How to Measure Success in Iraq

I haven't posted on progress with the Iraq Surge in a while due to my own lack of comfort with how to measure success in an complex operation such as this. It's like asking how you measure the success in raising your kids and shepherding your family. What do you measure?

Obedience of your children?

The number of times they say respectful words ("Thank you", "Please", "Sir/Ma'am")?

Their grades?

Playing well with others?

Orderliness of their room?

The degree to which they look like their mother vs. their father? (Poor kids)

Do they pray daily and seek to know God personally?

Obviously, none of these "metrics" - in isolation - provides any sort of meaningful measure as to family quality. Making matters worse, any single day's snap shot is likely to be full of glaring defects. Of course, maybe that's just with MY family. . .

Similarly, I'm discomforted by the dramatically poor job that's been done to measure Coalition success in Iraq (and by extrapolation) the greater Long War On Terrorism.

Below, I will attempt to layout an achievable, understandable and, yes, MEANINGFUL combination of metrics which really focuses on the three layers of effort in this Long War and the current Iraq/Afghan Surge:

1. Dramatically reduce the nation-state sponsorship of terrorism and the leadership centers of international terrorist networks

such that. . .

2. Local governments and cultures are able to police localized groups of terrorist

toward the end that. . .

3. Billions of individuals, free from heart-binding terror, are free to experience Life and Liberty and to Pursue virtuous happiness.

In light of these three levels of focus, it is helpful to remember the goal of the Iraq/Afghan Surge - to disrupt and eradicate terrorist control of population centers, especially Baghdad, to the end that the Iraqi government and people have the opportunity to self-police localized violence and build cultural support for contextualized Liberty.

So, what are these "Metrics" of success?

1. Combatants Eradicated
2. Accelerants to Violence Seized
3. Populations Freed
4. Hearts & Minds Won
5. Political Reconciliation & Institutions Built

I will summarize each of these here and then flesh each out in successive posts over the next week or so. No one of these Metric categories can completely encapsulate the degree of success or failure in our Iraq venture. Together, these metrics - and especially a trend line for the metrics over several months - can provide the substantive view of our progress for which so many of us are hungering.

1. Combatants Eradicated

There has been a thoughtful debate on the Hugh Hewitt show recently concerning the US Military's disdain for releasing "body counts" of enemy killed due to unhealthy actions in Vietnam. At the same time, in battle, how else do you determine the scale of loss or victory without some sort of count?

I have a suggestion here. Victory on the battle field is not merely in terms of "kills". It is measured by the number of combatants eradicated. When armies submit to terms of surrender (Appomattox, VE Day, VJ Day) combatants are eradicated (not killed) and the war or battle is won.

Suggestion:

Killed + Captured + Surrendered = Combatants Eradicated (Neutralized, Removed, whatever)

2. Accelerants to Violence Seized

In Iraq, most terrorists don't work as mild mannered reporters by day and transform into the enacters of spectacular attacks at nights and on weekends.

Iraqi #1 - So, what did you do this weekend?

Iraqi #2 - Oh, the usual. I cleaned the house, spent time with the family, successful demobilized a US Army convoy with an EFP, pinned the surviving troops through covering fire and kidnapped 3 highly-trained American soldiers. You know, the usual.)

The energetic core of terrorism is a dynamo which must be fed by outside suppliers. These supplies are money, food, munitions, training, intelligence, false documents, mobilization capabilities, communications, etc.

Each of these "accelerants" seized, directly disarms or dis-empowers multiple combatant enemies, rendering them virtually eradicated.

Suggestion:

Bomb, bomb factories, booby traps, torture rooms, weapons caches, mobilization methods (boats, trucks, safe houses, etc) = Accelerants to Violence Seized

3. Populations Freed

The end goal of our military operations is to free population groups from the coagulation of terrorist overlords. Overlords, not street thugs. The context of the surge, again, is the Long War on Terrorism - especially Nation-state sponsored terrorism. Terrorists in a small country town are important, but terrorists in control of large industrial, population centers are more important.

