Marketing a Myth: How John McCain Actually Got The Surge Wrong
By Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard Jr. (USA, Ret.)
To hear John McCain tell it, you’d think the fall-off in American casualties in Iraq is due solely to his foresight and foreign policy experience. It’s amazing to me just how many people have bought the McCain line, even those who should know better. “As we now know nearly four years later,” a Newsweek commentator recently noted, “McCain was dead on in his analysis of what went wrong in Iraq … McCain was so right that, among military experts today, the emerging conventional wisdom about Bush’s current ‘surge’ is that if had occurred back then — when McCain wanted it and the political will existed in this country to support it for the necessary number of years — it might well have succeeded.”
What a bunch of bunk.
Since the beginning of this year, military experts that I’ve talked with argue that the fall-off in violence in Iraq had very little to do with the increase in American troop levels — and everything to do with actually talking with and supporting the previous insurgents. Recent published reports confirm that talks with the insurgents began all the way back in December of 2003, when military officers met with Sunni insurgent leaders in Amman, Jordan. Not only that, but when those talks were actually opposed by the administration, the military went ahead with the talks anyway.
But don’t take my word for it, go back and read what General David Petraeus told the Congress in April of 2007, before the surge was actually in place. Back then, Patraeus told the Congress that the levels of violence in Iraq were down significantly and that “the tribes” were the key to that transformation. Let me repeat that: recruiting the Sunni tribes (and not the surge) has been the key to success in Iraq, along with the stand-down of the Mahdi Army. Patraeus is not alone in his thinking. The tribes of Anbar joined U.S. forces, according to U.S. Captain Jay McGee — an intelligence officer with the 69th Armored Regiment — because “everyone is convinced Coalition forces are going to leave and they are saying, ‘We do not want Al Qaeda to take control of the area when that happens.”
This isn’t exactly new information. Dozens of American newspapers and magazines have documented how the military recruited Iraq’s Sunni tribes as our allies — the same tribes that had once been fighting us. And all of this began before the U.S. increased the number of troops in the country. So let’s stop taking John McCain’s claim, his myth, at face value. The increase in American troops in Iraq had almost nothing to do with defeating the Iraqi insurgency and everything to do with actually talking with them. To claim otherwise is to market a myth and it’s time for John McCain to acknowledge it — to give credit where credit is due: to those fine officers of our military who decided to talk, even as the administration continued to beat the war drums.
This really needs to get out.
I have been saying this for sometime. In fact, just for the record, it was the drum beat of Obama, Clinton, and the other democrats along with the polls that showed that American’s were full of this war that lead Iraqis to began taking their country back.
It was truly an unstated timetable that moved them to began to work to defeat Al-Qaeda.
This began to occur long before the surge.
Thank you for your service and your commitment to this country!
Please do everything you can to get this to the main media, who seem bent on believing every campaign claim McCain makes.
So, deducing from your post and General Gard’s commentary, Just For The Record, we, the American people are to assume that McCain was unforgiveably wrong on his opinion of the surge, and that “Obama, Clinton, and the other democrats along with the polls…” were right in their drum beat for peace?
An additional question for you here, Just For The Record:
If in fact “Obama, Clinton, and the other democrats…” were correct in their assessment suggesting that the Iraq War is increasingly unwarranted, and that a collective American emotional weariness with the conflict is in large responsible for an Iraqi “take-back” of the country, how does that same opinion square with the fact that a shockingly large number of prominent Democrats–the Clintons, Bill Richardson, John Kerry, Al Gore, Madeline Albright and a host of others–have variously pronounced that they emphatically endorsed action against Iraq and Saddam Hussein as early as 1992, and indeed through the course of the ensuing ten years?
Indeed if, as you and General Gard suggest, “…[A drawdown in violence] began to occur long before the surge,” how does your suggestion square with the four-year collective liberal claim that, between 2003 and the opening of the surge, violence in Iraq rose rather than diminished?
Sad fact is, someone besides McCain sure has a lot of ’splaining to do regarding the surge, Lucy. Democrats, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too, as someone famous reportedly said.
See also Nir Rosen’s “The Myth of the Surge”, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18722376/the_myth_of_the_surge/1.
