The Complex Success of the Surge

"As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know." Don Rumsfeld

Now we know what we know.
As Mr. Rumsfeld became a political casualty of the War on Terror the Mission in Iraq has become what will become a corner stone in this long effort. Current events have not been kind to Mr. Rumsfeld but history will.

This article is a welcome dose of reality. The intervention in Iraq was an extremely difficult job. It took great courage on the part of Iraqis and American soldiers to get the job done and it took considerable political courage on the part of the Bush administration to persevere.

The surge has been a success because of the efforts that had gone before. But the decision to do the surge was not inevitable. Given the unpopularity of the war as evidenced by the Republican loss of Congress, the easy thing to do would have been to have thrown in the towel. And that would have been a disaster for both the US and Iraq.

Courage is something that is more appreciated after the fact than at the time it is employed. Fear often governs people's thinking
during the heat of battle. But sometimes battles have to be fought regardless the cost and those who step up to the plate to bear the brunt of the burden are often not recognized for their courage until well after the battle is won.

The other side of this is that for people who for reasons of fear do not step up, there is the terrible awareness of their own cowardice. Rather than deal with their own fears honestly, they blame the real heroes for making them into cowards.

The Europeans did not want to fight because they did not want to make the sacrifices to maintain sufficient military capability and they did not want to suffer the casualties that we have suffered.

American soldiers have protected the Europeans with our blood and treasure for almost a century. Our sacrifices ended WW I and our even greater sacrifices rescued Europe from the horrors of WW II. Furthermore, our military protected the western Europeans from being absorbed into the Soviet Empire and gave hope to the eastern Europeans that some day they would be free of it.

Americans worry that under Bush we have lost the friendship of the Europeans. That is a very short range view. Deep down they know we were right to get rid of Saddam and establish democracy in Iraq and that it was fear that prevented them from helping out. We are blamed basically for turning them into cowards, not for doing the wrong thing. The recent elections in France, Germany and Italy all point to a belated acknowledgement of that.

The worst fear about Obama is that if elected he could snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. It is important to force him to accept that if elected, it his responsibility to finish the job in Iraq. Right now it isn't clear he gets it. If he doesn't get it by election day he ought to be defeated.

The media's bias and hate for President Bush are the reasons there are any questions at all about the surge and its effectiveness. Our military is fabulous!
Regarding the Press Coverage this year - It has been my understanding that most professional fields have a Code of Professional Ethics that governs their work. My gut has always told me that it is the job of the Press to investigate and report the news in a fair and balanced manner, setting aside personal biases. Now, I'm now forced to rethink the accuracy of my guts communication.
Integrity in the News, Based on a Code of Ethics. It is found on zachjonesishome.wordpress.com. Specifically:
http://zachjonesishome.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/obama-sinclair-integrity-in-the-news/

Jonathan Cohen - Could you email me about publishing your comment in our local monthly "Progress in Iraq Report"?

Right; the fall of Germany in 1945 needed the stimulus of D-day and the fighting in France and Holland. Once that hard and dirty work--not failure!--was done the Rhine was crossed, and the rest happened very very quickly...
And let's not forget: Were it not for the weeks and months of deadly fighting in the Pacific--not failure!--the USAF could never have gotten close enough to the Japanese mainland for the ENOLA GAY to make her trip.
So yes, the surge needed all that blood and sweat and pain--not failure!--that went before it to make it a success, and for that Rumsfeld is to be thanked....BUT....BUT....
WOULD THERE HAVE BEEN A SURGE AT ALL HAD BUSH NOT FIRED RUMSFELD?

I'm a bit surprised to see this get past the moderator...
It is a leftist two-step to say that the success in Iraq is not due to the troops. It blows me away that for years, the left has been saying that more troops will not make a difference BECAUSE of the lack of internal changes in Iraq. Now that there is proof that it did, they come up with this huge list of internal changes that were the REAL cause of success. Tsk tsk tsk...you can't have it both ways.

Let us not forget...

When the fighting needed to be done, who did it and did it well???

When Hospitals/Schools needed to be built or re-beuilt, who did it and did it well???

When training the people of Iraq needed to be done, who did it and did it well???

When they got a package from home, who shared it with the people and children of Iraq???

When the Iraqi people finally learned what the American people are all about, who did they learn it from???

Answer: The American Soldiers on the ground!!!

They deserve alot of credit.

I say to them, Thank you for a job well done!!!

Bill

Thank you for the perspective.

Without denigrating General Petraeus's leadership in anyway, I have said that Rumsfeld and his Generals are getting the short end of the stick in the credit department. The slow, arduous task of building the Iraqi military and police forces were absolutely essential to ultimate success.

I do not know how essential the extra few thousand American troops were to success. I will leave that to more knowledgeable persons. I do believe that Petraeus implemented a strategy to use his forces more aggressively and more effectively; and suspect that, along with the Iraqi integration, was the real key.

I am about 2/3 of the way through Douglas Feith's book, "War and Decision". I believe it is an essential read for anyone who intends to form, or express, an opinion on the war. He is scathing in his documentation of the State Department and CIA actions, inactions and disruption. To my knowledge no one has disputed his charges.

Prior to the surge, "insurgents" who were family members of political leaders were often released as political favors. According to President Bush's speech when he announced a strategy shift, this policy was changed. I think this had a major impact on reconciliation. Why pick up a gun and shoot your neighbor if you know you're not going to be released if you are captured?

We should not be fighting about whose sacrifice was greater--they also serve who only stand and wait...

