“You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, and wipe it clean of life — but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman Legions did — by putting your soldiers in the mud.” – T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War
In a drawer in my desk is a small wooden box with a handful of old SD cards. Each card captures the images of a deployment, pictures taken and often forgotten. Soldiers whose names are distant memories. Moments of celebration amid the tragedies that surrounded us from day-to-day. Snapshots of lightheartedness with the seriousness of the business of war.
On of those cards, there are a series of images from April 2003 as my convoy snaked its way through a cheering crowd of Iraqis in Mahmudiyah on our way to Baghdad. Jubilant people packed a mile-long stretch of Highway 8, waving and clapping as we slowly pushed north to the capitol city. In the years since, that scene has played over in my head countless times.
Days later, we returned to Mahmudiyah to deliver humanitarian aid to the city’s residents. While the people were happy to receive assistance, the mood had shifted noticeably. There were no cheering crowds this time. Instead, we were met with suspicion. Armed men moved among the people, glaring at us menacingly. The hostile intent was impossible to miss, and we were not organized for a fight. We chose to disengage and return to Baghdad before events spun out of control.
We had only just mounted our HMMWVs when violence erupted; vehicles were burning in the street and gunfire followed us as our convey pulled out of the city center.
The Golden Hour
As we made our way back to our operating base on the southern edge of Baghdad, I was replaying those two moments in my mind. How could a city that welcomed us so excitedly turn violent so quickly? What had changed? Over the course of the next months, I would ponder those same thoughts on many occasions.
We’d lost the golden hour. Most people understand the meaning of the golden minute, the critical first 60 seconds in the life of a newborn, the period during which timely assessment and intervention can be crucial for survival. It also serves as a metaphor for establishing security and some semblance of stability in the wake of regime change – the dreaded nation building term.
The golden hour is unforgiving. You get one chance to do it right. After that, it gets exponentially more difficult to achieve meaningful and lasting results. For us, the golden hour had passed. We’d won the war but hadn’t secured the peace. An Mahmudiyah was just an early sign of what was to come.
Bringing Home the Win
From time-to-time, those memories – and similar ones from years spent in that corner of the world – come flooding back. As we marked the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq recently, I found myself thumbing through the images from the March to Baghdad, only to stop on the pictures from that morning on Highway 8.
Why do we lose wars? It’s not because we lack lethality or because we’re too woke. It’s not a factor of our ability to project decisive power to any corner of the globe or the supposed restrictions placed on us when we get there by the laws of land warfare.
None of the above.
As retired Lieutenant General James Dubik reminded us recently, there’s a difference between fighting wars and waging wars. We tend to be really good at one and not always so good at the other. We lose wars because we mistake one for the other, when we really don’t understand that they’re different.
“Iran,” he notes, “isn’t the same as, but rhymes with Libya.” Even while the military campaigns appeared coherent, with deliberate, sequenced targets and measurable outcomes, the resulting destruction had no clear end goal. What happens when the dust settles? “Where are the non-military campaigns that are a necessary component of waging war?”
That’s the $200 billion question.
Waging war, according to Dubik, requires three distinct skills from our senior political and military leaders, who must work together to execute them with precision. Together, these skills set the context for fighting war while setting the azimuth for waging war. “Executing them well enough increases the probability of success in war. Poor execution, even if the fighting goes well, decreases the probability of wartime success.”
1. Is our strategy coherent?
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. We’ve heard this same refrain from Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and every reputable strategic theorist in between. Setting clear and achievable war aims is the start point for success. Coherence is gained by aligning policy and strategy – along with military and non-military means – across the spectrum of national power.
2. Is there organizational decision-making capacity to adapt as the war unfolds?
War is brutal, unforgiving, uncertain, and – some might say – smelly. It’s also in a constant state of flux, as the conditions ebb and flow with each passing moment. That demands agile senior leaders with the ability to translate political and military decisions into orchestrated, adaptive, decisive action, all geared toward achieving a better peace after those aims are met. Leaders who enter into war with a clear understanding of how it ends.
3. Is the war legitimate in the eyes of the American citizenry?
This is where the rubber meets the road in waging war. Legitimacy can be a complex concept, but waging a successful war often depends on the public will to continue the campaign through to the better peace. And if the public doesn’t view the war as just or necessary, understand why a war is being waged, or see progress being made toward an achievable end state consistent with American values, that support will wane.
Dubik ends with a very on-brand degree of humility, admitting that he’s not offering anything we don’t already know. I disagree. If we keep making the same mistakes when it comes to waging war, if our senior leaders continue to confuse warfighting with waging war, then they still have a lot of learning left to do.’
And we’ll see a lot more Mahmudiyah’s in our future.
