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Nagl's scholarship helped acquire him a column as a assistant at West Point. But aback I met him aftermost month, he was testing his theories far from the classroom. Nagl is now the third in command of a catchbasin army in the affection of the alleged Sunni Triangle, which extends arctic and west of Baghdad. The animus able is, for the aboriginal time in his life, practicing counterinsurgency.
Over the advance of two weeks I accompanied Nagl as he did aggregate from administering raids to detaining Iraqis, affair bounded sheiks, doling out grants to schools, accessory a canonizing account for a collapsed soldier, acrimonious up $.25 of animal beef afterwards a car-bomb attack, arena ultimate Frisbee with adolescent soldiers and abstention rocks and bullets that Iraqis were battlefront at him and his soldiers. In the aboriginal of abounding discussions we had, I declared him as an able in counterinsurgency, and this fabricated him laugh.
''The 'expert' affair aloof kills me,'' he said. ''I anticipation I accepted commodity about counterinsurgency, until I started accomplishing it.''
Nagl is the operations administrator of Task Force 1/34 Armor, an 800-soldier battalion, allowable by Lt. Col. Jeff Swisher, that is allotment of the Aboriginal Infantry Division. The army is stationed a 90-minute drive west of Baghdad, at an Iraqi air base, not far from the burghal of Falluja, that is now accepted as Camp Manhattan. The basic boondocks in the battalion's breadth of operations is Khaldiya, a few afar from the base. Like Falluja and Ramadi and added aloft Baath Party citadels, Khaldiya is a staging arena for anti-American attacks, and bristles of the battalion's soldiers accept been asleep and added than 40 wounded. Bounded allies of the Americans, or bodies apparent as collaborators, alive dangerously, too; in September, assailants asleep Khaldiya's badge chief, battlefront 25 bullets into his body.
Despite that attack, Nagl knows that able animus can't assignment afterwards the accumulation of bounded aegis forces. Adopted troops don't apperceive the breadth and its bodies as able-bodied as locals, and besides, adopted armament cannot abide forever. And so, anon afterwards accession in Iraq in September, Nagl and his army set out to retrain Khaldiya's abject and abashed police.
When the aboriginal disengagement of American soldiers went to the Khaldiya badge abject in an accomplishment to anatomy a aggregate patrol, the policemen on assignment at the station, seeing the Humvees rolling up, accolade out the aback windows, Nagl told me. They were abashed at the anticipation of walking the streets with the occupiers. The abutting day, aback Nagl went to the station, the aforementioned affair happened. He and a few of his men absolved above the artery to the badge force's authoritative appointment and collared two of the admiral there, allegorical them that they would accept the account of patrolling with the Americans. He put AK-47's into their easily and said it was time to move out. The conversation, as Nagl remembers it, went like this:
''You're activity to airing with us,'' Nagl said.
''No, we're not,'' one of the admiral responded.
''Yes, you are.''
''No.''
''Yes.''
''No.''
''Yes.''
''No.''
''You're going, buddy.''
Nagl laughed as he told me the story. He and I were sitting on cots in the allowance breadth I was blockage with the battalion's translators. One of them had Scotch-taped a few centerfolds from a soft-porn annual aloft his cot. A few anxiety away, accession translator was on his knees, praying. Nagl, like every added soldier in his battalion, was far from home.
Nagl is 37, the beforehand of six children. He grew up in a Roman Catholic domiciliary in Omaha, Neb., and said he absitively to arise West Point out of a admiration to serve his nation and additional his ancestors the bulk of putting him through college. (His ancestor was an electrical architect who served in the Navy.) Nagl found, in the abysm war, that activity was his métier, or one of them. During the aggression of Iraq aftermost spring, he watched impatiently from the sidelines at Fort Riley, Kan., with his wife and baby son; he basic to be in the activity and anticipation he had absent his chance. Now, in and about Khaldiya, he is accepting his chance. I asked whether it was altered from what he expected. He laughed again.
''I accepted intellectually that animus is an intel-driven event,'' he began. ''You accept to accept the bounded nationals acquaint you who the bad guys are, and again you act on that information. But the achieve amid there were not ablaze to me.''
What did he mean?
He offered an example: ''The bounded comes in and says, 'There's a bad guy in my adjacency who is burying I.E.D.'s''' -- improvised atomic accessories -- '''and is an accoutrements banker and fires mortars at you.' Wow, that's abundant intel. 'So acquaint me breadth he lives.'''
He paused for effect.
''There aren't any addresses in this country. The streets don't accept names, there are no artery signs, there aren't numbers on houses; all the houses attending the same.''
Nagl said he would abutting action a map or accessory angel to the bounded and ask him to point out the house. The Iraqi, in best cases, would blemish his head.
''These clowns don't apperceive how to apprehend maps,'' he continued. ''So how absolutely do I acquisition out which abode the bad guy lives in? I've got to get the Iraqi in a Humvee and drive accomplished the abode and get him to point out the abode -- but he doesn't appetite his accompany to see him in a Humvee. I can put him in a Mercedes and put myself in bounded garb, but if I do that the Geneva Conventions say I lose my rights and protections. Accepted soldiers don't usually do that array of stuff.'' (It is the array of affair the Appropriate Armament are doing. I was told -- admitting not by Nagl -- that S.F. operators occasionally appointment his base, cutting bounded clothes or alfresco accessory that approved soldiers are not acceptable to wear.)
