What metrics will Petraeus use?
I’ve run this list past a couple of other veterans of Iraq. Yes, it’s a sketch. Yes, several of the categories must be broken down into very small pieces and those pieces accurately assessed (ie, the security of neighborhoods, the competence of police precincts, etc).
Recognize this problem: if you tell the enemy what you are measuring, it becomes very easy for him to frustrate the “measurement process” and your success in achieving your goal — at least to frustrate them perceptually. The best example (or perhaps “worst example” is more appropriate) is the conclusion that Babil is secure. The leader of an Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia cadre sees that conclusion in a newspaper headline so he sends several suicide bombers to Babil. One gets through and kills twenty Iraqis. What’s the media tout? Petraeus was wrong?
Still, GEN Petraeus will release an interim assessment in mid-September. He will base that on “measures of effectiveness.”
This list is a “rough draft” of “rough metrics” but I am certain it includes in some shape or form a few of the “metrics” the September report will consider. Call it a Baker’s Dozen – not to be confused with James Baker and the Iraq Study Group. Some of them obbiously incorporate both qualitative judgments and quantitative measures.
1) Number of trained and equipped Iraqi troops and their level of training
(2) Number of qualified Iraqi senior and mid-level military officers (key measure: can they plan and lead their own ops?)
(3) Number and locale of police precincts judged competent and minimally corrupt (and don’t mention Chicago to me — I know minimally corrupt applies to places in the US — like every Texas border town)
(4) Number of “extremist violence” related incidents (incline, steady, or decline) and location of incidents
(5) An assessment of the “demonstrated commitment” of key sheiks and local leaders in terms of cooperating with security forces and development teams – perhaps analyzed on a neighborhood by neighborhood level.
(6) Control of Iran and Syrian borders (what does this mean? Good question — better surveillance of the borders, more border forts, more reliable border cops, dimunition in flow of supplies for sectarian militias and terrorist groups…etc)
(7) Estimate of “robustness” of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia cells. (If we have killed a lot of these sociopaths, have the sociopaths we’ve killed been replaced?)
(8) Quality of Iraqi government action against Shia death squads (including Mahdi Militia) [NOTE: maybe quality is a hedge word, but you get the point.]
(9) Competence of key ministry officials and senior department heads — Interior and Defense — as well as an estimate of their commitment to a free, federal Iraq, [This leads to an assessment of provincial and national leaders commitment…)
(10) “Infrastructure protection” trend lines — are power lines, pipelines, key installations being protected?
(11) Trend line of development. At the local level: have the revitalized PRTs begun to do their jobs? At the national level: What’s happening to Iraq’s GDP?
(12) A neighborhood by neighborhood evaluation of the “new security plan” — which on the ground was about securing neighborhoods and stopping the “cycle of violence” (ie, Sunni terrorists kick it off, Shia death quads enter, the locals are caught in between…)
(13) An estimate of the quality of intelligence (better, same, worse) provided by Iraqi police, military, and citizens. If the intel from a neighborhood, town, or province has improved, this potentially is an indcator of increasing faith in the government’s capacity to defend vulnerable civilians. (Intel obviously affects several other metrics…few of these metrics are discrete.)
Web Reconnaissance for 08/20/2007 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
Trackback by The Thunder Run — 8/20/2007 @ 8:46 am
Those are good opening metrics. Let me suggest some more. Availability of coalition TV news (in Arabic) to the population. What percentage of Iraqis can receive coalition TV? Even better, can we do Nielson style TV ratings in Iraq? If so, how does coalition TV news compare with Al Jazzera ratings wise? Availability of electric power, running water, trash collection, sewerage, cell phone, wired phone, automobile registrations and other indicators of economic wellbeing? Can we get rail car loading numbers from Iraq? How solid a number for overall GNP is possible given the difficulty of collecting such statistics? Oil production? Number of operating wells, miles of pipeline, sales volume? Agricultural output?
Comment by David Starr — 8/20/2007 @ 8:47 am
How about, “Iraqi faith that the US will not pull out and leave them to fend for themselves against theocratic barbarians.” I predict aQ to lay low for a while, allow Gen. Petraeus to present a more positive outlook and to recover and perhaps heal their wounds. Then, around a few months before the election, they ratchet up their activities to influence US elections. Dems will assuredly nominate someone with anti-war bona fides or who has had their Damascus conversion, thus boxing the dems into a Reid “war is lost” posture. It will be the only position they don’t, can’t, retreat from.
Comment by Rob Mandel — 8/20/2007 @ 8:48 am
Please change the font you use. That san serif face is very hard to read, especially since the inter-letter spacing is so small.
Comment by Allan Pratt — 8/20/2007 @ 9:50 am
I’m with Allan. Enjoy the content, hate the font.
