So it should make anyone nervous that Petreus is leaving Iraq, even if its to accept more responsibility for the Mideast as a whole.
Which gives him mixed reviews based on my reading:
Odierno's tenure as 4th ID commander in Iraq and his unit's actions there have subsequently come under criticism from several sources. Many officers from the 1st Marine Division were critical of 4th ID's belligerent stance during their initial entry into Iraq after the ground war had ceased and the unit's lack of a 'hearts and minds' approach to counter-insurgency. Several authors have echoed similar criticisms shared with them by other military personnel in the theater. In his unit's defense Odierno strenuously argued that the situation was that such an approach was required and subsequent insurgent activity justified the actions of 4th ID as former insurgents began to join the fight against Islamic extremist groups, such as al-Qaeda, in 2007.[4][5] As a general also stated in Rick's "Fiasco: the american military adventure in Iraq": "What the 4th ID did was criminal."
In his second Iraq deployment, Odierno served as the commander of Multi-National Corps-Iraq. During Operation Iraqi Freedom 06-08, he and General David Petraeus were the primary architects of the troop “surge” into Baghdad. Running counter to previous strategies that sought to draw down the American presence in Iraq, Petraeus and Odierno increased the U.S. presence in Iraq to 20 Brigade Combat Teams from the previous level of 15.[6] The “surge” deployed troops to many parts across Iraq, concentrating in and around Baghdad and culminating in the Iraqi led Operation Fardh al-Qanoon that began in March of 2007. In conjunction with his counterpart in the Iraqi Army, Lieutenant General Abud Qanbar, the push into Baghdad included the establishment of dozens of Combat Outposts and Joint Security Stations throughout the city. Capitalizing on the initial success of Fardh al-Qanoon,[7]Odierno then launched Operation Phantom Thunder just north of Baghdad in the Diyala, Babil, and Salah-ah-Din provinces as well as just to the west in the Al-Anbar province. Forcing many of Baghdad’s extremists from the capital, Odierno sought to root out extremist influences around the city and initiated Operation Phantom Thunder in June of 2007.
So bad thing is that his first tour he was too heavy handed. Second tour, he was partners with Petreus. Hmm...
The Weekly Standard says that Odierno is Patton to Petreus' Eisenhower:
As is well known, General Petraeus oversaw the writing of a new counterinsurgency doctrine before being sent to Iraq. But the doctrine did not provide a great deal of detail about how to plan and conduct such operations across a theater as large as Iraq. It was Odierno who creatively adapted sophisticated concepts from conventional fighting to the problems in Iraq, filling gaps in the counterinsurgency doctrine and making the overall effort successful.
So that goes along with the "learned better" theory. Here's a briefing he did back in January, though you'll want to download the slides first. For a real treat, alternate between slide 2 and slide 4. He says some things that indicate he "gets it":
By reversing and reducing the cycle of terror through tough fighting and immeasurable sacrifice, coalition and Iraqi security force were able to earn the trust and cooperation of Baghdad citizens. While acknowledging the risks, coalition force in Anbar seized upon Iraqi discontent with al Qaeda's brutality, and planted the seeds for what is now a burgeoning bottom-up reconciliation effort that is rejecting extremism. In June, with the full surge in place, we initiated Operation Phantom Thunder, a corps-level offensive operation focused on the Baghdad Belts to defeat al Qaeda and extremists, deny enemy sanctuary, and interdict their command and control and logistics capabilities. With Phantom Thunder's success at disrupting the enemy, we launched Operation Phantom Strike in August to intensify pursuit of al Qaeda and extremists.
Q Some of the proposals by some of the candidates for president have talked about removing all of combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next year. Would you say that, given the strategy of the need to reinforce Iraqi units in the future, that you would be opposed to removing all combat forces in two years time?
GEN. ODIERNO: Well again, it depends first on what the environment is like, and so it's hard to make a prediction of what the environment is like. And so what I would say is for us to continue to make progress and for the Iraqis to make sure that they -- the government is successful, that they become regional partners, that they become partners in transnational terrorism, we want to make sure they're successful. And so as the environment goes forward and we believe the conditions are set, then we can reduce our forces.
The timeline of that depends on many factors. The timeline depends on the threat, the capacity of the Iraqi security forces, the capacity -- the governance capacity that's established. And based on that, we'll make recommendations.
Obviously, it's a policy decision about how long we stay here. What I would do is make my best military recommendation.
It's hard for me, again, to look two years from now. I see us making progress. I see us being able to get down to 15 brigades by the summer. I'm very confident of that. If conditions continue along the way they are and the same they are, then I think we'll set the conditions for further reductions, but that will be based on all the factors I just laid out for you.
Q As General Austin comes in, could you just reflect a little bit about what you would tell him about the biggest challenges that you see ahead and any advice you'd give him on lessons that you've learned from your time here in Iraq?
