Woodward On The Success Of The Surge

Bob Woodward explains that the surge was just one of four factors that led to the reduction in violence.  However, since the other three were clearly tied in to the surge, we are not utterly convinced that he is giving proper weight to Bush's decision to commit more troops and change our tactics:

In Washington, conventional wisdom translated these events into a simple view: The surge had worked. But the full story was more complicated. At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge. These factors either have not been reported publicly or have received less attention than the influx of troops.

Beginning in the late spring of 2007, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies launched a series of top-secret operations that enabled them to locate, target and kill key individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias, or so-called special groups. The operations incorporated some of the most highly classified techniques and information in the U.S. government.

"Late spring of 2007" follows the announcement of the surge and our new, more aggressive approach.

A second important factor in the lessening of violence was the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had made a strategic mistake in the province, overplaying its hand. Its members had performed forced marriages with women from local tribes, taken over hospitals, used mosques for beheading operations, mortared playgrounds and executed citizens, leaving headless bodies with signs that read, "Don't remove this body or the same thing will happen to you." The sheer brutality eroded much of the local support for al-Qaeda in Iraq.

For months, U.S. forces worked with tribal leaders, who had once fought the Americans, to build local security forces throughout Anbar. "We are the ones who saved our country," Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, whose slain younger brother first allied himself with U.S. forces and who now serves as president of the Iraqi Awakening Council, said in an interview. "We were able to fight al-Qaeda."

Bush noted the Anbar Awakening in his Jan 2007 speech announcing the surge and expressed his intention of reinforcing and expanding on the Awakening, so it is fair to say that the surge and the Awakening are not separate.

A third significant break came Aug. 29, when militant Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his powerful Mahdi Army to suspend operations, including attacks against U.S. troops. Petraeus and others knew it was not an act of charity. The order followed a gunfight between the Mahdi Army and Iraqi forces in the holy city of Karbala, during which more than 50 Shia pilgrims gathering for an annual festival had been killed and another 275 wounded. Sadr's order marked an unexpected stroke of good luck, another in a series for the Americans.

Good luck that the Mahdi Army did not want to embarrass a Shiite-led government or tangle with US forces?  Just good luck that Iraqi public opinion favored the government security forces in their battle with the Mahdi Army?  It had been a US goal to help create a government with a bit of legitimacy and popular support (hence the elections), but I suppose luck played a part.

The Administration response id duly noted:

On Friday, Stephen J. Hadley, the president's national security adviser, issued a statement about the news report, asserting that the surge of troops was the most important because it "enabled" the other three. Hadley wrote, "It was the surge that provided more resources and a security context to support newly developed techniques and operations."

Works for me.

Comments

[kim]

Good Golly, everyone neglects the fatwah against violence midwived by the Anglican cleric and promulgated by the leaders of all the major religious parties in Iraq in late August of 2007. Sistani stopped this war through sheer spiritual authority.

Late August last year was when I announced that the War in Iraq was over; also, that the globe was cooling. I haven't been as good since.
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[kim]

Sadr defied the fatwah, and he hasn't been as good since.
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[Charlie (Colorado)]

Anglican cleric?

Like Episcopalian Anglican?

[kim]

Yep, Charlie, I'll go look for his name. Maybe Young?
=========================

[kim]

Canon Andrew White. Utterly unsung; huge hero.
===============

[Barry Dauphin]

If that's the best Woodward has to offer, the publisher should demand the advance back. No one has talked about the Anbar Awakening????? (which is what he's trying to say by using the mealy-mouthed "received less attention"). Sadr stood down because of... threats from Woodward & Bernstein? I guess Bob was too busy writing to...you know...like read the papers and watch TV.

[agene]

Woolsey says the war is okay and we have TIA. He caught Plame on her trip to French speaking world. Spectre and Reid want another investigation into who outed CIA operations officers Matthews and Olbermann. Maybe just Matthews he and Val and Joe all have a similar past. Maybe it's the shield law. Maybe it's Abrams movie and 'Burn After Reading or just LIES'

Woodward works for CSIS out of Toronto.