Suffice to see this; something that was impossible to hear from ANY Iraqi before the toppling of Saddam. Yes it took 5 hard years to achieve, and maybe 50 more to consolidate, but we have given the Iraqis the ability to think these thoughts....

http://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=3&id=13396
[Asharq Al-Awsat] You have been close to the office of prime minister. Do you think you would have done a better job if you were prime minister?

[Abdel-Mahdi] No, not necessarily. There is no guarantee that I would have done better than others, and herein actually lies the sweetness of democracy, which enables you to choose the person you think is best suited for the times. It is not a matter of what an individual believes. I believe in institutional and team work and I do not believe that individual tendencies should prevail. Yes, there are personal tendencies and ambitions, but these should be controlled by institutional work and institutional rules, and the more these rules are respected, the better for the institutions and the people. This is true for everyone, not just for me. The more we put our faith in government institutions and play by the rules of team work, the better it will be for society and the more beneficial for the people and politicians.

Yes, that's right! He said "The Sweetness of Democracy", and that is why there will someday be a monument raised to George Bush and all the US ServicePeople who brought the "Sweetness of Democracy" to Iraq.

Even when all the right decisions are made, many bad things happen. Such is our world.
Thank God for the American military. Lets' give them and their families our thanks, our love and our money.

The NY Times should post this article. Well written, Mr. Hoven!

We needed to stay the course through thick and thin to get the Iraqis assistance in their own acceptance of a type of democracy. We were not trusted, we had abandoned them before. They were, and some still do remain, suspicious of our motives. We were fostering a broken people to believe in their own ability to take a chance and be a part of their own destiny.
It was very easy at first for the administration to believe that everyone wants freedom just like an American. But freedom comes with responsibility and responsibility takes courage. The Iragis had none, it had been bludgeoned out of them. Every time they attempted to stand up to Sadaam and his guard they were beheaded, thrown off buildings in the public square, their women raped, their children sent to prison, entire towns poisoned.
In a truly back assward way, the Democrats assisted the administration in showing how determined we were to stay and fight for them. Against all calls and ploys to leave these people to suffer a power vacuum filled by mobs and probably fascist Iran rule, the administration stayed with them.
It took the first years of the war to set a stage where the surge could work.
I'm fairly sick of hearing the fawning about the Iraq administation agreeing with Obama's time table for withdrawl. We have all wanted this to come to a end. The adminstartion had the fortitude to work it to a good end. The fact that there is a a fairly functioning adminstration in Iraq is amazing. We started with a country that turned to us when we first appeared and said, "Fine, you're the new boss, same as the old boss, we want security, jobs and electricity and we're not going to do a thing to assist ourselves" And they shook their heads and hulked down waited to see how horribly they would be treated under our rule. The fact that it has gone well enough with for Obama's time table to be even feasible is stunning and a gracious gift from God and should leave him saying "THANK YOU" and absolutely nothing else.

Very good article but the problem was never rebuilding Iraq or in fact building a modern Iraq. Candidate George W. Bush was correct on the American aspirations in the direction toward "Nation Building"...none.

Iraq has been a lynch pin of the Middle East region since Hammurabi. George W. Bush leaped Iraq forward a thousand years if everything works; it is still difficult to see what positive contribution a modern Muslim Iraq could make.

The Bush family, beginning with the 1830's book by George Bush to the George H. W. Bush, 41 and the Gulf war to George W. Bush, 43 and the Iraq War, has thought about the Muslim world more than any other family I know of in American history. (They also have to get more first names in that family!) Most people who think about the Muslim nations at all simply consider "modern Muslim nation" to be oxymoron. An improved Muslim nation may just be a more dangerous enemy that will be harder to kill when the time comes. George W. Bush elected to make judgments is as qualified to make these judgments as anybody I know of.

Bush family members, however, often played the long odds for the big payoff. That tendency has made the family relatively rich and put two of them in the Whitehouse. I have to suspect, however, that Bush's 41 foreign policy wins, that he never got to collect on, had at least something to do with the thousands dead on 9/11.

George W. Bush collected 550 tons of refined yellowcake Uranium ore from Saddam's WMD program, enough to make more than 700 warheads if enriched. If a future Muslim WMD program gets weapons built because of the political cost that Bush 43 has paid for this victory we may wish that Bush 43 played shorter odds.

Mr. Hoven's points are well taken, and as we all know, conventional wisdom is almost always wrong, especially in matters of politics and warfighting (as Carl von Clausewitz famously said, "War is politics by other means").

Yes, much too little is made of the American achievements during the post-Saddam period from the spring of 2003 through the end of 2006. Rumsfeld was responsible indeed for both the successes and failures of that period. However, it is also apparent that the military command under Rumsfeld did not appreciate or properly promote General Petraeus' doctrine of true counterinsurgent warfighting. Indeed, Petraeus was apparently considered an upstart and a maverick within the military command. The result of Rumsfeld and his generals' failure to employ effective counterinsurgency doctrine was the chaos that enveloped Iraq during virtually all of 2006.

No - we can and must hold Rumsfeld accountable for that failure of strategy. We can and must also hold President George W. Bush accountable as well. But the difference between the President and his SecDef is that the President recognized the failure for what it was, and actively sought differing advice and new leadership. And then the President had the courage to stand up and fight politically for his new warfighting strategy.

