Vigorous debate in Bush administration over Iraq strategy

Washington Post:

For two hours, President Bush listened to contrasting visions of the U.S. future in Iraq. Gen. David H. Petraeus dominated the conversation by video link from Baghdad, making the case to keep as many troops as long as possible to cement any security progress. Adm. William J. Fallon, his superior, argued instead for accepting more risks in Iraq, officials said, in order to have enough forces available to confront other potential threats in the region.

The polite discussion in the White House Situation Room a week ago masked a sharper clash over the U.S. venture in Iraq, one that has been building since Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations, sent a rear admiral to Baghdad this summer to gather information. Soon afterward, officials said, Fallon began developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops.

One of those plans, according to a Centcom officer, involved slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010. In an interview, Fallon disputed that description but declined to offer details. Nonetheless, his efforts offended Petraeus's team, which saw them as unwelcome intrusion on their own long-term planning. The profoundly different views of the U.S. role in Iraq only exacerbated the schism between the two men.

"Bad relations?" said a senior civilian official with a laugh. "That's the understatement of the century. . . . If you think Armageddon was a riot, that's one way of looking at it."

For Bush, the eight months since announcing his "new way forward" in Iraq have been about not just organizing a major force deployment but also managing a remarkable conflict within his administration, mounting a rear-guard action against Congress and navigating a dysfunctional relationship with an Iraqi leadership that has proved incapable of delivering what he needs.

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Amid the uncertainty, the overriding imperative for Bush these past eight months has been to buy time -- time for the surge to work, time for the Iraqis to get their act together, time to produce progress. In Washington's efforts to come to grips with the war it unleashed, the story of these months is one of trying to control the uncontrollable. And now as a result of a casual idea by Petraeus that hardened into an unwelcome deadline, the administration finds itself at a pivotal moment.

"All the outreach and consultations did not reset as much time on the Washington clock as we had hoped," said Peter D. Feaver, who was a National Security Council strategic adviser until July. "Rather than buying us more time, the D.C. clock seemed to accelerate after the president's speech."

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There is much more to this piece. There has always been a sense of unreality about the anti war case in Washington. It grossly exaggerates difficulties and setbacks. This seems to be for the purpose of accelerating a defeat for domestic political considerations and ignoring the strategic victory they would hand our enemies. There is never any allocation of responsibility for the way the Clinton Democrat troops cuts have limited our ability to fight this war. With half the troops we had in Vietnam and less than a tenth of the casualties the opponents of this war are demanding that we quit while we are winning.

I didn't hear either side of the debate between Adm. Fallon and Gen. Petraeus, but I have seen enough arguments supporting the counterinsurgency doctrine to know where that side stands. Historically too, it is clear that when you have an enemy fighting an insurgency and using a raiding strategy, you defeat it with a high force to space ratio. Reducing force puts you back into a whack a mole position having to repurchase real estate with blood. It makes for a bloodier longer war. We have already seen how the small foot print strategy worked in Iraq. We need a better explanation of why we should go back to that strategy.

A consensus seems to be forming around the need to keep troops in Iraq for at least a couple of more years and a debate is forming on how many and what mission. It would be a huge mistake to change from a counterinsurgency strategy to a small footprint FOB strategy, before we finish pacifying the country. Troops reductions before that time would be a major mistake.

We are about half way through the time period it normally takes to defeat an insurgency. We are winning, and it would be a huge mistake to throw it away at this point.