Hunting the Caliphate: America’s War on ISIS and the Dawn of the Strike Cell. Dana J.H. Pittard and Wes J. Bryant. New York, NY: Post Hill Press, 2019.
“There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.” So Ernest Hemingway proclaimed, although it is questionable how many people he killed, although he certainly liked to talk a big game.[1]
And at Air Command and Staff College (ACSC), one occasionally spots small 1-inch by 2-inch tabs affixed to uniforms or small notebooks, with two starkly emphatic words emblazoned on them: “Kill ISIS.” Likewise, a recent speaker at Air Command and Staff College proudly explained to the entire student body that the U.S. military has built the best man-hunting organization in human history.
Such beliefs are not limited to Air Command and Staff College. Indeed, they suffuse a new work written by two veterans of Operation Inherent Resolve. Dana J.H. Pittard and Wes J. Bryant’s Hunting the Caliphate: America’s War on ISIS and the Dawn of the Strike Cell purportedly explains aspects of how U.S. airpower and special operators, along with indigenous ground troops, enabled the systematic uprooting of the ISIS caliphate. The work has greater usefulness for understanding the kind of attitudes and motivations in some corners of the military, including open frustration at the “handcuffs placed upon” the military, a continuation of the Vietnam-era cliche of having to fight with one hand tied behind one’s back. Here one sees the ongoing tensions between what the military can technically do, what civilians tell it to do, and the ensuing tension between the tactical and strategic levels of war.
The work begins with a distracting foreword by General Petraeus, which does a disservice to the book by overselling the work’s purpose, claiming that US efforts to support Iraqi troops “evolved into a revolution in how the U.S. fights wars against extremists….” First there is the matter of Petraeus’ contradictory wording of “evolved” and “revolution” only two words apart. Second, the work itself does not make such a lavish claim for itself. Thus such hyperbole proves counterproductive.
Hunting the Caliphate has two authors. Major General Pittard served as the Joint Forces Land Component Commander-Iraq while Master Sergeant Bryan functioned as the senior enlisted Joint Terminal Attack Controller for the Special Operations Task Force-Iraq. Both played important roles in establishing and facilitating the mission of the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) strike cell from the summer of 2014 to the spring of 2015, during which time the U.S. supported Iraqis and others in an offensive to push back ISIS.
In part due to differences in rank, Pittard and Bryant appear uniquely suited to offer different perspectives in one blended first-hand account of the war against ISIS. In reality, though, their perspectives—which flow back and forth in chapters contributed by one or the other—offer a relatively seamless chronology. They both want to stress the BIAP strike cell as “unprecedented” and as an “ad hoc group of multiservice conventional and special operations forces coming together as one killing team.”
Major General Dana Pittard and Master Sergeant Wes Bryant (Rally Point)
A contrarian reader might argue that such a unified account suggests some collapse of tactical and strategic perspectives in the fight against ISIS. The work’s very first anecdote, for example, shows Pittard possibly micromanaging the prosecution of a high-value target. Simultaneously, he pats himself on the shoulder for taking more risks than his contemporaries and pushing back at CENTCOM interference.[2]
The work’s title also reflects a problematic theme: it consistently and tiresomely draws upon the idea of hunting people to characterize U.S. efforts. Such a characterization must be viewed in the context of the U.S. military’s identity as a warrior institution. Of the two authors, Bryant most clearly identifies as a warrior. The full costs of the U.S. military’s celebration of the warrior spirit cannot be argued fully in this article. Still, it is worthwhile to point out how the use of the word hunt implies the killing of animals. Bryant ventures down this road when he viscerally describes his desire to be the “predator...the hunter” (emphasis in original).
Warriors, however, recognize the humanity in their opponents. They also understand their limitations and weaknesses, but the American hubris of being unstoppable repeatedly intrudes into the book. If it occurred only once, one might assume Bryant to be offering ironic commentary. That is probably not the case.
