bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2009) — Spring 2009 // Printemps 2009, pp. 17–19
THE GAMBLE: GENERAL DAVID
PETRAEUS AND THE AMERICAN
MILITARY ADVENTURE IN IRAQ,
2006-2008, by Thomas E. Ricks, The
Penguin Press, New York, 2009, 394 pp,
$31.00.
Books dealing with military strategy or even military tactics are usually the work of retired generals who, in the softly glowing afterlife from the battlefields, update the records and correct historical judgements. These form their own literary genre and library shelves groan from their weight and importance.
Even the ancient Rigveda, without dates, documents the military strategy employed in the Battle of the Ten Kings in today’s Punjab.
Innumerable writers ever since have added to the tradition and their views, ranging from Sun Tzu to Caesar to Mahan to Clausewitz, continue to influence those charged with the most important of state functions. All too often the old aphorism “generals are always fighting the last war” has greater currency than warfare requires. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, even after the disastrous Battle of the Somme, continued for years to emphasize the value of the horse.
It is not surprising in the age of 24-hour news and the interconnectivity of global security, that waiting for such “afterlives” is not tolerable and there is a need for greater instance. Nowhere is that needed more than in Iraq and now in Afghanistan. Much has been written about the errors of American military strategy in the first phase of the Iraq war. Thomas Ricks, the Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, in an earlier book (Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq) had much to say on the matter. Now in his new book The Gamble, he returns, starting when the fiasco was at its most profound.
In his opening paragraph “Things Fall Apart (Fall 2005),’ Ricks details the killing of Iraqi civilians by American Marines in Haditha; and out of that disaster he creates the point around which the book revolves. It is Ricks’ conviction that the disaster at Haditha was a product of American strategy and assumptions underpinning the war, and forced serious generals and commentators to accept that they were on the road to perdition unless changes were made. Ricks writes:
“What happened that day in Haditha was the disturbing but logical culmination of the shortsighted and misguided approach the U.S. Military took in invading and occupying Iraq from 2003 to 2006: Protect yourself at all costs, focus on attaching the enemy, and treat the Iraqi civilians as the playing field on which the contest occurs.”
He goes on quoting in part a counterinsurgency expert:
“Marines were ‘chasing the insurgents around the Euphrates Valley while leaving the population unguarded and exposed to insurgent terrorism and coercion.’ This bankrupt approach was rooted in the dominant American military tradition that tends to view war only as battles between conventional forces of different states. The American tradition also tends to neglect the lesson, learned repeatedly in dozens of twentieth century wars, that the way to defeat an insurgency campaign is not to attack the enemy but instead to protect and win over the people.”
These quotes from The Gamble provide the central thesis of the book. For the remaining pages, Ricks recounts the story in great detail of how a few retired generals and specifically General David Petraeus took on the daunting task of changing the political assumptions underpinning the American invasion and rewriting the American military orthodoxy on how to fight counterinsurgency wars. The retired generals, some of whom had served in Iraq, were the sparks that began the legitimatization of the questioning of the ideologues around President Bush, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Ricks, in detailing these sparks, demonstrates that the existing uniformed leadership of the military were clearly out of their depth and unprepared to counter the paucity of knowledge and sagacity among the ideologues who formed the civilian leadership and directed the war.
The media offensive by retired officers began in March 2006 and was initially ignored or downplayed by the civilian leadership. Rumsfeld and the President were the rocks against which the criticism deflected. Both were intensely and ideologically wedded to the existing approach and were incapable of recognizing that they were swimming in a whirlpool. In one telling anecdote by a participant in a meeting with the President, Ricks reports:
“The president would say, ‘Get this done, and leave the room,” he recalled.
“And then Rumsfeld would start squabbling with Condi — ‘We’re not gonna secure your PRT!’ — a reference to the State Department-led Provincial Reconstruction Teams that were at the heart of the strategy of rebuilding the economy of Iraq from the bottom up in order to improve security and so eventually reduce the American military presence. His [the participant] thought on Rumsfeld at that point, he said, was, ‘Well, you fucking idiot, that’s your ticket out of Iraq.”
As for the President when asked about Rumsfeld, he gave his standard Brownian response, “He’s doing a fine job.” He then picks up on another of his own psychological crutches, “… I’m the decider, and I decide what is best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.” Ricks’ comment is that Rumsfeld lasted another seven months in office but does not mention it was not his discredited strategy that ended his time in office but the Republican disaster in the 2006 Congressional elections.
The bulk of Ricks’ book details the work General Petraeus directed in rewriting American military doctrine in counterinsurgency wars and his assumption of command of American forces in Iraq. Earlier, Petraeus was commander of the 101st Airborne in Iraq and later (after another tour in Iraq) was appointed commander of the American Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas. It was not an assignment he welcomed, but “Under his command, Leavenworth would become the starting point for a new approach in the war that would involve making peace with the tribes of Iraq.”
Petraeus is frequently described as an “intellectual” and in the best tradition of the word, he surrounded himself with a rich brew of advisers.