Hoven is right that the numerical parameters of the surge were probably not as decisive as some make it out to be (including Kagan, Kristol, McCain, et al). But the change in strategy and field tactics to a true counterinsurgency doctrine, as commanded by the author of the definitive book on counterinsurgent warfare - Gen. David Petraeus - combined with the psychological effects of a renewed American commitment to victory (rather than a prolonged endurance of suffering), decisively won the victory. And of course the irony now is that Obama and his leftist friends in the Democratic Party suddenly deem that victory inevitable, and due mainly to Iraqi political virtue, unrelated to the command decisions of a determined President Bush and his chosen field commander, and the sacrifices made by their troops.

Rumsfeld was 100% correct on the "big picture" with the lighter footprint and having making the Iraqis thrive for themselves.

We should also thank our lucky stars that so many supposed "mistakes", "miscalculations", and "lack of planning" occurred. How else would Al Queda get decimated?

However, why he stuck with Abizaid is beyond me. All the conditions were in place for General Petreaus, US military, and the Iraqis themselves to execute.

And did everyone involved "get her done"!!!!!!

I really like what you said as I too believe in your thesis.

In addition, having some knowledge about the psychological undercurrents of Middle Eastern peoples and politics, would it not have been a gross error if the "surge" occurred prematurely, not just on the grounds you state, but perhaps just as importantly causing deep resentment among the very people we were meant to liberate?

Not only could the US have not preformed this feat alone for all the reasons you state, but if it were possible that such an operation was executed immediately after Saddam's downfall, would it not have been likely to add impetus and further harden the street view that the US was indeed a "Malevolent Occupier." Would not our overwhelming presence been then perceived as further fuel for the fires of mistrust and the tyranny of appearances, furthering and calcifying a deep resentment, embitterment and subsequent entrenchment of the notion that we and our "so-called" liberation views are counterfeit, something that should be resisted at all levels and for all time.

As it was, after 30 years of Saddam, and America being hating throughout the Middle East via their own embedded educational and media propaganda machines, the US military was viewed with extreme suspicion...., and we'll remember that immediate calls for our departure throughout Middle East after the fall of Saddam were made by Al Jazeera and others. This was a time where we walked a fine line between being irrefutably defined as "conqueror," whose very presence fed into the mantra that we could not be trusted, to the time where Iraqi perceptions began to change, witnessing us as more "Friend than Foe."

Had this delicate balance not been achieved, had we appeared too forceful, too large, too overwhelming at first, we may have been unwittingly and irreversibly branded by the historical and Al Jazeera-Al Qaeda-fed Iraqi prejudice..., not to exclude the treasonous damage of the US led Liberal-Democrats and their own Media machine, the MSM. Despite the continuous call for more troops, had not this tight rope been walked, and had all our terror been unleashed, we may never have won the time to change people's minds, and successfully challenge the prevailing perceptions of a battle-fatigued people surviving under the fascist Ba'athists regime of Saddam.

In hindsight, we may have done the right thing all along, even if we appeared to stumble into it. The "surge" at any other time may have become the war's worst blunder. Timing is everything in war.

Culturally, Iraq wasn't ready for an instant redefinition of the US as anything other than the Great Satan, an Imperialistic Nation which would take their oil, rape their women, and take anything else the conquering hoard may wish to inhumanly take. For that's what conquering hoards do. That had been their historical experience. To even consider the possibility that the opposite could actually take place, took time. It took time for the evidence to amass to our favor.

And let us not forget from where most of that evidence was derived, though it would be impossible to document every whit. Namely, all the singular, quiet, brave acts of kindnesses and continuous acts of sacrifice of those in US uniform was something that few Iraqi's had before experienced from "those in uniform." All the planned and random acts of respectful rebuilding, instead of the continuation of ruination and tearing down that the "invading hoard" was to have supposed to have been engaged, incrementally became a startling revelation. The sum of everything Good about America and those US military personnel bravely putting America's best foot forward, was suddenly in direct contradiction to their eyes and their sordid expectations of those who previously carried rifles. They kept waiting for the wolf to bare its teeth, for the other shoe to drop as history with other malevolent leaders in the Middle East had always proved. But it didn't happen. Their minds and hearts began to be changed. Fear began to be extinguished as hope for the new day began to be realized.

As time wore on and with increasing stability, they began to learn who the real enemy was, and that the power and might of the US Military was indeed on their side, helping them secure their own freedoms, helping in the training of a new US-led national army and police force, one built on Iraqi pride and not twisted tribal notions. To be sure, it took four years. But I submit, it couldn't have happened in any other way..... And we're still not there yet.... God bless the USA and the bravery of the US Military. We weep over their losses while we praise them in the Lord's Name.

Dr Gregory Young

I'm not so sure that the surge itself caused a success as the improvement in the situation was already underway. What the surge actually accomplished is that it bought the one item that any commander needs more of than anything else: Time. The political wrangling about the strategy, implementing it and giving it time to have an effect bought General Petraeus some 6 months to implement his strategy and for the Iraqis to build their own forces. In some ways, I see the surge as having two purposes: Placing more boots on the ground and gaining more time to allow the "good things" that were already starting to happen to become more apparent.

Donald Rumsfeld understood one thing that hasn't been mentioned. The USA only makes up about 5% of the world population. We can't field a large military based on manpower. We need to build our national security on superior technology. At some point for example we will need to replace increasing numbers of ground troops and air combat pilots with robots. Perhaps Rumsfeld can be criticized that he overestimated the level of current technology vis-à-vis counterinsurgency combat but he had the correct long term plan.

Rumsfeld's failings were NOT that he didn't somehow lay the groundwork for the surge.