On a few occasions, however, Bryant shifts away from the hunted to examine the psychological quandaries of the hunter. He describes “significant combat PTSD” from a deployment to Afghanistan, stemming in part from faulting himself, probably unfairly, for the loss of U.S. soldiers. And, in one of the book’s more poignant scenes, he wrestles with the prejudices he acquired over the course of his service, which disintegrated—at least temporarily—in a mall in Bahrain after watching teenage girls dressed in burkhas giggle. Bryant suggests that this experience started a kind of healing process by
...letting go of the blind hate that I realized since that moment had dwelt in me for so long and was creeping through the depths of my being like a demon. It was a personal battle that I would share with almost no one. In time I would prevail—and I would become a better husband, more loving father, and far less angry person. And in the fight against ISIS, I would be a more even-tempered warfighting.
One should not—indeed cannot—forget the seemingly inhumane acts committed by ISIS, but the “Kill ISIS” rejoinder comes at a cost. As U.S. Marine combat veteran Karl Marlantes explains, this perspective has lasting effects on participants’ psyches, even when enabling killing from a distance, as both Bryant and Pittard are. However counterintuitively, it is empathy that is required to prevent enduring moral injury by recognizing one’s opposition as humans. At times, Bryant hints at such a view, going beyond the typical depiction of ISIS fighters as “fanatical,” hinting at their humanity by describing them at times as “scared and shaken.”[3] (Elsewhere, he gives ISIS credit for having far better trained soldiers than Iraq, an ironic aside given the many years devoted by the U.S. to Iraqi’s foreign internal defense).[4]
By his own admission, Bryant hints at the psychological toll of hunting in rare instances, as when he explains, “[e]ven though this time I was killing remotely from a strike cell physically removed from the battlefield, the mission still had an impact. I was in a state of constant aggression—consumed with the hunt.”[5] Even with increased distance compared to a previous deployment to Afghanistan, though, he struggles to separate himself from the need to kill ISIS.[6] As Marlantes, by contrast, argues based upon decades of wrestling with his combat experience, “Any conscious warrior of the future is going to be a person who sees all humanity as brothers and sisters.” More pointedly he even insists that being “a knight in shining armor only results in our unrecognized dark side roaring out of control.” It is past time to wrestle with the notion of the warrior in U.S. military culture, which has been a key aspect of institutional culture since the birth of the all-volunteer military after the Vietnam War.
Another aspect of this culture to which Bryant ascribes is the continuing assumption that men are warriors and women are supporters. The American lives at stake are Bryant’s “brothers.” He makes sure to point out, in perhaps the only mention of women other than his wife, that two Army JAG officers are female; but they clearly are the outliers in a very male war.[7] Emotions can be shared, but they must be understood as acceptably masculine, to include a hug, which must be suitably gendered as a “man-hug.” Bryant also makes clear that unconventional servicemembers like himself are doing the real business of war, scoffing at the “non-secure environment of the chow hall dining room” where he finds himself surrounded by “conventional soldiers, State Department personnel, and military contractors.”
Several other areas are worth commenting upon, especially in light of recent debates about civil-military relations. The authors criticize both President Obama and President Trump equally. They also both point to problematic or non-existent strategies. Bryant further pushes back at people-centric counterinsurgency tactics, arguing that at least in Afghanistan it should have been “only one small part” of the effort, yet it “seemed to dominate the operational environment.” Bryant’s responsibility for the kinetic employment of airpower certainly explains this perspective. However, others argue that airpower can be used most effectively in such conflicts in support roles.
Simultaneously, Bryant continues to believe in the promise of democracy for the Middle East, repeatedly stressing how much U.S. troops have sacrificed so that Iraq could be a free and sovereign democracy. He has the same opinion of Syria.[8] Left unanswered is how a strike cell contributes to this political objective. By contrast, citizens of the U.S. are viewed—again within the framework of civil-military relations—as largely disinterested in how much U.S. troops have sacrificed, as Bryant points out in regard to the purportedly lax response to sweeping ISIS territorial gains in Iraq.[9]
If Bryant appears as the idealist, Pittard seems to be the egotist. At one point he describes himself “boldly” marching down the red carpet, resulting in observers’ “jaws gaping.” At another point, he explains how he single-handedly infused Iraqi officers with the necessary will and morale to go after an ISIS stronghold.[10] But, as one participant in Operation Inherent Resolve more cynically commented, :we had 2 categories of targets: real and ‘Pittargets’ (entities he’d brief to increase his target development statistics,” in part in responding to pressure from officials in Washington, D.C..[11]
Despite the authors’ lamentations at the limits of U.S. strategy in the Middle East, Hunting the Caliphate—by its very insistence on hunting enemy fighters—reduces Operation Inherent Resolve to the tactical level of war. The story is about how to kill individuals, ideally in large numbers at once. The irony of both a general and a non-commissioned officer collaborating in such an effort to highlight the identification and targeting of individual ISIS members exemplifies this tactical focus. One may rightly criticize US strategy in the region; but then why provide such a detailed account of the tactical?
