Small footprint vs, force to space ratio debate continues

Westhawk:

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In Mr. Barnes’s article, he mentions a strategy session that occurred at Camp David in June 2006, after the situation in Iraq had turned for the worse:

To stimulate fresh consideration of Iraq strategy, the NSC staff organized a panel of experts to address the president and his war cabinet at Camp David in mid-June. The two-day meeting at the presidential retreat loomed as a potential turning point in the Bush administration's approach to Iraq.

The four-man panel wasn't stacked. Kagan spoke in favor of additional troops and
outlined his plan for pacifying Baghdad with a "clear, hold, and build" strategy. American soldiers, along with Iraqi troops, would do the holding, living in Baghdad and guarding its citizens, Sunni and Shia alike. Robert Kaplan, the foreign correspondent and military writer now teaching at the Naval Academy, talked about successful counterinsurgency campaigns in the past. (Kaplan's books are among Bush's favorites.) Kaplan neither advocated a troop buildup nor opposed it.

Countering Kagan, Michael Vickers, a former Green Beret and CIA operations officer, explained how Iraq could actually be won with fewer troops, not more. Vickers is now an assistant secretary of defense. The fourth panelist was Eliot Cohen, now a State Department adviser. Bush had read his book on wartime leadership, Supreme Command. Cohen reemphasized its theme: Leaders should hold their generals accountable if a war is being lost or won. [emphasis added]

Mr. Barnes doesn’t explain Mr. Vickers’s proposed strategy. But based on previous statements, along with his background, we can assume that Mr. Vickers proposed working through Iraq’s tribes to achieve American goals in Iraq.

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He list several alternative explanations for the victory. It is also clear to me that the increased force to space ratio helped to make a strategy of working with the tribes successful. The tribes had little incentive to change until we were protecting them. Historically, having a high force to space ratio makes it difficult for the enemy to move to contact without detection. Add to that the increased intelligence you get from being in close contact with the people, adds a cascading effect to locating and destroying the enemy.

It should also be noted that the 30,000 US troops were actually a small part of the increased force to space ratio in Iraq that was needed to destroy the enemy. Iraq added 100,000 of its own troops and the Concerned Citizens groups added another 90,000. The enemy was seeing a surge of 220,000 troops who were getting intelligence help from Iraqi civilians.

Another argument in favor of the high force to space ratio is the fact that in prior surges of forces around election violence also declined.