[agene]

http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=3100

[chip]

"Sadr's order marked an unexpected stroke of good luck, another in a series for the Americans."

Good luck?

I flunk this paper for lack of intellectual rigor.

[kim]

Yeah, chip, no insight into the background; he makes it sound like a bolt from the blue. Frankly, that's idiocy; where did this guy get his reputation. Oh yeah, Mark Felt, the you fill in the blank
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[paul]

woodward sees things linearly, and ignores pace...

a hypothetical:

if the us sends 100k addtional forces, or if the un doesn't get bombed out launching a larger scale peacekeeping mission, the genral assumption would have been that the civil war would have not occurred, or at least would have been dimished.

I wonder what woodward would make of the following contentions:

an increase in force prevents the influx of foreign fighters from getting a foothold, the sunnis are never exposed and victimized by an outside agent, and turn their focus on either escalting the civil war, or arming up for the eventual departure of the us forces, NEVER participating in govt.

this is not a defense of the bush strategy(?), so much as it is a question of making the point that order and the call for it, are a product of chaos.

as bad as things got, it made people far more willing to deal as a nation than had they never experienced life on the brink.

i would suggest woodward consider the butterfly effect, as one of his alternate solutions that should have been aprent to the bush admin, would not have guaranteed that other elements of Iraqi hisotry would have changed.

without 'poor' security, the Biden plan of confederation was an actual possiblity. Had the UN enetered, it would have been their wish to confederate as well, to expedite the matter.

[paul]

caught woodward on larry king...

very kind to condi...made her out to be one of the people screaming 'baghdad's on fire'.

[MAJ (P) John]

"Sadr's order marked an unexpected stroke of good luck, another in a series for the Americans."

Yeah. Pure luck. Nothing to do with trying to preserve a position that was becoming ever more precarious with a public that was starting to understand the JAM were naught but thugs, an ISF that was growing stronger, and the Coalition who was pressing them from several angles.

But then again the "powerful" JAM did win in Basrah, Sadr City and Al Amarah....oh, wait a minute...

[paul]

another point about alternate realities-

the us goes after sadr early and takes him out. The movement and sentiment he represents splits into a 100 diffrent components, with 100 different leaders.

under the 'watching the eggs in one basket' theory, monitoring and tracking the sadr organization was far more prefrable to dealing with scattered pockets, waxing and waning.

I understand the rummy/cheney sentiment in regards to increasing troops-

start a kid swimming with water wings, and he'll never learn to swim, and freak out when you take them from him. throw them in a lake and they learn to swim a hell of a lot faster...

the passiveness and slow response that woodward finds troubling, may actually be the cause of our success.

[Mustang0302]

MAJ(P) John:

Congratulations! Whose silver leaf will you get to pin on first? Got a wetting down planned?

Great to see you here, be safe.

Semper Fi, and thanks.

[xerocky]

Wait a second, you mean that they targeted and killed America's foes? How dare they?

[xerocky]

"Sadr's order marked an unexpected stroke of good luck, another in a series for the Americans. "

Good luck= dumb luck and I get the feeling that Woodward is shit scared to outright say anything more positive about Bush. When I watched the CBS 60min about this, I came away with the feeling that for once Bush trusted his own instincts, and went with what he knew he had to do. Which I think should be appreciated.

After 8 years of non stop "Bush is stupid" from the press, it should be noted that when he stood up to Cheney and fired Rummy without even talking to Dick, Bush started the trend that would change the ultimate direction of the war. Kudos to him for that.
I also like the last thing that the 60min piece leaves you with, basically Bush saying " don't lose this" or something to that effect. Because you know what they (CBS) begrudgingly had to say in so many words: The surge worked, Bush is not a complete moron, Obama was/is wrong about the surge. God bless the United States.

Ok, that last part was mine.

[east one]

woodwards book caused a stir with the iraqis by saying the u.s. spied on maliki. now they want an investigation. nothing like stirring the pot. somehow i missed the death of commonsense and critical thinking.

[Barry Dauphin]

Bush tells Casey that we're not playing for a tie, Casey gets indignant and stays indignant. He becomes Woodward's go-to guy. Yet, good-bye, Casey = hello, victory. It's funny how those things work.

