The surge worked, but...

David Glasner:

The real world, even under normal conditions, is a complicated and confusing place. In war, complications and confusion increase exponentially. Ever since January, when President Bush announced what he called a new way forward (and others called “the surge”) in Iraq and selected General David Petraeus, whose ideas for counterinsurgency warfare, codified in the Army’s new Counterinsurgency Manual which he co-authored, provided the rationale and blueprint for the new strategy, to take command of American forces in Iraq, arguments about whether the new strategy was really working have been going back and forth. After months of confusion, the picture has become unmistakably clear. The surge worked.

At first, critics of the surge refused to acknowledge that anything new was being tried other than to send another 25,000 troops into what had become a hopeless situation. In fact, the surge was the first (or second if one counts the belated sacking of Secretary Rumsfeld) serious, albeit tacit, acknowledgement by the Bush administration that it was facing a real insurgency in Iraq and that any strategy for success (as opposed to a classic but irrelevant concept of military victory) had to aim at changing the conditions on the ground that allowed the insurgency to flourish and gather strength.

The most critical condition fostering the insurgency was the lack of security for the local population. During the first four years after the invasion, the provision of security to the local population was at best a subsidiary part of the military mission that American forces were supposed to accomplish in Iraq. Secretary Rumsfeld and Undersecretary Wolfowitz made that very clear from the outset, when they sacked General Eric Shinseki for daring to tell Congress that a post-invasion force of several hundred thousand troops would be required in Iraq to provide security and was emphatically punctuated with an explanation point by Secretary Rumsfeld’s infamous “stuff happens” comment when the looting started in Baghdad in April 2003. The provision of security was a mission for Iraqis not Americans to discharge. If Iraqi forces were unable to provide security, the Iraqis would just have to live without security until American forces trained and equipped enough Iraqi police and troops that could provide it. Aside from training Iraqi forces, the primary American mission was to wage a “war on terror” by killing “terrorists” wherever they could find them.

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It is too bad Glasner falls into false history repeating the Shinseki myth. Gen. Shinseki was not sacked, period. He completed his term as Chief of Staff for the Army and retired on his scheduled retirement date. This myth also over looks the chain of command in the military which decided the force levels in Iraq.

The person primarily responsible for force levels in Iraq is not mentioned in this piece. That would be Gen. Abizaid, during most of the relevant period. Gen. Abizaid was a proponent of the small footprint theory. He believed so strongly in it that he resigned when President Bush took Gen. Petraeus' advice and decided to add more force and change the way it was used. It should be added that forces were surged from time to time under Gen. Abizaid and usually enemy activity declined, but they were never used in classic counterinsurgency operations.

Gen Abizaid testified before Congress on numerous occasions that he did not want additional forces. Secretary Rumsfeld and the President both said on numerous occasions that if the commanders requested more troops they would get them. It could not be more clear, yet the myth keeps getting repeated.