US: A senior British officer has written a scathing critique of the US army and its performance in Iraq, accusing it of cultural ignorance, moralistic self-righteousness, unproductive micromanagement and unwarranted optimism there.
His publisher: the US Army.
In an article published this week in the US army magazine Military Review, Brig Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was deputy commander of a programme to train the Iraqi military, said American officers in Iraq displayed such "cultural insensitivity" that it "arguably amounted to institutional racism" and may have spurred the growth of the insurgency.
The US army has been slow to adapt its tactics, Brig Aylwin-Foster argues, and its approach during the early stages of the occupation "exacerbated the task it now faces by alienating significant sections of the population".
The decision by the army magazine to publish the essay - which already has provoked an intense reaction among American officers - is part of a broader self-examination occurring in many parts of the army as it approaches the end of its third year of fighting in Iraq.
Military Review, which is based here along with many of the army's educational institutions, has been part of that examination, becoming increasingly influential and pointed under the editorship of Col William Darley. In the past two years, his magazine has run articles that have sharply criticised US military operations in Iraq.
The army is full of soldiers showing qualities such as patriotism, duty, passion and talent, writes Brig Aylwin-Foster. "Yet," he continues, "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."
Those traits reflect the army's traditional focus on conventional state-on-state wars, and are seen by some experts as less appropriate for counterinsurgency, which they say requires patience, cultural understanding and a willingness to use innovative and counterintuitive approaches, such as employing only the minimal amount of force necessary. In counterinsurgency campaigns, the brigadier argues, "the quick solution is often the wrong one."
He said he found that an intense conformist and over-centralised decision-making slowed the US Army's operations in Iraq, giving the enemy time to understand and respond to US moves.
"Such an ethos is unhelpful if it discourages junior commanders from reporting unwelcome news up the chain of command," the brigadier says.
A pervasive sense of righteousness or moral outrage, he adds, further distorted military judgments, especially in the handling of the fighting in Fallujah.
Lieut Gen David Petraeus, who runs much of the army's educational establishment, and also oversees Military Review, said he does not agree with many of Brig Aylwin-Foster's assertions. But Gen Petraeus, who commanded Brig Aylwin-Foster in Iraq, said: "He is a very good officer, and therefore his viewpoint has some importance, as we do not think it is his alone."
Reflecting that ambivalence, the article was published with notes which make clear that the views expressed do not reflect those of the British government, the British military, the US Army, its Combined Arms Center or Military Review.
"I think he's an insufferable British snob," said Col Kevin Benson, commander of the US army's elite School of Advanced Military Studies, referring to Brig Aylwin-Foster. Col Benson said he plans a rebuttal.
"I think he's overstating the case," said another military intellectual here, retired army Col Gregory Fontenot, who led US forces into Bosnia in 1995. But he added: "Whether he's right or wrong, what's important is that the army understands it has a problem, which it does."
And the Bush administration is under more pressure over its handling of the war in Iraq after Paul Bremer, the former head of the coalition provisional authority, claimed his request for more troops was rejected by the Pentagon and the White House.
Mr Bremer, the man most commonly associated with implementing post-war policies that led to the rise of the insurgency, has claimed that senior US military officials including the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, tried to make him a scapegoat for their failings.
In a memoir published this week, Mr Bremer says that from the time he took the job in May 2003, shortly after the fall of Baghdad, he had misgivings about coalition troop levels and raised the issue a number of times with administration officials, including George Bush.
Mr Bremer, a career diplomat, also attacks the US's allies, including Britain, for being "weak-kneed" and getting "cold feet" over plans to arrest the militant Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
In the memoir, titled My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope, Mr Bremer says he sent Mr Rumsfeld a copy of a report by a respected think-tank that estimated 500,000 troops would be needed to stabilise Iraq, but the defence secretary did not respond. Mr Rumsfeld also failed to respond to his recommendation in May 2004 to add 30,000 troops to the 160,000 in Iraq at the time.
Mr Bremer says he became so concerned about the issue of troop levels that he raised it with the president on a number of occasions.
- (LA Times Washington Post service, additional reporting Guardian service).