Iraq War, Surge

President George W. Bush, on January 10, 2007, announced that the US would surge at least 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, to improve security in the Baghdad to a point where the remaining Iraqi Security Forces could control violence from Iraqi sects and foreign sources. Intended to be more policing and engaging directly with the people, the approach was "population-centric" rather than "enemy-centric."

Context
Linda Robinson, a journalist and author of Tell me how this ends: General Petraeus and the search for a way out of Iraq, was invited to discuss the general situation with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. While her talk focused on the surge, she said it was necessary to set a context, and began by saying that the insurgency was caused by the early decisions of the US Coalition Provisional Authority for debaathification and disbanding of the Iraqi military. While an insurgency was already in progress January 2005, the next contributor was having an election that was boycotted by the Sunni comunity. This election created the body that would write the constitution. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad made an "agreement was made that there would be constitutional revisions considered and implicitly a guarantee that some at least would be adopted within four months of the seating of the new parliament. And that agreement was never honored, still has not been to this day."

How had this come about? By 2005, the U.S. was in serious danger of a major loss in Iraq, and entered a serious reexamination of its approach. Core to this reexamine was the advice of GEN (ret.) Jack Keane, who retired after his term as Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, declining promotion to Chief of Staff due to obligations to a sick wife. Nevertheless, Keane took a near-unprecedented role as a retired general who did not become a civilian leader such as George C. Marshall or Colin Powell.

Andrew Krepinevich had written, in Foreign Affairs, about a needed strategy. On the political front, they have been working to create a democratic Iraq, but that is a goal, not a strategy. On the military front, they have sought to train Iraqi security forces and turn the war over to them. As President George W. Bush has stated, "Our strategy can be summed up this way: as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." But the president is describing a withdrawal plan rather than a strategy...Instead of a timetable for withdrawal, the United States needs a real strategy built around the principles of counterinsurgency warfare...Rather than focusing on killing insurgents, they should concentrate on providing security and opportunity to the Iraqi people, thereby denying insurgents the popular support they need. Since the U.S. and Iraqi armies cannot guarantee security to all of Iraq simultaneously, they should start by focusing on certain key areas and then, over time, broadening the effort -- hence the image of an expanding oil spot.

As much as any one event, the shock that forced the reexamination was the Second Battle of Haditha in November 2005. Keane had first been alarmed by certain reports of civilian casualties, which suggested indiscipline among troops and a breakdown in the chain of command. Linda Robinson, in her book, puts the breakdown earlier, with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the missteps of L. Paul Bremer, and attempts at damage control.

Both agree that Bremer's acts were part of the problem. Bremer was replaced by John Negroponte, who wanted to leave within six months. Negroponte was relieved by Zalmay Khalizad, who was originally to have been co-envoy with Bremer; Khalizad had a much more nuanced sense of Iraqi politics, and, in the summer of 2005, managed to salvage something from the upcomin elections. The first Prime Minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, eventually stepped aside for Nouri al-Maliki, better able to deal with the situation. George W. Bush liked Maliki and dealt with him directly, undercutting Khalizad's ability to pressure him. Rob Richer, Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency Middle East Division, said there was plenty of blame to distribute, but also cites Condaleeza Rice as insisting on American-style demoracy too soon, and the infant democracy was not able to deal with armed sectarian leaders.

Problems in field command
After the Iraq War, major combat phase, field command had been given to LTG Ricardo Sanchez. There is little question that he was not given the resources even to begin a serious security, not much more that he and Bremer were co-equal and barely on speaking terms, and some argument that Sanchez was not the imaginative leader needed there, or that it was simply the wrong assignment for him and he would have done much better elsewhere. His headquarters, eventually called Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I) was not staffed to run a national campaign.

The Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke under Sanchez, and the four-star headquarters that should have been present all along, Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), was created under GEN George Casey. MNC-I went back to the tactical role for whic it was designed.

Casey was considered a thoughtful officer, better equipped by rank, experience, and personality to work the channels of power in the Army. Still, he was an essentially conventional officer with little grasp of counterinsurgency.

Not without difficulty, a sense arouse that then LTG-David Petraeus was the right MNF-I commander. As a division commander in Iraq, he had what was widely agreed as the most effective counterinsurgency campaign, which may have caused some resentment. In the Army culture, his doctorate in international relations may have been a detriment in some eyes, as was his ability to relate well to politicians and journalists. Ricks suggests that his extreme physical fitness may have been one of his saving graces; he was the only soldier ever to be first at both the Command and General Staff College and the Ranger School.

Petraeus also came from the wrong "mafia" in the Army. He was a "lightfighter" from airborne and light infantry troops, where Tommy Franks, Ricardo Sanchez, and David McKiernan were from the "heavy" side of mechanized infantry and tanks. From the standpoint of personality, he is demanding of all, including himself, and described as hard to know.

