Blood Dividend
Wretchard and his commenters on the latest grim milestone: plummeting casualty figures hit lowest three-month total to date. Fewer Americans and Iraqis are dying. The American and Iraqi deaths and injuries in the first half of 2007 bought this calm. Security within which political solutions may be arrived at is achieved in this manner. It is no frivolous accomplishment and nothing to be dismissed or frittered away, because it was bought with the blood of our people. The bitter lesson of history is that walking away ultimately will cost more, whether in Iraq or elsewhere. As people go to the polls today in Iowa, next week in New Hampshire, over the next few months across the nation, and next November, may they remember that.
Here’s Foreign Policy with Gen. Petraeus on winding down the surge. Seven Questions (abridged):
Foreign Policy: These days when you speak about the surge, you always highlight positive developments but you also appear very cautious. What are your concerns?
Gen. David Petraeus: We are trying to be cautious as we describe the progress that is taking place in Iraq. It has been substantial … We feel as if we’ve knocked al Qaeda to the canvas, but we know that, like any boxer, they can come back up off that canvas and lend a big, right-hand punch. We also have concerns about the (Shiite) militias …
FP: Based on the experience of the British, who as they draw down are leaving a lot of instability behind them in southern Iraq, how can you can be confident going forward as U.S. forces withdraw?
Good question.
DP: We have already begun a reduction, and we’ll reduce another number over the course of the next seven months. We do that with a reasonable degree of confidence because our surge is taking place and the Iraqi surge is taking place as well, and it amplifies what we have done. In fact, the Iraqis have formed 160,000 police, soldiers, border police, and other security force elements during the past year … only when they can handle it we will have this transfer.
…
FP: Why didn’t the U.S. military didn’t embrace a true counterinsurgency approach before the surge?
Hey, that’s a good question, too. Politically charged good question. Let’s see how he answers it.
DP: There was a concept that was working reasonably well until 2006, when the Samarra mosque blew up and the ethno-sectarian violence took off. All the efforts we were making to try to tamp it down were not successful initially, and it took a real change of strategy, frankly. It took additional forces on the Iraqi and coalition sides. And it took redeploying forces back out into Iraqi neighborhoods to try to get violence down, to get the support of the local people. The huge factor here was that we were able to tap into something that was there but was waiting to express itself—the Sunni community’s rejection of extremism, indiscriminate violence, and the oppressive practices associated with al Qaeda in Iraq. In the first few years, they associated with al Qaeda because they felt disrespected, dispossessed, you name it, disappointed. Now they realize that if they want their place in the new Iraq, they can’t let al Qaeda be in their areas.
“Reasonably well” seems a bit of an overstatement, when you consider the many factors that al-Qaeda was able to exploit with its provocative act at Samarra. The wholesale dismantling of government and security forces that created massive unemployment; the failure to sufficiently rebuild or build infrastructure; the failure to fully secure the country and its arms in the first place due to the Rumsfeldian faster-cheaper-lighter-stupider approach. Counterinsurgency sensibilities rather than hope-for-the-best at the outset could have forestalled a lot of this, though arguably, a politically traumatized Iraq pitted against itself for decades needed to get its bloodbath out of its system. Which gets us to the second half of his answer.
We now have tens of thousands of what we call “Iraqi concerned citizens” who are now members of the Iraqi police, paid by the Interior Ministry, in Anbar Province. There are another 6,000 or so who have gradually worked through the process of being approved to be part of the Iraqi police in Baghdad. That’s a tougher one for the Iraqi government because they’re mixed communities. Let’s remember, the fabric of this society is torn, so there are understandable concerns about taking in Sunnis, some of whom were part of the insurgency. But this is the reason we call it reconciliation. You reconcile with your former enemies and not with friends.
FP: So having to ally with past enemies is not a failure but a success?
Stupid question. It is the very definition of success. I have three words for you, FP: Britain, Germany and Japan.
DP: Not all of them were our enemies. Some were what we call fence-sitters; some were oppressed and some probably were shooting at us, but you don’t kill your way out of this kind of thing. You can’t kill or capture everybody in an insurgency. What you have to figure out are the irreconcilables, and ideally you want these numbers as small as possible because they have to be killed, captured, or run off.
FP: Is the Iraqi government walking at your same speed?
DP: They will be the first to tell you they want to make more progress and make it more rapidly than they have done to this point … the progress has been halting, but there are a number of encouraging signs on the horizon.
FP: There’s an election going on right now in the United States. Do you think that what you’re doing in Iraq will have an impact on politics at home?
DP: To be candid, we’re not really thinking about that. We’ve got enough to do here on the ground, and we’ll let that take care of itself.
Subtext: There’s not a goddamned thing we can do about it but pray some idiot politician and a short-sighted electorate don’t screw things up more and throw away this tremendous progress in such a troubled and critical part of the world, bought with the precious blood of dedicated Americans and Iraqis.
Welcome Instapundit, etal. Shed a tear for an old soldier who brought us one of history’s greatest scoundrels, so real he had to be made up.
Re Iraq, prior:
Abandon with Abandon. Edwards’ Murrow strategy, “Good night and good luck!”.
Keep Them There Now! Anti-war lawyer’s legal gambit
Grim Milestone missed by numbers-obsessed press
Christmas Story. Meet Capt. Southworth. Meet Ala’a.
