[Mb-civic] Guardian Unlimited: US army in Iraq institutionally
racist, claims British officer
Alexander Harper
harperalexander at mail.com
Thu Jan 12 15:22:15 PST 2006
That is a much fuller article - I just posted an abridged version gleaned from today's Independent. Sorry for the duplication.
Al B
----- Original Message -----
From: harry.sifton at sympatico.ca
To: mb-civic at islandlists.com
Subject: [Mb-civic] Guardian Unlimited: US army in Iraq institutionally racist, claims British officer
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 12:40:03 +0000 (UTC)
>
> HS spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.
>
> -------
> Note from HS:
>
> Bush and Cheney will not be happy about this....
> -------
>
> To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited
> site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk
>
> US army in Iraq institutionally racist, claims British officer
> Richard Norton-Taylor and Jamie Wilson in Washington
> Thursday January 12 2006
> The Guardian
>
>
> A senior British officer has criticised the US army for its conduct
> in Iraq, accusing it of institutional racism, moral righteousness,
> misplaced optimism, and of being ill-suited to engage in
> counter-insurgency operations.
>
> The blistering critique, by Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was
> the second most senior officer responsible for training Iraqi
> security forces, reflects criticism and frustration voiced by
> British commanders of American military tactics.
>
> What is startling is the severity of his comments - and the
> decision by Military Review, a US army magazine, to publish them.
>
> American soldiers, says Brig Aylwin-Foster, were "almost
> unfailingly courteous and considerate". But he says "at times their
> cultural insensitivity, almost certainly inadvertent, arguably
> amounted to institutional racism".
>
> The US army, he says, is imbued with an unparalleled sense of
> patriotism, duty, passion and talent. "Yet it seemed weighed down
> by bureaucracy, a stiflingly hierarchical outlook, a predisposition
> to offensive operations and a sense that duty required all issues
> to be confronted head-on."
>
> Brig Aylwin-Foster says the American army's laudable "can-do"
> approach paradoxically led to another trait, namely "damaging
> optimism". Such an ethos, he says, "is unhelpful if it discourages
> junior commanders from reporting unwelcome news up the chain of
> command".
>
> But his central theme is that US military commanders have failed to
> train and educate their soldiers in the art of counter-insurgency
> operations and the need to cultivate the "hearts and minds" of the
> local population.
>
> While US officers in Iraq criticised their allies for being too
> reluctant to use force, their strategy was "to kill or capture all
> terrorists and insurgents: they saw military destruction of the
> enemy as a strategic goal in its own right". In short, the
> brigadier says, "the US army has developed over time a singular
> focus on conventional warfare, of a particularly swift and violent
> kind".
>
> Such an unsophisticated approach, ingrained in American military
> doctrine, is counter-productive, exacerbating the task the US faced
> by alienating significant sections of the population, argues Brig
> Aylwin-Foster.
>
> What he calls a sense of "moral righteousness" contributed to the
> US response to the killing of four American contractors in Falluja
> in the spring of 2004. As a "come-on" tactic by insurgents,
> designed to provoke a disproportionate response, it succeeded, says
> the brigadier, as US commanders were "set on the total destruction
> of the enemy".
>
> He notes 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 US commander as a "minor application of combat power". Such
> tactics are not the answer, he says, to remove Iraq from the grip
> of what he calls a "vicious and tenacious insurgency".
>
> Brig Aylwin-Foster's criticisms have been echoed by other senior
> British officers, though not in such a devastating way. General Sir
> Mike Jackson, the head of the army, told MPs in April 2004 as US
> forces attacked Falluja: "We must be able to fight with the
> Americans. That does not mean we must be able to fight as the
> Americans."
>
> Yesterday Colonel William Darley, the editor of Military Review,
> told the Guardian: "This [Brig Aylwin-Foster] 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." In a disclaimer he
> says the article does not reflect the views of the UK or the US
> army.
>
> Colonel Kevin Benson, director of the US army's school of advanced
> military studies, who told the Washington Post the brigadier was an
> "insufferable British snob", said his remark had been made in the
> heat of the moment. "I applaud the brigadier for starting the
> debate," he said. "It is a debate that must go on and I myself am
> writing a response."
>
> The brigadier was deputy commander of the office of security
> transition for training and organising Iraq's armed forces in 2004.
> Last year he took up the post of deputy commander of the Eufor, the
> European peacekeeping force in Bosnia. He could not be contacted
> last night.
>
> Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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