Former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld point this out and also points out that those who want a "repeat surge" in Afghanistan don't even understand what the surge in Iraq was or why it worked when it did:
I believe that while the surge has been effective in Iraq, we must also recognize the conditions that made it successful. President Bush’s bold decision to deploy additional troops to support a broader counterinsurgency strategy of securing and protecting the Iraqi people was clearly the right decision. More important, though, it was the right decision at the right time.
Rumsfeld points out that the 2007 surge was actually the third surge of US forces. And he points out that by the time the third surge began, the Iraqi Sunnis had gotten tired of war; that we had killed large numbers of jihadis and Baathists; that the Iraqi security forces increased in quantity and quality; and that Sadr was neutralized as a major force.
I wrote about this timing aspect just as our surge kicked into high geat in July 2007:
Consider that the success we are having relies on the government having sufficient trained forces to help us, relies on the Sunni Arabs knowing they can't win and getting sick of the jihadis and their death threats, and relies on the Shias getting sick of the violence and not supporting Sadr and his Iranian sponsors in numbers sufficient to be a threat.
If we had surged troops and changed to a strategy of directly protecting the people of Iraq rather than trying to be the spearhead, could this have worked a year ago? Or two years ago? ...
We've gone through many phases of this war. We are in another phase which calls for new approaches and we have embarked upon a new course to fit the new situation. Just because this phase now calls for the methods we have adopted doesn't mean those methods were right for the past.
If a surge wouldn't work in Iraq except when conditions were right, why do you think that a surge is appropriate for Afghanistan now?
