5 YEARS IN IRAQ: WHY WE’RE WINNING, WHY WE’RE LOSING
March 19th, 2008, 9:53 am · Post a Comment · posted by Dan Lehr
Happy 5th Birthday, Iraq war.
The success of this past year’s surge has apparently taken it off the list of issues most important to voters this election year, but that’s wrong. How we handled the Iraq war from its beginning & how we would avoid the many, many mistakes made in the past 5 years should be of paramount importance to any voter who is concerned at all about the security of the United States of America.
After you click “read the rest of this entry,” we’ll have a perspective on Iraq that both liberals & conservatives may find uncomfortable.
First off, Americans of every political stripe owe an immense debt of gratitude to this man, General David Petraeus, who’s chief commander of operations in the Iraq theatre.
Time Magazine failed miserably when it choose Vladimir Putin as its “Person of the Year.” That honor was earned -with a lot of sweat- by Petraeus. How about “Person of the Half-Decade?”
Petraeus has correctly identified that this conflict (& the overall struggle against Islamic extremism, which we here at Vote08 refuse to call “the war on terror,” because it isn’t really a war) requires a much more cerebral way of fighting. He views this -again, correctly- as a chess game, rather than the game of checkers that his predecessors continued to play.
Petraeus is the author of this book (HUGE PDF file, be warned), the U.S. Army Manual on Counterinsurgency. If you are any kind of a war buff, make this your next read, as it illustrates exactly what war we’re fighting & how this war can be won.
& how can it be won? Not from killing, not from tanks or “shock-&-awe” bombing. Not from rounding up all terrorists, locking them in jail, & throwing away the key.
No, this is a war fought in the battlefield of the mind.
Petraeus has said recently “you can’t kill your way out of an insurgency.” The key to victory is to create conditions that cause support from the population for insurgents to vanish. Get the ‘average joes’ on your side. Do not break down a door looking for terrorists & handcuff a man in front of his family, for example. The shame you have given him in front of his wife & kids represents a defeat, regardless of whether you capture any bad guys.
For the past year or so, Petraeus has successfully implemented this new, brainier strategy - but he’s not the only one who deserves credit. New officers (who have seen multiple tours of duty) have had to learn these new tactics the hard way, often without help from their higher-ups. Petraeus rightfully has given these field commanders much more leeway to adapt to conditions & improvise with whatever works. Again, the young men & women who have correctly seen this conflict for what it is are the true heroes of this war. Many of those heroes have stood up to the leadership of the armed forces who are still fighting the last war (Persian Gulf) or even the one before that (Cold War). Read this salvo called “A Failure of Generalship ” written by an Army Lieutenant Colonel in the Armed Forces Journal last year & you’ll see what I mean.
Victories in this kind of a war are hard to see happen immediately. The current switching of sides (to ours) by Sunni leaders didn’t happen overnight, but it’s evident that this has happened.
Defeats in this kind of war are vastly different, too.
This photograph from the Abu Ghraib prison did far more to hurt the U.S. cause in Iraq than any truck or car bomb or multiple U.S. troop death. It spread around the world.. and forced many muslims (who were able to be won over) to take the opposing side. Recognizing & avoiding these kinds of psychological defeats are of utmost importance in fighting a struggle like this. Again, it’s about winning the hearts & minds of the people.
The current success of the surge does not come because of the leadership of President Bush, but in spite of it. On his watch, the American military made countless mistakes at the outset of the war that no question would have been prevented had General Petraeus’ strategy been in place from day one. President Bush not only failed the U.S. military - he also failed the people of the United States of America. It is critical that voters this campaign select a person for the nation’s highest office who does not come anywhere close to making the same mistakes Bush did; our lives depend on this choice.
Those mistakes President Bush made include
- Rushing into war despite shaky evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Many decision-makers cherry-picked evidence that helped make their case & stifled any opposing views.
- Scheduling a vote on Congressional authorization for the war right before mid-term elections, which forced many Democrats fearful of losing their re-election to make a choice based on fear of survival rather than the long-term interests of the country
- Promoting & rewarding those who made bad decisions or failed to see the big picture. Paul Bremer fired the Iraqi Army, perhaps the biggest bone-headed decision of the entire war. General Tommy Franks insisted it wasn’t his job to keep the peace among the populace after the 3-day invasion & fall of Baghdad. Halliburton, a company for which Vice President Dick Cheney served as CEO, was awarded no-bid contracts in Iraq without any government oversight. People in their 20s whose only qualification was their loyalty to the Republican party were placed in charge of jobs like the oil ministry or traffic division without any real-world experience to guide them.
- Constantly changing the narrative of the war. First it was about finding & eliminating WMDs. Then it was about promoting democracy. Then it was about fighting terrorists (who didn’t exist in the country under Saddam’s iron hand).