After all, the strategic effectiveness of hunting has its limits. As Bryant points out, “ISIS as a caliphate has been beaten, but as a terrorist organization is by no means fully defeated.”[12] He also tragically recounts his return to Afghanistan in 2017, only to find that ISIS-K had arrived and flourished, in part because of the nation’s “tunneled focus” on Inherent Resolve.[13] He laments the futility of the operations he must conduct there as nothing more than “whack-a-mole.”[14] In Bryant’s final chapter, entitled “Our Country,” he similarly wrestles with the “unintended consequences that come from the sheer scale of our airstrike campaigns” in terms of the “amount of destruction that we can never truly effectively quantify.”[15] Bryant’s last chapter is one of the book’s most thoughtful, and in many ways it contrasts with Pittard’s final takeaway: that a “small group of dedicated Americans accomplished in a relatively short period of time could one day become a model for how the U.S. could support partner nations in the future without committing a large military footprint on the ground.”[16]
Read critically, Pittard and Bryant’s first-hand accounts provide a starting point for wrestling with the true costs of war on humanity and the limits of hunting.
It is only at the end, perhaps, that the two authors diverge on the true lessons of the fight against ISIS, to include the tenuous gains resulting from the application of overwhelming military force. The mantra to “Kill ISIS” perhaps comes at a cost at all levels of war—strategically, operationally, and tactically. Read critically, Pittard and Bryant’s first-hand accounts provide a starting point for wrestling with the true costs of war on humanity and the limits of hunting. It's time to stop quoting Hemingway’s questionable insights into killing and quote those who wrestle with rather than celebrate killing because war does “a moral violence that pierces the psyche as surely as hot steel tears through flesh."[17]
Heather Venable is an assistant professor of military and security studies at the U.S. Air Command and Staff College and teaches in the Department of Airpower. She has written a forthcoming book entitled How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique, 1874-1918. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Notes:
[1] For some useful context on this quote and some doubts as to how many people Ernest Hemingway killed, see Mark Cirino and Robert K. Elder, “Was Ernest Hemingway The Original American Sniper,” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/was-ernest-hemingway-the-original-american-sniper_b_57cecfc8e4b06c750ddbbf1f . The authors have also published a book on the subject through Kent University Press: https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Hemingway-Inside-Ernest-Archives/dp/1606352733/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=hidden+hemingway&qid=1583343530&sr=8-1.
[2] At this point, the JOC in Tampa had been approving strikes for a while, which helps to explain some aspects of their continued interference. Correspondence with Lt. Col. John Thorne who served in OIR, 14 December 2019.
[3] Dana J.H. Pittard and Wes J. Bryant, Hunting the Caliphate: America’s War on ISIS and the Dawn of the Strike Cell (New York: Post Hill Press, 2019), 168.
[4] Hunting the Caliphate, 215.
[5] Hunting the Caliphate, 188.
[6] Also see Peter Lee, "The Distance Paradox: Reaper, The Human Dimension of Remote Warfare, and Future Challenges for the RAF." Air Power Review 21, no. 3 (2018): 106-130.
[7] Hunting the Caliphate 174.
[8] Hunting the Caliphate 263.
[9] Hunting the Caliphate 266
[10] Hunting the Caliphate 199.
[11] Correspondence with Lt. Col. John Thorne, who noted that both land and air officers became excessively focused on numbers of targets and strikes.
[12] Hunting the Caliphate 302.
[13] Hunting the Caliphate 303-304.
[14] Hunting the Caliphate 306.
[15] Hunting the Caliphate, 309 For some efforts to do this, see, for example, https://airwars.org/ and the Costs of War Project at https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/.
[16] Hunting the Caliphate, 316.
[17] Russell Worth Parker, “Render Safe,” The Bitter Southerner, https://bittersoutherner.com/render-safe-marine-bomb-tech-glass-blower-national-endowment-for-the-arts.