Comment by Chuck — 8/20/2007 @ 10:00 am
I agree with Allan, please use a more ordinary font. It’s a narrow sanserif that pushes the letters together. On my screen, at least, I’m staring at this phrase:(incline, steady, or decline)and in the original font I can’t see if those are “d” or “cl”
Comment by Richard R — 8/20/2007 @ 10:04 am
Unless I have missed something….the key metric will be what the “local population” believes. As you so rightly point out ‘perceptions’ formed thru news reports are extremely simple to manipulate. The answer to the question - “How safe do you feel in your neighborhood and how do you feel about your neighborhoods future?” are much more difficult to manipulate. Baghdad alone has some 400+ neighborhoods…the best the Jihadi’s can do is create a few “Show Neighborhoods” to give CNN and AlJazeera something to talk about. IMHO Congress will receive, in a classified annex, neighborhood by neighborhood assessments for the whole country.
Comment by Soldier's Dad — 8/20/2007 @ 10:50 am
You’re tap dancing around the elephant in the room. The only metric which can really persuade the US public and body politic is a major reversal in the US KIA trendline. Anything else will be seen as obfuscation of the central issue. Should it be that way? I dunno. Yes yes, body counts and casualty figures are poor measures of operational progress, let alone strategic effectiveness, and would be a gross oversimplification of the situation in Iraq. What if we had stopped halfway through D-Day because casualties were rising? Still … no metric more directly measures the strength and effectiveness of the insurgency, especially when their strategy is clearly to bleed us until we quit. That metric has steadily climbed since the summer of ‘03. During the first year of the war, we lost an average of 1 KIA a day. That rate climbed to 2 a day during the second year, and 3 a day during the 3rd year. This spring it was toying with 4 a day. I’m an active duty field grade officer and I’ve spent roughly 2 years cumulative time in Iraq. I’ve participated in dozens if not hundreds of conversations with my brothers in arms about how the media is ignoring all the progress there. Yet looking back, I have to wonder if it was not we who were ignoring the evidence. I don’t want to quit now. I don’t like to lose, and besides we’ve all buried too many friends for that to sit well. But keeping up the fight depends on the will of the people, and we’re teetering on the edge of losing that for good. We’re not going to get it back with complex arguments about hours of electricity per day or friendly sheikhs per acre. The American people are looking for conclusive proof that we are now winning. Only a sharp change in our casualty rate will persuade them that this is the case. The other metrics do serve a purpose. They can help give us confidence that the casualty rate trend will continue downward. But they are secondary indicators and will be treated as such when proffered.
Comment by Ed H — 8/20/2007 @ 11:23 am
“minimally corrupt” like the US Congress? There won’t be any corruptions if you call payoffs “campaign contributions”, paybacks “earmarks”. Overnight, all Iraqi politicians’ corruptions will be wiped out.
Comment by ic — 8/20/2007 @ 12:52 pm
Ed H, With all due respect for your service, which is greatly appreciated, I think that stating that American public will only respond to a change in the casualty rate is grossly over-simplifying the situation. For one, casualties in this war have, by historical standards, been very light. Granted, every single one of the 3,600+ lives that we have lost is precious. But to put that number in perspective, American forces suffered over 7,000 killed in action in the Battle of Iwo Jima alone. Right now, American KIA’s in Iraq are averaging about two a day, maybe a little more. Were that to be reduced to one a day, I don’t think it would make that much difference to many people. The American public has, in the past, shown that they are willing t accept casualties as long as they sense that progress is being made. I saw it written somewhere not too long ago that the American public isn’t “casualty-averse”, they’re “incompetence-averse.” And prior to the sacking of people like Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Sanchez and Tenet, and the ascension of people like David Patraeus, the entire Iraq operation has suffered from an appalling level of incompetence at the very top. Now that things seem, militarily at least, to be definitely turning the good guys’ way on the ground, I’m thinking that the American public can be persuaded to give the effort more time before beginning to draw down our force levels. As you quite correctly point out, most people in the US do not want us to lose this war and believe that it’s important that we win. But at the same time, they don’t want to sacrifice more precious lives if it can’t be won. I believe that it can.
Comment by Dan — 8/20/2007 @ 4:49 pm
Other side of the Texas Border: Nuevo Laredo (second only to Iraq in number of reporters eliminated)
Comment by Doug — 8/21/2007 @ 8:59 am
That Laredo link quit working, this one does as of now.
Comment by Doug — 8/21/2007 @ 9:13 am
Suggest one more metric: Number of Western journalists and editors who acknowledge they are the primary target of enemy information operations and who are professionally skeptical of stories that precisely fit an anti-American narrative. Increase, decrease, remain same.
Comment by rich — 8/21/2007 @ 9:23 am
No possible metric will satisfy the anti-war crowd among the Politicians, Media and DailyKOsites except for immediate total, unilateral withdrawal a la Gov. Richardson. I am not sure what metric would convince fence sitters since AFAIK there aren’t any! At least none that get any publicity.
