The enemy counter surge

Belmont Club:

The car-bomb attack on a US patrol base in Diyala which killed 9 soldiers is the first of two adapatations the Sunni insurgency to the Surge. As Max Boot wrote in the Weekly Standard before the attack, the insurgents have responded to the crackdown in Baghdad by moving elsewhere, not only to preserve their forces but to exploit places where the American presence has thinned out in order to provide forces for Baghdad.

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The attack on the American patrol base is the second adaptation. One of the principal innovations of General Petraeus has been to move US forces out of heavily defended mega-bases into smaller outposts they share with Iraqi Army and Police units. This redeployment into the field has three advantages. First, it overcomes the problems inherent in a dual chain of command caused by an American force operating in a legally sovereign country. Second, it shortens the decision cycle. Third, it reduces the dangers inherent in route marches from the mega-bases to the area of operations. Unfortunately, outposting American troops to smaller patrol bases probably means that each outpost is individually weaker than the mega base....

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Essentially the enemy is counter-maneuvering to oppose General Petraeus by ceding its strongholds in Baghdad and shifting forces elsewhere and by focusing their attacks on the individual smaller joint security stations. By massing their resources against a single security station, the insurgents hope to subject an otherwise unassailable American force to defeat in detail. Each side is dishing it out. Max Boot's article describes the horrible losses inflicted on enemy personnel and cached materiel day and night....

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There is much more in this long thoughtful piece.

Victory in war consists of getting inside your opponents decision cycle and thereby dictating his ability to respond. Some have called it getting inside the enemy's OODA loop. Gen. Petraeus's strategy has done that to the enemy and it is now dictating what kind of response he can engage in. To defeat him, we have to defeat his response. Iraq has been remarkable free of events like the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon or the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. An active defense inhibits that type of attack. As the attack in Diyala shows, we can never lower our guard.

I have maintained for some time that Diyala is where the enemy has chosen or more accurately has been forced to choose to make his last stand in Iraq. We need to be ready to defeat him there to win this war. This story suggest we are making progress with the Iraqis in Diyala.