Ms. Sky sees herself as part aid worker, part political operator, part cultural translator.

“I’m experienced in working in different cultures. The most alien culture I’ve ever worked in is the U.S. military,” she said with characteristic candor. “I was used to working in the humanitarian space, the diplomatic space. I came to Iraq and that space, the military, is all over it.”

Image Ms. Sky serves as political adviser to Gen. Ray Odierno, the American commander in Iraq. Credit... U.S. Army

Rather than remaining an outsider, however, she decided to try to effect change from within. Initially she worked as a British Foreign Ministry employee detailed to the American command; more recently, she has become an American contractor.

DESPITE her insider’s post, she prides herself on retaining an outsider’s view of the military, saying things to top brass that others will not. During the troop buildup in 2007 known as the surge, she said that attacks on insurgents that also resulted in civilian casualties were tantamount to “mass murder.”

“When you drop a bomb from the air and it lands on a village and kills all those people and you turn around and say, ‘Oh we didn’t mean to kill the civilians,’ well, who did you think was living in the village?” she said.

That is now conventional wisdom. The first thing Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal did when he took over the command of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan was to prohibit attacks that might harm civilians.

Just as she has tried to help the military pay more attention to civilian points of view, the commanders have given her a new appreciation for the role of force. She came to believe that increasing troop numbers in 2007 and 2008 was the best way to bring Iraqi civilians the security they needed so badly.