Rumsfeld's failings were that he let the insurgency metastasize in the first place. For that, history will never forgive him. Mistakes he made included:

1. Rumsfeld failed to dramatically increase the size of the U.S. army and Marine Corps right after 9-11. Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were each successful in their foreign policy, because each demanded and got a massive military buildup that gave them clout and effectiveness. Bush and Rumsfeld did not. It got so bad that by 2004, Senator Kerry ran on a platform that included the expansion of our army by 40,000 men. Rumsfeld denied it was necessary even then, long after even liberals like Kerry had admitted that our army was simply overstretched for the job it was being asked to do.

2. Rumsfeld failed to take quick action to stem looting, restore order, and put down the infant insurgency after the fall of Saddam. For months, Rumsfeld steadfastly refused to admit there was an insurgency at all! He kept referring to the insurgents as "dead-enders," claiming that they were on their "death throes." Which they were not.
Instead, a series of half-measures were taken against the insurgency, which proved ineffective till Rumsfeld was replaced and the Petraeus surge began.

In the end, Bush managed to scrape together another 30,000 men or so for the surge in Iraq. But as we have seen, the jihadists have attempted to launch a new offensive in Afghanistan. If Rumsfeld had seen the need for a major buildup of our army after 9-11, we could have had sufficient troops to defeat both the Iraq and Afghanistan insurgencies quickly and simultaneously. Instead, it took years longer to defeat the Iraq insurgency; and the Afghanistan insurgency appears to be getting stronger once again. That's the true Rumsfeld legacy.

Steve L

Your observations are absurd.

1. How exactly do you keep the "insurgency" from "metastizing"?

1 million troops?
shoot every able body man?
Build "the wall" to keep out illegal aliens (Al Queda/Iran)?

Had the numbers of troops you infer were needed had been on the ground, the following would have incurred:

Hundreds of additional casualties from a target rich IED environment.

Wholesale rebellion from both Shia and Sunni who resent a massive American footprint.

Logistical nightmares

A more powerful and influential Iran leading the charge against the imperialist Crusaders.

40,000 more Kerry troops sitting in the US because they couldn't have been ready for "The Surge" anyway.

The battle has gone on longer than you delude yourself into thinking Rumsfeld thought it would because:

Al Queda could ship in cannon fodder until recently

It took till 2006 for the Sunnis to get fed up with their AQI "protectors"

Building a professional army takes years. You can't wave a wand and "yip, yip" an army appears.
I guess you missed the fact that Rumsfeld devoted resources to building the Iraqi Army.

Sticking with Abazaid was a mistake.

The way US forces leave Iraq will determine if US troops will have to be sent back in a third time.

Has this generation of wimps lost their minds? Why didn't the liberals elect Michael Jackson for president if they wanted a Black rock star? At least we know to keep him away from children; which is more than we know about Obama.

Think back to WW2 and what Europe would look like had we not had the Marshall Plan. What would Japan and the Far East look like had we not built the framework for their democracy? Most European democracies owe their existence because of what America did immediately following WW2 and the subsequent Cold War.

What has it meant for America? Millions of people with a standard of living to consume products form our advanced economy. Has the resultant growth enabled American jobs? Has it helped our own standard of living? It could be argued that the whole Civil Rights movement is a result of the role Blacks played in the military and subsequently the integration of Blacks in the military.

Bush bashers are simply that, ignorant leftover wimpy ideologues without a semblance of understanding of history and a fervent desire to re-write it. But to invite a novice into the White House moronic. Bush was right, McCain is more right and if you don't look at the total picture of a successful engagement you don't change the real world. Afghanistan is not Iraq and currently the underlining factors for a successful 'surge' do not yet exist.

AQI had to humiliate any number of tribal leaders while at the same time engaging in murderous oppression in Sunni tribal domains in order to alienate a once friendly base. The AQI program of fostering civil war through the random mass murder of Sunni city dwellers had to alienate the general population. The terrible cost of a Shia Sunni civil war had to make itself clear.

It was the Swiss physician Paracelsus who remarked that "All fruits do not ripen at the same time, as do grapes". I suspect that historians in time will characterize a temporal tipping point between continuing or worsening disorder and the opportunity to create order. The surge was fortuitous in its timing.

Now, with 20/20 hindsight, we can find fault in the execution of the first years of the occupation. However, I cannot find a single prominent critic of the war who predicted what was to come after the fall of Baghdad.

AQI had to humiliate any number of tribal leaders while at the same time engaging in murderous oppression in Sunni tribal domains in order to alienate a once friendly base. The AQI program of fostering civil war through the random mass murder of Sunni city dwellers had to alienate the general population. The terrible cost of a Shia Sunni civil war had to make itself clear.

It was the Swiss physician Paracelsus who remarked that "All fruits do not ripen at the same time, as do grapes". I suspect that historians in time will characterize a temporal tipping point between continuing or worsening disorder and the opportunity to create order. The surge was fortuitous in its timing.

Now, with 20/20 hindsight, we can find fault in the execution of the first years of the occupation. However, I cannot find a single prominent critic of the war who predicted what was to come after the fall of Baghdad.

Time for the 300 speech on Iraq:

"Long I pondered our President's cryptic talk of victory. Time has proven him wise. For from free Iraqi to free Iraqi the word was spread that brave American soldiers, so far from home, laid down their lives, not just for America, but for all Iraq and the promise that country holds. Now, here on this fabled patch of earth called Mesopotamia, bin Laden's henchmen face obliteration! In the shadows the terrorists cower. Sheer terror gripping their hearts with icy fingers; knowing full well of the merciless defeats they suffered at the hands of the Americans. Yet they stare now across the battlefield at an American trained army of 500,000 free Iraqis. An army eager to avenge the horrors that al Qaeda inflicted on the Iraqi people.

