The Redhunter

Gen. Keane emphasizes that the surge in troops represents a wholly new military mission — to protect Iraqis in Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhoods, i.e. to defeat the insurgency. The current military mission is to transition to Iraqi forces. Kagan and Keane both emphasized that the surge has to be both substantial (minimum 30,000 troops) and sustained (minimum 18 months). They explained that it would be desirable to have even a larger surge but current resources don’t allow for that and they don’t support any timetable other than that dictated by mission success. Gen. Keane points out that it will take some time to win the cooperation of the local population. The troop surge should be accompanied by a reconstruction package.

Among those who actually want to win the war, there are two competing views. One view says that increasing American troops and changing the strategy is key to success. The other says no, this is not the answer and only the Iraqis can win the war. As such, they say, the key is to increase the number of trainers.

In an editorial last Sunday, Oliver North argued that more troops simply means more targets for the insurgents. Increasing American troops "will not improve Iraqi willingness to fight their own fight, which is an imperative if we are to claim victory in this war." After talking with both Iraqis and American troops in his last visit there, he is convinced that the key to success is an increased training regimen.

Mario Loyola, writing at The Corner also opposes increasing the number of troops, but for different reasons. He agrees with North that only the Iraqis can win, that only they can establish security. In a post today he wrote that

"Clear, hold, and build" may work as counter-insurgency strategy, but I can't imagine that it can be as effective in a counter-terror or counter-death-squad mode. Terrorists and death squads have a much easier time hiding among the urban population than a guerrilla force, which sooner or later cannot escape the necessity of controlling territory — or at least be able to openly challenge the territorial control of coalition forces. It is one of the tragedies of the Iraq conflict that in the counter-insurgency dimension of the war, coalition forces were actually largely victorious in 2004 and 2005. But then Al Qaeda came up with its "civil war" strategy, and an effective counter-strategy has thus far eluded us.

I've got respect for both North and Loyola, but in this case I think they're wrong. The current strategy of training the Iraqis to do the job themselves simply isn't working. We're going backwards in Iraq, and it's time for a change. As Frederick Kagan says about increasing trainers in the executive summary to their new plan:

This approach cannot succeed rapidly enough to prevent defeat. Removing U.S. forces from patrolling neighborhoods to embed them as trainers will lead to an immediate rise in violence. This rise in violence will destroy America’s remaining will to fight, and escalate the cycle of sectarian violence in Iraq beyond anything an Iraqi army could bring under control.

Take the Gloves Off?

Another thing I've heard a lot of recently is that we ought to "take the gloves off" because our troops are severely constrained in what they may do. Loyola writes about this in the post of his linked to above, saying that our troops "aren't allowed to do half the things they know they should be doing, out of deference to the Iraqi government." Although this is the type of stuff that drives war supporters back home nuts and annoys the troops, it is necessary because "the Iraqi government must succeed in establishing security with its own forces, and this means that it must establish central authority, even if this means subordinating the authority of coalition forces and constraining their freedom of action."

Today on the Jerry Doyle show I was listening to his guest Col David Hunt (Ret) argue just the opposite. Col Hunt, who had just gotten back from Iraq, was talking about the various restrictions on US troops and how in his opinion they hurt our ability to destroy the insurgents and take down the militias. He said that unless we arrest or kill Muqtada al-Sadr and destroy his Mahdi Army increasing the number of troops won't matter. He pointed out that we had the war won for a few months after the invasion, but got soft and let the situation get away from us. Because the Iraqis stopped fearing us, they feel free to engage in violence, against us and against each other.

Victor Davis Hanson, also writing at The Corner today, recognized the danger North pointed out that increasing the number of Americans may just increase the number of targets. To keep this from happening he says that

If we have a surge, that means sending combined Iraqi-American units on proactive operations to destroy the terrorists and their supporters. If we don't, then the additional numbers will only offer bigger targets and added prestige to the terrorists who operate despite increased American investment.

Hanson doesn't exactly say we should take the gloves off and go for broke, but earlier iin the same post he said that the reason for the relative calm after our invasion was that Iraqis feared us, but that after a few months we turned to "reactive policing", and thus lost their respect.

Here's my take: On the one hand those who advocate removing the restrictions from our troops need to recognize that they are running a serious risk. The obvious benefit from such an action would be to kill more terrorists and militia members, which would hopfully make Iraqis (or the ones that matter, anyway), fear us. On the other is the law of unintended consequences. The risks are many; civil uprising, denouncement by the IIraqi government and thus perceived loss of legitimacy of our presence, the chance filming by a reporter of some "incident" that reflects badly on US troops, the list goes on.

If the situation weren't so dire I'd agree with Loyola that there are good reasons to keep the restrictions in place. But as I said earlier with regard to the strategy of training the Iraqis to do the job, it clearly isn't working and we need a change in direction.

President Bush's Turn

This Wednesday President Bush will give a major address in which he will lay out his plan for winning the war in Iraq. Word is that he was briefed on the Keane-Kagan plan and came away impressed.

Chances are, I believe, that he will announce some level of troop increase and change in strategy. I just hope that he is willing to send enough troops for a long enough period of time to matter, and that the change in strategy is serious. He's already changed commanders at CENTCOM and in Iraq, which was a good start. My fear is that this will be another half-measure; 10-20,000 troops for a short time and incremental changes in strategy. Such things won't work and I will be disappointed if that's what happens. We shall see.

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