Just as the very people whose negligence & incompetence was such a factor on 9/11 obscenely sell themselves as the “national security” party, so they sell “The Surge” as if an increase in troops was the key to decreased violence. In fact, after his predecessors had triggered the Sunni insurgency with arrogant & ill-advised policies (see Thomas Ricks’ “Fiasco”), Gen. Petraeus wisely conceded to the reasonable demands of Sunni tribal authorities, armed them and paid them off. Before the additional troops had even arrived, violence dropped off for that reason.
It’s time for Democratic politicians to call this “victory” what it actually was- Bush’s surrender to the Sunni insurgency after having unnecessarily sparked it in the first place.
To Robert Leibold:
Robert, I don’t see any conflict between saying the level of violence rose after 2003 and up to the surge. Let me say it this way; desperation attacks were bound to occur as al Qaeda in Iraq as well the the Sunnis who were still hold outs reacted. I don’t believe we can say that all Sunnis went along with their chieftans escpecially when those chieftans were always in danger of being killed and or intimidated.
Violence rose until those chieftans conviced their followers and allies that theirs was the best way to proceed and protect their interests and their families. Now when you move the equasion to Baghdad and the south you have different equasions. Much of the violence there was due to dueling factions and until the cleansing of those factions took place, the violence levels (which went into the total numbers) rose also.
I think you have to look at Iraq not as just three sections, but maybe four or more. You have the Kurdish region which is pretty autonomous, the Sunni areas, Baghdad which was a mixture and the south which is predominently Shia.
Violence up before it went down, sure.
McCain not only got the surge wrong, but he also changed the context, just as Bush/Cheney have done for 7 years. The so-called surge was intended to provide the security basis for the Iraqis, who could then come to internal agreements on a variety of topics, including the distribution of oil revenues. Just as the rationale for the invasion kept changing, as each Bush justification fell by the wayside, now we see the identical ruse used to describe the purpose of the surge.
Those of us who spent time watching senior officers and the civilian leadership waste our men and treasure in Nam, and repeat the waste in Iraq, want nothing to do with someone who is willing to throw away more lives to justify the lives already lost. Even Nixon was forced to negotiate, and I want someone who is at least willing to negotiate.
Does anyone see McCain as a negotiator?
Robert Leibold
I believe there was a problem Kuwait was invaded by Iraq and I believe it was thirty one nations said Iraq must stop this aggression. Forward to 2003 the invasion of Iraq was a mistake we had a war on one front and did not have the forces to fight on two fronts. The war we needed to fight was in Afghanistan not Iraq. I still think that Iraq had more to do with Bush getting even for the plan to kill daddy Bush a war of personal revenge. Then we had a surge of troops this would naturally reduce the violence in those areas. Without the Sunnis turning on Al-Qaeda we would have had the success we enjoyed.
Here’s the reason for the lessening of violence in Baghdad and Anbar:
1. The surge worked, or better yet, the phrase “The surge worked” worked.
2. The escalation of troops in Baghdad helped divide the city into racial and ethnic enclaves using twenty foot tall concrete barriers in order to quell the Shia on Sunni on Shia ethnic clensing.
2a. The ethnic cleansing worked.
3. The Anbar Awakening which not only used talking with tribal leaders to turn them against al Qaeda in Iraq, but the Army also supplied duffelbags full of $$$ to former insurgents and promises for more if they stop the fighting and back the US. Cha-Ching. Payola.
4. But the main effort that did more to lessen violence than any other came form Muqtada al Sadr who called a cease-fire and halted his 30,000 member Mahdi Army.
Let us not forget either that McCain was one of those who argued in favor of far fewer troops in the early phases of the war when General Shinseki advised that many more would be necessary. The idea that by flying a few bombing missions over North Vietnam and spending several years as a prisoner of war gives him some insight into how to achieve victory is as ridiculous as it is fallacious.
Iraq has had 5 years of ethnic cleansing. This has reduced violence, as the militias have fewer targets in their neighborhoods. Also, the 20-foot barriers make it harder to shoot into other neighborhoods. In spite of these obstacles, about 100 civilians a month are being killed.
The war created 4 million refugees. If we were close to some sort of victory, those 4 million refugees would be back in their homes in Iraq.
I recall Saigon in the late 60s. When we were in Saigon, we didn’t wear flak jackets and we didn’t have to carry weapons. Electricity and running water were available 24/7. When we are close to victory, Baghdad should be close to the same level of service that Saigon had on its worst day.