President Barack Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan has attracted bitter criticism both within and outside the military establishment in the US. Obama’s decision appears to commit the US to combat in perpetuity, so few are buying his 2015 timetable for withdrawal either. The Gamble, the inside story of an earlier “surge” in an even more intractable war in Iraq, suggests that the critics are right to be sceptical about US disengagement from the region for years, if not decades, to come.
The Iraqi surge in 2007 — when the US committed almost an identical number of additional troops — attracted far stronger criticism, not least because it had finally dawned on even the most hawkish legislators that the US had committed itself to an unnecessary war.
Ricks, a respected military commentator and author of a hard-hitting and influential critique of the Iraq war called Fiasco, shows that the surge, as it finally panned out, went far beyond a mere commitment of more boots on the ground. It also prompted a fundamental reassessment of US commitment in Iraq that could have lasting implications for future engagements elsewhere in the world. More so because its chief architect General David Patraeus, who now heads US Central Command, played a key role in the Afghanistan surge.
The jumping-off point for what turned out to be a radical new approach was the indiscriminate killing of 24 Iraqi civilians — including a six-month-old baby — at point-blank range in Haditha by a Marine platoon out for revenge after it lost a member to a road-side bomb. Coming on top of a growing number of reports of military atrocities, Abu Ghraib remains a potent symbol, the Haditha massacre represented an all-time low for the US military’s tarnished reputation in Iraq. Facts about US military practices and attitudes unearthed by follow-up investigations horrified even battle-hardened Vietnam veterans.
Haditha also proved a wake-up call for the hawks in the Beltway and the Pentagon. In that year, as Ricks points out, the US came close to losing the war in Iraq. Hemmed in by rising Shia-Sunni insurgency, an “elected” government that enthusiastically participated in the rivalry, the incompetence of Iraqi security troops and low morale, the US seemed headed the Vietnam way: stalemate. Ricks quoted a Marine infantry officer as saying, “The truth is that many commands in Iraq are no longer focused on winning but on CYA” — the initials stand for Cover Your Ass.
This pithy comment was a variation of an assessment that the Pentagon was making around end-2005, but as Ricks says, “the White House was in denial about the trend of the war”. The impulse for a strategic review came after former CIA Director Robert Gates replaced Rumsfeld as secretary of defence.
The group that shaped the revamped approach was a combination of academics and retired generals — some of them considered maverick by the establishment. Their approach was realistic: in place of lofty ideals of bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people, the focus now was on achieving sustainable security.
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Central to the new approach were two commanders who followed very different paths during their tours of duty in Iraq. One was Patraeus who commanded the 101st Airborne Division in 2003-04. He earned local respect for following a “hearts and minds” policy in Mosul in northern Iraq. It was no coincidence that his bailiwick was among the relatively more peaceful regions in those early days of brutal turbulence.
The other was Raymond Odierno, who earned notoriety during his first tour of duty as commander of the 4th Infantry Division, for the “shoot now, talk later” outlook that informed most military operations at the time. Yet, he later bucked the entire chain of command in Iraq to push through the kinder, gentler approach.
Winning “hearts and minds” became the kernel of the new military approach to Iraq; the new troops, thus, would be used more productively. It was based on the simple assumption that what the Iraqi people wanted, above all, was security. If the US could reassure them of this, they would play a more positive role in flushing out militants and creating a virtuous circle of sustainable security.
This required a major shift in the way US troops would operate. For one, they would no longer live on large, isolated bases but among the population, building relationships and assuring them of round-the-clock security. As Patraeus wrote in a detailed, itemised Counter-Insurgency Guidance: “You can’t commute to this fight. … Living among the people is essential to securing them and defeating the insurgents.”
A controversial aspect of Patraeus’ counter-insurgency strategy was his suggestion of striking deals with insurgents (mostly via sheer bribery) to promote peace. That the US achieved a modicum of success with the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr may have encouraged Obama to suggest talking to “moderate elements” within the Taliban.
The new counter-insurgency strategy did work in that incidents of violence fell significantly in the second half of 2007 and 2008. But given the upsurge in the second half of 2009, Ricks has been right to question its long-term utility.
Ricks is a thorough reporter with a strong sense of history and the ability to tell a good story, so the book is a page-turner. Importantly, he also manages to escape the classic reporter’s trap of writing “for his sources, by his sources”, to provide a well-judged assessment of the exercise. So, though it was Patraeus who provided him the bulk of the access to this untold story, Ricks’ writes, “In revising the US approach to the Iraq war, Patraeus found tactical success but not the clear political breakthrough that would have meant unambiguous strategic success. …Under Patraeus, the American goal of transforming Iraq had quietly been scaled down. But even his less ambitious target of sustainable security would remain elusive… .”
Ricks’ conclusion could well be prescient: “The events for which Iraq will be remembered probably have not yet happened.”
That could be true of Afghanistan too.
THE GAMBLE
Thomas E Ricks
Allen Lane
371 pages; Rs 495
