How did General David Petraeus' surge work?

Question

I wonder if there are details known as to what the strategy/tactics were for the the successful campaign. Is this "Patraeus" doctrine really his or was there some other mastermind? Did he just popularize the ideas? How excited are military experts about the current surge success in Iraq and the new strategy especially as a new tool against terrorism?

I did not mean it sarcastically at all. There is real talk about this being more the just a surge, but a strategy that is much more the a "wack-a-mole". I think someone with military knowlege could provide an interesting explanation. I would love to hear it. Kinda makes me think that the lessons of Vietnam actually lead to another advancement. I'm no expert, but I think the first Iraq invasion of the 90's also came from another brilliant campaign that put a lot of emphasis on air power. It seems that that campaign was fought quite differently then Vietnam and partly by shielding the troops from a lot of politics from Washington.

Dave M: I understand where you are coming from, but the Anbar province in particular was very trouble and no one expected to have such success there. Also, the politics in Iraq appear to be much better after the new strategy. Military success can do that.

By the way, it wasn't just a matter of just more troops. That would have never worked. Read up on the strategy. It is really interesting.

DriverAnderson: What is SAS? I am no historian and am repeating some of what I've been hearing. I don't mean to say that the strategy is so new that it was never tried before. But popularizing sometimes make people really listen up. I'm sure in a sense all strategies have been tried before. But I don't think Petraeus can be ignored after America has felt involvement in Vietnam so acutely.

Dr.John L: "Move On" doesn't really tell me anything about the military strategy. Petraus is a political problem for some, but what has happened in Iraq recently is difficult to ignore.

Answer 1

The concept is to destroy several insurgent safe havens in a given area, simultaneously. This prevents terrorists relocating their infrastructure from one to another. Also, unlike on previous occasions, we don't plan to leave these areas once they’re secured. These ops will run over months, and the key activity is to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them.

The really decisive activity will be police work, registration of the population and counterintelligence in these areas, to comb out the insurgent sleeper cells and political cells that have "gone quiet" as we moved in, but which will try to survive through the op and emerge later. This will take operational patience, and it will be intelligence-led, and Iraqi government-led. It has not made the news (the really important stuff rarely does) but it will be the truly decisive action.

"Clearing" an enemy safe haven, is not about destroying the enemy in it; it is rescuing the population in it from enemy intimidation. If we don't get every enemy cell in the initial operation, that's OK. The point of the operations is to lift the pall of fear from population groups that have been intimidated and exploited by terrorists to date, then win them over and work with them in partnership to clean out the cells that remain – as has happened in Al Anbar Province and can happen elsewhere in Iraq as well.

The "terrain" we are clearing is human terrain, not physical terrain. It is about marginalizing al Qa’ida, Shi’a extremist militias, and the other terrorist groups from the population they prey on. This is why claims that “80% of AQ leadership have fled” don’t overly disturb us: the aim is not to kill every last AQ leader, but rather to drive them off the population and keep them off, so that we can work with the community to prevent their return, ir if they return, to have made the population resistant to thier intimidation tactics.

This is not some sort of kind-hearted, soft approach, as some fire-breathing polemicists have claimed (strangely enough, those who urge us to “just kill more bad guys” usually do so from a safe distance). It is not about being “nice” to the population and hoping they will somehow see us as the “good guys” and stop supporting insurgents. On the contrary, it is based on a hard-headed recognition of certain basic facts:

(a.) The enemy needs the people to act in certain ways (sympathy, acquiescence, silence, reaction to provocation) in order to survive and further his strategy. Unless the population acts in these ways, both insurgents and terrorists will wither, and the cycle of provocation and backlash that drives the sectarian conflict in Iraq will fail.

(b.) The enemy is fluid, but the population is fixed. (The enemy is fluid because he has no permanent installations he needs to defend, and can always run away to fight another day. But the population is fixed, because people are tied to their homes, businesses, farms, tribal areas, relatives etc). Therefore—and this is the major change in our strategy this year—protecting and controlling the population is do-able, but destroying the enemy is not. We can drive him off from the population, then introduce local security forces, population control, and economic and political development, and thereby "hard-wire" the enemy out of the environment, preventing his return. But chasing enemy cells around the countryside is not only a waste of time, it is precisely the sort of action he wants to provoke us into. That’s why AQ cells leaving an area are not the main game—they are a distraction. We played the enemy’s game for too long: not any more. Now it is time for him to play our game.

(c.) Being fluid, the enemy can control his loss rate and therefore can never be eradicated by purely enemy-centric means: he can just go to ground if the pressure becomes too much. BUT, because he needs the population to act in certain ways in order to survive, we can asphyxiate him by cutting him off from the people. And he can't just "go quiet" to avoid that threat. He has either to come out of the woodwork, fight us and be destroyed, or stay quiet and accept permanent marginalization from his former population base. That puts him on the horns of a lethal dilemma. That's the intent here.

(d.) The enemy may not be identifiable, but the population is. In any given area in Iraq, there are multiple threat groups but only one, or sometimes two main local population groups. We could do (and have done, in the past) enormous damage to potential supporters, "destroying the haystack to find the needle", but we don't need to: we know who the population is that we need to protect, we know where they live, and we can protect them without unbearable disruption to their lives. And more to the point, we can help them protect themselves, with our forces and ISF in overwatch.