It was, however, his force of will that led Chief of Staff GEN Peter Schoomaker, himself from the light infantry side and special operations, to select him to take command in 2007.

Planning
It was a campaign, ordered by GEN David Petraeus, the senior commander of coalition forces in Iraq (Multi-National Force-Iraq) and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Planning was by a Joint Strategic Assessment Team led by COL Peter Mansoor, COL H. R. McMaster (U.S. Army) and David Pearce (U.S. State Department); David Kilcullen was a counterinsurgency adviser to Petraeus. Operational control would be under Multi-National Corps-Iraq, under LTG Ray Odierno, with tactical operations under a force built around the 3rd Infantry Division under MG Rick Lynch.

By treating the problem as population-centric, several axioms come into play:
 * "An insurgent enemy needs the people to act in certain ways"
 * "The enemy is fluid, but the population is fixed"
 * "Being fluid, the enemy can control his loss rate and therefore can never be eradicated by purely enemy-centric means."
 * "The enemy may not be identifiable, but the population is."

Implementation
American infantry in the Baghdad area, prior to the surge, tended to operate in larger units, often supporting Special Operations forces making raids on time-sensitive enemy targets. As the surge began, the emphasis changed to a combination of patrolling, often on foot, and manning security outposts among the population. The US troops partnered with Iraqis, both from the army and police, but also local tribal or other authorities.

Local security
Kilcullen, visiting the 1/325 Airborne battalion, said they had reduced their casualties since the start of 2007, because they were vulnerable to ambushes and IEDs while "commuting to the fight". When, for example, they were based in a police station, they could react to problems immediately, but also make it harder to infiltrate the Sunni areas in which the security forces were concentrated.

Outside Baghdad
Larger operations began in June, which Odierno called the true beginning of the surge. This was intended both to clear insurgent bases outside the city, and to support the local security operations within it. The MNC-I level campaign was designated Operation PHANTOM THUNDER.

When Lynch arrived in March, he identified four enemy sanctuaries, used by Sunni and Shiite insurgents, as well as al Qaeda in Iraq operatives. Once he had the troops"... we’ve got major operations across my battle space to disrupt those four sanctuaries,”

Detailed operations included:
 * Operation MARNE ANVIL, aimed at Shi'a extremists associated with Muqtada as-Sadr’s militia, Jaysh al-Mahdi, located east of Baghdad. October 2007 - November 2007;
 * Operation MARNE TORCH I: establish a presence on both sides of the Tigris River and disrupt AQI from moving improvised explosive devices into Baghdad
 * Operation MARNE PILEDRIVER, near Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, March 2008-April 2008
 * Operation MARNE DAUNTLESS, in the Mada'in Qada, east of Baghdad, May 2008 - June 2008

Evaluation and recommendations
Opinions of its effectiveness vary with the source. It clearly reduced violence, but the issue of whether Iraqi forces can sustain the security is an open issue, fraught with complexity, and sometimes viewed through an ideological prism. Nevertheless, it is an attempt to deal with a situation where there are no ideal options.

In January 2008, Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) termed the surge a failure.

Thomas Ricks said the American people have difficulty in understanding:
 * 1) "how difficult the surge was and how different it was from the previous four years of the war
 * 2) that the surge failed, judged on its own terms
 * 3) the war is not over. In fact, I suspect we might be only halfway through it, which is to say that President Obama’s war in Iraq may well be longer than George Bush’s war in Iraq, which was five years and ten months old when Bush left office."

Ricks also describes the surge as demonstrating a new humility in the US approach to the war. Emphasizing how much of a change it was, he said "With the advent of the surge, the Army effectively turned the war over to its internal dissidents." GEN Petraeus took command after being deeply involved in a writing a counterinsurgency manual, the guidelines of which were not followed in the first year of the war. Ricks says Ambassador Ryan Crocker "reveals in my book that he had essentially opposed the original invasion of Iraq."

What is the potential outcome? r said that "The best-case scenario is that Iraq isn’t going to look anything like a success to Americans. It’s not going to be democratic, it’s not going to be stable, and it’s not going to be pro-American. Ambassador Crocker predicts in the book that the future of Iraq is probably something like Lebanon today. Most of the other experts I’ve talked to consider that wildly optimistic."

In March 2009, House Republicans introduced a resolution, agreed to be symbolic, Its sponsor, Rep. Steve King(R-Iowa) "called it less of a criticism of Mr. Obama and more of an encouragement that he 'expand on the victory rather than walk away...Our military has achieved a definable victory, and I want to tell them that America appreciates them...They've left a legacy and it's up to the new leadership to preserve and enhance the victory they've achieved.'"

On a positive side, as of August 2009, US casualties were the lowest since the invasion, and the death toll for civilians dropped from July.