Iraq and Private Security Firms

The Iraqi government's decision to consolidate control of private security contractors is enormous. Their success will make or break the government as the sovereign ruler of their country. The more the united States hinders the processes the longer America will be in Iraq.

Soverignty is most simply defined as the ability to monopolize violence within your territory. So far Iraq has not been able to do this. The American military has had control, at least nominal control, since the time of the invasion. It has parceled out pieces of control when appropriate but most violence has been outside of the control of the Iraqi government. Attempts to transfer control have had mixed results as a result of the varied abilities of the agencies that are enforcing the control.

Iraqi military units have been faced with a myriad of obstacles. Most of these are the result of lack of training and equipment. Also there are problems with factionalism and infiltration by insurgents. They cannot monopolize violence within Iraq on their own.

Primarily they rely on the American military to make up the difference. We too have had our shortcomings in Iraq. Simply stated there are not enough American's do the job and we are outside of our culture. Even combined with the Iraqi's we fall short of full control. (Despite amazing efforts by hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqi soldiers.)

The difference between what the American and Iraqi forces can produce is made up by private security firms. Called mercineries in any other age. These men and women operate in the grey area of the war. They are employed by everyone from construction firms and oil companies to the State Department of the United States.

They operate to their own standards, under their own rules of engagement (ROE). The Iraqi government has set ROE for these firms but these standards have been put aside in the interest of keeping themselves and their clients alive. These firms lack two things that would allow them to operate under the same ROE as regular military forces in the country (these are very broad and intended to protect the soldier first and the civilian second). One is support. The second is supervision.

Security contractors operate without the support that regular military forces live by. They lack intelligence support, fire support, air support, and backup when they get in trouble (I'm sure but can't confirm if there are exceptions when transporting U.S. Government officials). For all intensive purposes these people are one their own when the stuff hits the fan. It is therefore easy to understand why they adopt shoot first ask questions second mentalities. This is reinforced by a lack of supervision.

Lack of supervision is the second largest thing that has created problems for the private security contractors in Iraq. As a result of U.S. Government rulings at the beginning of the occupation these companies have essentially operated above the law (could not be brought to trial by the Iraqi governement). I think most people can see how this leads quickly to a lack of restraint.

Now the Iraqi governement has chosen to change the tune and assert its supervision. It is a challenging fight to pick but now that they have started they must be successful. There are thre outcomes that I can see emerging from this confrontation.

The first is that the Iraqi government will assert control and the security contractors will face a reduced capacity because they cannot operate safely in Iraq under the restrictions placed on them. This would be a net minus at this point because these contractors do in fact fill a void. Regular military forces cannot at this point provide enough security to cover all of the diplomatic and reconstruction activity that is occurring. If these projects cease recovery may quite likely be further hindered.

The second outcome is that the Iraqi governement fails to assert its authority in a meaningful way. This would be catastrophic. They are making an assertion of their soverignty and a failure to follow through will make them a lame duck. After this violence will spiral as everyone else decides to take their piece of the pie by force (and their neighbors too if they can get away with it).

The last possible outcome would be Iraq successfully asserting their authority. This would be a very meaningful credibility gain.

There are several things that I think that the United States can do to assist in this process.

1. Side with the Iraqi Government. If we are serious about them being effective they need to take control of the violence within their borders.
2. Subsidize reparations to the families in the most recent incidents. This should be done in a manner that it doesn't look like the governement has paid out to anyone. There are caveats on this, it must be clear that there should not be an open season for demands of reparations for previous incidents. Also all contractors employed by the United States that this is the only get out of jail free card they are going to get.
3. Make efforts to integrate the security forces into the larger security picture. This will help prevent later incidents.
   

In conclusion this fight is essential. The legitimacy of the Iraqi governement as a sovereign power is already shaky, loosing this fight will quicken a decline. It is in the best interests of the United States to assist the Iraqi governement in asserting itself. We must do this by helping to broker a settlement for the current incident, make it clear that from here on out Iraqi law on the subject is final and that we won't be bailing any one else out. The alternatives to failure here are more chaos from many directions.

Arlington

I've traveled to Washington D.C. for the 4 day Columbus Day holiday from BOLC II. I came to meet with my parents who are here to relax and look at schools with my sister.

