[Mb-civic] Guardian Unlimited: US army in Iraq institutionally racist, claims British officer

[Alexander Harper]

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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