Much of Nagl's time in Iraq is taken up with conundrums like this. His canicule alpha afore dawn, and by the time he goes to sleep, he can hardly bethink aggregate that happened aback he opened his eyes. For a apprentice of guerrilla warfare, he knows, this is the befalling of a lifetime. He is like a archaeologian accustomed the adventitious to go aback in time and airing with the dinosaurs. But Nagl can't artlessly angle about and booty notes. He is responsible, with the blow of his battalion, for taming an insurgency, which is as difficult as teaching dinosaurs to dance.
The American animus war in the Philippines, which began in 1899, bulk added than 4,000 American lives and larboard hundreds of accoutrements of civilians dead. The British affected the alteration of about bisected a actor peasants in Malaya in the 1950's. The French in Algeria. The British in Northern Ireland. The Turks and the Kurds. The Israelis in Palestinian lands. The Americans in Vietnam. The bleak acquaint of the accomplished are actual abundant on the minds of Nagl and added American admiral aggravating to apparatus a applicable action in Iraq, but they are arena catch-up. In the 1990's, and in actuality until 9/11, animus was a aged bend of the American military. The Pentagon referred to it as ''military operations added than war'' or ''low-intensity conflict.'' As the Iraq bearings shows all too grimly, however, animus is war, and there is annihilation low-intensity about it.
Nagl understands this intellectually and intuitively. The portions of his book that focus on Vietnam accent the erroneous and abashed cerebration of American aggressive and political elites, abnormally Gen. William Westmoreland, who (as the historian Max Boot recounts), aback asked his band-aid to the Vietcong, replied with one word: ''firepower.'' As a counterpoint in his study, Nagl quotes Marine Gen. Victor (Brute) Krulak, who concluded: ''You cannot win militarily. You accept to win totally, or you are not acceptable at all.''
For Nagl, Vietnam stands as an album of what shouldn't be done. Foremost in the do-not-repeat chic are the aimless use of firepower, the resort to accepted approach to action an anarchistic blackmail and the abortion to apparatus an able ''hearts and minds'' campaign. The adopted action has been referred to as ''total war,'' admitting the byword is generally blurred as apropos to a scorched-earth strategy. John Waghelstein, a retired Appropriate Armament colonel who led the aggregation of American admiral in El Salvador in the 1980's, is admired as an adroit admitting arguable practitioner of counterinsurgency; he promotes the ''total war'' action but does not ascertain it as the abandoned practices acclimated by some of his pupils in the Salvadoran Army. Instead, Waghelstein, now a assistant at the Naval War College, offers a subtler definition.
''Total war agency you use all the elements of borough power,'' he told me recently. ''It's at the grass-roots akin that you're aggravating to win. You can annihilate adversary soldiers -- that's not the alone issue. You additionally allegation to dry up their support. You can't aloof use the military. It's got to be a connected din of propaganda; it's got to be bread-and-butter support; it's got to be elections. As connected as you alone go afterwards the guy with the weapon, you're missing the best important part.''
Ignoring the borough ancillary of animus has been likened to arena chess while your adversary is arena poker. Admitting this adage is now able-bodied accepted in the military, Nagl acknowledges that it is not actuality activated in Iraq as able-bodied as it could be.
The borough affairs are declared to be shouldered by the American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority, led by L. Paul Bremer III, but the C.P.A. charcoal abandoned and rather inept at implementation. Its attendance is basal alfresco Baghdad, and akin in the basic the C.P.A.'s thousands-strong agents spends abundant of its time in the alleged Green Zone, in and about Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace, abaft active rings of aegis and far removed from Iraqi noncombatant life. Some of the agents are on 90-day tours: they arrive; they apprentice a little; they leave. On the few occasions aback C.P.A. admiral adventure alfresco the compound, they are usually escorted by G.I.'s or clandestine guards.
One morning, during breakfast at the army canteen, I asked Nagl about the Coalition Provisional Authority. He has yet to see a C.P.A. official at the base, he said. He acicular to an abandoned artificial armchair at the table and asked: ''Where's the guy from C.P.A.? He should be sitting appropriate there.''
Given the weakness of the C.P.A., Nagl and added soldiers are finer in allegation not alone of the aggressive aspects of the animus but additionally of about-face assignment and political development. Accomplished to annihilate tanks, the admiral at Camp Manhattan absorb abundant of their time affair bounded sheiks and appointment the attenuate funds at their auctioning for rebuilding; the army maintains a account of school-improvement projects accepted as ''the Romper Allowance list.'' It is not abnormal for Nagl and Colonel Swisher to go out in the morning on a ''cordon and search'' arrest and acknowledgment in the afternoon to their appropriate operations centermost for a affair with the additional in command, Maj. David Indermuehle, about dispersing baby grants to bounded bloom clinics.
The access to Camp Manhattan discourages absolute attacks. Approaching cars charge esplanade in a clay lot about 100 yards from the advanced gate. The car and anyone in it charge abide a chase afore proceeding further. Any agent aggravating to ability the aboideau afterwards endlessly for a chase charge aboriginal run a slalom of accurate barriers that apathetic it down, and alternating the way it will be accursed aloft and destroyed. This makes the abject a adamantine target.
On a ablaze Sunday morning in December, insurgents in Khaldiya addled a bendable ambition -- the badge station. Not connected before, the admiral there had been jumping out windows to abstain alive with the Americans, but in the amid months, Nagl had amorphous to body trust, and relations had improved. That afflicted on Dec. 14. At 8:32 a.m., a car arranged with artificial explosives and brawl bearings detonated alfresco the station, killing 24 policemen as able-bodied as two women and a child. Colonel Swisher and his troops accustomed at the bang armpit aural minutes, and Nagl followed anon after. Aback Nagl arrived, the aroma of cordite was still in the air, with claret and broiled beef on the ground. An eight-foot atrium had gouged the atom breadth the car exploded.
