TWO OUT OF THREE AIN'T BAD:

The Patton of Counterinsurgency: With a sequence of brilliant offensives, Raymond Odierno adapted the Petraeus doctrine into a successful operational art (Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan, 03/10/2008, Weekly Standard)

Great commanders often come in pairs: Eisenhower and Patton, Grant and Sherman, Napoleon and Davout, Marlborough and Eugene, Caesar and Labienus. Generals David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno can now be added to the list.

It's natural to assume that successful pairs of commanders complement each other's personalities (the diplomatic Eisenhower and the hard-charging Patton, for example) or that the junior partner is merely executing the vision of the other (Sherman seen as acting on Grant's orders). In reality, the task of planning and conducting large-scale military operations is too great for any single commander, no matter how talented his staff. The subordinate in every successful command pair has played a key role in designing and implementing the campaign plan.

History does not always justly appreciate such contributions. The role that Davout played in shaping operational plans for Napoleon is a matter for specialists. General Odierno deserves better. He played an absolutely essential role in designing and executing the successful counterinsurgency operations in Iraq. His contributions to securing Iraq offer many important lessons for fighting the larger war on terror. As he and his team return to Fort Hood, Texas, it is important not only to commemorate their achievement, but also to understand it.

Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno took command of Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I) on December 14, 2006. Iraq was in flames. Insurgents and death squads were killing 3,000 civilians a month. Coalition forces were sustaining more than 1,200 attacks per week. Operation Together Forward II, the 2006 campaign to clear Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods and hold them with Iraqi Security Forces, had been suspended because violence elsewhere in the capital was rising steeply. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) owned safe havens within and around Baghdad, throughout Anbar, and in Diyala, Salah-ad-Din, and Ninewa provinces. The Iraqi government was completely paralyzed.

When General Odierno relinquished command of MNC-I on February 14, 2008, the civil war was over. [...]

Petraeus as he took command in February 2007 emphasized using combat forces to protect the population in major cities, establish and expand safe areas, and clear insurgent safe havens. It was Odierno's job to figure out how, exactly, to accomplish those tasks with the forces he had available. He came quickly to a counterintuitive conclusion: Securing Baghdad required large-scale offensive combat operations outside the city.

Unpleasant as it is to acknowledge, Mookie and other Shi'ite militia leaders deserve a considerable portion of the credit for creating the pre-conditions in which the Sunni wanted to surrender. The elections had been shocking enough, revealing to Sunni who Saddam had assured they were a majority that they were a rather discrete minority. But they still held the Shi'a in such contempt that they assumed they could force them to re-submit. It was only when the Shi'a showed they were just as capable of ethnic cleansing and none too reluctant to engage in it that dreams of a Sunni restoration died and the American "surge" became a welcome cover for negotiated surrender.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 2, 2008 6:21 PM