One almighty push in Iraq

Two days after the last of 28,000 American reinforcements had arrived in Iraq, the independent war correspondent Michael Yon e-mailed a brief dispatch, observing, "This is a very serious offensive kicking off in Iraq. ... Nobody that I am seeing realizes just how big this is." Five days later, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno explained, "We are beyond a surge of forces, and we are now into a surge of operations."

No-one would guess it from the war coverage or the pronouncements of U.S. congressmen, but what is underway is the largest Coalition offensive since the end of major combat operations in 2003. The 11th-hour operational surge, officially named Phantom Thunder, was launched without notice or fanfare, on the same day as the U.S. Armed Forces announced the troop surge complete: June 15.

Iraq being the dominant issue in American public life, the biggest offensive in four years might at least be known to the American people, not just to obsessive followers of military matters. But Phantom Thunder has had less coverage and discussion than the "DC Madam" case. War coverage reliably recounts Coalition and civilian casualties, but not enemy body counts; and whatever explosion the insurgents intended for the evening news that day, but not Coalition operations, much less Coalition successes.

Phantom Thunder is a sort of re-invasion of nearly all Iraq's trouble areas, the insurgent strongholds in Baghdad and the "Baghdad belts" stretching into four surrounding provinces. The objective is to kill, capture, or scare off the insurgents -- mainly al Qaeda in Iraq and the Shiite "Mahdi Army" militia -- and occupy their territory long after, denying them the opportunity to return. This supported by new efforts to strangle insurgent supply lines, as by closing traffic on the Tigris River and policing a double-cordon around Baghdad itself.

In past, when the Coalition has moved in, many insurgents have simply moved on. So these attacks are simultaneous, to help end the unwinnable game of insurgent "whack-a-mole," and the Iraqi Army has occupied some of the more likely destinations for insurgents on the lam.

The cutting edge in Congressional critiques of the war is the "withdraw and fight" school, which declares the policy begun in earnest only weeks ago a failure, and advances an alternative which ironically is precisely the pre-surge policy associated with former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The critics recall that policy as "gross mismanagement of the war," but proceed to endorse its principles: a "small footprint," or minimal American presence, an emphasis on training Iraqi troops, and shepherding American soldiers on bases isolated in safe areas, with limited excursions into trouble spots.

That happens to be the story of the first four years in Iraq. It made good sense as a way of limiting Western involvement and promptly passing power to the new government and Iraqi people, and it may even be a fine idea again if Iraq is successfully pacified. But four years of that very policy did not pacify Iraq, and the surge policy is a recognition of that.

Calling for training the locals at this point is a bit like saying Microsoft ought to try making operating systems. The president made training for Iraqi forces a staple of his re-election campaign three years ago, and the Coalition has done quite a lot of it, to the point that the Iraqi Army is today as large as Britain's.

And as for holding down troop levels and holing up on safe bases, that left territory effectively unoccupied, so that blocks and quarters and cities fell to the insurgents. The new policy puts American soldiers on the streets, and in greater force, to take back and hold territory, and to make the GIs a fixture in the communities.

This is Gen. David Petraeus' counterinsurgency philosophy, drawn from French Algerian Lt. Col. David Galula, that the civilian population can never be an ally -- giving life-saving information or war-winning intelligence -- if they live in fear of the enemy. Once the people are convinced that the Coalition is serious about driving out, and keeping out, the insurgents, then the good information pours in.

There will be a draw down, both in numbers and in mission. There will have to be. The idea was never to run a protracted policing operation on sweltering foreign city streets, but to hand off to a democratic Iraqi government. All sides want a draw down, including the Administration that ordered the increased deployments and expanded operations. It was in part the Administration's desire for a homecoming once the initial mission was complete that wound up enabling the insurgency, as street-level occupation was forgone, allowing insurgents an opening.

The issue now is what is to be done before that inevitable draw down: Complete the first concerted effort to pacify Iraq in four years, or call the whole thing off before the results are even in, and let the chips fall where they may.