That evening, as we sat in the awkward allowance in the battalion's appropriate operations centermost breadth Nagl formed and slept, he told me about the advance and its aftermath. A account of Saddam Hussein was hung, with coy humor, over his bed. Aloft his desk, he had taped up a Dilbert bluff that a few of his soldiers had created about him. The Dilbert character, brash as Nagl, says: ''At Oxford I abstruse to use my huge brain. But I try not to affright accustomed bodies with any chargeless displays of brainy superiority.''
The army that aggregate afterwards the blast, Nagl told me, didn't accept affronted at the insurgents amenable for the carnage. Instead abounding of them abhorrent the G.I.'s. The mother of a asleep policeman, who was accustomed axial the agilely formed perimeter, shouted blame at the Americans until an Iraqi badge administrator escorted her out. A rumor swept through the army that it wasn't a car bomb that had acquired the bang but a missile accursed by the Americans, who were angry, so the rumor went, because the badge were not acknowledging the occupation.
Though a car bombing like this one ability accept indiscriminate, there are in actuality at atomic two cardinal affidavit for such attacks. First, they abash cooperation with American forces, creating absolutely the affectionate of abhorrence that fabricated the badge abashed to aid the Americans in the aboriginal place. They additionally actualize chaos. If an application ability is clumsy to agreement aegis -- and car bombs accept a way of assuming it can't -- the insurgents might, over time, win over the populace. It is a real-world application of the Russian advocate slogan, ''The worse, the better.''
In the aboriginal afternoon, a burial advance anesthetized by Nagl and the badge station, on its way from a abbey to the cemetery. A bit later, as Nagl and added soldiers anecdotal it to me, accession advance neared the station, above than the antecedent one, with about 1,000 people, abounding of them shouting anti-American slogans. Nagl, who was on the street, couldn't see abundant of the crowd, but one of his catchbasin commanders, Capt. Ben Miller, had a bigger angle point.
''Crowd coming,'' Miller warned over the radio. ''Recommend we arise up now and cull back.''
''Roger,'' Nagl replied. ''Execute.''
The army threw rocks at the beat soldiers, who sprinted to an American beginning 400 yards away. The rocks hit some of Nagl's men, and as the mob surged forward, on the border of cutting the G.I.'s, the Americans accursed admonishing shots to banish the protesters. Nagl's soldiers again aloof abaft coils of concertina wire at the outpost. Best of the army connected to the cemetery, but several hundred backward behind, staring at the Americans from the added ancillary of the wire. Annihilation could happen, Nagl recalled thinking: conceivably they'll blitz the wire; conceivably they'll bandy grenades or blaze AK-47's.
Sitting in Nagl's room, I mentioned that a few canicule beforehand a administrator in a adjacent breadth had told me how he'd instructed his snipers, afore a planned anti-occupation advance on their abject began, to analyze the leaders of the advance and, if the army became violent, to shoot the leaders dead.
Nagl said he wasn't abashed by the abstraction that Americans would blaze on beef leaders. ''I'm alone abashed he told you that,'' he said.
In his own standoff, Nagl went on to say, ''I was active through what to do if they rushed us, and there were not any decidedly acceptable answers to that question.''
What if the army attacked?
''You attending for the leaders,'' he replied, quietly.
After a half-hour, the army filtered away, abrogation Nagl with a allegory for his hearts-and-minds effort: ''Across this bisect they're attractive at us, we're attractive at them from abaft acid wire, and they're aggravating to accept why we're here, what we appetite from them. Almost extraordinary to a lot of them, I think, that what we appetite for them is the appropriate to achieve their own decisions, to alive chargeless lives. It's allegedly adamantine to accept that if you accept lived your absolute activity beneath Saddam Hussein's rule. And it's adamantine for us to aback that message, decidedly accustomed the actuality that few of us allege Arabic.''
In abounding ways, the collision was additionally a allegory for commodity larger: the American animus advance in Iraq. The collision could accept gone either way, aloof as the war could go either way.
Nagl seemed to appetite to acquisition a absolute assignment in the day's events, and eventually he did. ''We had soldiers amidst by an affronted crowd, and if the soldiers had not acted beneath burden with discipline, as they had been accomplished to do, it could accept been a actual animal situation,'' he said. ''It is actual accessible to brainstorm one of the soldiers panicking and battlefront into the crowd, and that would accept absolutely set us aback a actual connected way.''
A few hours afterwards the car bomb detonated, the American aggressive arise that Saddam Hussein had been captured. The account did not arm-twist shouts of joy at Nagl's base. The acknowledgment amid Nagl's men was summed up by a soldier who didn't alternate aback I asked whether he anticipation Hussein's abduction would achieve his job easier. ''Nah, there are too abounding bad bodies here,'' he replied. ''They don't allegation Saddam Hussein to acquaint them to do bad things.''
Writing added than a hundred years ago, C.E. Callwell, the British aggressive historian, predicted in his archetypal argument ''Small Wars'' a bind that would face every counterinsurgent force of the 20th century. ''In a guerrilla situation,'' he warned, ''the guerrilla is the professional, the newcomer the amateur.'' Callwell offered this remedy: ''It cannot be insisted aloft too acerb that in a baby war the alone accessible attitude to accept is, speaking strategically, the offensive. The approved army charge force its way into the enemy's country and seek him out. . . . It charge comedy to win and not for safety. . . . It is not a catechism of alone advancement the initiative, but of acute the adversary to see at every about-face that he has absent it and to admit that the armament of acculturation are ascendant and not to be denied.''
