70page

68 <a href="http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette">www.mca-marines.org/gazette</a> M a r i n e C o r p s G a z e t t e • M a y 2 0 0 9 IDEAS & ISSUES (FUTURE WAR) they are about to occur. That’s as im- possible as predicting the high or low point in the stock market. I asked Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who led the Sunni Awakening until he was as- sassinated by al-Qaeda, why the tribes had not swung over in, say, 2005 and avoided needless bloodshed on both sides. He said, “We Sunnis had to per- suade ourselves. You Americans did not persuade us.” His reply was a warning about the limitations of analyzing other cultures. War yields defining events, leaders, and movements that assessments cannot predict. As Kenneth Boulding has doc- umented, peace and stability have tremendously varying degrees of tensile strength inside cultures. Colombia, Saudi Arabia, or Indonesia may look worse than Iraq by some measures, and yet they are more stable. There is a dearth of historical models to show how to nation build successfully, while abiding by the decisions and the goals of prideful leaders in sovereign states that cannot survive unless our soldiers do the bulk of the fighting. As we con- tinue the war in Afghanistan, then, five lessons can be drawn from Iraq in terms of risk assessment. First, do not scapegoat. Don’t blame garbage and lies on a single group like the military, civilians in the Pentagon, or the State Department. The blunders in Iraq weren’t confined to one group. On the positive side, Iraq stabilized due to a learning curve and persistence shared by all groups. Second, one man must be charged with risk assessment, separate from the operational commander in Afghanistan. There are three candidates for that job— the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the NATO commander, or the USCent- Com commander. A triumvirate can provide input, but assessing risk cannot be assigned equally among three entities. One commander must have the respon- sibility. In 2007 President George W. Bush pushed aside the chain of com- mand and went directly to GEN Pe- traeus, the operational commander, for assessments about Iraq. That worked, but it’s a bad model. Third, ensure that the goal of risk assessment is to identify and track the critical variables leading to future suc- cess or failure. Agree on a campaign as- sessment format and a set of measures to be applied consistently, year after year. Examine the assessments from Iraq in light of what we now know ac- tually happened, extract the best meas- ures, and discount the rest. Distinguish between measures that are backward looking and record what has already occurred versus trends that point to fu- ture developments. As was the case with the Sunni Awakening in Iraq, we lack in Afghanistan a reliable means for predicting tribal fortitude against the Operations conducted based upon comprehensive risk assessment permit the eventual transfer of responsibility from our forces to host-nation security forces. (Photo by LCpl Grant T. Walker.)
70page

www.mca-marines.org/gazette