Look Back in Anger. Petraeus for POTY.
Mission UnAccomplished, Leadership Unfollowed. A year into Democratic congressional leadership.
Unpopular Quagmire to Drag On as Surrenderistas capitulate.
Topics: America, Iraq, military, pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:39 am on Thursday, January 3, 2008
12 Responses to “Blood Dividend”
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January 3rd, 2008 at 11:27 am
Web Reconnaissance for 01/03/2008
A short recon of whats out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
The last paragraph is what has me worried. It is one thing to ask legitimate questions, and there are those questions to be asked, but this isn’t what is happening. But I don’t have to tell this bunch that.
January 3rd, 2008 at 1:48 pm
DP: There was a concept that was working reasonably well until 2006, when the Samarra mosque blew up and the ethno-sectarian violence took off. All the efforts we were making to try to tamp it down were not successful initially, and it took a real change of strategy, frankly.
Gosh, you’d think the military didn’t have a crystal ball and all the answers beforehand about what would work and what wouldn’t. At least, the left, operating with 20-20 hindsight, seems to think so.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
FP: So having to ally with past enemies is not a failure but a success?
Jules - I respectfully dispute that this is a stupid question. I think it depends on the voice in which the question was uttered. FP is not a dumb publication, so I’m going on the assumption this was asked to elicit an explanation of the previous response and not on its own. If the latter, I can understand you calling it stupid. But if I’m right, and I think FP deserves the benefit of the doubt here, imagine the question asked as almost a continuation of the discussion from the prior answer.
So yes it’s stupid if the questioner was assuming the opposite was true, but not so if it’s issued in the manner in which I suspect it probably was.
Take care and absolutely love your blog, Dude.
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Many thanks, point taken. Alliance vs, enmity often a delicate, situational balance. Just ask the Ivans and the Heinrichs. Heck, just ask us and the Ivans. Still kind of a dumb question, though.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:40 pm
“the failure to fully secure the country and its arms in the first place due to the Rumsfeldian faster-cheaper-lighter-stupider approach. ”
Tommy Franks thought 3-5 years for stabization.
Do the math, active Army had 33 brigades in 2003. 1 in 3 rotations meant 6 were tied down in Afghanistan. That leaves 27 brigades, 9 active Army + 2 Active Marine Brigades get you to 11 Brigades per rotation. Everything else would have to come from the Reserves.
Rumsfelds faster/cheaper method bought time to build the active Army to 43 Brigades and create a semi-functional Iraqi Security Force.
One goes to war with the Army one has…one finishes a war with the Army one needs. Rumsfeld didn’t have the Army he needed…the assumption that the Saddam Era Security Forces would function in the new Iraq was horribly wrong.
So Rumsfeld and Casey fought a holding action so that Gates/Patraeus would have what they needed to finish the war off.
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Subtext: There’s not a goddamned thing we can do about it but pray some idiot politician and a short-sighted electorate don’t screw things up more and throw away this tremendous progress in such a troubled and critical part of the world, bought with the precious blood of dedicated Americans and Iraqis.
Amen
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Rumsfeld’s strategy was not stupid. It set up Patraeus’ victory, and if you look closely, you will see Patraeus pointing in this direction:
That previous strategy was Rumsfeld’s small-footprint/ force-protection strategy. It worked well because al Qaeda responded with a “media strategy” (Zawahiri’s term for blowing up civilians) that was systematically turning the Iraqi people against al Qaeda.
Patraeus acknowledges this when he notes how, prior to the surge, the Sunnis went from being on the side of al Qaeda to against al Qaeda. In terms of his counterinsurgency doctrine, the Sunnis went from being a hostile population to an intimidated population: just the kind of population that could be “rescued” by a large-footprint/ population-protection strategy.
Whether this surge strategy could have worked on a hostile population is highly speculative. To think we should have used it from the beginning is a bit like seeing Ali come off the ropes to kayo Foreman in the 8th round and thinking he should have done that in round one.
My full post on Rumsfeld’s victory here.
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Two points, Rumsfeld worked with what Clinton left him, and also the Iraqis had to find some way to find an investment in their country. Until they had become involved by dint of action, no government would have stood the test of time. To wit, the Sunnis didn’t turn on al-Qaeda until the surge, well after Rumsfeld had been fired.
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Not quite right. The Sunnis turned on al Qaeda in early 2006, at least seven months before Rumsfeld was fired. The al Qaeda/ Iranian attack on the Golden Mosque in February 2006 was the birthday of the Anbar Revenge brigades, which were publicly announced three weeks later. By the end of the summer of 2006, almost all of the Anbar tribes had joined and the Anbar awakening was in full swing, ripe for the picking with Patraeus’ surge strategy.
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I’m not sure that Rumsfeld anticipated the need for a different strategy. It’s possible that he saw his strategy as the end game, and left simply because he couldn’t see around his own premises.
But I could be wrong. We’ll probably find out in a few years, after he writes his autobiography.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:50 am
““Reasonably well” seems a bit of an overstatement, when you consider the many factors that al-Qaeda was able to exploit with its provocative act at Samarra.”
I put it down to tact, if not professional courtesy, myself.