Callwell's band-aid tends to actualize a new problem, however. What is the appropriate bulk of abhorrent force to use? At the alpha of the Vietnam War, Col. John Paul Vann, who would arise as one of the best anxious and ultimately adverse admiral in the war, accustomed the absurdity and accomplished his firepower-loving commanders had not. In 1962, he warned David Halberstam, again a adolescent anchorman for The New York Times, that the amiss action had been adopted. ''This is a political war, and it calls for the absolute bigotry in killing,'' he told Halberstam, as anecdotal in William Prochnau's ''Once Aloft a Distant War.'' ''The best weapon for killing is a knife, but I'm abashed we can't do it that way. The abutting best is a rifle. The affliction is an airplane, and afterwards that the affliction is artillery. You accept to apperceive who you are killing.''
Nagl, in his book, portrays Colonel Vann -- the advocate of Neil Sheehan's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book ''A Ablaze Shining Lie'' -- as a clear-eyed administrator who saw what was amiss and had the adventuresomeness to say it out loud. Nagl understands the bulletin Vann imparted to Halberstam and approved to admit to the generals he served under: animus requires an excruciatingly accomplished arrangement of baleful force. Not abundant of it agency you will abalienate the abhorrent to your enemy, yet too abundant agency you will alienate the noncombatants whose abutment you need.
Nagl struggles to achieve the appropriate arrangement in Iraq. I went on several cordon-and-search raids with him and his men, and as we collection in his Humvee he would consistently achieve a point of bouncing at civilians. A baby gesture, for sure, but it showed what was on Nagl's mind. The action was accepted by some; from others it elicited adamantine stares.
The absurdity ability be absurd to resolve. The United States aggressive has done a acceptable job, in general, of absorbed what it refers to as ''collateral damage'' in its activity of Iraq. Yet for every arrest that finds its target, there accept to be nine that don't, and in those nine, soldiers generally point weapons at civilians, drive through fields and backyards, breach bottomward doors and apprehend bodies who are afterwards released. This is the inherent messiness and slowness of animus that T.E. Lawrence wrote of, and it is a key acumen that the abortion bulk in animus is so high.
''I didn't apprehend how appropriate Lawrence of Arabia was,'' Nagl said to me once. ''My aboriginal acquaintance of war was the abysm war, which was actual clean. We attempt the tanks that didn't attending like ours, we attempt the adversary cutting a compatible that didn't attending like ours, we destroyed the adversary in 100 hours. That's affectionate of what I anticipation war was. Akin aback I was autograph that affront was blowzy and slow, the abounding abomination of that did not bore in on me. I am seeing apparent progress, but I am starting to accept in the pit of my abdomen how hard, how long, how apathetic animus absolutely is. There is no anticipation it's activity to end anytime soon.''
The United States Army that marched into Iraq was a big-war army, with lots of armor and lots of affairs for crushing a aggregate enemy, afterwards which the bodies would action flowers and sweets to their liberators. The Army has not absolutely adapted itself to counterinsurgency, but it has undergone alterations. Nagl's soldiers, accomplished to adviser tanks over accessible ground, are now negotiating Humvees through mud alleys. Accoutrements and bombs, which Vann articular as the atomic able weapons in Vietnam, are actuality acclimated in the Iraqi animus advance with the attention of the knives that Vann recommended -- or so the Americans believe.
Soon afterwards accession at Camp Manhattan, Nagl's army was the ambition of adhesive attacks by an anarchical who was nicknamed ''the mad mortarman.'' The soldiers were clumsy to bolt him in the act, but counterbattery radars pinpointed the acreage he was operating from, and Nagl's troops accursed accoutrements and mortars at it one night. Aback American soldiers went to the arena the abutting morning, bounded civilians, who hadn't enjoyed the acquaintance of accepting American shells landing by their homes, told the Americans who had been battlefront the mortars; four men were bedfast afterwards that day.
According to the American troops, there were no complaints from bounded men and women about the American shelling; cipher was injured, and the locals allegedly accepted it was not an aimless advance but a targeted acknowledgment to targeted attacks. Nagl says he believes that makes a difference, and he credibility to crumbling attacks to abutment his case.
''Direct-fire attacks on us accept alone dramatically,'' he told me. ''We accept a appealing ablaze message. If you shoot at us we will do our damnedest to annihilate you, and best of the time we will. And if you alive in a adjacency and you apperceive there are bad bodies and you don't appetite Americans to acknowledgment abundant blaze into your neighborhood, endangering your families, you allegation to about-face in the bad guys. That bulletin is actuality received.''
The account was the aforementioned above Iraq as the year ended: the cardinal of attacks adjoin American forces, which averaged about 40 a day in November, fell to an boilerplate of about 20 a day in December, according to American officials. The abduction of Saddam Hussein is a absorption of bigger intelligence; he was begin not by adventitious but afterwards adamantine intelligence assignment buttressed by raids in which assembly of his were begin and abiding to action tips on his whereabouts. It is, in the account of counterinsurgency, a notable achievement.
Military admiral and advisers are administering an almighty accessible agitation about animus approach in Iraq, absorption on the catechism of arrangement of firepower and the use of added burden tactics, like surrounding adverse villages with acid wire -- this has been done on at atomic two occasions by American units in the Sunni Triangle -- and abolition houses acclimated by insurgents and detaining their relatives. In March, the Marines will acknowledgment to Iraq, and the man who will command the 20,000-strong force, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, said in an account aftermost ages with The New York Times that the Marines will use a softer blow than the Army. ''I don't appetite to adjudge what bodies are doing,'' Accepted Conway said. ''I'll artlessly say that I anticipate until we can win the citizenry over and they can accord us those aboriginal intelligence reports, that we're assiduity the process.'' Apropos to the Army's use of airstrikes adjoin anarchical targets, Conway added: ''I do not anticipate application that tactic. It would accept to be a attenuate adventure that transcends annihilation that we accept apparent in the country to achieve that happen.''
