In his contentious April 2008 testimony before Congress, Petreaus briefly referred to a chart titled "Anaconda Strategy versus al-Qaida in Iraq." The Anaconda Chart was a complex graphic that depicting the U.S. strategy for winning Iraq's intricate, multidimensional war.
It identified six lines of attack on al-Qaida: 1) Kinetics (which includes combat); 2) Politics (Iraqi political reconciliation was key); 3) Intelligence; 4) Detainee Ops (which includes counter-insurgency in detention facilities); 5) Non-Kinetics (education, jobs programs); and 6) Interagency. The "Interagency" line of operation included diplomacy and media operations. "Squeezing" al-Qaida in all dimensions was the big idea guiding Anaconda.
He concludes:
Afghanistan differs from Iraq. The U.S. has pursued a comprehensive, multidimensional strategy in Afghanistan, but trust Petraeus will vigorously pursue and energize Afghan Anaconda. Creating stability and wealth, however, takes time. President Barack Obama will have to exercise a skill he has yet to demonstrate: strategic patience.
Strategic patience. Indeed.
I perhaps foreshadowed McChrystal's self destruction over the Rolling Stone piece when I noted that the general was wrong to unload on a battalion commander for the pace of pacification. Buying time for the strategy to work, I stated, was not the battalion commander's job to address. Indeed, that was not McChrystal's job--it is the president's job and McChrystal could only tell the president what he needed (and perhaps not getting that led him to vent too openly).
Strategypage also highlights the quiet work our special forces are doing at the sharp end of the stick to exploit our presence with the bulk of our troops out in the villages and neighborhoods trying to protect the people (and avoid killing too many while they do that).
Strategic patience wouldn't do much good if our troops were too poor to kill the enemy while avoiding alienating the people who the enemy tries to hide behind. We have the troops--whether special forces or line Army and Marine Corps units--who can do the job.
But good troops won't do us much good alone either, since it takes time to win this type of war, without strategic patience from the top. Bush bought the time to win in Iraq despite the retreat caucus in Congress. Can Obama do the same? Does he even understand the need for such patience?