This day we secure a country from oppression and tyranny, ushering in a future brighter than anything we can imagine. Give thanks men! To President Bush and the brave American soldiers. To victory!"

Courage is something that is more appreciated after the fact than at the time it is employed. Fear often governs people's thinking
during the heat of battle. But sometimes battles have to be fought regardless the cost and those who step up to the plate to bear the brunt of the burden are often not recognized for their courage until well after the battle is won.
The other side of this is that for people who for reasons of fear do not step up, there is the terrible awareness of their own cowardice. Rather than deal with their own fears honestly, they blame the real heroes for making them into cowards.

To Jonathan Cohan

The above paragraph in your comment blew away all the chaff and reveals the unvarnished truth, it was like stepping from the shadows into the sun light and goes a long way in explaining the venom coming from the wacko left. Kudos to Jonathan Cohen.

People are going to be dissecting Operation Iraqi Freedom for years just as we continue to do with every major battle American forces have ever fought. There will always be differing opinions on what went right and what went wrong.

As every military person knows, though, the commander is always responsible for whatever his/her unit does or fails to do, so ultimately it falls at the feet of the Commander in Chief. Did subordinate commanders do things right and wrong? Of course, but as several people have said, lets wait to judge them, and the Commander in Chief, until we can look at the facts as a whole and evaluate them on an objective scale of some sort.

Personally, I like an objective study like that proposed by Eliot Cohen and John Gooch in "Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War". If you look at their premise that a combination of three things; failure to learn, failure to anticipate, and failure to adapt, as a means of evaluating OIF, some things are already beginning to come out.

1. Failure to anticipate Iraqi forces just laying down their weapons and fading into the populace created a vaccum that was too great to be filled by coalition forces and allowed the insurgency to germinate and grow.
2. Failure to adapt quickly to insurgent tactics emboldened the insurgents and gave the MSM the fodder they needed to tell the American public that we were losing the war.
3. Failure to learn from past dealings with muslims in the theater and from the actions in Afganistan. As mentioned by Dr Young, there are severe cultural difference that we did not take into account in the beginning, and we discounted the amount of help the population was willing to give the insurgents, even if it was just looking the other way and keeping their mouths shut.

OIF, like all other military operations has a number of things that went well and things that were not so good. Who knows, if we had done things differently to start with, the surge may not have been necessary. Either way, our hats should go off to all the individual soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who have sacrificed to get us to the point we are today.

The important thing in all of this is that we take our lessons learned and integrate them into our training and make our troops more prepared for the next crisis that pops up on the radar.

In response to Dr Gregory Young, your insights are thoughtful and interesting .. as surely we all agree that timing is very important.

However, even granting that the Shinseki-led call for 400,000 to 500,000 troops in country would have had its own unintended consequences (i.e., of an Iraqi backlash), we still could have - and should have - been engaged in a determined counter-insurgency battle with AQI and the Sadrist militia long before late 2006/early 2007. Rumsfeld's maintenance of field commanders who evidently did not understand how to fight an insurgency of the likes led by AQI very nearly lost us the war. We teetered on the brink of a disastrous surrender to AQI and the Iranian-inspired Sadrist militia, which had created an incipient civil war.

Please check out Michael Yon's archive of postings ... he wrote frequently, even in anger, and contemoraneously (not in 20/20 hindsight today), of the disastrous tactics then employed by US commanders in Iraq prior to President Bush's decision to fire Rumsfeld.

At the least, Rumsfeld's failure to promote Petraeus and his counterinsurgent doctrine, as supported by a temporary and modest increase in American combat forces, almost certainly led to the Democrats' election win in 2006, and has certainly put the pro-war Republicans in a defensive crouch throughout the two years since then.

Even today, with all of the evident success wrought by the counterinsurgent strategy and the accompanying surge, the political environment for pro-defense Republicans is still very dicy, such that even a wet-behind-the-ears inexperienced dilletante like Barack Obama is still presumed to be the likely 2008 President-Elect.

Would that the counterinsurgency had begun even a year, yea, even six months sooner! In fact, the moment of the Samarra Mosque bombing in early 2006 should have been the pivot point for Rumsfeld to take a fresh look at commanders, strategy, tactics, and troop levels, if only to reassure the Iraqis that we Americans were not simply staring at disaster like deer caught in Al Qaeda's headlights.

But alas, that was not to be.

If conventional wisdom is usually wrong, I also see the risk of a new CW developing, which is already being promoted by Obama and the Dems ... i.e., that essentially it was fore-ordained that we would eventually succeed in Iraq, because all of the elements for success (especially Iraqi determination to succeed with the Anbar Awakening) were already present years ago.

Talk about turning on a dime! Of course, the Dems' new rewrite of history is intended entirely to deprive George W. Bush (and John McCain) of any credit for turning around a disaster ... as well as to downplay the apparent residual risk in Iraq, so as to make it seem "safe" to elect Barack Obama.

Let's not feed that new CW by now claiming (like Obama et al) that indeed, the "Surge" (which is really a misnomer - call it the "New Counterinsurgency") made little practical difference. Without the New Counterinsurgency, we'd already be writing the epitaph of America's misadventures in the Middle East. And America's fighting forces would be licking their wounds back here Stateside, demoralized for a another generation, while preparing for a slew of Hollywood pictures (a la "Apocolypse Now" and "Platoon") about how the Evil BushHitlerMcChimpy lost us another immoral war, just like Nixon/Ford did in Nam.

