- Sep 30, 2003
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Well, couldn't sleep last night and was tired of the MN bridge news (which seems to be non-stop on all channels as I complained about elsewhere).
So about 3 or 4 am I switched over to C-Span and watched an academic conference on measuring success against insurgency. I was thinking this would be highly relevant to the upcoming progress report on Iraq. Did anybody else see this?
Who were the participants?
I only clearly remember 3 who did most of the speaking. Two were professors from the U.S. Army War College. They seemed to be from the History Dept. One was a former Battalion Commander opering in and around Baghdad's worse areas.
What did they say?
First I'll point out that most of their information was drawn from our efforts in Vietnam. It should be noted that we had a far greater effort in VN, utilizing far more resources. This suggests that may have developed much more useful info on VN than we may generating about Iraq.
They claim it is a very difficult and highly complicated effort to accurately measure progress in counter insurgency efforts. Further, the metrics employed must be changed as the situation changes, and different metrics need to be employed in different geographical locations depending upon their specific situation.
The metrics utilized are numerous, sometimes numbering in excess of 100.
Statistics were judged to be one of the most useless metrics. I.e., death count etc is not worth much in judging success according to them.
In hindsight, some of the most useful and acurate information was found to be contained in various Commanders' reports. Apparently their instincts or observations turned out to be accurate, even if otherwise unsupported at the time with various metrics.
Quite a lot of the more accurate & useful metrics involved nothing militarily. Commerce, trade, the number of shops open etc were found to be good indicators. E.g., if most shops are closed, that's a bad sign, when they re-open, that's a "tell tale" sign of success. Apparently (but I guess not surprising) the "actions" of the locals can really tell you something. In VN there was a surprisingly good indicator: Did the village Chief sleep in that village at night or not? If he didn't, it's not a good sign no matter what he may be saying etc.
They said you need about 4 yrs worth of data, and good deal of time afterword to accurately judge the success.
What does this indicate about the upcoming Sept Report?
Hmm... Seems to me that we aren't gonna be in a position time-wise to get a very thourough analysis done. While the Battalion Commander indicated that a lot of data is being generated in Iraq (is it as much as VN?, unknown), we surely won't have the time neccessary for any academic analysis of the data by Sept.
I can only guess that we will be forced to rely upon the infomation in various Commanders' reports.
I do expect the academics to continue working on any info generated in Iraq. Will be interesting what they say in hindsight (after a lot of study) compared to what is determined in Sept. Will we get it right? I guess we'll know in a few years.
Fern
So about 3 or 4 am I switched over to C-Span and watched an academic conference on measuring success against insurgency. I was thinking this would be highly relevant to the upcoming progress report on Iraq. Did anybody else see this?
Who were the participants?
I only clearly remember 3 who did most of the speaking. Two were professors from the U.S. Army War College. They seemed to be from the History Dept. One was a former Battalion Commander opering in and around Baghdad's worse areas.
What did they say?
First I'll point out that most of their information was drawn from our efforts in Vietnam. It should be noted that we had a far greater effort in VN, utilizing far more resources. This suggests that may have developed much more useful info on VN than we may generating about Iraq.
They claim it is a very difficult and highly complicated effort to accurately measure progress in counter insurgency efforts. Further, the metrics employed must be changed as the situation changes, and different metrics need to be employed in different geographical locations depending upon their specific situation.
The metrics utilized are numerous, sometimes numbering in excess of 100.
Statistics were judged to be one of the most useless metrics. I.e., death count etc is not worth much in judging success according to them.
In hindsight, some of the most useful and acurate information was found to be contained in various Commanders' reports. Apparently their instincts or observations turned out to be accurate, even if otherwise unsupported at the time with various metrics.
Quite a lot of the more accurate & useful metrics involved nothing militarily. Commerce, trade, the number of shops open etc were found to be good indicators. E.g., if most shops are closed, that's a bad sign, when they re-open, that's a "tell tale" sign of success. Apparently (but I guess not surprising) the "actions" of the locals can really tell you something. In VN there was a surprisingly good indicator: Did the village Chief sleep in that village at night or not? If he didn't, it's not a good sign no matter what he may be saying etc.
They said you need about 4 yrs worth of data, and good deal of time afterword to accurately judge the success.
What does this indicate about the upcoming Sept Report?
Hmm... Seems to me that we aren't gonna be in a position time-wise to get a very thourough analysis done. While the Battalion Commander indicated that a lot of data is being generated in Iraq (is it as much as VN?, unknown), we surely won't have the time neccessary for any academic analysis of the data by Sept.
I can only guess that we will be forced to rely upon the infomation in various Commanders' reports.
I do expect the academics to continue working on any info generated in Iraq. Will be interesting what they say in hindsight (after a lot of study) compared to what is determined in Sept. Will we get it right? I guess we'll know in a few years.
Fern
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