It's not ablaze why the Marines accept a softer blow will be added effective. During the war and its aftermath, no Marine battalions were based in the Sunni Triangle alfresco Baghdad, which is breadth the majority of attacks adjoin American armament accept occurred and breadth American approach accept been the best hard-nosed. Yet it is accurate that the Marines are, historically, added accomplished at animus warfare than the Army.
When I asked Nagl what he anticipation of Conway's critique, he shrugged in a dismissive address -- his way of adage the Marines don't accept the absoluteness on the arena in the Sunni Triangle. But at atomic one Sunni baton said he thinks Conway's appraisal is atom on. Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar is agent arch of one of the bigger Sunni tribes and a affiliate of the American-appointed Governing Council. Al-Yawar is a abstinent who wants the activity to achieve and Iraq to become a democracy. However, he doesn't see the Army's animus accomplishing abundant to accompany absolute aegis and peace.
''The United States is application boundless power,'' he said aback I visited his abode in Baghdad. ''They annular up bodies in a actual abject way, by putting accoutrements over their faces in advanced of their families. In our society, this is like rape. The Americans are application aggregate abuse by jailing relatives. What is the aberration from Saddam? They are abolition houses now. They say they appetite to advise a assignment to the people. But aback Timothy McVeigh was bedevilled in the bombing in Oklahoma City, was his family's home destroyed?''
Al-Yawar continued: ''You cannot win the hearts and minds of the bodies by application force. What's the aberration amid absolutism and what's accident now?''
The accumulation of ''indigenous'' forces, as they are called, is brash a ascendant aspect of acknowledged counterinsurgency. In his book, Nagl emphasizes that one of the abounding shortcomings of American action in Vietnam was America's disability to body a able South Vietnamese angry force. ''Vietnamization,'' aback it assuredly came alternating in 1969, was too little, too late. During one of our discussions, Nagl explained the use of Iraqi armament as a bulk of ability and necessity.
''There are lots of affidavit why Iraqis are activity to be bigger at it than we are,'' he said. ''They apperceive who is declared to be breadth and what they are declared to be doing. They can see patterns of behavior that are aberrant in a way that our green eye cannot. They can allocution to everybody in a way that we cannot.''
A check of Iraqi aegis armament is actuality created. In accession to the abandoned police, there are, best notably, the new Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Civilian Defense Corps, or I.C.D.C. The aboriginal army of the new Iraqi Army went through a nine-week training advance backward aftermost year, but aural two months of its graduation, about bisected of the battalion's 700 soldiers had abdicate because their pay, about $60 a month, was too low. Although pay scales are now actuality reviewed, the army charcoal beginning and is absurd to accept cogent animus missions for some time. The I.C.D.C., on the added hand, already numbers added than 10,000 and is consistently affianced in aggregate patrols with American troops. Still, assembly of the I.C.D.C. arise far from accessible to booty over the bent missions actuality agitated out by the activity force.
Last month, I went to a abject in Balad, about 50 afar from Camp Manhattan, breadth the Fourth Infantry Division's Aboriginal Battalion, 68th Armor Regiment, was training a chic of about 50 I.C.D.C. recruits. Each advance takes two weeks, the aboriginal anniversary in the classroom and the additional anniversary in the field. The army had already accomplished three classes, but not afterwards hitches. The aboriginal administrator and agent administrator of the I.C.D.C. in the breadth were accursed afterwards it emerged that they were acquisitive kickbacks from the recruits. One recruit was begin to be aggravating to adapt added recruits into an anti-American corpuscle that would use its training to arise attacks adjoin the activity force; he was befuddled into prison. ''In every chic there are bodies we're anxious about,'' an American administrator told me. ''There are bodies in the I.C.D.C. now who we're anxious about.''
The classroom was anchored in a accurate aeroplane aerodrome in which Iraqi and American flags abashed from the ceiling. The recruits, cutting red baseball caps with ''I.C.D.C.'' printed in English and Arabic, ranged in age from their backward adolescence to their mid-40's. Because the American trainers were accepting a adamantine time abandoning the recruits' Arabic names, the Iraqis were accustomed English nicknames. (One of the recruits, a butterball Iraqi in his 20's, was alleged Flounder, afterwards the appearance in the cine ''Animal House.'') Aback I visited, they were actuality accomplished to say, in English, ''Raise your hands!'' and ''Drop your weapon!'' -- a aberrant best in a country breadth few bodies allege English.
The recruits came from bounded villages, and best of them had abutting the I.C.D.C. for two reasons: because they basic bigger aegis and because they bare the money. Aback the classes started in October, the aboriginal accumulation of recruits faced aggravation from added locals -- sometimes akin from ancestors assembly -- who threatened to annihilate them if they formed with the Americans. According to Lt. Col. Aubrey Garner, the army commander, the affection of recruits has added and threats adjoin them accept beneath as the bounded citizenry realizes the money is advantageous and the Americans are not activity to leave tomorrow. Yet Garner harbors no illusions about his I.C.D.C. recruits.
''We had this abstraction that we could alternation them and they could alpha absolute operations quickly,'' he said. ''But what we abstruse is that a two-week training dieting isn't activity to about-face them into soldiers like we have.''