Another factor to consider is the aid and comfort given the enemy by the Democrats. I have no doubt the terrorsit factions were emboldened by what they saw and heard on CNN evry day. How much sooner would the so called militants have cut thier losses and run if they had not seen the Democrats like Pelosi lobbying for defeat on the American media? How many young Americans died because of the Democrats atrocious and treasonous behaviour? My son is a paratrooper who went in during the surge and I will never forgive the Democrats who sacraficed American men for their own selfish political gains.

BRAVO! FRS
Just a quick thanks for your comments as I just so happen to agree with all you posted.

Your beginning comment was priceless and bares repeating not only on AT but elsewhere, so here goes....

"Has this generation of wimps lost their minds? Why didn't the liberals elect Michael Jackson for president if they wanted a Black rock star? At least we know to keep him away from children; which is more than we know about Obama".

I applaud Dr. Gregory Young's analysis.

To Duane Truitt, I say: I respect Michael Yon's writing a great deal. I bought his book immediately, and have read his blog extensively. However, it became clear to me that Michael Yon, while having a wonderful empathy for the fighting man and real ability to convey the experiences of individuals and small units, was a bit beyond his depth when he tried to analyze stategy.

To those who are quick to criticize Rumsfeld, I repeat, you need to read Douglas Feiths, "War and Decision". If you don't, then you are speaking from ignorance about how decisions were made, and who played what role. Mistakes were made, as they always are, and Rumsfeld undoubtedly made his share; but he has become the convenient whipping boy for all those armchair critics who are quick to cast blame. From all I have read about him, I doubt that he will ever bother to defend himself. As with GWB, I expect that history will treat him more kindly than contemporary critics.

This is the best article and smartest written thread of commentary I've read and seen on the Iraq war and the true accomplishments if the Us Military, the president and everyone else involved in the boldest attempt at reshaping of the Muslim World in THOUSANDS of years.

All funded by the American taxpayers and their children in hopes of turning the worst attack on US soil ever into some type of positive instead of turning the Middle East into glass which at the time I was all for and sometimes still am.

Only America and Americans could attempt and accomplish such a thing, meanwhile nearly half our own citizenry tried to sabotage the above described events in all these wonderful posts all along the way with the help of of our own supposed free press & MSM.

Absolutely disgraceful behavior that future generations of Americans and fortunate Muslims transformed by the boldness and bravery of those combined acts will ask "why were these people not prosecuted for treason during a time of war" as many of us still scratch our heads asking that very same question.

Now that the Iraq war is winding down maybe some attention can be payed to that issue after we keep Obama and his frightening prospective administration out of the white house to claim credit for 8 years of hard work and ultimate sacrifices by others and something he opposed all the way like almost all spineless democrats did. Freedom for millions upon millions that democrats opposed, history will show this for all to see.

Great article! High quality info!
Truth be told the military overwhelmingly love and respect 'W' and Rummy. I read Robin Cook's book 'Hunting Bin Laden'...(enlightening read) and the Special Forces troops regarded 'W' and Rumsfeld as fellow warriors and equals. What say you Bill Clinton?
I envision returning Iraq vets going into politics and purging Congress of the treasonous liberals who undermined and backstabbed their mission at every turn, resulting in a Conservative Rennaisance, turning back the creeping tide of Euro-socialism. We are not Sweden!

If one wants to discuss failure, here are real failures:

Failure to realize that we are going to win.

Failure to realize that sometimes "failure" is needed to find what works or atleast tells one what DOESN'T work.

Failure to realize counter insurgency is a long term affair. This failure results from failure to evaluate against all other historical counter insurgencies.

Anyone care to compare this to the Romans in Britain? Napolean on the Iberian Peninsula? The Germans in WWII? US in Vietnam?

99% of this downer talk comes is the result of the "we needed hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of troops paleo cons" trying to delude themselves they were correct.

Perhaps you guys can redeem yourselves and correct your most egregious failure:

Failure to recognize where credit is most certainly deserved.

I think that the decision of the surge was indeed inevitable only - and only - because of President Bush. He has, in the face of fierce political opposition, always stood fast and was determined to do whatever it took to uphold the commitment we made. Whether it was a troop surge or some other strategic action, it would have eventually been applied regardless of the opposition to do so. Whatever the circumstances dictated would have been done. Retreat was never to be an option to the President - and everybody became aware of that which cost him politically and robbed him of his popularity.

What we did in Iraq with the surge would have puzzled WWII vets and the like. It was just one tactical decision to attempt to go in the right direction towards victory. Why the fuss? The vets of that war were thrown into certain death in many cases just to secure a patch of sand or a hill of volcanic ash. Yet today, we are squeamish against anything that may take blood or sacrifice to acheive a concrete objective - obvious to all - such as preventing suicide bombers from dotting the landscape here at home or the detonation of a nuclear device.

What we have done is something that has not been done in decades - stood fast to the ideal of victory. Not to turn tail the way we did in Viet Nam when the political atmosphere, poisoned by the Left and the Media, made it easier for the folks at home to turn the way while we stabbed allies in the back and left millions to die. Much to the nodding approval of the Left.

And yet to this day, the liberals see no shame in the way we handled Viet Nam. They see it as the good old days. Something they'll always be proud of. Something to try to do again to relive those glory days. President Bush begged to differ. Which is something that the history books take notice of.