Yesterday we went to Arlington National Cemetery. I haven't been there in years and it felt different to be there as a service member. Before it was always moving to see all of the headstones lined up perfectly. But this time I felt the weight of those lives upon my shoulders. We watched the changing of the guard and a wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers and the sound of taps gave me goosebumps.

We also visited the Kennedy Family Grave. The following portion of President Kennedy's inaugural speech is enscribed in marble looking down on the Mall area of Washington:

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.	24
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.	25
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.	26
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

I remember reading that when I was still in Middle School or possibly younger. I remember it being on of the ideas that sparked me towards military service. Even today it still makes me proud of what I have chosen to be a part of.

BOLC II - The lazyness wrap up.

So the pace of BOLC II accelerated quickly and my hopes and dreams of keeping an accurate record of what we did fell away as training time got longer and longer. I will try and recap now, after the fact, the key points of each week after I last posted.

Qualification week: This was one week that was new to almost no one and simply went slow. Be prepared to qualify with an IBA on. It adds heat and makes it much harder to get the weapon in the pocket of your shoulder. Other wise this shouldn't be to new to any one who as come out of ROTC or west point. The biggest difference was using the CCO. They are not hard but it takes a little bit of getting used to. I was having trouble but found that when I went back to basics and put my nose on the charging handle and closed one eye, my shot groups tightened right up and I zeroed quickly. Also night fire is cool. You get about 30 rounds to shoot so you can only really get used to the concept but it is fun to be able to just point and shoot fire from the hip.

MOUT, is a good a time as you make it. I enjoy it because it is a constant puzzle to determine the best way to move from room to room safely. It seems very easy when you have a square room with no windows, doors or closets. If you add anything more it starts getting more complicated. This is especially true when there is dead space in the room (think L shaped rooms). This was also the first time that our cadre (this was our platoon only) took us out to do a night mission. Platoon attack under night vision. Its harder then you would think, especially when you don't have radios. At the end of the week we got to go in to the shoot house with simunitions and actually fire at targets. I never did any force on force with the simunitions. There was a competition between platoons but that was only one fire team from each platoon.

Mounted Operations were pretty cool. I can say that it works for the most part like a movement to contact lane. Biggest thing you have to get used to is that mounted land navigation works a lot different then on foot. It is harder to figure out where you are when things are moving at 25 miles an hour. Best thing to be prepared for in advance would be to be familiar with IED/UXO reaction drills and reports.

Culmination week. This experience varied greatly from platoon to platoon and even more between companies. Some people like my platoon worked very hard. We would do a mission, including all of the prep, rehearsals and actions on. Get back and get a "follow on mission" where we would have about 30 minutes to prep.

Also included in this week was the 10 mile road march. My platoon did at 5 mile movement, an attack on an objective and a 5 mile movement back. We LDed out of the FOB at 2115 and I crawled into bed at 0530. It was long, hot and sweaty. My neck was the worst part of it. Between the pulling my shoulders down and my nods pulling my kevlar forward it was quite uncomfortable. Weight standard was 25 percent of your weight in a ruck. In most cases that was your IBA plus some water in a camel back.

We also got to play a little bit of OPFOR this week. Anyone who is inbound to this should make sure that you are comfortable with platoon attacks and ambushes, that is how most of your time gets spent. I really can't tell you how much your going to work because there is a huge difference depending on what platoon you are in. I worked hard, the 5th platoon people worked hard but no one else really seemed to.

Week 7 is out processing, and weapon cleaning. Quite and boring, a very nice change.

BOLC II vs. LDAC: Part 2 -Leadership positions and cadre relationship.

The second edition of this series (I can call it that now there are two of them) will regard leadership positions and evaluations and the relationship to cadre.

Evaluations have a lot in common to evaluations in ROTC. The sheet is almost exactly like a blue card. In this case you don't write a yellow card, you just get counseled. There are two types of leadership evaluations. The first kind is a platoon leadership position. The second is by event.

Platoon leadership evaluations are a week in length and include the student first sergeant, platoon leader, platoon sergeant, and squad leaders. Unlike LDAC there is no student CO. The biggest difference between these positions and their counterparts at LDAC other than length is the fact that you can be fired. If you screw up you are removed from command and get an unsatisfactory rating. It has happened once in my platoon. One of the SLs reported that one of her squad members was not present at first formation. He was in fact on CQ duty (something she should have known). Apparently if this happens you will get additional chances to fix yourself later.