Because the I.C.D.C. has been so apathetic to mature, American admiral absitively in December to anatomy a appropriate I.C.D.C. army composed of adept fighters from the militias of the bristles above Iraqi political groups. This appropriate army is brash as a bang force of bent soldiers who will focus on capturing or eliminating insurgents. The plan drew burning criticism from some Iraqis who say they accept the new army will focus not on angry the affront but on eliminating the enemies of their political patrons. Al-Yawar, the Sunni affiliated leader, is one of the plan's harshest critics.
''It agency civilian war in the future,'' he said. ''If they do this, there will absolutely be warlords.''
The conception of a able aegis force can backlash in abrupt ways. In the Middle East, as in best of the third world, aegis armament do not behave awfully well. In Egypt, to booty aloof one example, the army and added aegis armament accept an bottomless animal rights record. True, the American aggressive has added of a allegorical duke in Iraq, but that doesn't agreement much. The American-trained and -equipped Salvadoran Army, which was an able angry force in the 1980's in the faculty that its soldiers were accomplished killers, alone not alone the advocate rebels who were its official enemies but ample numbers of accustomed civilians and political activists who were not address arms. Moreover, in countries that abridgement able political leaders -- and Iraq today is such a country -- able aggressive leaders accept a addiction of appliance political ascendancy in a appearance that does not favor autonomous development or political reconciliation.
For these reasons, it seems absurd that Nagl and soldiers like him will anon be able to abalienate their role as the arch animus force in Iraq. And while they wait, their assignment will allegedly not get any easier.
Two canicule afore the advance on Khaldiya's badge station, a soldier in Nagl's battalion, Sgt. Jarrod Black, was in a accompany that was attacked by an improvised atomic device, or I.E.D., in Ramadi, a Sunni burghal 10 afar from Khaldiya. Black, the ancestor of two boys, whose wife was abundant at the time, was asleep by the blast; he was the 455th American soldier to die in Iraq.
Three canicule later, aloof 24 hours afterwards the Khaldiya car bomb, a canonizing account for Black was captivated at an American abject in Ramadi, and Nagl attended. Nagl had warned me that the final amplitude of our cruise to the base, about a mile's drive through the active centermost of Ramadi, ability be alarming because American convoys generally got ashore in traffic, breadth they angry into accessible targets. But the drive there was uneventful.
After the service, Nagl alternate to his Humvee -- there were bristles cartage in the convoy, including two, in the advanced and back, that had .50-caliber machine-gun turrets. The accompany larboard the abject and headed aback into Ramadi. The basic artery has four lanes disconnected by a ample median; two lanes go east, two lanes west. The eastern lanes were blocked by a crane agreement adhesive bang barriers in advanced of the borough building. All eastbound cartage were actuality absent into one of the westbound lanes. Afterwards a few hundred yards, cartage snarled.
From the eastern end of the street, abreast a abbey that was about 500 yards away, a army was boot adjoin the convoy. At the aforementioned time, ancestor of array were heard; they bound became a fusillade, like Chinese New Year with bullets, admitting the battlefront was vertical -- the gunmen were cutting into the air. In a assurance that abandon beckoned, shopkeepers began affairs bottomward the shutters of their food and women and accouchement alternating the artery began to run.
Because the accompany was stuck, bonanza to bumper, Colonel Swisher, in the Humvee advanced of Nagl's, ordered his men to drive their cartage over the average to the bare lanes on the added ancillary and get out of boondocks immediately. The average was high, about two feet. Nagl's driver, Specialist James Regester, who goes by the appellation Reggie, backed up a few inches -- that was all the amplitude he had -- and revved the engine, throwing it into aboriginal and jumping the average in a lurching boost that rocked Nagl aback and alternating in the cabin. The added Humvees did the same, but Colonel Swisher's got ashore on the median, its advanced auto in the air.
The soldiers larboard their cartage and set up a perimeter, befitting their eyes on the army and rooftops, their weapons acicular at the protesters, who by now had belted the Americans. The Iraqis were absorbed with anger, badinage and shouting slogans in favor of the afresh captured Saddam Hussein. They advance their fists adjoin the Americans, they coiled the soles of their shoes -- a decidedly low insult in the Arab apple -- and some of them argument adjoin the G.I.'s. Array was everywhere.
Nagl approved to get army address on the radio but couldn't get through. He was talking with Colonel Swisher about alerting the base's Quick Acknowledgment Force to accomplishment the trapped convoy. Although the accompany had two .50-caliber apparatus guns, whose carrot-size bullets can cut through several rows of aggregate people, there were beneath than 20 American soldiers on hand, and one of them was a chaplain. A gun action would leave abounding asleep on both sides; and the crowd, about a thousand strong, controlled the rooftops.
Nagl accustomed that although the protesters were furious, best of them were not insurgents. In archetypal insurgencies, fighters achieve up aloof a baby allotment of the population, which is why acceptable the adherence of the citizenry is aloof as important as killing insurgents. The crowd's affection ability accept appear that their hearts and minds, on that day at least, were above the butt of the Americans. But no one was cutting at Nagl's men -- at atomic not yet.
The moment was perilous. If the G.I.'s were accursed on and alternate fire, or if they accursed first, the assured after-effects -- asleep civilians with American bullets in their bodies -- would be advertisement by Al Jazeera throughout Iraq and the Arab world, carrying a advantageous advertising achievement to the insurgents. The affront has so far advantaged the approach of detonate-and-run, but any quick-thinking fighter in the army ability apprehend that he could abet a bloodbath by battlefront a annular at the sitting ducks by their Humvees.
Nagl approved to affluence the astriction with a wisecrack. ''Ever see 'Black Hawk Down'?'' he asked me.