- A stubborn refusal to remove ineffective leadership. You may recall specialist Thomas Wilson of Ringgold, Georgia asking Donald Rumsfeld why troops weren’t properly equipped with body armor & armor for their humvees. Rumsfeld blew him off. He also said of the looting after the initial invasion “stuff happens.” If General David Petraeus were President of the United States at that moment, he would have fired him straight away. As it was, Rumsfeld remained in power until the week after the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006.
- Failing to realize the sectarian divisions that Saddam had done such an effective job of supressing for so long.
- Assuming the victory would be similar to the domino effect the fall of the Berlin Wall had in Europe in 1989. In those cases, change & freedom spontaneously came from within. In Iraq’s case, it was forced upon its people through the U.S. occupation.
So in essence, in many ways President Bush is failing to heed the lessons about fighting a counterinsurgency so expertly spelled out in David Petraeus’ handbook. That document preaches a quickness to adapt to conditions on the ground. Adaptability & pragmatism have never been the strong suit of a president who prides himself on being “stubborn” (he calls it “resolute”). He fails to learn the wisdom in the adage, “when you find yourself in a hole - stop digging.”
So. Given that David Petraeus is the hero of this war, given that he has figured out how to handle the situation on the ground such that victory is at least feeling attainable again, which statement made in the last week gives you the most confidence?
“I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago and I sense that, as a result of the progress that has been made since then, phenomenal changes in terms of the overall situation.”
“Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences.
“Anybody who believes the surge has not succeeded, militarily, politically and in most other ways, frankly, does not know the facts on the ground.”
With all due respect to Messrs. Cheney & McCain, we’re sticking with #2.
Petraeus’ success provides a lot of people who made bad decisions cover in Washington. They’ve succeeded in moving this conflict off the front page. But again, how this was handled does matter in the current presidential race.
Which is why of the 3 major candidate’s plans for Iraq, John McCain’s comes the closest to reality.
(didn’t see that one coming, did you?)
McCain appears to “get” the effectiveness of counterinsurgency. From his website:
John McCain believes the current force structure and power vacuum persisting in many areas of the country demands a more robust counterinsurgency strategy. Iraqi and American forces must not only use force to clear areas occupied by insurgents but to stay and hold these areas to deny them as a base for insurgent forces and allow economic and political development to occur in a secure environment. By emphasizing safety of the local population, this strategy will create strongholds in which insurgents find it difficult to operate.
The thing is, this isn’t just a strategy for Iraq. It should be considered the plan for fighting against the struggle against Islamic extremism around the globe.
This is not to say he’s completely right about his approach. McCain has got to acknowledge that “just giving troops more time” is simply kicking the can down the road. Many of these brave fighters are on their third or fourth tour of duty. That puts not only a strain on their individual families, it also dampens the U.S.’s ability to be ready for a conflict elsewhere. The military is experiencing a slow bleed, & just giving the surge more time does nothing to staunch the bleeding. McCain also deserves criticism for trying to discourage folks from asking questions about how we got ourselves into this mess. How not to get into a mess like this one in the future is a plan he needs to address if the American people are going to go along with how he sees Iraq’s future.
Both of the Democratic candidates deserve praise for realizing the importance of aggressive diplomacy in the region. The Bush administration handed Americans a huge defeat in the overall struggle against terrorism by extending its middle finger to the rest of the world & going it alone in Iraq. George W. Bush should have followed the path of his father, who made sure he had an overwhelming amount of support from countries around the globe before he acted to invade Kuwait in January 1991. That matters. Ignoring that fact has only hurt our standing in the world, at a time when our leadership is needed more than ever.
But they both deserve criticism for promising to “moving to get troops out as soon as they take office.” That’s a claim both Obama & Clinton make, & it’s a claim made without a willingness to accept the facts on the ground. Of the two, Obama has done a better job expressing the importance of consultation from generals before making any drastic moves.
UPDATE/1:11pm: It looks as if our praise for McCain’s judgement on Iraq is premature. Here’s what he said in Jordan yesterday:
John, Iran is Shiite. Al Qaeda is Sunni. The two groups are like oil & water. Thank goodness Joe Lieberman was there to correct him.
This post is getting awfully long-winded, & we’re sorry. We think it’s important. But we also have an on-air newscast to write, so it’s time to finish up. We hope you click on the last three links provided to see each of the candidates’ ideas for Iraq. We’ll get more into their specifics in a future post.
We haven’t even gotten to the sand issue, which we outlined here. (It’ll take a full 2 years for all U.S. military equipment, from guns to humvees to tanks, to be cleaned completely of sand before it can be put to use elsewhere, as we explained in this post last month).
Please take away this thought, if you’re not able to digest any other:
We will be in Iraq & it will be an issue for the 2012 campaign. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.
Now it’s time for you to take over. Take me to task if you disagree with me, or make a point I haven’t made. Take the forum. Shout it out. Post a comment.
