The author wrote:

“Senator John McCain, now running for president, wrote in a recent opinion article that, prior to the surge, American strategy at the highest levels in Iraq was ‘mismanaged.’”

That quote is absolutely correct. LTC Gentile’s battalion command position did not represent “the highest levels in Iraq” and this should be fairly obvious. At the highest levels in Iraq, the trend was FOB consolidation. He also quoted a “neoconservative” writer who criticized this FOB consolidation. He makes a legitimate critique of that comment by pointing out that his battalion was not in FOB consolidation mode. But what the dastardly neo-con wrote was largely true for the country as a whole. That changed in 2007.

The author goes on to write:

“The main difference was a decision by senior American leaders in 2007 to pay large amounts of money to Sunni insurgents to stop attacking Americans and join the fight against Al Qaeda. Coupled with this was the decision by the Shiite militia leader, Moktada al-Sadr, to refrain from attacking coalition forces.

The dramatic drop in violence, especially toward Americans, that occurred in Baghdad from June to July 2007 can mainly be explained by these new conditions.”

That is an oversimplification that ignores the conditions that brought about the change in behavior by Sadr. It is one thing to omit mention of those conditions for the sake of OPSEC, but quite another to assume that they never happened and then draw an incorrect conclusion. Sadr did not decide, in a vacuum, to play nice with America. There was also a basic psychological appeal of increasing troop strength and renewing our commitment to remaining in Iraq that helped to sway some Sunni tribal Sheiks to play ball. They needed reassurance that we were going to stay there if they were to side with us against al-Qaeda. It was not as simple as throwing cash around.

I agree with the following point and I cannot figure out why he downplayed it:

“Granted, before the surge there were about 30,000 fewer U.S. troops and fewer American combat outposts in Iraqi neighborhoods. But the overall methods that the U.S. Army employed at the small-unit level where I operated were no different from the so-called new counterinsurgency methods used today.”

Absolutely correct. The key phrase is “at the small-unit level”. Many, if not most, units in Iraq had figured things out for the most part by 2006 and were doing the right things, but at the small unit level. I see no evidence that this was often occurring at, say, Brigade or above. Most certainly, it was not sufficiently understood at the MNC-I level. The trend was FOB consolidation. That was exactly counter to the efforts being made by those at the small unit level who had figured it out.

I agree with the general theme that Iraq has not been turned around by some enlightened Soldier-scholar with a PhD rolling in to town and using intellect instead of firepower. That was an image that appealed to the media and academia and was politically expedient. However, Gen Petraeus made a big difference by simply reversing the FOB consolidation trend. Units pushed deeper into the population in order to secure the population, rather than withdrawing to FOBs and securing their own perimeters (and I understand that LTC Gentile's battalion was not part of this withdrawal). This was made possible partly by the addition of troops, as the author points out, but there was also a fundamental shift in guidance to stop consolidating and get out into the population.

LTC Gentile may not have felt the frustration of FOB consolidation in 2006 - perhaps his AOR was not near the front of the queue for consolidation. My unit was. Even in 2005, there was a push for us to be withdrawn into a FOB, despite our protests that our AOR would go into the crapper overnight. We were able to delay this movement for the duration of our deployment, but we had to constantly be ready to move on a moment's notice, in the event that the powers that be made the subjective decision that it was time to go. The compromise struck between those who were implementing the nonsensical plan and those of us in the city who said that the plan was stupid was that, in 2006, we were not replaced by US forces. From our standpoint, this was a crappy compromise, but not one that we had much say in. We were replaced by an Iraqi force that we had only been training for a few months. It was a plan destined to fail, but that was the theme back then. Even if the plan was doomed to fail, it did not matter, because it was the plan and the plan had to be executed.

Thankfully, in spite of a lot of bad decisions at very high levels that set the conditions for failure, the author is correct when writes that our troops did not fail in 2006.