By RALPH PETERS
Posted: 4:23 am
September 14, 2008
When it comes to the war in Iraq, we've endured an embarrassing procession of don't-blame-me books by failed diplomats, failed generals and failed Pentagon apparatchiks. Reporters raced into print to assure us that they knew how to wage counterinsurgency warfare far more effectively than those in uniform. Pundits reveled in gloom and prophesied doom. A few books worth reading sneaked into the bookstores - nearly all written by actual combat veterans. Now, at last, we have Col. Pete Mansoor's extraordinarily valuable "Baghdad At Sunrise," which is destined to be studied in war colleges for generations, but may have difficulty breaking through the bookshelf clutter today.
A brigade commander in the botched-on-high opening phase of the occupation, Mansoor's year as the "sheriff" of east Baghdad, from June 2003 to July 2004, quickly became a grim improvisation as the reality facing his soldiers decoupled from the official line in Washington (or in the nearby-yet-distant Green Zone). In those early days, Mansoor writes, "The coalition lacked more than troops in Iraq. It lacked imagination and insight."
Mansoor cracked the code early on: "long-range sensors and shooters can win a war, but they cannot create peace. For that goal, boots on the ground are required to provide security . . . and stabilize the land the way the Roman legions once did."
"Baghdad at Sunrise" is a far better guide to counterinsurgency warfare than the official manual published by the Army and Marines. Mansoor was a voice of reason during the drafting of that manual, but political correctness won out. As a result, this book has more intellectual integrity and utility (here the enemy is killed; in the manual, he needs a hug).
Yet, whatever theoretical grasp he possessed, Mansoor had a flesh-and-blood brigade to lead and increasingly brutal enemies to fight: "A failure to adapt inevitably means defeat." Mansoor's reinforced 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division proved impressively agile in adapting to unanticipated threats - notably to the insurgents' evolving weapon of choice, the roadside bomb. Mansoor's soldiers became manhunters, cops, aid workers, engineers, aldermen, referees - and had to be ever alert to the imminent danger of no-holds-barred combat.
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