U.S. army “institutionally racist”

[sonz]

"We must be able to fight with the Americans. That does not mean we must be able to fight as the Americans,” General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the British army, told parliament in April 2004 as U.S. occupation forces were bombarding Fallujah.

This criticism was echoed by a top British Army officer who angered American officials with a scathing article that slammed the performance of the U.S. military in IRAQ. According to The Guardian, Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was the second most senior officer in charge of training Iraqi security forces, accused U.S. occupation forces of institutional racism, cultural ignorance, self-righteousness, over-optimism, and unproductive management. He also said that the U.S.’s tactics during the occupation had alienated the Iraqis and created several problems for foreign forces in the country.

In the blistering critique, heavily criticized by the U.S. army but published in the Military Review, Brig Aylwin-Foster conveys the frustrating opinions voiced by other British commanders about the conduct of U.S. forces in IRAQ. However, he says in a disclaimer that his article doesn’t reflect the views of the United Kingdom or the U.S. military.

U.S. occupation forces displayed such cultural insensitivities that it "arguably amounted to institutional racism", Brig Aylwin-Foster wrote. While the military is “indisputably the master of conventional war fighting, it is notably less proficient in... what the U.S. defense community often calls Operations Other Than War,” he added.

Brig Aylwin-Foster also says that operations to create peace in IRAQ were “weighed down by bureaucracy, a stiflingly hierarchical outlook, predisposition to offensive operations and a sense that duty required all issues to be confronted head on.” He argues that the U.S. army’s laudable "can-do" approach adversely led to "damaging optimism". This, he says, "is unhelpful if it discourages junior commanders from reporting unwelcome news up the chain of command".

The central theme of the article was that U.S. military commanders failed to train and educate their soldiers to counter the Iraqi resistance. The British officer also stressed on the need to win the "hearts and minds" of the local population.

While American officers in IRAQ denounced their allies for not using force, their plan was "to kill or capture all terrorists and insurgents: they saw military destruction of the enemy as a strategic goal in its own right". Simply put, Brig Aylwin-Foster says, "the U.S. army has developed over time a singular focus on conventional warfare, of a particularly swift and violent kind". Such an unsophisticated approach is counter-productive, creating the difficulties the U.S. forces now face in IRAQ by alienating large sections of the population, he argues.

* “Moral righteousness”

The Brigadier also says that a sense of "moral righteousness" led to the U.S.‘s response to the killing of four American contractors in Fallujah in 2004. He says that "come-on" tactic by Iraqi fighters, aimed at provoking a disproportionate response, made American commanders "set on the total destruction of the enemy". Brig Aylwin-Foster also noted that the firing on one night of more than 40 155mm artillery rounds on a small part of the city was considered by the local American commander as a "minor application of combat power". Such techniques, he says, would not remove Iraq from the grip of what he calls a "vicious and tenacious insurgency".

The British officer says he wrote the article to "be helpful to an institution I greatly respect". But the response from many American military officers was hostile.

Colonel Kevin Benson, director commander of the U.S. Army's elite School of Advanced Military Studies and one of the lead planners for the 3rd U.S. Army's early post-INVASION operations, told the Washington Post that his first reaction was that Brig Aylwin-Foster was an "insufferable British snob".

“I certainly don't recognize what he says about the de-professionalization of the U.S. Army,” Col Kevin Benson said. However, he admitted that “sometimes good articles do make you angry. We should publish articles like this. We are in a war and we must always be thinking of how we can improve the way we operate… It is a debate that must go on and I myself am writing a response."

Colonel William Darley, the editor of Military Review, praised Brig Aylwin-Foster’s article, saying that he is “a highly regarded expert in this area who is providing a candid critique. It is certainly not uninformed ... It is a professional discussion and a professional critique among professionals about what needs to be done. What he says is authoritative and a useful point of perspective whether you agree with it or not."

Brig Aylwin-Foster’s criticism indicates the differences between UK and U.S. army commanders in IRAQ, which could have serious implications for their future operations in the war-torn country. Last year, British MPs accused American forces of using heavy-handed tactics against IRAQI CIVILIANS. In a report, the House Foreign Affairs Committee said that “excessive use by the U.S. forces of overwhelming firepower has been counterproductive, provoking antagonism toward the coalition among ordinary Iraqis.”