Is the Insurgency Our Own Creation?

During my two tours in Iraq I witnessed two different approaches to counter-insurgency, aggressive versus passive, and took note on how the infantry's culture naturally accepts the aggressive style. I am not arguing for passivity, clearly we need aggressive soldiers, but in a counterinsurgency, where the people are the key terrain, we need to tread lightly. My basic question is: How much are we contributing to the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan while trying to prevent it?
Unfortunately, I do not offer any answers, but only present my experiences to serve as an analogy to the infantry's disincentives to conduct a good counterinsurgency.

During my first tour from 2003 to 2004, I was an Infantry Platoon Leader in the 101st Airborne, near Mosul, tasked with stopping the looting of a university and to impose peace on the local neighborhoods. I was in Alpha Company where we would rotate once a month with Charlie Company using the university as our headquarters. As we did the hand-over, Charlie Company would tell us about the unruliness of the town, and that they were constantly fired upon. Because of this they recommended many patrols and nightly cordon and searches because there were a lot of “bad guys.” Once we took responsibility of the patrols we were hardly shot at and rarely mortared, as compared to the nightly experience of Charlie Company. It took us a little while to figure out why this was happening--of course the Charlie Company Commander never figured it out. Basically, the Charlie Company Commander had an offensive, conventional approach, which angered a lot of the locals. He treated the towns-people as subordinates by issuing orders as if they were his children. To stop the locals from shooting at his troops the Charlie Company commander increasing the patrols, and conduct more nightly raids, only to infuriate the locals more so. From the American point of view, the Charlie Company Commander was seen as more productive than Alpha Company because he was conducting more patrols and capturing more “bad guys.” Quantitatively, Charlie Company appeared more productive than Alpha Company who appeared to be lazy. After a while the locals could tell when Charlie Company was in charge because their commander had twice the amount of guards on the roof and twice the amount of patrols, because there was twice as much activity. So the locals knowing that Charlie Company was in charge would attack them more often. Then when Alpha Company was in charge, we essentially did half the work because there were half the attacks. Of course doing half the work is counter-culture to the hyperactive infantry, nor does it report well that we are in a combat zone doing nothing. When the relieving unit took over, they let their hyperactivity get the best of them and annoyed all of the locals, who in turn shot at the soldiers--or supported those that did.

During my second tour in Kirkuk, 2005-2006, I noticed the same disincentive of passivity, where those units that conducted the most raids and produced the higher numbers in killing or capturing the “enemy” received more accolades, more medals, and more bragging rights. They got to play with the bigger toys—had air support and all the newer gadgets—because they needed them more. Those who were interested in “keeping the peace” and talking to leaders and exercising patience were seen as less productive than the aggressive unit. This low productivity level was highlighted when the companies put their weekly accomplishments side-by-side on a PowerPoint slide in front of their peers, superiors, and subordinates at the weekly battalion meetings. It seemed that the higher commanders would question the existence of a low producing company commander—what were they doing in Iraq?

In the infantry there is an incentive to be aggressive. These aggressive feelings further mount when people are trying to kill you. Then when you cannot find the enemy, the entire population is seen as the enemy. This is where the difficulty rests: in counterinsurgency, an aggressive unit is actually counter-productive. In sum, I wonder how much of our troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan are brought on by ourselves?