Kimberly Kagan and "The Surge"

Wall Street Journal:

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Throughout 2007 and 2008, Kimberly Kagan followed events on the ground closely, traveled frequently to the theater of operations, and conducted interviews with senior and mid-ranking officers. In "The Surge: A Military History," she avoids the pitfalls of the war-reporting genre -- oversold incidents of dramatic action, fulsome adoration of warrior-leaders -- and instead gives a sober, blow-by-blow account of events as they unfolded. Along the way, she describes the strategy that proved to be so successful.

... "The Surge" is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how Iraq was saved from the brink of disaster. Perhaps out of modesty, Ms. Kagan does not stress her own role, as president of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, in pushing for the surge or the role of her husband, Frederick Kagan, in designing (with Gen. John Keane) many of its components.

"The Surge" challenges existing accounts in two ways. First, although Ms. Kagan is rightly respectful of Gen. David Petraeus, who led American forces during the surge, she avoids celebrating his genius at the expense of other important figures. She draws attention to the pivotal role played by Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, who commanded the day-to-day operations of the Multi-National Corps in Iraq. She shows him helping to ensure that co-operating tribal forces submit fingerprints, weapons serial numbers and family details that would make it difficult for them to take up arms again. It was Lt. Gen. Odierno who executed Operation Phantom Thunder in June 2007, synchronized operations that, as he told Ms. Kagan, aimed to "eliminate accelerants to Baghdad violence from enemy support zones." Other key players include Col. J.B. Burton, commander of the Dagger Brigade that drove the insurgents out of northwest Baghdad, and David Sutherland, whose combat team pacified the eastern province of Diyala. Ms. Kagan does not mention -- though she might have -- the analysts who helped the U.S. to rethink its counterinsurgency strategy, such as John Nagl and David Kilcullen.

Second, Ms. Kagan skewers the notion that the surge marked a shift from unreflective war-fighting to a "smarter" strategy that combined military and civil elements. This notion, in its extreme form, holds that the additional brigades were a relatively minor factor in a process driven primarily by a political change of heart among former insurgents. Ms. Kagan shows the opposite to have been the case.

Pre-surge U.S. military strategy was dominated by defensive and containing operations; priority was given to "non-kinetic" (or nonviolent) operations. In practice, brute force was often used, but in a largely reactive manner. And it was ineffective: Insurgents would simply melt away under pressure, shifting their bases to neighboring areas. In the absence of security, reconstruction efforts languished.

By contrast, Ms. Kagan argues persuasively, the surge marked a departure not only in the number of troops deployed but also in the adoption of a more "kinetic" approach, which took the battle to the enemy. Only after U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies had harried the insurgents from area to area, and ultimately destroyed them, could neighborhoods become secure and civil programs take effect.

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This is a smart assessment of the war. I look forward to reading it. There were several battalion and regimental grade officers who had been effective in waging war against the insurgents in Iraq. It does a disservice to the troops and these officers to suggest that their efforts were a "Fiasco." Yet we were not as effective as we could be until we surged forces into Iraq and did more to protect the people. When we did that we also got better intelligence on the location of the enemy.

From the beginning of the insurgency I have argued that we needed an adequate force to space ratio to control the movement of the enemy and protect the people. It was not just the surge of US forces that provided this ratio. It was also the substantial growth on the Iraqi army and also the turning of the neighborhood sons of Iraq. By adding their eyes and ears to the disposition of our forces we greatly increased the forced to space and were able to interdict the insurgents' movement to contact.

We also got better at using the persistence provided by the UAVs to track and destroy those planting IEDs. This is something we urgently need to do in Afghanistan.

I have been a fan of Kimberly Kagan's work for sometime and I look forward to reading this book.