Leaving Iraq a mistake

Marie Colvin interviews Col. H.R. McMaster:

Even out of uniform Colonel H R McMaster, one of the architects of the US make-or-break surge strategy in Iraq, is unmistakably a military man. Arriving at what he calls the “situation room”, his face takes on the look of mission accomplished. “The main thing is they have snacks here,” he says, smiling.

McMaster has the direct manner of a soldier but is far more personable than the textbook version. The bare room where we meet in London is filled by his passionate determination to explain how the American “surge” – the controversial campaign that has seen the deployment of 30,000 more troops to quell the Baghdad insurgency – can still work.

It is his, and the Bush administration’s, biggest challenge since US-led coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

McMaster, 44, was part of an elite team of military men, academics and diplomats who were gathered together late last year in Baghdad by General David Petraeus, the American commander of forces in Iraq, to brain-storm as the country deteriorated into internecine bloodletting.

They were charged with coming up with a strategy to stop Iraq descending into chaos and gain time for the fractious Iraqi government to resolve rivalries between Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish factions and begin governing, and to train an Iraqi army. They came up with the surge.

“The idea was to break the cycle of violence, provide basic services to people so that they would see an improvement and rekindle hope, and strengthen the Iraqi forces,” says McMaster, whose thick neck speaks of years of soldiering. “Underlying our whole approach is the need to give Iraqis time to move to a political accommodation.”

Their theory was that the coalition forces could then hand over to the Iraqis and withdraw from an increasingly unpopular war. The surge was memorably controversial as it called for sending in tens of thousands more US troops at a time when opposition to the war was gaining traction.

“What is going on now is not just an insurgency but a communal struggle incited by Al-Qaeda,” McMaster says. “Al-Qaeda jumpstarted tensions to incite chaos and succeeded. That allowed them to establish bases where they could move freely, train and pursue their agenda.”

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The surge strategy was based on an operation commanded by “HR”, as he likes to be called (no wonder; the initials stand for Herbert Raymond), in 2006 as the commanding officer charged with pacifying Tal Afar, a lawless Iraqi town on the Syrian border which had been taken over by insurgents. The strategy was “clear, hold and build”, now echoed as a virtual mantra.

McMaster cut off Tal Afar, divided it into small neighbourhoods, cleared each of insurgents and established permanent posts in each district, instead of defeating insurgents and then leaving, as had been the earlier American practice. After earlier operations, the insurgents returned as soon as the Americans left; in Tal Afar, under McMaster’s reign, the town came back to life.

Tal Afar clearly seared his soul and fuelled his determination to fight. “I saw the most unimaginable horrors,” he says. “Things you can’t even imagine another human thinking of. In one case, the terrorists murdered a young boy in his hospital bed, booby-trapped the body, and when the family came to pick up the body they detonated the explosives to kill the father.”

In another case, a retarded 13-year-old girl was strapped with explosives, given the hand of a three-year-old toddler to hold, and told to walk into a line of police recruits. They pressed the button when the girls were amid the waiting men.

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While Baghdad is too big to be isolated in the way that Tal Afar was, the surge plan being implemented has used the same tactics – sealing off districts of the capital, clearing out insurgents and leaving American units in place to stop the insurgents from reinfiltrating.

McMaster’s blueprint for his successful Tal Afar operation, and later the surge, was informed by his critical analysis of the joint chiefs of staff’s role in the defeat in Vietnam, which resulted in a book called Dereliction of Duty. It is also fed by what one senses is his innate common sense, practical experience and study of the Iraqi people that few in the military have bothered with. He has been seconded as a research fellow to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

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“The enemy understands the importance of General Petraeus’s testimony, then, and will do all they can to murder more innocents and create a sense of hopelessness,” McMaster says.

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There is much more.

The Democrats have offered a prescription for a return to chaos in Iraq that must be rejected. Hopelessness has already infected their thinking before seeing the results of the surge. Many are pushing for failure because they see political gain from that failure. Many in the Democrat party have reject the use of force under any circumstances and they believe that failure in Iraq will help them achieve that objective. They are as desperate for defeat as our enemy is for victory and they are our enemy's best hope of achieving that objective. Al Qaeda only hope of winning in Iraq is in the hands of Democrats in Washington to who to give them that victory.