Efforts to stop IEDs by targeting the insurgent networks that finance, build and plant the bombs showed results only after the Bush administration adopted a broader counterinsurgency strategy this year — and sent 30,000 more troops to Iraq to support it.
But a USA TODAY investigation shows that the strategy now used to defeat the bombmaking networks and stabilize Iraq was ignored or rejected for years by key decision-makers. As early as 2004, when roadside bombs already were killing scores of troops, a top military consultant invited to address two dozen generals offered a "strategic alternative" for beating the insurgency and IEDs.
That plan and others mirroring the counterinsurgency blueprint that the Pentagon now hails as a success were pitched repeatedly in memos and presentations during the following two years, at meetings that included then-Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The core of the strategy: Clear insurgents from key areas and provide security to win over Iraqis, who would respond by helping U.S. forces break IED networks and defeat the insurgency.
That leap of logic is wrong. It may ultimately be a correct judgment, but just as likely it is all wrong. Just as invading Normandy and driving into the heart of the Reich was a good strategy in June 1944, such a strategy in June 1942 or June 1943 would have spelled an Allied disaster and quite possibly led to German victory in World War II. And if done in 1945, we might have been met by Russian troops twenty miles inland. Timing is everything.
Consider that after the surge we believe the correct strategy for Iraq is to turn over fighting duties to Iraqis gradually, yet before the surge we can see that Iraqis were not capable of doing the exact same mission. If turning over fighting to Iraqis in 2008 and 2009 is right, does it mean doing the exact same thing in 2006 and 2007 would have been right? Obviously not since we had to use the surge strategy to get us to where we are today.
Consider further that our war effort hung by the thread of a few votes in the Senate that halted the Congresisonal retreat long enough for our new strategy to bring evidence of victory. Could the additional casualties we would have suffered in a different environment that may not have produced the same results that we are seeing now have made the difference in those critical summer votes?
Victor Hanson writes about our expectations of war and the judgments of mistakes:
By the same token, for every purported blunder in Iraq, there is at least an understandable reason why errors occurred in the context of human imperfection, emotion, and fear. Such considerations do not mitigate the enormity of military mistakes, but they should foster understanding of how and why they occur. Such recognition might lend humility to critics and wisdom to the perpetrators—and prepare us to accept and deal with similar human fallibility in the future. So shoot looters—and CNN immediately would have libeled the occupation forces as recycled Saddamites. Level Fallujah—and Iraqis would have compared us to the Soviets in Afghanistan. Had we kept together the Republican Guard—if that were even possible—charges of perpetuating the agents of Saddam's genocidal regime would have followed, with unfavorable contrasts to our successful de-Nazification program after World War II. Granted, there were not enough American troops to close borders, monitor ammunition depots, and maintain order. But as a result, there were enough deployed elsewhere to discourage trouble in the Korean peninsula, reassure Europe and Japan of our material commitment to their security, fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, help keep order in the Balkans, and man dozens of bases worldwide.
While it would be wrong to say we are merely at the next point in a well thought our plan, it is probably far more accurate to say that we are applying the right strategy now and this success has been built on the foundation of past success in different environments.
Perhaps we made a mistake in not applying the surge strategy earlier. But since we are winning now, I wouldn't want to go back in time and rerun the war with that change. The important thing is that I have always accepted that we cannot fight a war perfectly. The trend has been good in the big picture despite fluctuations that could make a particular month or week look like defeat. And I have wanted to win and believed we deserved to win this war. Hanson concludes:
[We must] reestablish our national wartime objective as victory, a goal that brings with it the acceptance of tragic errors as well as appreciation of heroic and brilliant conduct.
As long as we win this war, going over the what-might-have-beens will be as entertaining as it is for World War II decisions. Just win and I won't mind all the books that will assure us we could have won better or faster if the author's chosen course of action had been taken.