This article and the comments, especially Dr. Young, are wonderful. I have been posting these sentiments for the last year.

But I take issue with this statement from a commenter.

"I'm not so sure that the surge itself caused a success as the improvement in the situation was already underway."

Although paciification in Anbar was -as a result of the work previously done - well on its way by January 2007, the Surge was necessary to pacify Bahgdad and its belts and Diyala.

From the time the Surge began I visited MNF-Iraq daily to see the operations being undertaken. What I saw was that al Qaeda was being targeted.

As I've posted on other forums the Surge targeted al Qaeda and peace broke out.

The Surge put the lie to the MSM claim that al Qaeda was minor player in the level of violence.

Mr Hoven has put into cogent thought what I have been muttering about for a year and a half. The most basic aspect of COIN operations is to gain the confidence and cooperation of the population. This took time. Dr Young describes the great job that our forces did to accomplish this. The other side of the coin is that AQ used its only significant weapon, terror, to accomplish the same thing. Once the Iraqis became convinced that we would not abandon them to the terror, they chose the more humane side.

It was not as inevitable as the slogan "All men prefer freedom."would make it. Remember the overtures to Iran that Maliki was making in '06. After the elections that fall, the commitment to the "surge" made a necessary psychological and political, as well as military, statement to Iraq and the Iraqis.

jresfabn uses a very harsh measure to count our "failures". War is, after all, a two-sided operation, and perfect anticipation of the enemy's actions is never possible. I suggest that the original military plan for a two-pronged attack would have both reduced the dispursal of Saddam's soldiers, and placed greater forces in the critical central region. The "failure" belongs on Foggy Bottom's doorstep, not the Pentagon's. As also the two-plus months' delay in the operation, pushing mop-up operations into the heat of the summer. After watching Saddam's statue fall, it was not at all obvious that AQ would choose to confront our forces directly. They were, after all, busy bombing stuff from Madrid to Bali, with mixed results. They made the mistake of focussing on Iraq, with the intention of giving us a Lebanon/Mogadishu or two and watching us run! Bush was made of sterner stuff. As is McCain. Not so, Obama, I'm afraid.

The battle for Iraq is not over, much less the larger GWOT. We have continuing need for stern persistence.

The greatest mistake of the Bush administration was in underestimating the treasonous support given to the insurgents by the mainstream media and the rabid left. These zealots will never admit that they are some of the greatest cheer leaders of anti-American feeling throughout the world

It is imperative that John McCain be elected to ensure that American success in Iraq is lasting. It should be very clear to every American that Barack Obama and the Democrats cannot be trusted to finish this job.

At last! Vindication for Rumsfeld and the brave troops that held him in such high regard.

BobG - I cited Michael Yon as an eyewitness of the pre-counterinsurgency tactics of clear and withdraw, vs. the counterinsurgency tactics, as initially instituted by Col. Macfarland of clear, hold, and rebuild.

Yon's observations need not be construed as arising out of any specific strategic thinking on his part .. but he was and remains a truthful chronicler of what didn't work, and what later did, in the Iraq War.

The fact is that our commanders, under Rumsfeld, made unfortunate errors repeatedly, using a defective strategy whose purpose was less to win the war than to simply minimimize the American footprint in Iraq. And not surpisingly, repeating the same error over and over again produced virtually the same results each time.

The repeated errors and consequent failure to produce results in Iraq are what caused President Bush - and John McCain and me and millions of other supporters of the war - to lose confidence in Rumsfeld's leadership by late 2006. The 2006 election results certainly confirmed that the nation had lost confidence in President Bush's leadership - therefore he had to act, or simply declare defeat and withdraw.

I have admired Rumsfeld on a personal level, and it was only with great regret that I came to agree with President Bush's decision to sack him in November 2006. The results speak for themselves, no matter how much revisionist history is posted on these or other websites.

I need only recite the words "Falujah" and "Ramadi" - and we all painfully remember the great sacrifices of American fighting men & women made to win those towns - only to give them back again to the terrorist insurgents ... such that the same terrain necessarily had to be won back, at additional great cost in American and Iraqi blood, or simply given up for good to the bad guys.

It is not unusual for American military leadership (both civilian and/or uniformed) to be, out of necessity, replaced by the Commander in Chief when results don't match expectations. Washington did it in the Revolutionary War (Gen. Gates) ... Lincoln did it in the Civil War (Gen. MacClellan) ... FDR and Gen. Eisenhower did it in World War II (sacking Gen. Fredenhall, of Kasserine Pass infamy)... Truman sacked Gen. MacArthur in Korea, while Nixon sacked Gen. Westmoreland in Vietnam. In all but one of those sackings (Fredenhall), the replaced commander(s) had their vocal defenders who swore to their dying day that their man was wronged. This is no different.

The point is, the ultimate Commander in war is the President. He must have a Sec Def and field commanders in whom he has complete confidence, because the "bottom line" for America is winning vs. losing. Anybody who doubts that Rumsfeld and his senior commanders in Iraq weren't losing the Iraq War betweeen the period of the Samarra Mosque bombing in February 2006, until the time when Bush sacked Rumsfeld in November 2006, simply ignores the facts.

It is no mere coincidence that upon Rumsfeld's departure, our military commanders on the ground (as first practiced by Col. Macfarland in his support for the incipient Anbar Awakening) felt for the first time that they had command support for implementing a true counterinsurgency strategy of "clear, hold, and rebuild". The fruits of that change in strategy were immediate. It is almost unbelievable that we have seen such a complete and dramatic turnaround in Iraq in such a short timeframe, even as all the war critics shouted that all was already lost.

