The article argues that we could have begun the surge earlier, and even that we missed an opportunity in 2003 to work with the Sunni Arab tribes of western Iraq to end the insurgency:
As the insurgency began to develop in 2003, for example, a group of officers in the U.S. military's intelligence cell in Baghdad developed a plan to work with the Sunni tribes in the western province of Anbar that was never carried out. Col. Carol Stewart had met with a group of Anbari sheiks and devised a plan to bring them into the fold. The strife-ridden Ramadi and Fallujah areas would be designated a "tribal security zone." Tribal leaders would be authorized to police their own areas and given vehicles, ammunition, and money to pay their men, who would be dubbed the "Anbar Rangers." ...
The Red Team assumed that the only U.S. forces available were the ones that were already on hand, which meant that there was no way to blanket the country. So it proposed the concentration of forces in specific areas to effect a mini-surge. The command, for example, could use the beefed-up security for the upcoming December elections to establish an initial ink spot, perhaps in Baquba or in the Fallujah-Ramadi corridor. As more ink spots were created in 2006, they would be linked in a "Two Rivers campaign" to control the population centers along the Tigris and the Euphrates.
The article argues that our plan to transition to Iraqis fighting could not work out. But the plan itself was basic stuff and is exactly what I argued we were trying to do: to knock down the enemy while building up Iraqi forces to handle the reduced threat. Army Red Team analysts thought the Iraqi army was not good enough nor were we beating down the enemy enough for the Iraqis to handle. Whether we were executing COIN 101 is a valid question, but that was COIN 101.
But saying we "belatedly" adopted measures called for earlier misses that timing is important.
If we didn't work with the Fallujah tribes in 2003, we sure did in early 2004 during the dual Sadrist-Sunni Arab offensives. Remember when we called off the First Battle of Fallujah and empowered a Fallujah Brigade? Remember how that unit of "former" enemies failed to control the city and simply allowed the city to become an al Qaeda sanctuary that we had to take at great effort near the end of 2004?
The earlier work by the Red Team shows why I believed the change in focus was the more important part of the surge rather than the extra 5 brigades. Indeed, I worried that we were risking a faster loss of support at home by trying to win faster with extra troops. That worked out, but it was a risk. The Red Team assumed a three-year effort with existing forces. The 2007 surge broke the back of al Qaeda in Iraq in a single campaign.
It is also why I didn't think the last surge in Afghanistan was critical. Since we cut it short before the surge plan in Afghanistan could be carried out, we may yet regret that surge of forces if because of the extra effort we now lack the determination to win with the troops we have left there--troops sufficient to win in my opinion.
The surge in Iraq worked in 2007. This does not mean it would have worked in 2005 or even 2006.
By 2007, Sunni Arabs were finally willing to actually turn on the jihadis--who didn't do their worst until later in 2006--and work with us rather than just go through the motions as they did in 2004.
By 2007, the Iraqi armed forces had grown in size tremendously and gained valuable experience. Whether Iraq could have handled the missions in 2005 or 2006 is questionable.
Indeed, it took Sunni Arab barbarity to get most of the Shias to more fully side with us. [LINK UPDATED] Suspicions of our abandonment of them in 1991 were strong even as they were happy we drove out Saddam in 2003.
The surge worked. It was another phase of the war that we won. We had to win earlier phases to get to that point. "What-ifs" are an interesting parlor game for military history.
But what if a surge in 2005 or 2006 was premature? What if, lacking the cooperation of Sunni Arabs and lacking sufficient Iraqi troops of sufficient quality, we could not beat down the enemies? What if that failure had led to the United States Senate joining with the Democratic House to cut off funding rather than the Senate narrowly defeating that effort and thus ending the war in failure? Congress was very wobbly at the time, recall.
Still, by arguing that we could have won earlier, the article at least admits we won the war. Since we won in Iraq, I'd rather spend more time worrying about whether we can cement this win than in wondering if we could have won a year or two earlier.