[narciso]

Let's put this in words, even Joe Biden, can understand; there was no Civil War. There was only the reaction to the Sunni tribes and Salafi/Wahhabis 'farhud' against
the Shia, which they thought blowing the Golden Mosque in Samarra would do. It was really more in the character of the post war 'epuration' against Vichy collaborators.
It was Zarquawi's last step to implement what Zawahiri suggested in the intercepted letters. However, the subtlety exhibited by
the Salafi; eventually wore on the hospitality of the Dulaimi chiefs as well as those in Salahuddin and points west. The
Ambar Awakening arose from that, while the
press screamed civil war (MSNBC & McClatchy
yelling the most)Ultimately, it was that action that forced local forces to give up
Zarquawi; which Zawahiri 'pinch hitted' by
sending his understudy Egyptian Ayub Al Masri, who dialed things up to eleven. He had worn out their welcome, the inkcloud over Haditha, generated by Taliban flak McGuirk; along with the atrocious actions of Pfc. Green (who was the model for DePalma's flashback)and the backlash directed against Menchaca & Tucker, by another foreigner the late Al Tunissi; which might have been done, inorder to provoke another reaction; obscured the
progress of the Awakening and Petraeus's application of the entire counterinsurgency strategy. Woodward is typical of the view
that would have declared failure after the
Battle of the Bulge or Operation Market Garden.

I defer to the late and all too soon departed Ambassador Hume Horan; the Shia expert and Wahhabi foe, who thought Sadr should have been forced from the scene ASAP. However the fact, that he would have been the 3rd member of a leading Shia clan
to be martyred; along with the impact of
the 'dissapearance' of his kinsman Musa Sadr; who led to the rise of Hezbollah that gives me pose.

[JM Hanes]

Someone should put Woodward and Doug Feith on the tube together.

[paul]

My initial rxn to the title and woodward's interviews seemed to lead mr to believe that the "War Within" was a dismantling of Bush/Cheney for failing to recognize that the strategy needed to change.

after additional reading, it now seems that the war within, is more about Bush/Cheney fighting with the joint chiefs on how to proceed with the war.

The libs will get off to a fast start, emphasizing the failure of Bush to heed his commanders in the joint chiefs, but the implication is that Bush AND Cheney were doing an end around to get Petraus' strategy up and running.

Woodward is setting the hook, that the dems are going to swallow, providing the issues that dems want to hear in interviews, but the meat of the book seems to be a blessing.

haven't read it, but I will.

[matt]

from the Civil War to Vietnam to Iraq it seems it takes leadership @ 2 years to gain the operational advantage. Peter Mansoor's book outlined a lot of these issues which we faced early on in the follow up to the capture of Baghdad. Too few troops on the ground, inadequate engagement with the Iraqi cultural/political elite such as it was immediately after the war ended, a CPA that was not fully engaged, and all sorts of neer do wells, all with shifting agendas and alliances.Iraq is probably one of the most fractious cultures on earth, so it shouldn't be surprising.

The same can be said about our government's response so many times. Generals replaced, strategies altered until a winning formula is found. Every time we go to war, this happens.

Most analyses agreed that we needed up to 500,000 troops to properly accomplish the mission, but this would have put even further pressure on the military globally. The CPA came up zeros, which was another major factor. Someone should have tightened security of the oil sector immediately; stopped the corruption, and taken all of thet money and put it into reconstruction. Even that was not done. I always wondered if anyone in high places read anything on the Marshall Plan. It does not seem they did.

All that being said, the progress is heartening. Woodward, Bush, Rumsfeld, Bremer, Powell, Casey etc all had a Beltway mentality. I suggest we move the seat of government to Pierre, SD so that they can focus on what is important instead of playing the political game.

[kim]

Duckhunting?
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[Elliott]

Okay, I think I have finally figured it out: Obama doesn't want his true devotees to see his O'Reilly interview, hence Olbermann.

Has he become the first candidate to counter-program himself? If so, it is truly a vicious smear to say that the new politics is just more of the same.

[sophy]

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