It’s painful to watch the military discovering how to be diplomats when we’re stuck with a government that thinks diplomacy should be based on using the military.

In November, just a month after arriving in Iraq, Becker, along with battalion commanders across the northwest, found his troops defending against an insurgent attack that was stunning for its organization and breadth.

In two days, insurgents conducted nearly simultaneous attacks on 44 Iraqi police and army posts. Almost all of them folded, many of them with a single shot being fired.

The Iraqi police went from about 7,000 members down to 300 in two days.

This is a long article. I hope you read the whole piece.

“Anyone who comes to a counter-insurgency thinking it’s about killing terrorists is missing the boat,” said Becker.

“It’s really about winning the people. You can kill all the terrorists but then you’ve pissed people off and created 100 more,” he explained.

Connecting with local leadership is the only way a counter-insurgency campaign can work — even if the leaders are part of the insurgency.

There are none of the qualms expressed by officials from the safety of Washington about “not talking to terrorists.”

Local leaders can be co-opted away from the insurgents, or at least more closely watched, if U.S. forces have a relationship with them.

As of this week, his battalion has not had a single soldier killed-in-action, although there have been several close calls. Some of that record he attributes to luck, but most to the patient application of a counter-insurgent strategy that emphasizes personal relationships and mutual benefits.