The Redhunter

I would remind the candidate that the Anbar Salvation Council (which later grew exponentially and developed into al-Sahwa al-Iraq - the Iraq Awakening) started with one man, Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu al-Risha, and seventy men fighting al-Qaeda in defense of their families, not in pursuit of a 'political' anything. They simply wanted to live and end al-Qaeda's assassination and murdering spree against their families and tribe. Sheikh Abdul Sattar, later assassinated by al-Qaeda in Iraq, had seen 10 family members, including 4 brothers, killed by al-Qaeda for their cooperation with US forces. He had had enough.

Obama's plan - unoriginal and pieced together like a quilt from others against the Iraq war - was entirely Baghdad-centric, about laws and revenue sharing and conferences. The Anbar Awakening had nothing to do with Baghdad when they began and when they turned the neighborhood tides in Ramadi and elsewhere in Anbar province. It was about killing the terrorists before the terrorists killed them. One must, after all, live to ultimately see progress on any scale beyond one's neighborhoods.

Obama wanted laws written, press conferences, and an immediate pull back of US troops. As Senator Chuck Schumer so brilliantly said at the time about 'the plan,' US forces were to withdraw post-haste to the periphery "in more of a counterterrorism role." This would have abandoned the Anbar Salvation Council - and Anbar Sunnis and Shi'a alike - entirely. It would have been feeding them to the bloodthirsty wolves of al-Qaeda so that domestic American political figures could champion themselves as 'ending a war' and conducting business "in more of a counterterrorism role."

This is precisely what I tried to scream when I wrote "This Is Counterterrorism, Senator" over a year ago for National Review Online. And winning the counterinsurgency is about aligning a population with us. Neither of these, counterterrorism nor counterinsurgency, could have been successfully addressed by 'The Plan' put forth by Obama and others in opposition to The Surge. The Surge was all about protecting the population within their own neighborhoods, while 'The Plan' was about abandoning said population to complete animals unassisted. Yet Obama - and surely others - would oppose it all over again.

The Iraqis have done what they have done for themselves in spite of the likes of Obama, Schumer, Pelosi and all the rest. What's more, now that The Surge has accomplished much of what it set out to do to help the Iraqis - again in spite of Obama, Schumer, Pelosi and the rest - a presidential candidate who opposed the surge, would still oppose The Surge and had absolutely no clue about the Anbar Salvation Council when it was pleading and begging for US support (since at least September of 2006) wants to champion their success as somehow his brainchild and a sign of the political development he envisioned?

One is left to suppose that he overlooks the fact that so many in Anbar and throughout Iraq are alive in spite of attempts to push such a sacrificial 'Plan.' There's no other way to describe it. Dead people - crucified, baked and beheaded - do not live to contribute to 'political progress.' Sheikh Abdul Sattar - and today, his brother Sheikh Ahmed al-Rishawi - understood this. Too many Americans seem flip to dismiss this comfortably from afar.

The Anbar Salvation Council didn't have a damn thing to do with political resolution. It needed to simply survive first; family by family, town by town, tribe by tribe. The movement that eventually saved Iraq laid ignored and unsupported until General David Petraeus changed that when he arrived to command The Surge that Obama said he would still oppose.

Obama's (et al) 'plan' and 'political' demands would have fed them to the wolves, slaughtered with their families while we were to have breathed a sigh of relief that the war was finally over. Funny thing about the Iraqis: They want to live, no matter what our politicians profess.

Today's remarks simply could not be left to stand unchallenged.

An excellent history lesson. It's obvious Obama has no idea what he's talking about. Like someone who's spent his entire life pursuing politics, he doesn't understand anything that's not political. Like his fellow Democrats (and some Republicans), the military is a strange and alien thing that he cannot get his arms around. All he gets is big-government deal making and legislation.

What proved successful was not political deal making but securing the population. Security first, politics second. This is the lesson of counterinsurgency that Gen Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Odierno understood and implemented. It's the thesis of the U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24; the one written by the team led by then Lt. Gen Petraeus in 2006 and is the basis for everything we've done in Iraq since then. You'd think that by this time Obama would get it.

