point. If the United States were to descend to the level of a third world country, the young (and some not-so-young) people in our neighborhoods could easily become insurgents or terrorists. Think of a lot of uneducated, unemployed, idle youth and add to it something which they can line up or unite against, such as a foreign invader that supposedly seeks to destroy their way of life. There are many people in this country today who are easily convinced of the same thing already.

Think if you were a young man, had less than a high school diploma, and were un- or underemployed. What would happen if a well-spoken, educated, older man came to you and convinced you America was to blame for these woes and spoke of friendship, brotherhood, equality, justice, revenge, and a little adventure. It would be a chance to make a mark on the world and to gain respect. The only recruting conditions this man needs are disaffected youth, an enemy to rail against, and a program to indoctrinate. This is how much of terrorist activity begins.

Terrorism in our minds these days is inseparably connected with Islam. This is misleading. While the many terror attacks against America and its allies in the last decade have been perpetrated by Muslims, Islam is simply the tool used by a hierarchy of political Islamists to indocrinate the disaffected youth in their countries with the hope of placing them or keeping them and their ideas in power. These political Islamists use a hardline version of the religion to draw a line between themselves as 'true' believers and others as non-believers, a strong argument in the muslim world. Islam is not the reason terrorists exist; it is a tool used to create them. The religion itself could be replaced by some other idea just as powerful. If the same socio-economic conditions existed in America or Europe today, Christianity could be used to the same effect.

Muslims see each other as brothers and find it difficult to work against a fellow Muslim, even if they were born in the U.S. or live or were educated in the west and even where they believe themselves that terrorism is wrong and hurts other Muslims. This is why the West has such troubles finding Arabic speakers willing to work in the military and intelligence communities. Islam is not a religion that preaches terrorism; it is a religion that preaches brotherhood within a community of believers. This fact is turned against the community of believers by Political Islamists using it to keep decent Muslims quiet and turn disaffected youth into a tool to put or keep them in power. There is not a 'clash of civilisations', but simply politicians using rhetoric, suspicion, youth, and anger for political gain. It kind of sounds familiar in the end, doesn't it?