Population centers allow for a more efficient ratio of terrorists to civilians for intimidation and control (the definition of terror). Population centers are also where one finds, takes control of and develops the accelerants to violence discussed above. Third, disrupting population centers is a more efficient means of amplifying ones effect through threatening disruption of infrastructure, the economy, regional tensions, etc.

Thus, ultimately, controlling population centers has to be a major goal of our enemy. Put another way: Terror groups don't need nation-state funding, training and equipping to overwhelm and overpower al-Bubba in the middle of the desert. Nation-states, ultimately, are concerned about winning population centers and the means of industry they house.

Suggestion:

Parallel measures:

% of population under law & order (Coalition, then Local)

% of GDP within these areas

% of key industries within these areas (oil, electricity, food distribution)

4. Hearts & Minds Won

The guiding principle behind the American Revolution was that all governments derive their power from the consent of the governed . This is no different when the local rulers are tyrannical terrorists. In an earlier post, I quoted one of Gen. Petraeus' chief advisors for Counterinsurgency:

"The enemy needs the people to act in certain ways (sympathy, acquiescence, silence, reaction to provocation) in order to survive and further his strategy. Unless the population acts in these ways, both insurgents and terrorists will wither, and the cycle of provocation and backlash that drives the sectarian conflict in Iraq will fail."

Through the continued application of love (food distribution, healing the wounded, reconstruction, risk life to secure others, etc), our forces begin the process of warming hearts of a population driven into the cold darkness of terror. Eventually, individual by individual, a critical mass is reached where the population starts to enliven from being a host from which terrorist parasites are literally sucking life blood to an empowered populace with hope, capacity and fortitude to support the battle against their oppressors.

This turning of the tide is quite practical, dramatic and measurable. It occurs when former terrorists share the location of weapons caches, when residents identify rogues in their midst, when locals call in Coalition & Iraqi forces to confront marauders and take up arms to hold the encroaching darkness at bay until military support arrives.

Suggestion:

# of local leaders pleading to work with the coalition + level of support from locals in identifying terrorists + level of support from locals in identifying the accelerants of violence = Hearts and Minds won from darkness to light.

5. Political Reconciliation & Institutions Built

Media coverage follows either the path of least resistance or fights bravely to secure the lowlands of scandal. Asymmetrical violence, punctuated with spectacular (derived from "spectacle") one-off attacks on civilians, sequesters all media attention by conditioned stimulus / response reactions . Governmental benchmarks on the national level are easy to cover in 30 second sound bits.

Reconciliation between little known sheiks with hard to pronounce names, the rise of police recruiting in an unknown Baghdad suburb and the development of a local food warehouse do little to stir the attention of a restless America torn between reruns of Seinfeld and coverage of Iraq.

If you were an Iraqi, especially one with family, which of the following would most likely captivate your attention and impact your daily life:

1. A power-sharing agreement in Baghdad between Sunni ex-Saddam regime supports and Shiite ex-patriots recently returned to Iraq - - OR - - Historic cooperation between Sunni and Shiite leaders in your neighborhood, city or Province/State?

2. An agreement to share oil revenues from a distribution system which still needs a couple years of repairs before being fully operations - - OR - - the construction of a food distribution center and efforts to secure the convoy routes by which life giving staples are delivered to your desert region in the midst of the 120 degree summer?

Government takes two forms. The national bureaucracy which is critical to building lasting institutions, negotiating international trade, providing national security, distributing treasury funds, etc. And the local leadership which polices streets, renders justice, applies distributed funds to felt community needs, etc.

For too long, America and the world focused on and forced the development of the national form with the hope that the local form would soon follow - despite the personalized terror of death squads. A little heralded part of the Surge strategy, worked in concert with Ambassador Crocker is to continue to push for national progress, but to foster and support the quicker wins of local reconciliation and reconstruction. There is a new national election in 2009 to elect new representatives to the national government. If more provinces have successfully developed vibrant local capabilities, perhaps better representatives can be found to build a more stable, more broadly representative national government.

Suggestion:

Examples of local reconciliation efforts + completed, local reconstruction projects + local institutions (courts, police, food distribution, etc) developed.

On Principle,
CBass