The Red Herring Called Training, Rx for Iraq

By

<>THOMAS MOLLOY

<>

<>I spent forty years in the field of training and let me tell you that there is something fishy about the Bush administration’s statements about training Iraqi soldiers to replace our soldiers. The premise is that, as we train Iraqi soldiers, our troops will gradually turn over the responsibility for the defense and security of Iraq to the Iraqi government. It sounds like a logical approach, but I smell a rat. I am not implying deceit. I don’t think that the administration really understands the nature of the problem.

<>In my experience, when job performance is not satisfactory, management’s first thought is that employees need training. Paradoxically, in my opinion as a professional trainer, training is rarely the required remedy. The typical causes of poor performance generally don’t spring from a lack of training.

Most of my experience was in the field of English language training. However, I spent about three and a half years overseas involved in technical training. I worked as a USG quality assurance monitor (QAM) of technical training provided by US contractors to foreign military personnel in various maintenance specialties. I spent 24 months in Country X and 18 in Country Y. In both cases the training was provided to support the country’s acquisition of a major weapons system. In country X, the training program was very successful. When the graduates reported to their operational units, their job performance met or exceeded expectations. In country Y, the program was a failure. Most of the graduates failed to meet expectations when they reported to their units. I found myself drafting letters to the contractor complaining of the poor performance of the graduates. After receiving several letters, one of the contractor senior managers sat me down and told me I was being unfair. He said that I witnessed the performance test given at the end of training to assess the qualifications of candidates. He was right. Most of the candidates were able to perform their required tasks. Those who were unable to perform were either eliminated from the program or recycled for additional training. Poor performers were not passed on to the operational units. Yet, paradoxically, the units were complaining that they could not perform required maintenance because of the poor performance of the majority of the graduates from technical training. The units were desperate and began to request that their personnel be given additional training.

Senior management seemed to think the solution to the problem was the requested additional training. Another training specialist and I wrote a point paper to explain that more training was not the solution to the problem. The initial training itself was demonstrably successful because the graduates were able to perform the required tasks. The problem was that the value system of the candidates didn’t mesh with program goals.

Most of the trainees told me that they had entered the program because of a lack of job opportunities. Economic necessity compelled them to get a job. The fly in the ointment was that they regarded blue collar work as beneath them. It wasn’t that they couldn’t perform the work; they didn’t perform the work because it was disgraceful for them to do so.

I suspect that the current insufficiency of Iraqi military units arises from factors other than training. The pontification of high ranking USG officials and of Fox News analysts notwithstanding, I suspect that training, while it must be accomplished, is not the principal impediment to Iraq’s fielding self-sufficient military forces.

So just what is preventing the Iraqi armed forces from achieving self-sufficient combat readiness. After all, we train American soldiers and deploy them in months. Some Iraqi units have been in training for three years. The American people are asking why it takes years to train Iraqi soldiers? Are the Iraqis stupid? Are the trainers incompetent? I suspect that neither is the case. I would bet that the Iraqis, given an equivalent amount of training, can perform all the standard tasks required of soldiers just as well as their American counterparts.

As I understand it, the problem is not that the Iraqis can’t hit what they are aiming at; it’s that they are not firing their weapons. Not hitting what you aim at can usually be remedied by training. Not firing your weapon indicates a lack of will to engage the enemy. This lack of will is symptomatic of poor morale. It is the same phenomenon that accounts for the sometimes enormous disparity in combat effectiveness between two equally trained combat units.

Patriotism is one element of morale. When we Americans hear our national anthem, it is an emotional, even euphoric, experience. We feel pride, gratitude, love of country. When we stand among 50,000 fellow Americans at a sports event and listen to the national anthem, we are all Americans. For that moment at least, no one cares where your ancestors came from or what your religious affiliation is. We feel an overpowering sense of unity.

When Iraqis hear their national anthem, I doubt that they feel the same emotions. Iraqi society is fragmented into family, tribal, ethnic, and religious groups. Primary allegiance is to these sub-groups. Civil war looms as a possibility. Exhorting an Iraqi to fight for his country might very well elicit the response, “What country?” Right now Iraq is an experiment

Unless the desired outcome is many tribal armies rather than a national army, the focus has to shift from teaching them how to fight to giving them the will to fight. Training per se will not necessarily give Iraqi soldiers a will to fight and die for their hypothetical country. Training answers the question “how”; it doesn’t answer the question “why”.

I believe the answer lies in creating elite Iraqi units. Elitism is a powerful motivator. Elite groups such as the Navy Seals, the French Foreign Legion, the Army Rangers and various US marine groups are marvelous warriors. They have that “je ne sais quoi”. Call it morale, spirit de corps, unit cohesiveness, or camaraderie, it creates formidable warriors. These men risk their lives to retrieve the body of a dead comrade and carry him for miles through inhospitable terrain in a harsh climate. Iraq doesn’t need hordes of uniformed men unwilling to fight for what may prove to be an imaginary country; it needs elite soldiers who kick ass. Whether they love their country becomes almost irrelevant. They will fight for one another. Soldiers in the French Foreign Legion don’t fight “pour la France”. Rather, they fight “pour la Legion”

The greatest pitfall in this approach is succumbing to the temptation for a quick fix. You can’t bestow morale on units; they have to earn morale by becoming elite. That is, they really have to excel. You can’t con them into thinking they are the best. Attempts to con them into feeling that they have achieved elitism create cynicism, the very antithesis of morale.

Elitism has to start at the top. The commanders of these units have to be the best and the brightest. They have to be the type of leaders with whom familiarity breeds admiration rather than contempt.

I may be wrong, but I don’ think so. You can't expect soldiers to die for a nation that isn't yet a nation. They have to have another reason.