Comment by AF Dad — 8/21/2007 @ 9:36 am
One useful metric would be the start-up of factories (as in Ramadi) and the flour mills (Baqubah). Two of the most positive trend lines are the business start-ups and the restarting of local production and the first real hits downwards of the unemployment problem. The concentration since early this year in Ramadi is yielding good results and examining that and Anbar should show what happens with local Iraqi support of government forces. Likewise in Baqubah the ability of Iraq to process its own grain to finished flour is a huge plus. That represents ‘the breadbasket of Iraq’ and is a critical part of helping Iraqi agriculture stand up for itself. Iraqi agricultural production would also be a good metric, although it has been steadily upwards ever since the Saddamist thugs stopped farmers from farming… Things like electrical production are helpful if you put a neighbor, like Syria, out in comparison. From what I’ve read the Syrian electrical production for civilian use is lower than Iraq’s is now. Agree with the Soldier’s Dad, above: put up the number of free media (publications - daily, weekly, monthly; television stations; radio stations), satellite television dishes (the ‘National flower of Iraq’) and then compare that to Iran, Syria, Jordan, Turkey. Either on sheer amount or per 10,000 of population. Also to be looked at is foreign investment, both for oil field work and for business & industry. On the former, of course, there are a number of countries like Japan and India looking to invest billions in Iraq. The latter, however, should be just as important for seeing how outside Nations see the investment opportunity in Iraq. At some point historical comparisons with Turkey should be included for terrorist attacks. While those go unreported except for high-profile attacks on westerners, there are number of attacks there from various groups beyond the PKK, including Hezbollah and other outside funded/inspired groups. An examination of how Turkey deals with that would be helpful, although societally the two are different Nations in outlook. Internal to Iraq there are the displaced persons and internal refugees, and a status report on that should be helpful. Likewise ex-pats coming back to invest/work/live in Iraq would be interesting to see just what the scale of return is for those that left during the Saddam era. Outside of that, I don’t think that Maliki will have a miracle out of his new coalition, but it should be a harbinger of an oil law and provincial election law before the end of the year. Do play up the stand up of local administrations (mayors, local civic and municipal organizations) and the Federal aspect of that (pressuring National government to get something done). With the central court now more or less stood up and Iraqis controlling their own prisons, see how the rule of law is expanding outwards to the provinces and cities (number of courts, prosecutions, conviction/acquittal ratio and such). There is no magic metric, but a series of them demonstrating slow spreading stability or long-term upwards trends would be good. Critics will try to focus on one, but the bulk of report after report, from 2003 to present, should all show increases and an examination of the last 3 months is not enough, although some like unemployment will be showing the first real improvements as those factories come back up. Congresscritters should understand these as they get hit with them *here*. Anything that they get here will help to ground them in what is going on in Iraq. Someone needs to tell that story and Gen. Petraeus has that job.
Comment by ajacksonian — 8/21/2007 @ 3:22 pm
EdH, What you are talking about are the metrics that affect US public opinion, not if we are winning the war necessarily, but those are very important, too. US KIA = headlines. I’d say the other major morale sapper of a headline is the mass suicide attacks, ” 220 killed in Iraqi market.”
Comment by Aaron — 8/22/2007 @ 4:32 am
Although I agree with the spirit of your list, you speak of too many items over which we do not have complete control. In many of the items you list, we are a major factor but we are dependent upon others to be successful. For Patraeus, the report to Congress must be based on items over which we are in complete control. Otherwise, he will be criticized for the weak side of our strengths, not praised for our successes. As a businessman (not a military person), here’s what I think Patraeus should report: (1) As you suggest, he should list the success criteria for the war (over which we have complete control) and then discuss the aspects of those criteria that we have accomplished. (2) Then, he should list the success criteria for the Iraqi people (over which we have only partial control), how those items are being accomplished and how we are assisting the Iraqi people in accomplishing them. And, (3) finally, he should list items which the enemy seems to want to accomplish (over which we have no control) and how we are causing them to lose their will to accomplish them. In this way, whatever problem the opposition brings up about the war, Patraeus will be able to point specifically to our accomplishments and where we are contributing to success of the Iraqi people and the failure of the enemy. To do otherwise, the opposition will be able to undermine the report by focusing on the weaknesses of the “surge” rather than the strengths. Just a thought!
Comment by Richard Foster — 8/22/2007 @ 8:37 am
Col. Bay and all, I hope this is relevant to the discussion of the success criteria/metrics. We need a metric to describe our efforts/ability to provide a counter-narrative to the AlQueda strategic assumption of US (and allied) weakness and division. For example, the recent election of Sarkozy and Merkel are certainly plusses in this department. How to make that more quantitative than qualitative, I’ll leave to better minds than mine. Personally, some propaganda films (a la world war 2 vintage war movies) wouldn’t hurt either.
Comment by RKV — 8/22/2007 @ 12:34 pm