A dose of reality from Fred Kagan over at NRO's The Corner:
Much of the testimony today has focused on the issue of the number of Iraqi units assessed as being able to “operate independently,” based on their formal “Operational Readiness Assessments,” or ORAs. A love for statistics is one thing that unites congressmen and military officers, but it can be misleading if we are not clear about what we’re measuring. That is the case with this particular statistic.ORAs, like the “readiness ratings” by which we measure American combat units, are fundamentally peacetime metrics. They count the percentage of assigned soldiers actually present for duty, the number of vehicles, amount of ammunition, hours of training, and so on. Units in combat frequently see their readiness ratings drop as they take losses in personnel and equipment. As General Petraeus has explained repeatedly, but apparently to little avail judging by the comments of his critics, the fact that Iraqi forces are fighting harder almost ensures that their ORA ratings will drop. But it’s the reality, not the metric, that matters. As Petraeus has testified, every battalion in the Iraqi Army has been engaged in significant combat, Iraqi forces take three-four times as many casualties as Americans, and yet there is no shortage of volunteers not merely to make good these losses but to increase the manning levels of Iraqi units to 120% to enable them to handle combat losses and even to increase the overall size of the Iraqi Army.
The question of ORA ratings is particularly irrelevant in the context within which opponents of the surge most often present it. America’s ability to withdraw our forces from active combat and ultimately to reduce the number of our forces in Iraq is not tied to the ability of Iraqi units to operate without any support, or to meet particular metrics. It depends much more heavily on two things: the local security situation in a given area, and the ability of Iraqi forces to maintain that security without having U.S. forces actively patrolling with them or conducting military operations for them. The purpose of the surge is to bring the security situation to a level at which the growing capability of the Iraqi Security Forces can maintain it.
As Kagan points out, the critics use of the number of Iraqi units able to operate entirely independently and at 100% ratings is a red herring - it is a debating point taken to make it appear that nothing is improving, and so we might as well give up. Do keep in mind that the Democrats must force a defeat of the United States in Iraq or their whole 2008 campaign plan will fall apart (it has to do with keeping the left on board - a winning war will only make the left madder and more demanding of defeat - and Democrats don't want MoveOn and Code Pink to be visible in 2008...they want this war over and done with long before the conventions next year). What I like to point out, in contrast to the critic's position, is that three years ago, there barely was an Iraqi army.
Part of our PR problem here is that, relatively, hardly any Americans have ever been in the military. My upward guess on the number of veterans in this country is about 20 million - a lot, but not even one in ten Americans. This ignorance of military affairs plays directly into the hands of the critics - who are also mostly ignorant of military affairs, but know a good propaganda tag when they see it. A military force is not just a bunch of guys in uniforms with guns - it is, most importantly, a set of moral and mental attitudes which makes it almost certain that in battle no one will run away and everyone will fight to the best of their ability. Equipment is vital, but if the soldier is not mentally and morally prepared for battle, he will fail the test and either be crushed, or will run away at the first opportunity.
As it turns out, this moral and mental attitude is something developed in the west and only those military forces trained in western military practices have even a ghost of a chance against a western trained military. When west meets non-west in war, non-west is almost invariably beaten (the few exceptions to this tend to be rule-proving exceptions). In Iraq, we're not just arming men, we're training them to be a western-style miltary. This is a hard task in and of itself, but it is doubly hard because the Iraqis do not have the underlying moral and mental framework which allows an American to be turned from slack-jawed civilian to steely-eyed warrior in about a year.
This is not to say that Iraqis aren't brave - for all we know they are, man for man, the bravest of the brave. This is not to say that Iraqis aren't proficient in using their weapons - for all we know an Iraqi infantry battalion is a collection of Dead-Eye-Dicks who can shoot the eye out of a sparrow at a hundred yards. But it is to say that Iraqis don't have the cultural framework which will make them willingly subordinate themselves - and their lives - to a mission they may not entirely understand and/or they feel is poorly thought out. We're giving it to them, but it isn't something to be done in a year - or, really, even in five or ten years. It is a generational project.
The South Korean army routinely disgraced itself in the early going of the Korean War - time and again, well equipped and positioned South Korean troops were routed by Chinese units which, when matched against American forces, failed to make a dent in the line. As time went on in the war, American training started to make an effect and South Korean forces became better and better - here in 2007, half a century after the fighting stopped, I'd stack up the South Korean military against any other military force in the world - in morale, training and equipment there are no obvious deficiencies in the South Korean military establishment. If push ever came to shove, I'm confident that the un-aided South Korean military would make mince-meat of the North Korean forces. So it will be one day with the Iraqi forces - but it will take some time. And it will even be a couple years from now before the un-aided Iraqi military can fully defend the territorial integrity and internal security of the Iraqi nation.
It is my fervent prayer that we will soon be able to start drawing down our forces in Iraq - contrary to what critics think about me, I can't stand war and I wish to God this whole nasty business was over with. But I'm also not fool enough to think you can just "end" a war - wars don't just "end"...they are won, or they are lost. Losing wars is never a good thing, and so we must keep going until we have victory. The Iraqi security forces are fighting well - they are not entirely up to snuff, and they won't be for a number of years...but to scuttle Iraq because their secrity forces are not parade-ground prepared at any given moment is the acme of idiocy...even for a liberal.
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