COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

The Countercolumn:

Jason Van Steenwyk reports again on a topic that interests him much: why the 2/4 Marines who replaced his Army unit (1-124th Infantry) took far heavier casualties. His current thinking is that the intelligence capability collapsed with the change of units:

Our Bn S-2 [ground intelligence officer -- Grim] was very proactive at working with and through the Iraqi police and some of the other tribal heads. Our company commanders were also building sources at the grass roots level, and we even had informants coming to the gates asking for platoon leaders and NCOs. They didn't want to tell information to anyone else, other than the officers and NCOs these informants had relationships with and had built up a level of trust.

The 2/4 Marines, he says, were not only unfamiliar to the Iraqis -- they didn't trust them. Just as the Iraqis didn't trust these strangers, the Marines didn't have the personal experience with and ties to the Iraqis either. With the lack of mutual trust gone, the intel network collapsed. The insurgents, who had remained on the ground the whole time, were able to fill in the gap.

There is probably some truth to that assessment, and I don't think it's an Army/Marine thing. It is the other side of an advantage: the fact that we can rotate forces out to a safe area for rest and retraining, lessons learned and replenishment. The breakdown of these personal relationships, which comprise the functional intel networks, is a side effect.

Is there a way around it? Yes: intelligence officers could deploy earlier and remain longer, so that they have time to be worked into the existing networks, and could remain to work in their replacements. That creates an additional burden on these officers, however, who are already engaged in a challenging and mentally exhausing occupation. Alternatively, if the Pentagon can find in its heart enough assets, we could increase the number of military intelligence officers per unit, so that they could divide some of this extra time.

The intelligence challenge is a bigger part of the game in this kind of fighting. We ought to be learning lessons like this. Thanks to Van Steenwyk for thinking it through.