The second type of position is a by event position. For instance next week my platoon is the duty platoon for the qualification range. This means that we provide the OIC and a LT to fill the position of NCOIC. These people are responsible for planning the entire range.

I don't know how counciling works out. My first scheduled duty position at the moment is PSG in week 5. More later.

In regards to our relationship as students with the cadre. It is much less formal (at least in my platoon) then in LDAC. At LDAC the cadre are evaluators. They are there to teach but mostly to evaluate and this means that their relationship to you is fialry standoffish to ensure that there is no appearance of favoritism. Here the cadre are considered mentors, they want to get to know you and to help you become better officers. Ideally each platoon gets a CPT or MAJ who is the platoon mentor. Then you have an E7 who is essentially the PSG but is also there to teach and coach. Each platoon is also supposed to have 3 to 4 E6s who will mentor individual squads. My platoon only has one squad mentor, but it's cool because he kicks ass.

The atmosphere that this creates is really great. The NCOs treat you with all the respect due to your rank but it is explicitly clear that you are there to be trained by them. Any one who gets it in their head that they are in charge is quickly corrected. It hasn't happened hear but it was made quite clear not to even let the thought into your head.

That is all for now.

Bad movies

For the record. Both "The Bourne Ultimatum" and "Rush Hour 3" are terrible movies. I've seen two movies in two night on the big screen and been horribly disappointed by both. Neither movie had anything new to offer. The same jokes stunts and tricks.

Bourne is super human everything. Smarter, faster and tricker then everyone else. The technology tricks were unconvincing. Everyone knows that they can be tracked through their phones but leave them on all the time. The CIA knows everything about you but can't figure out the fact that Jason Bourne knows all of the ways that they will attempt to trick him. It was a saga of blunt instruments hitting blunt instruments. That is the one thing that Casino Royal did better in the Spy genera, Bond is a thinking man.

Additionally there is some pretty terrible character development, not helped by bad actors, among the CIA staff. Matt Damon has come a long way in talent since the first movie. But the actors with him couldn't carry their weight. (I think the one exception was Albert Finney who had a short yet terrific performance.)

The last straw and the thing that really killed it was the ending. I don't want to be a spoiler but they did a terrible job of not deciding if they were going to make a fourth movie. There were some pretty transparent and weak tie backs to the first movie that let it go either way. I just really bothered me. I would talk about it more but I really don't want to spoil the disappointment for anyone else.

Rush hour offers very tired cross racial jokes. The scene in the first 20 minutes of the movie where they use a nun as an interpreter was probably the best comedy in the whole movie. Otherwise the jokes were weak tea compared to the previous movies. They did a really bad bit with a French cab driver who wouldn't drive the American but then wants to be a real American because we have a good time was just tacky. Really I don't have much else to say about this one other than it just wasn't very good.

More heat

This is a short post. The heat index for Ft. Benning GA is 120 today. Last night the AC went out in the building. So we got a sticky night of sleep.

Also UA this morning. Got to love someone watching you pee in a cup.

Heat and CIF

We had our first serious heat injury of the cycle today. After our platoon run this morning one LT had a core temp of 107 degrees. For anyone who doesn't know that's fry your brains warm. They ice sheeted* him, put an IV in him and toted him off to the hospital for treatment. This was at 0650 this morning. I can't even think what it is going to feel like when we do real work out doors. He came back to us by the end of the day but it was pretty scary.

Lesson learned, drink water, the heat really will kill you.

I can't remember ever being this hot. It was 103 when we got in my car at 5 o'clock.

In other news we got our CIF issue today and they gave us complete cold weather gear including Gortex tops and bottoms, complete sleeps systems, mittens, over boots, polypro underwear, neck gators, the works. I never got that much cold gear when I lived in Rochester. The Army is a very silly place some times.


*Ice sheeting is a way of cooling a person down. You keep sheets (like for your bed) in an ice chest. Then when you need to bring someone's temp down you put one laid out below them, one in there crotch, one under each of their armpits and wrap one around their head. You then take the sheet below them and fold it over the top. It will cool you down in a hurry if your not to far gone.