GEN. ODIERNO: Well, I mean, I would just say -- is that the bottom line is that the number-one piece of advice that I've given him and he understands very fully -- he's a great officer who has great understanding of Iraq -- is -- it's about really protecting -- you know, the lesson we learned is, it's really about providing security for the people of Iraq, protecting the population. And what we have to do -- and the Iraqis understand that. And so his mission is to continue to do that as he turns more responsibility over to the Iraqis. And my advice to him would be to do that in a slow, deliberate manner, making sure that we don't make some of the mistakes we've made in the past -- turning it over too quickly, where we lose ground and give some of these extremist elements a chance. We don't want to give them another chance. We don't want to give them anything back. So I would say that's probably the biggest challenge.
It also is about developing jobs. We've got to help, work with the -- it's the government of Iraq's responsibility, ultimately, but here, in the next six to eight months, job development is going to become more critical, because security now is at a level where jobs become more important, economic development become(s) more important. So it's time for us to really focus on those areas, working with the government of Iraq to try to create as many -- and not -- I'm not talking about just jobs for jobs; I'm talking about sustainable jobs.
And we've been able to do that through micro grant programs, through establishing some vocational technical institutions. We are just beginning a program called the civil service corps. We've kind of modeled after the 1930s, when we were trying to put people to work in the United States after the Depression. And so we're trying to put some of those programs -- and we're working those with the government of Iraq, with their reconciliation cell.
So I would say those are the areas that are going to be hard to get started, and those will be -- those are the things that will be the most difficult for them to move forward with. But I believe they understand that, and they are ready to do that.
Here's a more recent briefing, where he answers my question directly, did you learn better? (March 3rd):
Q Sir, you were given credit for kind of changing your thinking about how to fight a counterinsurgency. And in effect, some people would say you got the memo when it comes to fighting a counterinsurgency. Could you talk a little bit about how your thinking changed and adapted through the past year? And also, as you kind of go into this next job, do you see the Army as well prepared to do what it needs to do in these kinds of fights?
GEN. ODIERNO: Yeah, well, I would just say, first, there's nothing like experience, being on the ground, getting to see it every day. The most important thing, though, is to try to take that and learn from it.
And who I learned from is a lot of my subordinate commanders, frankly, these great brigade commanders, battalion commanders, division commanders. We had a collaborative process and really had a chance to really talk about this very complex problem and try to come up with the best solutions to fix these problems. And that's what enabled us to really -- and in fact, that environment was what I credit with the change, the fact that we had an environment that we were able to have these discussions. No single person does any of this; it is a team effort, you know.
And so us working together as a group, us trying to come up with these right solutions, but it's also the -- you know, what I was most impressed about with our leaders is the time -- you know, everyone had been over there before. The time they spent back here, they used that to really do some introspective looks, as well as -- I did as well, continued to study the problem and what is the best solution as we move forward. And I think that helped us as we started to implement this counterinsurgency strategy. So I was very happy about that.
And you asked a second part.
Q What about the rest of the Army, as you kind of --
GEN. ODIERNO: Yeah. I would just say, first off, it's very important, as we move forward, we are full -- what I call full- spectrum. That requires us to operate across many different levels. We can't forget the lessons we've learned -- what I call irregular warfare. And we have to continue to make sure we emphasize that. And it's about adaptability in our thinking. It's about decentralizing, giving right and left limits, providing intent, decentralizing responsibility, and then allowing them to adapt to the problems and give them the resources to do that, whether it's a division, a brigade or battalion. We have to continue that thought -- it's about decentralized thinking, decentralized execution.
It's -- you know, our conventional forces are doing operations that our Special Operations Forces did in 2003. Our Special Operations Forces are moved higher up on their capacity to conduct their operations. And that's how -- we want to keep that, but still going back and being able to do some higher-intensity conventional operations if we can. I feel very comfortable that we can do that. But we can't ever completely go back to conventional. We've got to maintain this irregular warfare capacity that we have built into our Army.
Q Real quick, though. As you come back, do you see that there's a lot of pressure to kind of forget those lessons learned?
GEN. ODIERNO: No. No. In fact, I see us incorporating it every day. I mean, I see it incorporating in our schools -- both our officer, noncommissioned officer schools, in the academies I see it being incorporated. But there's still work -- more work in our training centers, national training centers, all being incorporated, Joint Readiness Training Center. We just have to make sure we don't stop, we continue moving forward, we continue thinking about it, we continue improving ourselves. That's the challenge I think we have.
Q How much does the retraining in counterinsurgency play into the increased dwell time? Because I know that the families are a big focus, but you have to retrain for these full spectrums. How large of a piece is that?
GEN. ODIERNO: Well, you know, it's one of the things we talk about all the time. You know – we’re deployed for a year, home for a year -- during that year you're not just sitting home every night. You're out training and doing a lot of other things and still spend some time away from home. That's why we want to extend that time. And also, you know, and we'd like to have a bit more time to reintegrate units, to spend more time on our equipment, to spend more time doing those kind of things.
So time does play a role in it. But we have been able to do it very well. Our equipment is continuing to perform very well under really tough conditions that we have to inside of Iraq. So I'm comfortable with what we're doing. More time would just give us a bit more -- reduce the risk, mitigate the risk a little bit more.
So based on all this, it looks like he's a good replacement. As it says in the last transcript, "he got the memo".
Update: Here's a Washington Post Article saying that. (Hattip: Wizbang)
Update: Hot Air is covering this as well
