Serving on the military transition team (MiTT) assigned to the Iraqi Ground Forces Command (IGFC) from January 2006 through January 2007, Lieutenant Colonel Matt Whitney was originally slated to be the C5 advisor. This, however, was an "ill-advised title," he explained, since the Iraqis "do not have, nor do they plan to have, a civil affairs capability"; and indeed, said Whitney, such a designation was the first of many unproductive - even harmful - examples of how the US military tried to compel what he calls a "mirror-imaging" effect on various Iraqi military organizations. As it turned out, Whitney was in effect the plans advisor for the IGFC. In this interview, as remarkably frank as it is thoughtful and earnest, this foreign area officer and current assistant professor of military science at Brigham Young University begins by detailing how, in his view, the US "violated a principle of war, which is unity of command," and how it tried to "get some of it back by establishing the IGFC." He then explains how Americans' "thumbnail understanding of Islamic culture" and detrimental "affirmative action" program of insisting on placing Sunnis in certain positions, Shi'a in others and Kurds in still others actually made matters worse. "Our insistence on this schism," he said, "is what exacerbated the situation." Whitney delves both widely and deeply into a myriad of sectarian, ethnic and tribal issues and also clarifies why he believes we "continue to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and inculcate a culture of dependence in the Iraqi Army." In addition, he speculates on what would happen if the Iraqis were unleashed to conduct the counterinsurgency (COIN) fight as they really want to. "They're ready to kill people - a lot of people - in order to get stability in Iraq," Whitney insists. "They just don't have enough weapons as far as they're concerned…. [If] you think we can leave them in charge and not end up with a real kinetic solution that would kill a lot of people, you're wrong." But, in their minds, says Whitney, they're acting and behaving just like American commanders and taking a very direct approach to the insurgency. "You can't blame them," he adds. "It's what armies value. We talk a big line about COIN and non-kinetic operations but it's not what we value." As he further argues in the context of the Army's new COIN manual, "I don't think you can do anything to change the cultural heart, the deep belief that killing people and breaking things is what a brigade does … and I don't believe any manual in the world is going to overcome that mindset." Whitney further reveals the one trait that was common to every single successful MiTT he saw in Iraq but, even so, he says there's an "intellectual fallacy that supports the entire MiTT concept" and, what's more, he does not believe that the MiTT concept is working; rather, it's "an enabler" that merely helps feed the Iraqi addiction to American vehicles, weapons, fuel - even our copier paper! After explaining why neither he nor any other field grade officer he knows is planning to stay in the Army past their 20 years, Whitney concludes thusly: "What you're going to see doing these interviews is a whole bunch of MiTTs come back from Iraq and they're going to be one of two kinds of people. They're either going to have so much cognitive dissonance over the ridiculous assignment they just had that they're going to tell you they were awesome and how they made a big difference in the lives of the Iraqis, or they're going to be intellectually honest with you and tell you, 'This is all bullshit.'"

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