A painful condemnation of the Bush Administration's failure to adjust to the insurgency in Iraq

COVER STORY: "Strategy that's making Iraq safer was snubbed for years: It sounds simple: Get help from locals to stop bombmakers. But a USA TODAY investigation shows the Bush administration was slow to accept the idea," by Peter Eisler, Blake Morrison and Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today, 19 December 2007, p. 1A.

Good piece, if a bit of rehash in places, but some nice reporting on meets I've heard about but I hadn't seen covered before so prominently.

Petraeus gets a lot of credit, as I believe he should. I was glad to play a small role in elevating his profile when he was still back at Leavenworth--Mattis too.

Not every story of such efforts makes it into the press. In fact, most don't, so these reformers demand real respect, even if it took so long for guys like these two, plus Kagan and Krepinevich, to effect a breakthrough with the Bush team.

It may seem unfair to Bush to deny him credit for the current improvements in Iraq, but it's right to point out that the surge pales in importance to the COIN, which in turn--in Iraq-- owes much to Al Qaeda's screw-ups (going overboard, as always).

But clearly, these changes took too long.

So the win, such as it is, is logically handed to the change agents and not the political masters who took so long to convince--mostly due to their pride.

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

A statistical survey of articles in US daily newspapers on Iraq since March 2003 and Afganistan since October 2001 might be revealing. If the principal forum for informed analysis and not posturing is still primarily the daily newspapers and the first principal of a democratic republic is that the people should be given adequate information, this survey alone might tell us the how and why of the public's knowledge, interest, and understanding, or lack thereof, of the "Long War" and how it has led to the current position of the President and others in the political leadership. As Professor John Lucaks has written about the Congress of Vienna in 1815, that group understood well the prinicpal that "War is Revolution" so avoid war. Interesting to date that so little has been written on how the Iraq and Afganistan wars have revolutionized those societies. Look at modern Vietnam, while still a dictatorship, the beneath the surface evolution is completely revolutionary and driving towards what Tom has analyzed as the extension of the core.

[jwbarton]

You rest on an unstated assumption that what has worked in 2007 would have worked as well in earlier periods. I think this requires some argument.

Isn't it possible that, among other things, the sunni insurgency had to happen in some form, that al queda had to overstay it's welcome and create conditions for the sunni's to turn on them, and that (least likely) the Shia had to see the possible negative consequences of civil war before 2007's COIN operations could succeed?

[Louis Heberlein]

Key point in Tom's comments:

"the surge pales in importance to the COIN, which in turn--in Iraq-- owes much to Al Qaeda's screw-ups (going overboard, as always)."

Why, how and when did Al Qaeda adopt its "going overboard, as always" posture? They have global and local information resources, historical insights, educated participants, and adequate financial resources for a long struggle. A long range lesson for US and world will be how the Al Qaeda came to screw up.

[Gilbert Garza]

What is tried now and works now may or may not have been as appropriate/available for trying earlier and if tried earlier may not have been as likely to have worked earlier. We can only guess.

[Javaid Akhtar]

Al'Qaeda have a built in failure mechanism unlike other terrorist organisations .They have supra-national aspirations unlike ,say,Hamas, which is just about national aspirations(a defined and stable objective that no amount of violence from any side can alter ).Middleclass Westerners indulged themselves in a fervent ideology (communism) and killed many for the 'necessary' good of mankind. Al'qaeda is the middle eastern variant and will have the same kind of shelf life but none of the sucesses.The pan Islamist pipe dream of a commom islamic brotherhood is the centre piece of this childish middle class daydream.Use any amount of violence as they wish,its still a stupid idea without legs.

Maybe AQ hastened the end of the insurgency by fast tracking the civil war with its extra powerful injection of violence.Without them, could a slower burning civil war have taken longer to reach this level we are seeing now.

[emjayinc]

AQ self-defeating screw-ups seem centered in its conviction of historical determinism - as in, their version of Islam is inevitable. The corollary would be that the emirate/caliphate and sharia law will be the basis of organization in any AQ area. AQ efforts to move from hirabah (jihad) to sharia governance fouled their environments in Saudi, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sunnistan Iraq, forcing AQ and clones to seek new addresses. Given Zawahiri's history, one can add Egypt to the list of AQ screwups. But, trapped in their inevitability, they'll keep trying. That's why it's a Long War, and COIN will be only one tool on our side.Gilbert, believe you're referring to the truism about wishes and wishful thinking. That is, if wishes were wings, frogs wouldn't bump their asses when they jump..but, that's what happens. We really need to focus on this jump, right now, and let history sort out what might have been.

[Bill C.]

I am concerned that the current gains are temporary and illusionary.

Many of the underlying dynamics/problems -- both internal and external --seem to be the same as before the Surge/COIN.

Accordingly, should we not expect the conflict to resume, along much the same lines as before, once the troops are draw down?

[Nathan Machula]

In response to Louis and emjayinc: AQI's overreach was trying to force their medieval version of Islam on the Iraqi Sunnis. Iraq has a tradition of a secular and (relatively) tolerant society, where women were educated and many Iraqis enjoyed the occasional adult beverage, even Muslims. After AQI bombed liquor stores and forced women to completely cover up and mostly stay home, the Sunnis got pissed off, but were unable or unwilling to fight back. But when they starting cutting off the fingers of men who smoked cigarettes and demanded the Iraqis' daughters for marriage, that was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. Al-Qaeda gets away with the same type of behavior in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan, which are much more tribal, and traditional societies.

[stuart abrams]

I think the analogy to communism is only partially correct. Unlike the communists, I don't think that al Qaeda could ever do anything coherent like running a state. They are more analogous to left-wing groups like the Red Brigade or the Baeder-Meinhof Gang in Europe, or the Weather Underground in the U.S. They can be highly successful at being pointlessly destructive, but they can never be constructive, even within the framework of what they supposedly want to accomplish. The Iraqi Sunnis were looking to accomplish specific goals in their contests with the Shiites and the Kurds. Al Qaeda could not assist the Sunnis on those terms.

[Michael]

Seems to me the lessons of Al Qaeda's screwups could be applied more personally that people are letting on here. The Sunnis saw us as the overbearing invaders and accepted Al Qaeda's help in fighting us-- until Al Qaeda went overboard and demanded too much, at which point THEY became the overbearing invaders and the Sunnis switched sides. If some articles I read a while back are to be believed, such a process could happen with the Shiites and Iranians as well.

Such a process could also lead to us being considered the overbearing invaders again if we get cocky. Our best strategy at this point may be to get the Iraqis to the point where they can finish off the other foreign groups themselves, negotiate a deal all three groups can live with (or at least sucks equally for all three groups) and high-tail it out of there.