It is becoming comical watching the attempts of the Democratic Party to denounce the success of “the surge” strategy in Iraq:
Republican John McCain pushed back on Wednesday against Democratic criticism that he misstated when the troop buildup ordered by President Bush began, saying elements were put in place before Bush announced the strategy in early 2007.
He told reporters during an unscheduled stop in a super market that, what the Bush administration calls “the surge” was actually “made up of a number of components,” some of which began before the president’s order for more troops. [Associated Press]
McCain of course is right because what Democrats refuse to recognize is that the surge strategy wasn’t just putting more troops into Iraq, it was about implementing a counterinsurgency strategy that would bring security to the Iraqi people backed by more troops. That is why General Petreaus was picked to be the commander of forces in Iraq because he implemented his own counterinsurgency strategy in the city of Mosul to much success when he was the commander of the 101st Airborne during the first year of the war. He surrounded himself with counterinsurgency experts known as warrior scholars, such as Colonel H.R. McMaster who also had much success implementing a counterinsurgency strategy in Tal Afar as commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
The Democrats want people to ignore the counterinsurgency portion of the surge strategy and instead give credit to tribal sheiks:
At issue are McCain’s comments in a Tuesday interview with CBS. The Arizona senator disputed Democrat Barack Obama’s contention that a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida combined with the dispatch of thousands more U.S. combat troops to Iraq to produce the improved security situation there. McCain called that a “false depiction.”
Democrats jumped on his comments. They said McCain’s remarks showed he was out of touch, because the rebellion of U.S.-backed Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida terrorists in Iraq’s Anbar province was under way well before Bush announced in January 2007 his decision to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq.
The rebellion of tribal sheiks was well on its way because of the counterinsurgency strategy that had been adopted by the Marines just like Colonel McMaster implemented the counterinsurgency in Tal Afar when he was in command of the area between 2005-2006. The strategy in these areas were successful which led military commanders to believe that it could be successful around the country if more troops were available to implement it more quickly.
The second aspect of the surge that goes largely unrecognized is the training of the Iraqi Army with the implementation of US embedded training teams known as MiTT’s (military transition teams). This teams have greatly increased the skill of the Iraqi Army to the point that the Iraqi Army has taken the leading role in a number of missions such as clearing out Basra and Sadr City of rogue militia elements.
It is really disappointing to see politicians downplay the achievements of the US military in Iraq purely for their own political advantage. Barack Obama has been trying to pass this same propaganda during his visit to the Middle East:
However, Obama would not attribute the decreased violence entirely to the troop surge, which he opposed, instead saying that it was the result of “political factors inside Iraq that came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not occurred, my assessment would be correct. … The point I was making at the time was the political dynamic was the driving force in that sectarian violence.” [ABC News via Greyhawk]
Why did those political factors in Iraq occur in the first place? It didn’t just happen out of the blue. It was because of the counterinsurgency strategy that was implemented that the surge forces spread throughout Iraq. Obama wants people to believe he is never wrong about anything and is willing to downplay the great work done by the US military for purely political advantage. At least he isn’t crediting the good will of the Iranians for the success in Iraq yet like his pal Nancy Pelosi.
Despite Obama’s willingness to downplay US military success in Iraq he has yet to make up his mind on how he is going to handle these successes if elected President:
Obama said that after being sworn in he would give U.S. military commanders a new mission, “for us to begin a phased redeployment at a pace of one to two brigades per month, at which point we would have our combat troops out in 16 months. That’s the goal that I’m setting.”
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“What I will refuse to do is to get boxed in into what I consider two false choices,” he said. “Either I have a rigid timeline, come hell or high water, and I am blind to anything that happens in the intervening 16 months, or, alternatively, I am completely deferring to whatever the commanders on the ground says, which is what George Bush says he’s doing, in which case I’m not doing my job as commander in chief. I’m essentially, simply rubber-stamping decisions that are made on the ground. [ABC News via Greyhawk]
Got that?
So even Obama admits that his own timetable rhetoric is a “false choice”. Kind of like his belief the US military had little to do with success in Iraq is a “false choice” as well.
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11:27 am on July 24th, 2008 1
What’s comical is watching you nuts hold onto to the weak argument that the surge is the only thing that needs to be focused on in the Iraq debacle. I can assume that you have bought every line that McCain has fed you and rather than looking ahead and respecting the wishes of Iraq, you want to drag it out for political gain.
