The New Plan for Iraq

[GPaulus]

There is a huge misunderstanding .... There's a belief that we have a defined enemy in Iraq, and that once you either put those folks in jail, or you kill them, or you secure the streets -- the fighting will just stop. That's simply not the case. There is a root cause of the insurgency in Iraq and it is not America, not religion, not terrorism, not race, not sectarian rifts, not lack of security.

Gen. Chiarelli's, in his Time Magazine article, eloquently says, "To think the security line alone is going to bring peace to Iraq, and solve the problems you see manifested in the streets of Iraq today, is absolutely foolhardy." We have seen that increased security alone is not the answer. Additional US forces only create a counter-productive confrontational environment. It further embeds in people's mind the notion of a police state and not a democracy.

On the political front, we have been working to create a democratic Iraq, but that is a goal, not a strategy. On the military front, we have sought to train Iraqi security forces and turn the war over to them. As President George W. Bush has stated, "Our strategy can be summed up this way: as the Iraqi security forces stand-up, we will stand down." But the president is describing a withdrawal plan rather than a strategy. So if Security Alone is not the strategy, then What Is That Elusive Iraq Strategy?

[SWJED]

Petraeus Time - Reuel Marc Gerecht, Wall Street Journal.

Can one back President Bush's new strategy in Iraq? Yes. For all its serious faults, his new approach is the first one since the fall of Baghdad to offer a chance to reverse the radicalization of Iraq. But it needs revision quickly.

Too much of this new plan leaves unchanged the disastrous approach of John Abizaid and George Casey, the two top generals on Iraq. The new offensive, assuming it doesn't peter out through a slow arrival of soldiers, or become enfeebled by "Iraqi leadership" in its execution, envisions a too-small U.S. force doing too much. Recent remarks by Defense Secretary Robert Gates--predicting troop reductions within a year, and saying that we might not need an additional five brigades in Baghdad for a successful operation--are a frightening echo of the self-defeating, undermanned optimism that came from the U.S. military under Mr. Gates's predecessor.

The good news is that by emphasizing a military, not political, strategy to diminish Iraq's debilitating violence, the president has correctly set aside one of the primary factors destroying the Shiite Arab center. While waiting for a "political solution" to the Sunni insurgency, we watched Shiite timidity and patience turn to anger--and to a revenge which now threatens the integrity of the Shiite-led Iraqi government. Gens. Abizaid and Casey had gambled that they could stand up an effective Iraqi military and police against the Sunnis before violence threatened everything in Baghdad. That bet collapsed with the destruction of the Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006--but the administration kept playing the same hand as if nothing had happened. The reversal of this soft-power, politics-not-troops mentality is an essential step forward...

[Tom Odom]

The reversal of this soft-power, politics-not-troops mentality is an essential step forward......Nevertheless, there is a dismaying hesitancy in the military's and the White House's deliberations on this conflict. Although the president wants a new approach, the Pentagon, the State Department and even the National Security Council appear wedded to the past. The contradiction between what the president says and what his government does has never been greater. We need to move rapidly: The enemy is digging in and the drift to full-scale civil war is gaining speed....

Mr. Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

That says much about where this comes from. Most interesting is the use of "drift toward full-scale civil war"....nations/countries do not "drift" toward civil war; they may erupt but they do not drift.

Gerecht is essentially calling for a massive crackdown; given the numbers of troops avaliable and other factors, this is a waste of ink.

Tom

[tequila]

I would say Gerecht is arguing not so much for a massive crackdown, but rather a massive U.S.-led effort to crush the Sunni insurgency and clear the decks for a religious Shia theocracy in Iraq led by the less anti-American Shia clerics selected by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (and perhaps even al-Sadr, if he refrains from too much anti-American activity by the looks of this article). Gerecht appears to believe that by doing this, we'll somehow split political Shiism so that Iran's leadership is marginalized (the whole depending on the Najaf quietists to fight our battle against the Qom Khomeinists idea), leading to pro-American factions in both Iran and Iraq.

I agree that this is largely a waste of ink.