The fighting professor in charge of Iraq war

Phillip O'Connor:

I arrived in Baghdad in mid-March to work on electricity issues, just as Gen. David Petraeus returned to Iraq to lead the "surge," of which he is the prime architect. But my sense of identification with the commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq goes beyond that. To most people Petraeus is a four-star general, an experienced combat veteran and the consummate military officer. But when I pass him in a hallway of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, I have to catch myself from blurting, "Good morning, Dr. Petraeus."

Like me, Petraeus has a doctorate in political science, his from Princeton, mine from Northwestern. I see Petraeus as a political scientist and former professor in the department of social science at West Point who just happens to be an Army ranger and general. It's his persona as a scholar that is key to understanding what the surge is and why it seems to be working.

Author of the "Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual," Petraeus has literally written the book on 21st Century real-world application of a well-established political science theory on defanging armed insurgencies. David Kilcullen, the Australian adviser to Petraeus, has said that counterinsurgency is 100 percent military, 100 percent political, 100 percent economic and 100 percent social.

Petraeus, acting hand in glove with Ryan Crocker, the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, is moving on all four fronts. Progress in these four areas will not be even or simultaneous. To the contrary, sequencing is crucial. Establishment of security, area by area, must be followed by such things as improved services, job creation assistance and local governance and policing.

The objective in counterinsurgency is not to destroy the enemy directly but to deprive him of the ability to intimidate the population and thereby displace the legitimate government.

Leadership "pheremones" seem to be permeating the air in the embassy and the Green Zone. One wakes up every morning knowing that whatever one's job is that day, it's contributing to a large counterinsurgency mosaic. Now I have an idea what it must have been like to play for the Green Bay Packers when Vince Lombardi was running the show. You are confident that there is a game plan and you understand how you fit in.

The politics that Petraeus confronts is not politics writ large as reported every day from Washington. It is the kind of street-level, precinct captain, bottom-up politics that Chicagoans intuitively appreciate. Big decisions by the Iraqi Parliament or at the UN may matter less than local village leaders and coalition forces delivering new water wells. And when young Iraqi men feel confident enough to apply for service in the Iraqi army or local police, rather than hide at home or join the insurgents, you know that things are turning around.

Petraeus' theory is playing out in real life.

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There is more. What is it about Democrats and some Republicans like Lamar Alexander that makes them arrogant enough to think they know more about counterinsurgency warfare than people who do it for a living? What scholarly studies have they done on the subject? Where is their book on how to defeat an insurgency? What text are they relying on for their judgments if they have written none? Let's have a debate on the source of their knowledge of this subject.