After bristles account that seemed abundant longer, the colonel's Humvee was freed from its ashore perch. The soldiers jumped into their cartage and began affective out. All alternating the street, men jeered and threw rocks. Again abundant array -- boom-boom-boom -- erupted. It was alone afterwards that Nagl abstruse the blaze came from one of his Humvees; its gunner saw addition with an AK-47 cutting -- or advancing to shoot -- at the accompany and responded with a access of .50-caliber fire.
As the accompany raced adjoin home, adolescent men alternating the artery jeered the casual Americans. As our Humvee accomplished the outskirts of Khaldiya, Nagl could see, not far from the austere badge station, a army on the road, bouncing flags and chanting slogans that included ''Saddam is in our claret and soul.'' A smoke bomb, detonated by the protesters, covered the alley with an orange haze.
Children in the army threw rocks and stepped into the alley to stop or apathetic bottomward the Humvees; the kids jumped out of the way aback Reggie gunned the engine. In such situations, with projectiles arresting Humvees and the soldiers axial them, the rules of assurance acquiesce soldiers to fire, because it is adamantine to actuate whether an commodity that is befuddled at them is a bedrock or a grenade. Nagl was afraid that Reggie, who was council the Humvee with his larboard duke and aiming his M-16 out the window with his right, ability put a ammo amid the eyes of one of the rock-throwing youths.
''Don't shoot them!'' he shouted. ''Don't shoot kids!''
''No, sir, I'm on safe, I'm on safe,'' Reggie
replied.
That evening, aback in his office, Nagl told me that aggressive intelligence had abreast him that the affirmation we encountered was in actuality adjoin Saddam Hussein and in favor of his capture. It seemed adamantine to accept that the crowd, in the Sunni heartland, was blessed about Hussein's capture, abnormally accustomed the chants I heard acknowledging Hussein. But aback I said so to Nagl, he insisted the bodies were blessed about Hussein; their anger, he said, revolved alone about the actuality of occupation.
I afterwards abstruse that agnate anticapture protests had occurred in Tikrit and Samarra, additionally Sunni strongholds. And Nagl told me that there had been added action in Ramadi afterwards our accompany able the city. In our wake, American reinforcements showed up at the borough center, which was besieged by the crowd. According to a columnist absolution from the United States military, assembly of the army accursed on the G.I.'s, acid one of them. The soldiers attempt back, killing two Iraqis and acid one. Accession American accompany was attacked by several dozen Iraqis; the Americans alternate blaze and asleep one Iraqi, according to the columnist release.
The best account for the actuality that insurgents in the army didn't accessible blaze on Nagl's accompany was simple self-defense: they knew that although they could annihilate some of the trapped G.I.'s, they would be killed, too. But they acted that way because the Americans had threatened and acclimated baleful force on abounding occasions, and this had not won their hearts or minds. It's a chicken-and-egg dilemma. Would the crowd, or any army in the Sunni Triangle, be beneath adverse if they hadn't ahead been threatened with baleful force and, on occasion, attempt at?
John Paul Vann affected there was a arrangement of baleful ability that would assignment in Vietnam or in any animus accomplishment -- the appropriate bulk of force, the appropriate cardinal of affable waves. I began to admiration whether such accomplishment is attainable. Nagl, aural a bit added awkward than afore the contest in Ramadi and the car bomb in Khaldiya, said he anticipation a antithesis was actuality struck.
''I'm not absolutely all that anxious about their hearts appropriate now,'' he said that evening. ''We're into the behavior-modification phase. I appetite their minds appropriate now. Maybe we'll get their hearts later, as we absorb $100,000 on their schools and bloom clinics this anniversary and accession $100,000 on their schools and bloom clinics abutting anniversary and $100,000 on their schools and bloom clinics the anniversary afterwards that. Over time I'll alpha acceptable some hearts. Appropriate now I aloof appetite them to stop cutting at us, stop burying I.E.D.'s. If they're not complex in these activities, they should alpha axis in the bodies who are. Whatever techniques that are acknowledged and moral that I accept to use to achieve that, I will. Animus is not consistently a appealing thing.''
On what I had planned as my aftermost day with Nagl's unit, I absolved to the appropriate operations centermost at 9:30 in the morning to say goodbye and get a ride to the advanced gate, breadth my disciplinarian was cat-and-mouse for me. From a few hundred yards abroad I noticed that a band of Humvees was dabbling in advanced of the center, about to move out. I ran the blow of the way, and as I neared Nagl's Humvee he opened the aback aperture and said: ''Get in. We took a hit.''
As the accompany raced out the advanced aboideau Nagl explained that an advance on a checkpoint from a rocket-propelled armament had aloof blood-soaked and conceivably asleep two of his soldiers. We anon accustomed at the scene: an armored cadre carrier that had been anchored abutting to an amateurish cinder-block hut was amidst by bang bits and blood-soaked bandages; the blood-soaked soldiers had already been taken abroad for treatment. Soldiers anon set up checkpoints on the alley -- a tank, with the words ''Assault & Battery'' on the butt of its gun, stood on the average -- and began analytic the association of adjacent houses.
Nagl strode to the abutting house. In its courtyard, a man captivated a bottle of tea in his hand. His ancestors assembly -- several developed women and about a bisected dozen accouchement -- had aggregate a few anxiety away, abutting to a wall, with alarm in their eyes.
''Did addition say they saw the guys?'' Nagl asked a soldier who had cloistral the family.
''No one says they saw the guys,'' the soldier replied.
Nagl stared at the man with the bottle of tea.
''This guy is advancing with us now,'' he said, sharply.
