By Its Own Standards, The “Surge” Failed
If you really move the goal posts, defining up “success” as the Surge having not only reduced levels of violence and addressed immediate drivers of conflict but having also managed to fix all the problems in Iraq’s political process, then yeah, it failed. But I don’t recall that ever being the aim of the operation in 2007, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the U.S. military and its friends in the diplomatic corps to be able to settle the political affairs of a host nation. ~Abu Muqawama
That’s a bit of hyperbole on his part, which is necessary for his objection to hold up. No one claims that the “surge” was ever supposed to “fix all the problems in Iraq’s political process.” However, it was supposed to facilitate political reconciliation, and by Bush’s own standards a plan that did not include political reconciliation on major points of contention would not be a successful one. It was not the critics of the plan who put these measures of success in place–it was the authors of the plan.
Fortunately, we don’t need to rely on anyone’s memory for this. We can refer to Bush’s January 10, 2007 address to the nation, and we can review the White House’s “fact sheet” that summarizes the “key elements of the new approach.” In his address, Bush said:
A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.
What were these? Bush continued:
To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq’s provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend 10 billion dollars of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation’s political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq’s constitution.
One or two of these have occurred, but the rest remain elusive. As I wrote in my TAC column in December of 2007:
The Washington Post declared in an editorial, “By every metric used to measure the war, there has been an enormous improvement since January.” Every metric, that is, unless you include measures of rebuilt and functioning infrastructure, political progress, or public opinion—all of which are as vital to success
as physical security.
Some of the political elements that the previous administration considered “key” to their “new approach” were these:
Strengthen the rule of law and combat corruption.
Build on security gains to foster local and national political accommodations.
Make Iraqi institutions even-handed, serving all of Iraq’s communities on an impartial basis.
Is anyone going to argue seriously that there has been significant progress on any of these “key elements”? These are political elements of the plan that the administration itself emphasized as essential, and I don’t think anyone can say that the goals have been reached. There are other political elements listed on the “fact sheet” that are still neglected over three years later. If anyone wants to separate the security gains that have occurred in part because of the additional brigades present in Iraq during 2007-08 from all of the other stated goals of the plan, he is free to do so, but it is absurd to say that it is not credible to judge the success of the plan according to the standards set up by the administration that proposed it.
11 Responses to “By Its Own Standards, The “Surge” Failed”
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“I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the U.S. military and its friends in the diplomatic corps to be able to settle the political affairs of a host nation.”
Once again, the Iraqis have failed to live up to the high hopes we had for them when we destroyed their country. And, *host nation*? Is that the term foreign policy experts are using these days to mean “invadee”? Did Iraq lobby to be the venue for this war, beating out Helsinki and Lake Placid, NY?
Abu Mook is a perfect target, thanks. The whole CNAS academic-military complex could provide plenty of material. I suspect he’s unconsciously blocking out the political goals of the surge from his memory, as many others supporting any part of the Iraq War have done. He was working at WINEP at the time, so he has plenty of colleagues to help him with this convenient forgetting.
I’ve long since given up any hope of having an honest national security intellectual movement; it’s more subject to special interest capture than anything else, as far as I can tell.
Even in an allegedly liberal website, one would have to spend a lot of time looking for the posters discussing the fraudulent nature of that war.
The shifting of standards for judging the success of the Surge, which you correctly point out, are merely a repetition of the constantly changing justifications for going to war against Iraq in the first place. Was it Iraq’s possession of WMDs, Iraq’s ties to Al Queda, or the compelling need to overthrow a brutal dictator and establish democracy in that part of the world?
Btw we seem to be applying the same tactics of the Surge in Afghanistan, including a liberal disbursement of cash to win the “hearts and minds” of the Afghans. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/world/asia/04marja.html?hpw Unfortunately, many of those recipients may be Taliban (there is no way to tell—they are Afghans after all) who are using the money to pay for IEDs. A classic case of history repeating itself, the second time as farce. What is truly ironic is that Obama, who opposed the Surge in Iraq and never did concede its “success,” has now embraced the tactic he once scorned, apparently not realizing that the two situations are substantially different. The one difference is that we are now, apparently, in full propaganda mode and creating “cities,” like Marja, that had not previously been shown on any maps. http://www.alternet.org/world/145971/marjah%3A_the_non-existent_city_the_military_said_we_conquered_in_afghanistan
In 2003, we could have paid off tribal leaders and war lords, got out and hoped for another Egypt at worst.
Now 7 years and a trillion dollars later, we are paying off tribal leaders and war lords, getting out and hoping for another Egypt at worst.
Comparing the relative opportunity costs, the Surge failed miserably.
Like the “duty to protect” types, the CNAS crew is if anything far more dangerous than the PNAC crowd, because they share the same basic goals and assumptions, but do a good job of appearing thoughtful and nuanced rather than depraved and militaristic. I prefer my jingo intellectuals to be straight up buffoons.