Laid out more formally, let's once again go over the factors that have led to our success. In the February 11, 2008, print edition of National Review, Wesley Morgan identified four interconnected efforts:

1. The adoption of classic counterinsurgency tactics, with U.S. battalions spreading out among the population and earning their trust;
2. The grassroots reconciliation of many Sunni and some Shiite communities;
3. A series of meticulously planned corps-level offensives across Baghdad and its surrounding areas. All of these efforts have hinged on one major change:
4. During 2007, every echelon of the U.S. command -- from the four-star headquarters down through the critical corps and division levels to the brigades and battalions in the field -- was closely integrated into a cohesive whole. Without this integration, none of the four efforts that have brought Iraq forward would have made much difference.

Last December VOA reporter Al Pessin asked Maj Gen Walter Gaskin, the USMC commander in Anbar, about why the Anbar Awakening occurred and whether it would have occured without US troops and the Surge:

Q General, it's Al Pessin from Voice of America. I wanted to ask you about the Awakening, and you talked a little bit about how there's this blood feud, and how the Anbaris have rejected the brutality of al Qaeda. Would you say that the progress that we've seen this year in Anbar had to do with something that MNF-I did? Or was it entirely indigenous to the inner workings of the people who live in the province?

GEN. GASKIN: I think it's a combination. You know, you can't separate the fact that this multinational corps and force out here was designed to eliminate al Qaeda.

And al Qaeda is a part of why the Awakening came about, is to awake and see that you can have self-reliance. We can join with the coalition forces and rid ourselves of the brutality and the caliphate and the just plain disregard for how the Anbaris live.

Now, it kind of manifests itself out here in Anbar because these were Sunnis -- (audio break) -- and therefore, they resisted the Taliban-like life -- the life and ideology that al Qaeda was bringing to this area. But it did not come without a cost. Al Qaeda was very brutal to the sheikhs, and this is a very tribal society. As a matter of fact, the sheikhs often say that we were tribal before we were Muslim, and therefore, this is a(n) anchor point within our society. And so when al Qaeda attacked that, they did some very brutal things to the sheikhs, did not follow customs allowing the sheikhs to die in the desert and not burying them within 24 hours. That's what I mean by the blood feud and that they have created a schism that I don't think will ever be repaired.

And because they really want to return to a life where they can have control of their own destiny, I see this as an opportunity since -- (audio break) -- have joined with al Qaeda -- with the sheikhs and the people against al Qaeda. This is going to work, and I think it's enduring.

Q But General, might that not have happened anyway without MNF-I, without the surge, without the new counterinsurgency strategy?

GEN. GASKIN: I doubt it. I think if you -- if you look at the history of the fighting here, you will see that several times the sheikhs have attempted to rid themselves of al Qaeda.

They started in about 2005 out in al Qaim, where the sheikhs raised up, calling themselves the Desert Protectors, put down brutally by al Qaeda. It started again in and around Ramadi, where 11 sheikhs raised up to try to rid themselves of al Qaeda and its caliphate and shura law. And 11 of -- of those 11 -- (audio break) -- were put down brutally.

And so again, in Ramadi with Sheikhs Sattar Abu Risi (ph) who started the Sahwa Allah Iraq, which is the Awakening movement. He had lost two brothers and a father in that fight. So he realized, too, that the joining of the coalition who had there to aid them in getting rid of al Qaeda, that we were better equipped, better trained and had a better principle (sic) of what was happening to them and all of that. This joining of us with them would not have happened -- it definitely would not have happened in the time frame for which we are experiencing now because al Qaeda was better organized, better financed and a lot more brutal than the Anbaris ever expected in dealing with them.

And so I think this was a -- (audio break) -- and it's proved to be ridding them of al
Qaeda and allow them to get on with their economic development and governance of this province.

I rather take Maj Gen Gaskin's word over that of Sen Obama.