Opinion (Phillip Carter): What About the Grunts?

The Iraq Study Group

For all of the time they spent learning about America's war in Iraq, the Iraq Study Group failed to study the war at its most critical level: that of the grunts. Nothing makes this clearer than the report's appendix, which lists scores of men and women interviewed for the report, but none below the rank of lieutenant colonel. Iraq is what the Marines call a "three block war"—where U.S. troops might distribute reconstruction aid on one block, separate warring parties on the next block, and engage in a high-intensity firefight on the third. The actions of "strategic corporals" and captains matter most for small wars of this character. It is at their level where the war will be won or lost. It speaks volumes that the panel did not take the time to hear any of these grunt-level voices while in Iraq or back in the United States, or at least did not bother to list their names as authoritative sources for their report. If nothing else, the panel should have interviewed a few Iraq veterans and their families for political purposes, given the lingering questions over who serves when not all serve.

Further, Iraq is a land that confounds national strategies and solutions. Just like politics, all counterinsurgency is local. The war in Iraq is a provincial and municipal-level fight. What has worked to establish order in the Kurdish province of Sulymaniyah and the southern provinces will not work in the contested provinces of Anbar, Diyala, Baghdad, and Salah Ah Din. Likewise, each city presents unique problems that often defy national-level strategies devised in Baghdad or Washington. In a heavily Shiite area, building the local police force may be the best answer for creating order. In a heavily Sunni area, that move would likely cause open sectarian warfare. Staying in the Green Zone and getting their view of Iraq via PowerPoint slides and sterilized group discussions simply didn't convey this reality to the ISG. They needed instead to talk with soldiers, Marines, intelligence officers, and diplomats who regularly interact with Iraqis and understand the reality of this country that exists outside the blast walls of America's hermetically sealed bases.

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