Early in his Leavenworth command he convened a meeting not only of military officers “but also representatives from the CIA and the State Department, academics, human rights advocates, even a select group of high profile journalists.” As Ricks comments, “It was instantly clear that this wasn’t going to be the standard Army manual written by two tired majors labor-ing in a basement somewhere in Fort Leavenworth.” Ottawa’s recent efforts to craft foreign policy might take a page from Petraeus’ book.
Central to these advisors was a trio of outsiders who would normally not be allowed within sight of a manual rewriting exercise. First was a “quirky” Australian infantryman with a Ph.D. in the anthropology of Islamic extremism, Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, who had earlier written an essay “Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency.” It was a breezy take-off on the “Twenty-Seven Articles” written by Lawrence of Arabia in 1917 on how to fight in the Middle East. A second outsider was Emma Sky, an antimilitary Brit with deep expertise and experience on the Middle East. The third was a Mennonite-educated Palestinian pacifist, Sadi Othman. They and numerous others who subscribed to Petraeus’ approach fundamentally rewrote American counterinsurgency doctrine.
The new doctrine was published towards the end of 2006 and had “two striking aspects: It was both a devastating critique of the conduct of the Iraq war and an outline of the approach Petraeus might take there if ever given the chance. In political terms, it amounted to a party platform, the party in this case being the dissidents who thought the Army was on the path to defeat in Iraq if it didn’t change its approach.” It was all those things, but in its content it was largely an orthodox document reflecting the experience of others over the past 50 years in fighting insurgencies in all parts of the world. Its main points were:
e An operation that kills five insurgents is
counter-productive if collateral damage leads to the recruitment of 50 more
insurgents.
e If military forces remain in their
compounds they lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared, and
cede the initiative to the insurgents.
* Often insurgents carry out a terrorist act or guerrilla raid with the primary purpose of enticing counterinsurgents to overreact. e Treat detainees professionally and publi-
cize their treatment.
e At no time can soldiers and Marines
detain family members or close associates to compel suspected insurgents to
surrender or provide information. e Have local forces mirror the enemy, not
US Forces.
e Remember, small is beautiful.
The new doctrine found widespread support within the military leadership, largely due to endorsement by the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, and the ultimate accolade of appointing Petraeus as the new American commander in Iraq and giving him responsibility for its implementation. The most public manifestation of these far-reaching changes was the debate about increasing American troop levels — the Surge — to support the change in strategy.
In large measure the changing of the strategy and increasing the crew were helped by a very significant development in Iraq that Ricks argues was very much an American initiative. The jury is still out on the origins of the initiative but there is no doubt that the decision by a majority of the Sunni tribes in Anbar province to switch sides and support the Americans was a fortitudinous stroke of circumstance. These changes in tribal affiliations as much as the changes in strategy led to the steep decline both in American casualties and the overall level of violence, and for the first time since the start of the war provided a large measure of hope for a better future.
The long-term significance of the Sunni tribal affiliation changes is unknown.
However, what is known is that these tribes es Representative
6-5959 OTTAWA REALTY LTD. @sympatico.ca INDEPENDENT MEMBER BROKERAGE www.IsmeneWood.ca which were central to Saddam’s power were not inconsequential players and their, initially, self-imposed withdrawal from Iraqi politics was an aberration. Their decision to reengage was supported by millions of American dollars and the creation of the Awakening Councils and associated militias could be an event where the law of unintended consequence will have opportunity to flower. While the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad understands full well that these militias are a counter to their own, and while past confessional/ ethnic negotiations were difficult, an army of over 100,000 Sunnis will ensure even greater difficulty in the future.
Ricks is completely right to end his book on a pessimistic note. American military strategy is important but only in a temporal sense. While the war to date can be classified as a counterinsurgency it does not presage the future course of events. Ricks’ inventory of issues in Iraq — Mogtada al-Sadr, the well-armed Shia leader, the role of Iran, the Shia-dominated military, the Awakening militias, the Kurds — are more than enough to give the wise pause. In the words of a former American ambassador, “I think [what is going to happen in Iraq] is going to be determined much more by what happens from now on than what’s happened up to now.”
In this telling of the American war in Iraq very little is said about Afghanistan. However, the portents are already there. General Petraeus is now the commander of Central Command which includes Afghanistan; the Afghan insurgency is as intense today as the war in Iraq was in 2005—06 and the surge in additional troops (mainly American) is underway. There are signs that the war in Afghanistan will be waged on the basis of the recent experience in Iraq irrespective of the fit. Generals and the fighting of the last war is a syndrome that is not easily overcome. At this time (March 2009) there is no reason to believe Afghanistan will yield to even the temporary respite now evident in Iraq, based on a change in strategy and the increase in troops. Alexander, Kipling and, in the end the Russians, understood, but it will take a few more years for the Americans, NATO and Canadians to learn the bitter lesson again.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2009) — Spring 2009 // Printemps 2009, pp. 17–19. Read the rest of this issue →