“Obama wants people to believe he is never wrong about anything and is willing to downplay the great work done by the US military for purely political advantage.”
You have got to be kidding me.
“So even Obama admits that his own timetable rhetoric is a “false choice”. Kind of like his belief the US military had little to do with success in Iraq is a “false choice” as well”
He is simply saying that he wants to lead and make decisions rather that defer that role to the military. I agree. Most people do, pal. Over 60% of voters want a timetable and none of them are arguing about the surge. The surge has past, let it go and move on.
6:54 pm on July 24th, 2008 2
Despite your rant you have not counter one point I made. The surge was about an increase of troops to more widely implement a counterinsurgency strategy that had its beginnings way back in 2005 and was showing signs of working in 2006 which is why the military wanted extra troops in 2007 to more widely implement the strategy.
The tribal sheiks sided with the US military because of the counterinsurgency strategy, which the Democrats want people to believe that the tribal awakening just happened out of the blue. Anyone who argues that the counterinsurgency strategy wasn’t responsible for the successes in Iraq is either dishonest or ignorant.
Also McCain has advocated withdrawal based on conditions on the ground which is what Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has advocated for despite the Der Spiegel attempt to misquote him:
Here is more:
If conditions on the ground allows combat troops to be pulled out in 16 months then so be it. Personally I think that if the trend remains the same Petreaus will recommend large withdrawals next year but he will not make any recommendations until the election is over in order to not seem to be trying to influence the election.
Also I don’t have a problem with Obama leading and making decisions. I never mentioned anything about that, you did. I pointed out how he called his own timetable rhetoric a “false choice”. It sounds like to me he is leaving himself wiggle room to change his mind which there is of course nothing wrong with.
7:38 pm on July 24th, 2008 3
Oh lets be real now….Obama will lisen to military leaders advice before he withdraws troops from Iraq….
But if Obama becomes president he will ax current leaders and bring people who will say anything Obama wants…like General Sharpton or General Wright
9:45 pm on July 24th, 2008 4
The surge was about creating an atmosphere where the Iraqi government would have room to fufill ALL of the agreed upon benchmarks which they had been reluctant to reach beforehand. They still have not reached them. While violence might be down IN PART because of the surge (more because of the dominating Shiite presence), the surge has still not completed the tasks it was intended to. Yet, the Iraqi government wants us out. Don’t feed me this “mistranslation” garbage. It was Malaki’s personal translator, plus that article and audio has been vetted by hundreds and still says the same thing. Moreover, all the Iraqi leaders have stated this week that they want the US out by 2010. All of Obama’s foreign policy plans that hawks like you critized are ALL now being realized. Interesting…
“The surge was about an increase of troops to more widely implement a counterinsurgency strategy that had its beginnings way back in 2005 and was showing signs of working in 2006 which is why the military wanted extra troops in 2007 to more widely implement the strategy.”
Look at you using fresh McCain talking points. But seriously, the surge seems to have had some success, but that does not mean that Obama is downplaying that success. He’s trying to move ahead and look beyond the war-driven goggles that we have been cursed to wear for the past four years. McCain is dangersous, but luckily, we won’t have to worry about him.
Also, King Kitty… not worth it.
11:04 pm on July 24th, 2008 5
The only one repeating talking points is yourself.
It is a known fact that units like the Marines in Anbar and the 3rd ACR in Tal Afar implemented a counterinsurgency strategy before the surge began to great success, these are not McCain talking but facts. Not recognizing these facts is either ignorant or dishonest.
It is also a known fact that the military transition teams embedded with the Iraqi units are largely responsible for increasing the training and combat capabilities of Iraqi Forces which have improved greatly due to the long term commitment to training the Iraqi military the US military has undertaken.
I gave you a quote from Maliki’s spokesman reported on CNN disputing Der Speigel statement. Once again a fact and not a talking point.
Let’s look at Maliki’s statement anyway in Der Speigel. Here is Maliki’s statement originally published in Der Speigel:
Then Der Speigel went and changed it to this:
The media went into over drive hyping this quote without asking why Der Speigel dropped the “positive developments” line.
Why would a left leaning publication like Der Speigel possibly want to alter what Maliki actually said? I think to make the headlines they did but draw your own conclusions.
The counterinsurgency strategy has had more success then anyone thought possible and now Iraq is probably moving into a Northern Ireland type of transition period where it will take years to fully reconcile and car bombs will go off every once in awhile but the outcome appears clear.
