Petraeus and Odierno also realized early on that the insurgents could never be defeated the old-fashioned way. "You cannot kill your way out of an insurgency," Petraeus tells Time. "You're not going to defeat everybody out there. You have to turn them." And many of America's enemies were ripe for turning. Before the surge, elements of al-Qaeda in Anbar province were carrying out grisly atrocities against local Sunnis, including women and children, who refused to join the jihad against Americans. The Sunnis approached the Americans for help, and Petraeus was happy to oblige. The local uprising against al-Qaeda is known as the Anbar Awakening, and it gave the U.S. a model for turning local tribes, clans and whole neighborhoods against the insurgents.
Oh! So close to having a valid point. While details in the article are certainly useful, the idea implied that we were formerly trying to kill our way out of the insurgency is not true.
We were never trying to kill our way out of the insurgency. Since fall 2003, I was fine with turning over the fight to Iraqis who could win the war. We didn't need to kill the last terrorist. Further, I've made it clear that the key to winning was to support our friends, move those neutral into friend status, move those with the enemy into the neutral or friend status, and kill those who cannot be shifted out of the enemy column. I never go out of joint at the thought of amnesty when it was proposed several years ago. That's the traditional way of defeating insurgents.
Killing an insurgency consists of killing off the insurgents and the people who support them to crush the rebellion into angry but helpless passivity. But this is never a solution for very long unless you ethnically cleanse the area and move your own people in to settle the areas conquered (think Tibet, here).
For years we've been negotiating with Sunni Arabs to get them to defect. We never made a lot of progress despite repeated signs of some movement because too many Sunni Arabs believed they were destined to regain control of Iraq. And for a long time, jihadis were either seen as an ally or were too scary to defy. The Anbar Awakening began the movement in large numbers that the surge offensive exploited this trend and expanded it into the central Iraqi area. And the new strategy made it easier to kill off the threatening jihadis and protect the defectors from the wrath of the jihadis by using US forces in conjunction with Iraqi troops rather than relying solely on Iraqis. Another year of training and expanding the Iraqi security forces along with its greater experience was a great help as well.
We've always been trying to win the old-fashioned way. But new tactics and the development of ongoing trends combined to defeat the jihadis and move more Sunni Arabs into the friend or neutral columns.
Perhaps I'm being too hard on the authors. But even war supporters who claim we were losing and only now finally winning have missed the past success we've had to reach this point where we could pile on and go for victory. I guess this line of thinking is just annoying me more than usual.
