Could Someone Please Explain the "Surge Strategy" to Me

[Granite_State]

I guess I'm just frustrated because Donnelly, Kagan and, to a lesser degree, Kristol are friends of mine and they just keep beating the drum of the new strategy but I have yet to see a cogent explanation of what it is. A troop surge is an operation, not a new strategy. Rather than explain how the new strategy will better to lead to "victory" (or exactly what that is), they just spend all of their time lambasting anyone who isn't on board.

In a broader sense, I'm afraid that the conceptual underpinning of the "new strategy" is the idea that Andy Krepinevich and others were espousing that says that population security should be the central factor in counterinsurgency. In my tiny little mind, that is one more example of extrapolating general lessons from Cold War insurgencies. In Vietnam, El Salvador, etc., the "people" were "undecided" so the counterinsurgency campaign was designed to win them over with development, security, and reform. But in ethnic/sectarian insurgencies, people don't decide which side to support based on the provision of development, security, and reform. Loyalty is more primal.

That's a great, great point, and I kind of feel like an idiot that it never occurred to me in that way. Thanks.

Only question is, what happened to the supposed mass of secular, well-educated Iraqi professionals? My guess is the majority have left or are leaving for Syria, Egypt, Jordan, etc.

[Culpeper]

When I first saw the term, "The Surge", for the latest offensives I was sort of baffled myself by the name they chose. It just appears to me that someone making decisions finally read, "Counterinurgency Warfare", by David Galula while waiting in the lobby for a dentist appointment.