To suggest that the change in leadership, strategy, tactics, and troop levels initiated by President Bush in November 2006 was not the real cause of the shift from defeat to victory is to both deny reality and to doom us to repeat failure.

I sympathize with people who like and respect Donald Rumsfeld. I do too. But the success and security of this nation is incomparably more important than the reputation of any one man, or group of men. Our best Presidents have always understood that, and acted accordingly. Including (most thankfully) George W. Bush.

Duane Truitt/skorrent

GREAT POSTS!!!

Duane

As a "defender" of Rumsfeld, I maintain he got the big picture correct:

Lighter, faster forces to Baghdad
Lighter footprint during the occupation
Force the Iraqis to show initiative.

The big strategic concepts were correct and are what create so much turmoil in the lefturds and paleo con types. However, the ideas were new and bold even if they were not completely origional.

However, turning to Robert Gates and General Petreaus was correct. The outcome is obvious.

Still, Rummy deserves much credit eventhough someone else was needed to finish the job.

Iraq will be a treasure trove of "lessons learned" in the years ahead. Unfortunately, we conservatives have taken on the leftturd tendencies of assigning blame, creating "bad guys", and trowing around "failure" when no such actions are needed or deserved.

U.S. President George W. Bush is the hero of the Iraq War, the Afghan War, and the War on Terror. America owes this great victory to him, our bold and resolute Commander in Chief.

Our patriot ancestors fought the Revolution in a "Glorius Cause": the cause of human dignity and freedom. They prevailed against all odds, and now the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence have another champion. Hail to the Chief! -- Brian P. Blake

U.S. President George W. Bush is the hero of the Iraq War, the Afghan War, and the War on Terror. America owes this great victory to him, our bold and resolute Commander in Chief.

Our patriot ancestors fought the Revolution in a "Glorius Cause": the cause of human dignity and freedom. They prevailed against all odds, and now the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence have another champion. Hail to the Chief! -- Brian P. Blake

when one looks back over the conduct of war in the iraq theatre the striking thing that emerges is that in this theatre from the 2003 invasion to the surge a masterful game of "rope a dope" was being played on the islamofasists that we are at war with. bush and his infidel crusaders rushed in and captured and occupied the capital city of the hoped to be restored caliphate. this state of affairs is unacceptable to alqueida and iran and the rest of the islamofascists and so they mounted the so called insurgency and rushed their best fighters to iraq which by ths time had been turned into a "roach motel" for islamofascists where they could be dispatched rather easily instead of having to dig them out of the ground one by one. the islamofascists were also allowed to capture and rule some town so that the iraquis and the world could see what would happen if aq was allowed to win. this last was the key to the success of the surge. without the demonstrated aq brutality the sunni sheiks would not have turned to us and petraeus' surge would not have worked. rummy and dave and w all deserve credit for getting iraq to where it is now.

Anerican Thinker Fan - thanks for the comment, and I do agree with you that Rumsfeld got many of the most important things right during his tenure. Many of our civilian and uniformed leaders did many things right in Iraq, from the earliest planning for the invasion.

As happens so often in life, few leaders have the flexibility to deal with any and all contingencies they will face, and as a result, many great leaders are great only during a specific moment, or succession of moments ... until a time and set of circumstances arise when their skills no longer match the demands upon them. I think that may well be what happpened with Rummy. I'm no shrink and have never met the man, so I cannot analyze why Rummy was not able to respond to the metastasizing AQI/Sadr Brigade insurgency in 2006. That certainly was not the war he was fighting from 2003 through 2005.

This episode of American military history illustrates why it is so critical to have a Commander in Chief with sound character, good judgment, and a clear view of his objectives sitting in the Oval Office. When the definitive histories of this era are written in 20 or 30 years from now, George W. Bush will be lauded for exactly those qualities.

Which is why it is just as hard to imagine today Barack H. Obama wearing the CIC hat, as it was back in the 70s (when I wore the uniform) when Jimmah Cahtah proved that the hat did not fit his undersized head.

Mistakes are made in every war and I was disappointed and baffled by the strategy sometimes, Fallujah for example. But overall it's been a lopsided victory for the U.S. Military. Even if the media is unwilling or unable to report the enemy casualties, it's obvious that the enemy has been decimated. Despite the best efforts of the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The success of the general surge strategy was almost entirely due, not to the surge itself (the sending of additional troops), but rather to the aggressive military stance that accompanied it--a stance, I might add, that neoconservatives had been calling for, for some time.

This proactive military leadership is almost entirely the sole work of General Petraeus. After going through a number of lackluster generals, we finally found a keeper.

The Secretary of Defense was practically irrelevant in all of this. The situation prevailing in Iraq before the surge wasn't Rumsfeld's fault, and the success of the surge had nothing to do with Gates, an absolute fool.

It certainly wasn't the fault of the neoconservatives. If the President had continued to listen to the neocons in the first place, instead of letting other views woo him, we would have been where we are today two or three years ago, and the Republicans would still control Congress.

And if the President and others continue to ignore the neoconservatives, the ones who actually understand how to win the War on Terrorism and the conflicts in the Middle East (as opposed to simply preserving "stability" and the status quo), the conservative brand will continue to lose elections and continue to lose geopolitical battles.

Republicans and conservatives ignore the neoconservative segment and their own peril, and at the peril of our nation.