I’ve been wanting to post about this for ages.
Back in February, The Daily Show (best show ever! :) interviewed Thomas Ricks (which you can see here - recommended), the respected Washington Post war correspondent, about his new book “The Gamble” about Iraq and ‘the surge’. Ricks is also the author of “Fiasco”, a 2006 book on the Iraq War, and in the interview he said Generals and others on either side of the political fence were asking him to sign copies of his book, because they thought this was finally someone who understood what was going on.
If you’re interested in the history of the Iraq war, as opposed to sound bites like “The surge is working!” then Ricks seems to be the current authority on the state of play, including the rise of General Petraeus (who he is a big fan of) and the new strategy he helped forge in US military circles.
Also of interest is the Aussie in the middle of US military counter-insurgency policy. From the glowing LA Times feature on the book:
[Petraeus’] most important counter-insurgency aide, for example, has been an Australian, David Kilcullen, son of a noted medievalist. Deeply experienced as well as learned, he has a doctorate in the anthropology of Islamic fundamentalism. He’s also apparently possessed of that instinctive Aussie irreverence for authority and consequent frankness.
The LA Times calls the book ‘gripping and brilliantly reported ... contemporary history of a vivid and urgent sort,’ and describes it as follows:
Essentially, this is the story of two insurgencies: One is that of the Iraqis and the Islamists who flocked there after the American invasion; the other has to do with the small number of dissident U.S. officers (of whom Gen. David H. Petraeus was the most prominent), retired officers (particularly Gen. Jack Keane), military historians and conservative defense intellectuals centered on the American Enterprise Institute who mounted a guerrilla campaign to make the Bush administration confront its mistakes and adopt an effective counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq.
We know that strategy as “the surge,” and, in essence, it was a distillation of the counter-insurgency lessons that had been learned in every such conflict from postwar Malaya and Algeria through Vietnam. An insurgent, as Mao pointed out, must “swim like a fish in the sea of the people.” To fight him, Keane, Petraeus and their allies—like AEI’s Fred Kaplan—would successfully argue to the White House, U.S. forces would have to do the same. It all worked, though, as Ricks carefully points out, in a limited way: The surge staved off defeat, but it did not achieve anything like victory in any sense in which we conventionally understand the word.
There’s some great comments in the Daily Show interview - eg two of Petraeus’ most important advisors are pacifists, and ambassador Crocker thinks the most important events to occur in the Iraq conflict are yet to happen.
It’s interesting to get a liberal American perspective on the book, enter Salon.com:
Democrats fought the surge and the surge—sort of—won. Now what do we do in Iraq?
Back when I was regularly writing about Iraq and talking about it on television, I read everything the Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks wrote about the war. From his devastating book “Fiasco” to his daily reporting from Baghdad and the Pentagon, Ricks was the nation’s top expert on the folly of the U.S. mission in Iraq, from inept prewar planning to postwar execution to a botched occupation that led the U.S. to the brink of defeat without its leadership having a clue how bad things really were.
Imagine my surprise, and also perhaps Ricks’, to find his new book, “The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq 2006-2008,” telling an admiring, often inspiring story of the way the American military came back from humiliation thanks to the so-called surge, which so many Democrats, myself included, passionately opposed. If you enjoyed “Fiasco,” thrilled to have your prejudices about the clueless Bush administration confirmed, it’s your responsibility to read “The Gamble” to have some prejudices challenged. In “Fiasco” decisions are made by knaves and buffoons like Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq reconstruction czar L. Paul Bremer and Iraq’s first commander, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez; in “The Gamble,” the action is dominated by men Ricks respects, like retired Gen. Jack Keane, along with David Petraeus and his deputy, Gen. Raymond Odierno.
Ricks shows how the three military leaders ran their own insurgent campaign to get control of the disastrous war as it spiraled out of control in 2006. According to Ricks, liberals weren’t the only ones appalled by Abu Ghraib, the massacres at Haditha and Mahmoudiya, and abusive interrogation practices all over Iraq. War critics within the military were likewise galvanized by those abuses, Ricks says, at least partly because they saw firsthand the ways American cruelty widened the anti-American insurgency. In a near-complete strategic turnaround, surge adherents argued that the way to victory was not killing as many Iraqis as possible but protecting them, building alliances by respecting Iraqi culture and religion.
[...]
Ricks seems to surprise himself, at the end of the book, by concluding the U.S. needs to stay. “Even as security improved in Iraq in 2008, I found myself consistently saddened by the war, not just by its obvious costs to Iraqis and Americans, but also by the incompetence and profligacy with which the Bush administration conducted much of it. Yet I also came to believe that we can’t leave.”
The author disagrees about the need to stay, but it’s a fascinating review in any case.
Finally, on the Amazon.com page for the book, there’s a Q&A with Ricks:
I think there are two big misunderstandings about the surge. The first is that the surge “worked.” Yes, it did, in that it improved security. But it was meant to do more than that. It was supposed to create a breathing space in which Iraqi political leaders could move forward. In fact, as General Odierno says in the book, some used the elbow room to move backward. The bottom line is that none of the basic problems facing Iraq have been addressed—the relationship between Shia, Sunni and Kurds, or who leads the Shias, or the status of the disputed city of Kirkuk, or the sharing of oil revenue.
The second misunderstanding is just how difficult the surge was. People back here seem to think that 30,000 troops were added and everything calmed down. In fact, the first six months of the surge, from January through early July 2007, were the toughest months of the war. When troops moved out of their big bases and into little outposts across Baghdad, they got hammered by bombs and rockets. It took some time before being among the people began to lead to improved security, and during that time, a lot of top American officials in Iraq weren’t sure the new approach was working. General Petraeus says in the book that he looks back on that time as a “horrific nightmare.”
Fascinating stuff, though it’s disturbing how little of this has been reported around our parts. More at the Washington Post which has a whole section dedicated to it.
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On the topic of war and the so-called ‘War on Terror,’ what the hell is happening in Pakistan?
It must be the most concerning security situation at the moment. The war in Afghanistan (now 8 years old!) has driven the Taliban into the tribal areas, radicalized the Pashtun tribes, and then they have happily pushed into nuclear-armed Pakistan, and appear to be taking over large chunks of territory.
The politically weak Pakistani president - currently facing a bitter stoush with opposition political forces and other groups - has openly said the Taliban are trying to take over and they are fighting ‘for the survival of Pakistan.’
Ironically the Pakistani’s have seen the Taliban as a useful buffer with India, but the blow-back from the support of the Taliban historically from US against the soviets, and from the Pakistani military establishment seems to be very severe.
Dateline had an excellent story on it a couple of weeks ago, by 23 y/o aussie video journalist Sophie McNeil (who is my new personal hero - traveling to the Pakistani tribal areas is not for the faint of heart!) called “The Battle for Pakistan”.
Crazy stuff, the US is bogged down and facing a severe recession, and more than 8 years after 9/11 the long term security situation only looks worse.
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