If Iraq is moving into such a transition heavy concentration of US troops will not be needed but large numbers of US troops will remain to assist the Iraqis with combat jobs such as artillery or air support which they currently have little to no capabilities. This is not something you can field and train people to do overnight to meet some artificial deadline. That is why military commanders and the Iraqis themselves have been stressing conditions on the ground to warrant US withdrawals.
5:53 am on July 25th, 2008 6
While I’m anything but an Obama supporter, I have to say that a lot of what GI is iterating are pure TACTICAL successes on the part of US military forces.
Morning Calm is right to argue that in terms of meeting the political benchmarks that the “surge” was suppose to make possible much still needs to be done.
Consider that on July 24, 2008, the NYT reports that:
“Iraq’s president vetoed legislation on provincial elections on Wednesday, sending it back to lawmakers for revisions as political leaders continued to try to strike a deal that would allow the vote to be held this year as planned.
Provincial elections are seen as central to political progress in Iraq, but their timing was thrown into doubt on Tuesday when Kurdish lawmakers boycotted the parliamentary vote on the legislation…
Mr. Talabani (Iraq’s president) office earlier in the day had issued a statement promising a veto, saying that the legislation in its current form would deepen ‘the sectarian and national isolation and expand the circle of extremism.’
Iraqi Kurds have opposed the legislation because it contains an article on the multiethnic…city of Kirkuk that they do not accept…
The Kurds believe that Kirkuk…should be part of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. Arabs and Turkmens disagree, saying power should be evenly divided.”
It would seem that whatever tactical successes our brave men and women have accomplished in Iraq, there are clearly other dynamics at play that do not follow the logic of the US military’s plans.
7:07 am on July 25th, 2008 7
The only way the US will know if the war in Iraq can be turned into a strategic success is if the Iraqi government remains stable and friendly to the US. This would mean the first Arab democracy in the middle east would have been formed which is no small feat, however it is much to early to draw such conclusions.
In regards to benchmarks 15/18 of the original benchmarks have been met.
Here is a good quick assessment about the benchmarks:
That is why you don’t hear Democrats bring up benchmarks anymore. There is still plenty of work to be done for sure but for anyone to claim there hasn’t been significant political progress in Iraq to coincide with the surge is once again either ignorant or dishonest.
In regards to Kirkuk that city is an extremely complex issue that will not be easily resolved. I served before in the Kirkuk sector and actually the last day I spent in Iraq was in Kirkuk because I flew out of Iraq from the airfield there. So I know Kirkuk quite well.
The Kurds will keep delaying any resolution on Kirkuk to buy time to get more Arabs that were moved there during the Saddam era to move out to be replaced by the Kurds that were forcibly removed by Saddam. The Kurds want to control Kirkuk because of the oil fields outside the city. Kirkuk is more then just an Iraqi issue but a regional issue as well with Turkey who doesn’t want Kurdish control of Kirkuk. There are many more issues but bottomline like many issues in Iraq this one will not be solved by an artificial timetable.
However notice from your NY Times report the Iraqis are fighting their issues between each other in the parliament instead of in the streets with guns which is just another sign of the political progress in Iraq.
7:48 am on July 25th, 2008 8
First things first. The long passage that you provide from Pajamas Media was-as you well know-by Abe Greenwald. Abe Greenwald, in case some of your readers don’t know, also blogs over at the magazine Commentary’s “Contentions” blog. In case your readers also don’t know, the “Contentions” blog is an outlet for neoconservative opinions, tropes, and bromides.
Anybody who aspires to have even a scintilla of objectivity in their perspectives on Iraq should by now have learned to take with fist full of salt anything a neoconservative says. I’m afraid evolution hasn’t provided me with the requisite number of digits to count the number of times that neocons have trumpeted success was just around the corner, only to see them splatter egg all over their face yet again.
Second. I’m afraid the quote you provide from the AP does nothing to bolster your case GI. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that your’re showing hints of disingenousness. You see, if you actually read the excerpt, it’s the BUSH WHITE HOUSE’S progress assessment of Iraq’s political progress. It should be patently obvious to anybody that Bush officials would undoubtedly say that 15 of the 18 benchmarks have been “satisfactorily” met.
