IraqSlogger devotes some space to the JIEDDO this morning, working off a Newsweek article about that Office.

I wrote about the JIEDDO a while back, with the helpful assistance the Armchair Generalist, who has done some pioneering research on the topic. Both the Generalist and I took the view that the Bu$h malAdministration’s response to the IED problem of establishing a large office presence in Northern Virginia was rather typical: loot the Treasury and throw lots if cash at some contractors. (OK – he was a bit more polite than I am.)

Describing IEDs as “Weapons of strategic influence” has some validity to it, because the problem, while deadly, has consumed a tremendous amount of attention, effort, and ca$h in our still-unsuccessful battle to pacify conquered Iraq. Those uppity natives still don’t understand that we believe we’re wearing the white hats.

As the Generalist noted:

According to its website, the JIEDDO's mission is "to eliminate IEDs as weapons of strategic influence."

So the problem with IEDs isn't that they kill or injure our troops. It's that they influence public opinion. They are weapons of propaganda.

"It can be mitigated, minimized, made into a nuisance," said Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs (ret.), the JIEDDO director, taking a page from John Kerry's anti-terrorism playbook.

How do we defeat "weapons of strategic influence"? Not by outfitting our troops with armor. Not by improving our intelligence and infiltration of insurgency groups. No.

We defeat them by funding sources of counter-propaganda: pro-war think tanks, pundits, and bloggers.

Our budget for next year allocated $6.4 Billion-with-a-B to funding the JIEDDO, whose job appears to be “outreach” – “communication,” – “information operations,” – you know, the classic Bu$hCo response to anything – propaganda.

Bu$hCo is a confusing message center; GEN Meigs says the best way to deal with the problem is to minimize it, while MNF-I insists the problem must be blown out of all proportion, and blamed on the evil Iranians.

According to Newsweek GEN Meigs says that the MRAPs are a good idea, but they’re basically a defensive measure. Defense doesn’t win wars –ask the man who designed the Maginot Line. Offense is needed, although some people think word spew is not the correct approach to solving the problem of these deadly weapons.

The article does mention "a retired general who declined to be quoted by name criticizing his former military colleagues," who is also described as a veteran of the Balkans, noting in passing that “While there are a number of retired generals who served in the Balkans, this also could refer to Gen. Meigs, who commanded NATO's Multi-National Division (North) in Bosnia in 1996, and assumed leadership of the NATO Stabilization Force in 1998-99.

The anonymous general doesn't discuss JIEDDO's work, but tells Newsweek that in order to reduce the threat of IEDs:”

One step is to get soldiers out of the vehicles that have too often become their fiery coffins. "What does barreling down a highway at 45mph, peering through a dust-covered windshield, actually accomplish?" asked a retired general who declined to be quoted by name criticizing his former military colleagues. A veteran of the Balkans, this general recalled that his troops had a term for routine, pointless patrols. "Dabbing," they called it, from the caustic acronym for "driving around Bosnia." "'Dabbing' now means 'driving around Baghdad'," says the general. Before he became head of Coalition forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus wrote the Army's new manual on counterinsurgency. For his forces in Iraq, he boiled it down to a series of instructions. Instruction No. 4: "Get out and walk."

Everyone—from the Americans to the British to the Israelis, with their long experience in Lebanon—seems to agree that better intelligence is essential to reducing the IED problem to a mere "nuisance" (Meigs's goal). But good intelligence is hard to come by. Instead, the Americans have resorted to operations like sending out convoys as bait—while drone aircraft loiter overhead to track the bombers, and signals-intelligence teams listen for their communications—followed by a larger force to spring a trap on the attackers. If that tactic sounds a little desperate, a senior military official, speaking anonymously about a sensitive subject, assured NEWSWEEK that such convoys use volunteer crews and very-well-armored vehicles.

“Dabbing around”, looking for trouble? Sending crews out as bait? Newsweek is going to get a nasty letter from BG Kevin Bergner, the head press flack at MNF-I about those statements. BG Bergner interned in the White House before being sent to Iraq, so he knows how to apply the political pressure and play the parsing game to get his own way. I guess the Mighty Wurlitzer will be all up in arms about the traitorous Newsweek soon.

Of course the troops have to patrol; the conquest isn’t complete yet. The natives, with no clean water, no sewage services, electricity one or two hours a day, no schools, not enough jobs (60%+ unemployment) not enough hospitals, not enough medicines, not enough doctors, not enough food, and a ruthless civil war raging all around them, are restless.

While police work isn’t a perfect analogy to subjugating a conquered country, policing experts all agree that foot patrolling a bad neighborhood pays better dividends that motor patrol when it comes to stopping crime. The good guy residents get to see the beat cop, and the bad guys leave the area. The fact that Iraq’s bad guys are a bit better armed than, say, an American inner city is just a point of scale. GEN Petraeus is right in his instruction #4: “Get out and walk.”

He has had quite a few photo ops on the streets of Baghdad, creating a visible presence: walking around markets, pressing the flesh with shop keepers, smiling and nodding in order to show our nation’s good side. His large, heavily armed escorts can be seen as evidence of his determination to turn the mean streets of Baghdad into Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood.

With the incredible upsurge in use of these devices we will have to develop better ways of making friends with our future conquests.

Newsweek notes:

[T]he IED—cheap, easy to make and adapt, and deadly—has in its own way proved equally powerful. The bombs have bled the U.S. military in Iraq. And thanks to the ubiquitous videos of IED attacks shot by insurgents and put up on YouTube, they will be credited with driving us out of the country whenever we do leave. Guerrillas, even armies, elsewhere are watching: most of the world's conventional militaries would be vulnerable to similar tactics. Already, locally made devices have begun appearing on battlefields from Somalia to Thailand to Pakistan.

GEN Meigs has his work cut out for him in minimizing the strategic effect of these weapons on the general public, if they’re becoming more popular and effective around the world. One possible good example of his organization’s work has developed however:

The U.S. military hasn't told the public exactly how many soldiers and Marines are killed and injured by IEDs every month in Iraq. Such disclosures would aid the enemy, or so goes the official explanation, though it might also embarrass Pentagon officials who say they have spent at least $6 billion so far trying to defeat IEDs, with limited success. The best estimate is that about one in three soldiers lost in 2004 was killed by an IED. Now it's more like four out of five. About 50 soldiers a month are killed or injured by IEDs, up from about 30 a year ago. Success, such as it is, is measured this way: the insurgents are setting off more and more IEDs every month—perhaps twice as many as last year. The American death toll is not rising as fast. Officials claim that about eight out of nine IED casualties are injured, not killed, which is a consolation of sorts, though not much of one to the maimed and brain-damaged.

Getting out the word that IEDs are killing fewer GIs on their 3rd and 4th tours has to have a beneficial effect.

Articles on MRAPs:

Mine Resistant Vehicles

17,700 MRAPs

Marine MRAPs Mired in Minutiae

A Minor MRAP Problem

The Super-MRAP

The Cougar MRAP

Baby Huey Needs Feeding

What Does the JIEDDO Do?