Of course, we still go after all the terrorist and extremist leaders we can target and find, and life has become increasingly “nasty, brutish, and short” for this crowd. But we realize that this is just a shaping activity in support of the main effort, which is securing the Iraqi people from the terrorists, extremist militias, and insurgents who need them to survive.

Is there a strategic risk involved in this series of operations? Absolutely. Nothing in war is risk-free. We have chosen to accept and manage this risk, primarily because a low-risk option simply will not get us the operational effects that the strategic situation demands. We have to play the hand we have been dealt as intelligently as possible, so we're doing what has to be done. It still might not work, but "it is what it is" at this point.

That's the theory. In practice, we are doing reasonably well and casualties have been lower so far. Last year we patrolled rarely, mainly in vehicles, and got hit almost every time we went out. Now we patrol all the time, on foot, by day and night with Iraqi units normally present as partners, and the chances of getting hit are much lower on each patrol. We are finally coming out of the "defensive crouch" with which we used to approach the environment, and it is starting to pay off.

It will be a long, hard summer, with much pain and loss to come, and things could still go either way. But the population-centric approach is the beginning of a process that aims to put the overall campaign onto a sustainable long-term footing. The politics of the matter then can be decisive, provided the Iraqis use the time we have bought for them to reach the essential accommodation. The Embassy and MNF-I continue to work on these issues at the highest levels but fundamentally, this is something that only Iraqis can resolve: our role is to provide an environment in which it becomes possible.

That requires yet more opeational patience. We are nto on our timetable in this regard, but the Iraqi government's, and that's a matter of political realities that are no different than the one's our own Congress faces. Politics is the art of compromise and "the possible." Thus far they've been unable to agree on such critical issues as oil revenue sharing, jsut as our own Congress has been unable to agree on, say, Immigration reform. Seems highly hypocritcal to criticize them.

All this may change. These are long-term operations: the enemy will adapt and we'll have to adjust what we're doing over time. Baq’ubah, Arab Jabour and the western operations are progressing well, and additional security measures in place in Baghdad have successfully tamped down some of the spill-over of violence from other places. The relatively muted response to the second Samarra bombing was evidence of this. Time will tell, though....

Answer 2

I recall back in 2004 that John Kerry (yes, John Kerry) was proposing moving more soldiers to Iraq, but it was not called a "surge" then. John McCain also became an advocate of this plan. It wasn't for 3 years that it was actually done. I don't know why, but John McCain and John Kerry are not taking any credit for the idea (probably because it isn't done yet, and could fail in the long run).

This is anything but a new strategy. It's been known since the dawn of war that you finish a war by occupying the territory, and the best way to do that is with boots on the ground. The problem was we didn't have enough boots on the ground, and now we might. This is also not a tool against terrorism, it is a tool against insurgent / guerrilla warfare.

Answer 3

Well of course if you have enough boots on the ground, you can supress whatever you need to. That was a no-brainer that Generals had been asking for since day one. The question is; What Now?? Do we keep the soldiers there forever? Will the powder keg just explode the second we scale back?
The fact that it took them 4 years to go ahead and do what two 12 year olds could have told you needed to be done from the beginning doesn't impress me much.

Answer 4

Everything is local. This model has been used before but. you are not a history major and would not clue it. Hint SAS Did just this activity and the Moslem Communists had to fold.

Answer 5

It didn't work at all. Its just that the shiite militias were able to consolidate their power and the minority sunnis were unable to continue their attacks to the degree previously.
Even so, the death rate of 1 soldier per day has been pretty consistent, and the car bombs continue.

Answer 6

That surge just warped and distorted the situation for a little while. With out a real functioning Iraq government you really have nothing.

Answer 7

Sending more troop hasn't accomplished any thing, just more deaths. His is Gen.Betraeus. The surge was just Bush's idea to contine the war and Petraus is his instrument.

Answer 8

gee, if sending 30,000 more troops into Iraq turned the tide

THEN

Bush and Rummy were wrong all along and THEY WERE TRYING TO DO IT ON THE CHEAP, COSTING 1000'S OF LIVES

OR

If what I suspect, the 30,000 troops have altered the plans of the warring factions and soon these factions will re-start. If you send 100 cops into a high crime area what happens? do all the criminals quit being criminals or do they simply re-locate and wait for the cops to leave?

Answer 9

Please explain to me how the surge worked. As far a I know, elevated numbers of troops are still there. Therefore, the surge is still on.

In order to claim that it worked, we have to remember what it was supposedly supposed to do. Officially, it was to give the Iraqis more time to set up a government and military and police forces. They have not done that yet to the extent that we can leave. Therefore, the "surge" is not finished by your government's own admission.

Oh, and by the way, if you meant that the surge worked to funnel even more money (Billions) into the hands of the war profiteers, then yes, it worked. But that's exactly what the Liberals said would happen, so that wouldn't humiliate us.

Answer 10

It's the Whack-A-Mole game. More troops on the ground, less places for the moles to pop up without getting hammered.