Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Okay, so it’s been almost six months since I’ve updated this thing, which means…I have a lot to say. I just won’t say it all now. I’d like to enjoy my first night of freedom after the semester ended. So, let’s talk about…Iraq. Hmm…now there’s a shocker.

General Petraeus is telling us to wait till September before we judge this troop surge. Funny…we’ve been told to wait before only to be told to wait again. Anyone else seeing a pattern here? We’ve got some serious problems in Iraq, and General Petraeus know it. He is, after all, the man who literally wrote the book on counter-insurgency.

The Army's counter-insurgency strategy, co-written by Gen. Petraeus (Army Field Manual 3-24 if anyone's interested) calls for 25 troops per every 1000 civilians to stabilize a country. For most of the Iraq War, we've been operating at 7:1000 (see Thomas Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century.)

Furthermore, FM 3-24 states that the military operations should only account for 20% of the activity in counter-insurgency done right. The other 80% should be economic and political reform, rebuilding infrastructure, etc. On this, we have screwed the pooch.

We've been told over and over again that we can't win the war on terror militarily, yet that's all we've tried. It's all we've tried because it's really all we have to try. Without adequate troop support to stabilize Iraq, none of these other things can happen.

In On War, Clausewitz said that the most important decision a commander or policy maker had to make was to determine the kind of war they were fighting and not try to make it something that it was not. From the beginning, the Bush administration tried to make the war in Iraq something it was not. It was never a war that could be won quickly and with a small number of troops. Rebuilding a country that has been so devastated by tyranny and despotism does not happen overnight, yet that is what they believed and tried to do.

Honestly, at this point, I'm not sure that the situation in Iraq will be any different if we leave five months from now or five years from now. Four years of mistakes and miscaluclations and porous borders may be too much for the military to overcome. The only way it could work would be to reimplement the draft, dramatically inflate the numbers of the mlitary and send another 200,000 troops to Iraq to do what it takes to secure the country. And we all know that won't happen. At this point, I think withdrawal is our only option if we want to reduce troop casualties.