Lots of good points here, “another Egypt” is a great comparison with one caveat. Egypt surrounds the Suez Canal (and controls the only non-Israeli Gaza entry), Afghanistan has about 20 miles of railways in the whole country. Calling Afghanistan “land-locked” is generous, it’s terrible-road-locked.
tbraton’s comment prompted me to remember that Exum was a member of the almost all-civilian-and-all-COINista Gen. McChrystal / Petraeus study group brought in to craft the new Afghan policy. That gives him another reason to forget the strategery involved in the surge. Hat tip on both my comments to Wikipedia.
I once read somewhere that any idiot can engage military conflict. The trick is in disengaging. We are still blundering through the engage side of the equation.
Success is always around the corner, a few days, weeks, months, years more. In the meanwhile our politics absorbs the status quo. The expression “Fog of War” applies even more to the sustaining politics than it does to what happens on the battlefronts. There is always some excuse, some new justification, some new war aim that only serve to ensure that the war’s profits centers continue to gorge at the public trough.
It is pretty clear by now that Obama has neither the stature, experience, or oomph needed to get us out of this mess and he signaled all of this by sticking with Gates at DoD. Worse, he crippled himself with Gates. Now he has to fire Gates before he even begins to find out where he actually is, and after finding out where he is, he still won’t have the experience to decide what needs to be done, and maybe not the oomph either. Firing Gates would nevertheless be a start, and is a sine qua non.
Surges are merely historical milestones to mark where the can got kicked down the road.
“In 2003, we could have paid off tribal leaders and war lords, got out and hoped for another Egypt at worst.”
You raise a very good point, although it is not clear whether you are referring to Iraq or Afghanistan. There are two important aspects to getting involved in any war. One, should you go to war in the first place, and, two, is there “a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell_Doctrine Most of the talk here and elsewhere has focused on the first point and neglected the second.
The two situations differ. We had a justification for going to war with Afghanistan because of its connection to 9/11 and its harboring of Al Queda. Despite all the criticism directed his way, Donald Rumsfeld actually fashioned a light footprint that succeeded in overthrowing the Taliban. Victory was secured at very low cost and little loss of American life. The mistake in Afghanistan was that we did not simply declare victory and pull our troops out. We had and still have no vital national security interests in Afghanistan that justified our prolonged presence, and the notion that we could transform that backward culture into some semblance of a modern state was pure fantasy from the start. We are now fighting on one side of what is essentially a civil war and still haven’t fashioned a suitable exit strategy. Maybe we should follow Karzai’s suggestion and join forces with the Taliban.
Iraq is different in that we had no justification in going to war against Saddam Hussein in the first place since he had no connection to 9/11 and no ties to Al Queda. Still, we were able to overthrow Saddam’s regime with a comparatively small force and minimal loss of American life. The problem is that our small force was based on our quickly exiting Iraq. Continued effective occupation would have required the much larger force advocated by Gen. Shinsecki. Of course, completely disbanding the Iraqi army was a colossal blunder that prevented our effectuating a quick departure.
But, in both instances, it was the initial failure to design a plausible exit strategy that turned bad situations into disasters, as you pointed out.
Re: tbraton
I was referring to Iraq. Forecasting an eventual Mubarak like autocrat in Iraq back in 2003 was easy. I mean the great Islamic Arc is chock full of archetypes.
Afghanistan unfortunately was a primitive narco-state before we got there, is a primitive narco-state now, and will be a primitive narco-state after we have withdrawn.
The most ridiculous arguments being tossed out by members of the militarist Right like nitwit Oliver North, is that the Afghanis are growing opium on the command of the Taliban. As if they will suddenly switch to farming sunflowers if the Taliban were not present.
“The one difference is that we are now, apparently, in full propaganda mode and creating “cities,” like Marja, that had not previously been shown on any maps. http://www.alternet.org/world/145971/marjah%3A_the_non-existent_city_the_military_said_we_conquered_in_afghanistan”
As supporting evidence of my claim that U.S. military is engaging in propaganda by creating “cities” like Marja that had not previously appeared on any map, I cite the following detailed map of Helmand Province prepared in 2005 for the Defence Ministry of the U.K.
http://www.operations.mod.uk/mapping/images/HelmandProvince.jpg
By scrolling down and looking on the right, one can locate the capital of Helmand Province, Lashkar Gah. You will see to the west of Lashkar Gah, where Marja is supposed to be located, there is nothing but blank space. Yet, to the north of Lashkar Gah, you will see clearly marked the town of Now Zad, with a population of 30,000. Just to west of Lashkar Gah, you can see Nad Ali, which is described as simply a “bazaar.” And we are supposed to believe that they missed the “city” of 80-85,000 called Marja which appears nowhere on the map?