New U.S. Commander's Approach Has Evolved

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Miami Herald
September 17, 2008
The new military commander in Iraq has seemed to do an about-face in his once-aggressive dealings with Iraqis.
By Nancy A. Youssef
WASHINGTON -- Soon after he took over as the U.S. military commander in Iraq on Tuesday, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno greeted the U.S. troops standing before him in Arabic: ''As-Salam Alaikum,'' or ``Peace be upon you.''
For a soldier once known for his aggressive tactics and his impatience with local residents, his budding Arabic marked an extraordinary evolution.
When he arrived in northern Iraq in 2003 as the 4th Infantry Division commander, the physically imposing Odierno was more likely to level a community than reach out to it.
On his second tour this past year, he and his fellow soldiers mastered Iraq's tribal structure, customs and the finer points of counterinsurgency, which helped lead to a dramatic drop in violence.
Odierno, who succeeds Gen. David Petraeus, is charged with the task of maintaining the security gains of his predecessor while managing a U.S. troop drawdown.
To many in the military, Odierno personifies the transformation of the American military in Iraq.
''Gen. Odierno didn't know much about counterinsurgency five years ago. He reflects the American Army, which also didn't understand counterinsurgency very well,'' said Ret. Lt. Col. John Nagl, who drafted the counterinsurgency manual with Petraeus. ''You can't kill or capture your way out. I think there was a time when the Army believed that'' it could.
Odierno's career in Iraq began in frustration. The 4th Infantry Division didn't take part in the invasion. Stuck in Turkey and blocked from crossing the border, it moved in after the invasion and deployed in Saddam Hussein's northern hometown of Tikrit days after Saddam's statues were toppled around the country.
American forces treated Iraqi citizens as potential combatants. They traveled without translators. Each innocent civilian killed was seen as an isolated incident, not an igniter of future violence.
Odierno's troops were known as especially aggressive and unsympathetic, asserting that the mostly Sunni community around Tikrit was filled with Saddam backers. They kicked down doors, destroyed homes, killed civilians and arrested thousands, sometimes seemingly indiscriminately.
Odierno seemed to ignore the early signs of the insurgency, and some charged that his tactics emboldened it. Odierno returned to the United States in 2004, and the violence in Iraq exploded. While working with him at the Pentagon, Nagl said he noted that Odierno was starting to think about the problem of implementing a counterinsurgency. So was the Army.
In late 2006, Odierno returned to lead the multinational corps, just as Nagl and Petraeus' counterinsurgency manual was being published.
Odierno began learning the religious and tribal breakdown of every district. He learned Arabic and walked around neighborhoods as did the captains in charge of those districts.
Odierno was constantly studying maps and fine-tuning the details of the plan. He assigned each outpost and monitored violence in the capital and some of Iraq's biggest hot spots.
Brig. Gen. Joe Anderson, who was Odierno's chief of staff during his second tour, said Odierno adapted because the war had changed so much between tours.
''It's a complicated, convoluted web,'' Anderson said. ``He understood it.''
Miami Herald staff writer Nicholas Spangler contributed to this report from Baghdad.
 
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