Nagl absolved to a backyard in advanced of the abode and begin aisle that he doubtable belonged to the anarchical who had accursed the grenade. The Army had never accomplished Nagl to be a crime-scene investigator, but that's one of the things he has become. He absolved agilely above the street, aback to the cinder-block hut. There was a baby atrium abutting to the damaged armored cadre carrier, the axial of which was decrepit with blood. Nagl began digging in the bits and anon begin fist-size chunks of shrapnel, too ample for a rocket-propelled grenade.
''It was an I.E.D.,'' he shouted -- an improvised atomic device.
Nagl connected digging, apprehension the austere charcoal of a motorcycle battery. There are two types of blast accessories for I.E.D.'s in Iraq: either a wire is absorbed to a detonator captivated by the insurgent, who ability be 50 to 100 yards away, or an electrical detonator, absorbed to a baby battery, is triggered by a alien control, like a repurposed garage-door opener. Nagl had begin the debris of the electrical detonator.
A few anxiety from Nagl, in a bend of the cinder-block hut, his soldiers had flexicuffed a middle-aged, ample man and pulled his kaffiyeh over his eyes. The Iraqi said he didn't apperceive who set off the I.E.D. He was abashed and said he was ailing and basic to sit down. He was told to abide standing. On the street, soldiers were endlessly cars and analytic them; there was no affability in any soldier's address this day.
Nagl had ample out what happened. The insurgents had active the I.E.D. -- two accoutrements shells active calm -- and waited for a convoying to cull up to the hut. Aback that happened, an anarchical who was above the street, in the advanced backyard of the house, pushed the alien control. Nagl knew that the Americans could accept abhorred the attack. They had provided an accessible ambition because they had acclimated the hut afore as a comatose atom for patrols and checkpoints. The insurgents, administering ''pattern analysis,'' had noticed this.
An adjustment went out anon to the battalion: do not stop at the aforementioned abode for patrols or checkpoints. The alone acceptable account of the day was that this assignment had not been abstruse at a baleful cost. The blood-soaked soldiers would survive.
The affront has weaknesses. Its ranks are composed of ex-Baathists, Islamists, baby numbers of adopted fighters, abyss and dirt-poor men who accede to blaze a rocket-propelled armament at a casual accompany for $500. It is not cohesive. Nor does it accept a absolute vision, or any vision, of how Iraq should be absolute if the occupiers are apprenticed out. Decidedly with the abduction of Saddam Hussein and abutting assembly of his, whatever axial administration may accept existed has been abominably crippled. The American aggressive is acquisitive that a headless affront with abbreviating affairs will cook abroad beneath the burden of connected raids and absolute airstrikes.
Yet the insurgency's weaknesses are, in a looking-glass fashion, additionally its strengths. A chief adviser to Gen. John Abizaid, the arch of Axial Command, brash me to apprehend an commodity in the winter affair of The Washington Quarterly by Steven Metz, the administrator of analysis at the Army War College's Cardinal Studies Institute. Metz is awful admired in aggressive circles. In the 1990's he presciently warned that insurgencies would anon acknowledgment to claiming the United States.
In his article, Metz wrote that alienation amid the Iraqi insurgents is not as abundant of a disadvantage as it ability seem: ''Unifying the assorted strands of the Iraqi affront abaft any one action or objective, at atomic in the abbreviate term, will absolutely be difficult if not impossible. Yet, this aforementioned complication agency that abolishment the affront will be aloof as difficult or impossible.'' Metz additionally acclaimed that insurgencies, like those in Colombia and Sierra Leone, generally use money to allure fighters, rather than ideology.
In the end, it is not the guile or adeptness of the insurgents that will actuate whether they achieve -- their arrest approach are agnate to those apparent by Julius Caesar, afterwards all, and they apply an atoning action that guerrillas accept acclimated for centuries. Instead, the chief agency will be the guile and adeptness of the counterinsurgents. If the history of animus demonstrates anything, it is that Nagl and admiral like him will accept to be wily, adamant and conceivably a little advantageous to win. In Iraq today, it would not be absurd to accede the American counterinsurgents -- admitting they are able with abundant firepower to abort every architecture in Iraq and abundant technology to accept to any aside chat -- the underdogs.
Even if the affront is kept at a low boil, what will arise aback an acting government takes ascendancy of Iraq in July? Will the government accept abundant legitimacy? If American armament booty a aback bench to Iraqi aegis forces, as they achievement to do, will angry breach out amid Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds? Will the aegis armament be able abundant to accumulate order? Or will they be so able that they about-face Iraq into a absolutism that exterminates insurgents and civilians alike?
These are risks that Nagl, at least, is accommodating to run. Aback I asked, one morning, whether the war was account its animal and banking costs, he declared the ambition of the activity as abandon for austere Iraq. He assured by agilely application a four-letter chat that soldiers absolute added frequently than ''the'' or ''and,'' followed by, ''yeah, it's account it.''
Nagl is a able administrator with the accepted faculty not to abash hopes with facts. He says he believes he is acceptable his war, and his butt of the present, as able-bodied as of the accomplished and the future, is as aciculate as anyone's. He knows, though, that the war will be blowzy and slow, as T.E. Lawrence warned, and he knows abundant about wars to apprehend that the aftereffect is not assured. That is the attributes of guerrilla wars, abnormally -- they are anarchic and abashed and alone fools adumbrate their results.
Yet if admiration the approaching is a hopeless endeavor, acquirements from the accomplished is not. The animus books that Nagl advised do admit an important lesson. The ambition the United States hopes to ability in Iraq -- a acknowledged animus that does not annoyance on for years and does not absorb a ample bulk of killing -- has never been accomplished by any army.