If you want a summary of what GAO recently had to say about Iraq’s political and economic progress go here:
nytimes.com/2008/06/24/world/middleeast/24gao.html
10:09 pm on July 25th, 2008 9
The only evidence presented for the thesis that the “surge” “worked” is that Iraqi deaths from political violence have declined in recent months from all-time highs in the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007. Even Malaki questions the political success of the surge. Furthermore, the surge was not really a surge, but a steadied escalation of troop levels that took over six months to accomplish. If more troops was the answer to everything in Iraq, why did it take the adminstration over 4 years to do it-and when they did do it why not go full bore with the intent to put a LOT of troops in, kill a lot of Iraqis so that Americans don’t have to get killed and get this over with quickly. Why not put in 60,000 troops or a 100, 000 , moblize all the reserves, put the country on a wartime footing finally and finish this war quickly.
As best I can piece it together, what actually seems to have happened was that the escalation troops began by disarming the Sunni Arabs in Baghdad. Once these Sunnis were left helpless, the Shiite militias came in at night and ethnically cleansed them. Shaab district near Adhamiya had been a mixed neighborhood. It ended up with almost no Sunnis. Baghdad in the course of 2007 went from 65% Shiite to at least 75% Shiite and maybe more.
Bottom line, the debate is not about the surge. Its about the United States continuing to be stuck in a worthless Arab country, defending those same worthless Arabs who after over 5 years are still not ready to take on the job themselves. United States interests in Iraq are already accompished. From this point on all we are doing is enabling Iraqi objectives and those are not necessarily aligned with the those of the US. There is no “victory” to win-from our standpoint, which is the only one that matters-I could care less about the Iraqis-we have already succeeded.
John McCain wants to stay in Iraq forever. Obama for all his faults, realizes that being in Iraq is not in the national interest and never was. And please spare me the “central front in the war on terrorism” analogy, because that one is not true either.
5:56 am on July 26th, 2008 10
It is interesting how Gaetano wants to discredit the messenger but not the message. Bottom line if the progress from the benchmarks set was not significant the Democrats would be venting about them right now and Obama himself would have mentioned it. They are not and are instead trying to rewrite how the success of the surge came about by in essence claiming, yeah the soldiers are brave but they really didn’t do anything.
Skippy if you read above the surge was about implementing a counterinsurgency strategy that had its roots back in 2005 started showing signs of success in 2006 and it was decided to back it with more troops in 2007. The more troops were made available by extensions and early deployments of troops either already there or going.
If anyone argues that more troops in Iraq was the answer they are as clueless as the people arguing for more troops in Afghanistan. The surge was about increasing troop numbers only after a force wide strategy was implemented.
Your withdrawals will be coming next year, the only thing at issue is what the narrative of those withdrawals will be. I would be very surprised if Petraeus announces any withdrawals before the election because that could be interpreted as him trying to influence the election. Thus that is why he has a force level freeze going on.
I would not even be bringing up this issue if Obama would give credit where credit is due which is to the US military for implementing and executing a strategy with much blood, sweat, and tears that leaves the US in a position to leave Iraq as a sustainable country, no longer a threat to its neighbors, and friendly to the US.
6:48 am on July 26th, 2008 11
The surge was more about a shift in strategy rather than overwhelming the enemy with reinforcements. Prior to the surge the troops operated from distant bases, but now they’ve integrated within the community to hold daily patrols and heed concerns from citizens. Michael Totten (a reliable source of Iraq news) blogged about how American soldiers now literally live just like the Iraqi people, sleeping inside dusty, broken down houses without much running water and sewage. They really set up the place to anticipate suicide bombings and facilitate tips from Iraqis on suspicious activities.
8:23 am on July 26th, 2008 12
I discredit the messenger because the message is discredit worthy. And if I’m not mistaken I believe you engage in the same sort of antics yourself. How many times have I read posts of yours dicrediting something from the Hankyoreh simply because it was from the Hankyoreh? Like I said, evolution hasn’t provided me with needed number of digits for a hand count.
By the way, did you actually read the link that I provided you? Or are you still adamant about living in your little fantasyland?
1:24 am on July 28th, 2008 13
[...] Barack Obama call your office: The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost. Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago. [...]
4:27 am on August 1st, 2008 14
[...] an effort to fight the false narrative trying to be created by political partisans that the US military had little to do with the recent [...]
1:39 pm on August 27th, 2008 15
[...] Petraeus that everyone should read. Here is one question where General Petraeus confirms what I have already said about “the surge”: Could there have been an Awakening without the surge? Well, there [...]