It just might be that the soldiers win on the ground, in one almighty push, while the press and politcal class oppose not only their deployment but their cause, and deny any prospect of victory.

Andrew W. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia

Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia

New Sheriff in Baghdad

The war coverage remains dominated by the most superficial “exploding car of the day” stories, and half of Washington uninterestedly insists that nothing has changed, but the new Iraq plan is being implemented.

The plan is reductively referred to as the “troop surge”, but simply adding soldiers would not amount to a plan.

At least 24,000 new U.S. combat troops have been committed to Iraq, at last count, plus about 5,000 support troops. The surge stands to strengthen the Iraq deployment by nearly a quarter, to about 160,000. Only two-fifths of the extra soldiers are in-country as yet, and the full complement is not expected to arrive until June.

The plan those troops are to enforce is drawn from four years’ hard experience and historic counterinsurgencies.

Gen. George Patton famously took a dim view of “paying for the same real estate twice,” and the plan takes that to heart. American forces have in past fought very hard to clear insurgent strongholds and then withdrawn, on the understandable thinking that the American and Iraqi people both want American troops drawn down, and that the Iraqi forces and government should assume their country’s administration as soon as possible. But the effect has been to allow jihadists and militiamen to return unopposed once the Americans have left. Hence the new “clear, control, and retain” policy, sweeping insurgents and weapons out of an area, then patrolling it vigorously to deny it to the enemy.

A century ago, as part of the British plan that finally won the guerilla Boer War, a grid-and-blockhouse system was devised. That “quadrillage” principle was later adopted by the French in Algeria, and now the Americans in Iraq. Baghdad has been divided into 11 sectors, with 70 “Joint Security Stations” now planned for housing American and Iraqi forces. The stations are being built in as little as three days. The sectors divide responsibilities for the entire city into manageable blocks, and the stations give the troops a permanent local presence and handy safe havens.

The French campaign in Algeria in the 1950s and ’60s was lost politically, in France, but French forces had by the end turned the tide militarily, and one of the policies credited for that was the mixing of French troops with the locals. Likewise, American troops are now moving off insular Forward Operating Bases and into the Joint Security Stations in civilian communities, with Iraqi forces, to foster cooperation and develop a working knowledge of the country on the most local level.

Four-star Gen. David Petraeus has assumed command of Multinational Forces Iraq, and, as the biographical line goes, has literally written the book on counterinsurgency: “Field Manual 3-24”.

Economic stimulation is to be increased, as in infrastructure programs, to employ the locals in hopes of occupying the more opportunistic trouble-makers.

And the issue of the foreign underwriters of Iraq’s insurgency is no longer being neglected. The borders with Syria and Iran have been closed as need be. The United States is engaging Iran diplomatically for the first time since the founding of the Islamic Republic -- at the urging of the Iraqi government -- and at the same time, squeezing Iran financially, confronting Iranian elements in Iraq, and adding a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf fleet.

The plan focuses on Baghdad for the obvious reasons that it is the capital, largest city, most mixed city, and the scene of by far the most bloodshed, but – so to speak -- as the new sheriff has come to town, the bad guys have gotten out of Dodge. The Baghdad elements of al-Qaeda in Iraq particularly have shifted to neighbouring Diyala province. Baghdad must be the priority, but the trick will be seeing that gains there are not offset by setbacks elsewhere.

Iraq’s largest militia, the Shiite “Mahdi Army” of Muqtada al-Sadr, has largely disappeared without a fight, and Sadr himself has fled to Iran. The worry is that, by simply dissolving, the militia will survive the push and return to fight another day. But if American and Iraqi forces hold the territory surrendered by the militia, there may be no opening for a return. And if the Sunni threats to the Shiite community are similarly dealt with, that would eliminate one of the rationales for Shiite militias in the first place.

One wonders why all this was not done much earlier, but the situation was not always so bad, and the idea was to “stand down”, certainly not to expand the U.S. presence and mission.

The plan is smart, the stakes are immense, and all that is asked of those of us who “sleep peaceably in our beds” is time for the plan to either sink or swim.

Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, OK and Cape Sable Island, NS

Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia

The Iraq Push - "Retreat by any name would do nothing to end this war"

This war should have been wrapped up and the soldiers shipped home in one piece long ago, but here we are.

No matter how necessary and overdue the cause, no matter how swift and clean the invasion, and no matter how sizable a downpayment on future security a sustainable democracy in Iraq would be, the post-invasion phases have been too long, too costly, and the patience of the American people is at bottom.

Americans cannot remain unmoved after watching fellow Americans die, a handful at a time, on their news every day for nearly four years, when the cause seems so beyond hope, and when the arguments against the war are pop culture, while the arguments for it are to be found in occasional, ignored speeches, unread opinion journals, and obscure think tanks.

After Americans’ discontent with the status quo was registered in the recent Congressional elections and the timid Iraq Study Group recommendations managed to disappoint everyone, the message was taken that no marginal tweaking of the Iraq policy would suffice anymore.

The problem in Iraq, as in Afghanistan, is security. Without that modicum of security, the nation cannot function and progress. There are political problems, especially governmental collusion with Shiite militias. There is also corruption, especially among the Iraqi police, not disbanded and rebuilt after the war like the Iraqi Army. But the fundamentals are strong: The people have converted to democracy, and the change could even be irreversible. What is needed most is security, and that takes soldiering.

More soldiering is unlikely to be easy or popular, but it is possible. The Washington Times reports that 50,000 extra combat troops are available for deployment to Iraq, and the Commander-in-Chief still has two years and an authorization of force.

It deserves mentioning that Iraq has not followed a straight line from initial success to current despair. The fascists at the heart of so much Mideastern conflict have been captured or killed. Western forces have gone undefeated militarily. The Kurdish north and much of the Shiite south have become functioning free societies. Iraq's economy has somehow managed to thrive. And the Iraqi people have voted massively and enthusiastically in three national elections, even at risk of death, demonstrating that they do in fact want this democracy and need only the security and good-faith leadership to make it work.

The temptation is to imagine that picking up and leaving Iraq, and Afghanistan and the Mideast generally, would be the end of it: No more strife, no more military funerals, no more smouldering rubble and body counts on the news. But retreat by any name would do nothing to end this war. The war will continue with Western troops in the field or back home on their bases.

Jihadists bent on killing Westerners would be free to pursue us elsewhere, including in our own countries. Taliban slave-masters would be free to bludgeon the Afghan people back into their old nightmare. Sunni militants who have known little else but killing Shiites and Kurds would be free to see how far they get against a vengeful 80 percent of the country unrestrained by Western forces and influence. And Shiite Iranian agents would be free to butcher their way toward remaking Iraq as the Greater Islamic Republic of Iran.

Quitting wars prematurely, leaving the enemy to fight another day and neglecting to fix the countries at the source of the trouble, has become something of a new Western tradition, and solves nothing.

Once the Russians had been dispatched in the Soviet-Afghan War, the West abandoned Afghanistan to the Mujahideen who later formed the Taliban and al Qaeda which we fight today. The 1991 Gulf War was halted without excising its source, which left the job to the 2003 war that bleeds on today. The Somalia intervention of the early '90s was aborted at the first upset, and today the country is a battlefield falling into and out of the hands of the al Qaeda-allied Islamic Courts Union, Somalia's own Taliban. Even the troubles with North Korea, not to mention the grinding misery of its people, are the result of the West settling the Korean War with a stalemate leaving the North under the Communist government that today detonates third-rate nukes and fires erratic ballistic missiles.

We are free to continue our new tradition of committing to wars and then abandoning them unfinished, negating the sacrifices of our volunteer soldiers, but by now we ought have no illusions that quitting will bring peace to anyone but the enemy.

If we cannot muster the will for this, when all that is required of us is to maintain moral support for historically small military commitments of our professional fighting forces, then we really are the craven, decadent paper tigers the jihadists think we are.

Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia

Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia