[Rhodes22-list] AQ a Terror Threat?

[Brad Haslett]

Slim,

Great story!  I'm a little short on time this morning or I'd tell the story
about a friend of mine who got arrested in uniform at the MEM airport
shortly after 9/11.  As he was being led away in cuffs the 'security' person
scolded him, "bein' a pilot at de airport don' mean shit no mo'."  Richard
Reid, the shoe bomber, was delayed a day because the ticket agent, a former
El Al employee, profiled him.  The French let him fly the next day and the
only reason he wasn't successful was that the ignitor for his shoe took on
too much moisture (it was raining in Paris that day).  The AQ threat is
still out there.  The flying Imans incident and the lawsuit that followed in
your town was an attempt to use PC to open opportunities.  There are smarter
ways to go about Homeland security but we'll have to overcome our PC
addiction and make more use of technology, biometrics at the passenger
terminal for one.

Attached is Fred Kagan's latest on Iraq.  The press is giving little
coverage to current events and our 'leaders' in the Congress from the great
nation of Incumbantstan are too busy watching the polls and their
re-election campaign fund to make any real analysis.

Brad

   Understanding General Petraeus's Strategy
Testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
by Frederick W. Kagan
06/27/2007 10:00:00 AM


*Testimony delivered by Frederick W. Kagan, resident scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute, to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on
Wednesday, June 27, 2007.*

American military forces in Iraq are now entering the second phase of their
kinetic operations even as political efforts continue on a separate but
linked track. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus are in the
midst of a multi-faceted program that will not proceed in a linear way and
will not generate clear and consistent metrics in all of its phases. The
early signs are positive in a number of respects, although difficulties and
challenges clearly remain. But it is too soon to evaluate the outcome of an
operation that is just moving into the first of several phases intended to
produce significant positive change in the situation overall.

It is now beyond question that the Bush Administration pursued a flawed
approach to the war in Iraq from 2003 to 2007. That approach relied on
keeping the American troop presence in Iraq as small as possible, pushing
unprepared Iraqi Security Forces into the lead too rapidly, and using
political progress as the principal means of bringing the violence under
control. In other words, it is an approach similar to the one proposed by
the ISG and by some who are now pushing for political benchmarks and the
rapid drawdown of American forces as the keys to success in the war. It is
no more likely to work now than it was then. Political progress is something
that follows the establishment of security, not something that causes it.
The sorts of political compromises that Iraq's parties must make are
extraordinarily difficult--one might even say impossible--in the context of
uncontrolled terrorism and sectarian violence. And the Iraqi Security
Forces, although significantly better than they were this time last year,
are still too small and insufficiently capable to *establish* security on
their own or even to maintain it in difficult and contested areas without
significant continuing coalition support.

For all of these reasons, the president changed his strategy profoundly in
January 2007, and appointed a new commander in General Petraeus and a new
Ambassador in Ryan Crocker to oversee the new approach. This new approach
focuses on establishing security in Baghdad and its immediate environs as
the prerequisite for political progress. It recognizes that American forces
must be in the lead in many (but not all) areas, and that they will have to
remain in areas that have been cleared for some time in order to ensure that
security becomes permanent. The aim of the security strategy is to buy space
and time for the political process in Iraq to work, and for the Iraqi
Security Forces to mature and grow to the point where they can maintain the
dramatically improved security situation our forces will have helped them to
establish.

The scale of the problem required an increase in American forces in Iraq,
which the president ordered in January, of around 40% (from the equivalent
of 15 brigade combat teams to more than 21). It also required a multi-phased
approach on both the military and the political side of the equation, which
has been begun.

The first phase began on January 10th with the announcement of the new
strategy and the beginning of the movement of the 5 additional Army brigades
and Marine elements into the theater. That deployment process was only
completed at the beginning of this month--in fact, critical enablers for
those combat forces are still arriving in theater. As the new units entered
Iraq, the U.S. military commanders began pushing those that were already in
the theater forward from their operating bases into Joint Security Stations
and Combat Outposts in key neighborhoods in Baghdad and elsewhere. The
purpose of these movements was not to clear-and-hold--the units present in
theater were not sufficient in numbers to conduct such operations. The
purpose was instead to establish positions within those key areas and to
develop both intelligence about the enemy and trust relationships with the
local communities that would make possible decisive clear-and-hold
operations subsequently. During this phase of the operation, additional
Iraqi Security Forces deployed to Baghdad in accord with a plan developed
jointly by the U.S. and Iraqi military commands. All of the requested units
appeared in the first Iraqi Army rotation, and the Iraqi military has just
completed its second rotation of units into Baghdad--again, all designated
units arrived, and their fill levels were generally higher than in the first
rotation.

Generals Petraeus and Odierno did not allocate the majority of the new
combat power they received to Baghdad. Only 2 of the additional Army
brigades went into the city. The other 3 Army brigades and the equivalent of
a Marine regiment were deployed into the areas around Baghdad that our
generals call the "Baghdad belts," including Baqubah in Diyala province. The
purpose of this deployment was not to clear-and-hold those areas, but to
make possible the second phase of the operation that began on June 15. The
purpose of this operation--Phantom Thunder--is to disrupt terrorist and
militia networks and bases outside of Baghdad that have been feeding the
violence within the city. Most of the car bomb and suicide bomb networks
that have been supporting the al Qaeda surge since January are based in
these belt areas, and American commanders have rightly recognized that they
cannot establish stable security in the capital without disrupting these
networks and their bases.

But even this operation--the largest coordinated combat operation the U.S.
has undertaken since the invasion in 2003--is not the decisive phase of the
current strategy. It is an operation designed to set the preconditions for a
successful clear-and-hold operation that will probably begin in late July or
early August within Baghdad itself. That is the operation that is designed
to bring security to Iraq's capital in a lasting way that will create the
space for political progress that we all desire.

The U.S. has not undertaken a multi-phased operation on such a large scale
since 2003, and it is not surprising therefore that many commentators have
become confused about how to evaluate what is going on and how to report it.
Sectarian deaths in Baghdad dropped significantly as soon as the new
strategy was announced in January, and remain at less than half their former
levels. Spectacular attacks rose as al Qaeda conducted a counter-surge of
its own, but have recently begun falling again. Violence is down
tremendously in Anbar province, where the Sunni tribes have turned against
al Qaeda and are actively cooperating with U.S. forces for the first time.
This process has spread from Anbar into Babil, Salah-ad-Din, and even Diyala
provinces, and echoes of it have even spread into one of the worst
neighborhoods in Baghdad--Ameriyah, formerly an al Qaeda stronghold.
Violence has risen naturally in areas that the enemy had long controlled but
in which U.S. forces are now actively fighting for the first time in many
years, and the downward spiral in Diyala that began in mid-2006 continued
(which is not surprising, since the Baghdad Security Plan does not aim to
establish security in Diyala).

All of these trends are positive. The growing skill and determination of the
Iraqi Army units fighting alongside Americans is also positive. Some Iraqi
Police units have also fought well. Others have displayed sectarian
tendencies and participated in sectarian actions. Political progress has
been very slow--something that has clearly disappointed many who hoped for
an immediate turnaround, but that is not surprising for those who always
believed that it would follow, not precede or accompany, the establishment
of security at least in Baghdad. And negative sectarian actors within the
Iraqi Government continue to resist making necessary compromises with former
foes. Overall, the basic trends are rather better than could have been
expected of the operation so far, primarily because of the unanticipated
stunning success in Anbar and its spread. But it remains far too early to
offer any meaningful evaluation of the progress of an operation whose
decisive phases are only just beginning.

To say that the current plan has failed is simply incorrect. It might fail,
of course, as any military/political plan might fail. Indications on the
military side strongly suggest that success--in the form of dramatically
reduced violence by the end of this year--is quite likely. Indications on
the political side are more mixed, but are also less meaningful at this
early stage before security has been established.

Great commanders in history have understood two critical truths: the
situation in war is constantly changing, and decisions must take that change
into account--and, therefore, that it is best to delay decisions until the
last possible moment to ensure that they are made on the basis of the most
recent and accurate understanding of the situation, rather than on
preconceptions formed in different circumstances. The situation in Iraq is
very different today from what it was in January 2007, to say nothing of
November 2006. It will be very different in September, and still more
different in December of this year. It would be a great error to attempt to
decide now upon the strategy to pursue when the current plan has actually
been implemented, because we cannot now predict what the situation will be
then with any confidence or accuracy. And it would be a very grave error
indeed to rush now to abandon the first strategy that offers some real
prospect for success in favor of a return to an approach that has already
failed repeatedly.
*

--Frederick W. Kagan
*


On 6/28/07, Steven Alm <stevenalm at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I moved to MD in 1980 driving a 1969 Dodge van.  It had MN plates with
> expired stickers so I just tore the stickers off and planned to play dumb
> if
> I got stopped.  And I did.  The cop said he thought MN required stickers
> and
> kinda scratched my head and said, "Dunno.  Never done it before."
>
> He went back to his cruiser for a few minutes and came back said his
> computer was broken down so he couldn't check.  So off I went on my merry
> way.  Next I had to grease the palm of the guy at the inspection shop to
> get
> him to pass my old van held together with bailing wire and various
> jury-rigged light switches.
>
> Pardon the rambling but this was funny:  The break light switch under the
> break pedal was shot and no longer available so I by-passed the old switch
> and ran wires up the steering column and out onto the three-on-the-tree
> shift lever.  There I mounted a SPST momentary throw switch which turned
> on
> the break lights.  When stopping, I always had my hand on the shifter
> anyway
> so when I stepped on the breaks I also through the switch with my thumb.
> When the inspector asked what the switch was for I said it was for an old
> horn that I don't have anymore.  I through the switch a few times while he
> looked closely at it and didn't hear any horn.  When he walked around
> checking the lights, he called out, "Break Lights!"  I didn't even push
> the
> pedal, I just thumbed the switch and passed.
>
> I never did change my driver's license because I was only there for the
> school year.
>
> Slim
>
> On 6/27/07, Robert Skinner <robert at squirrelhaven.com> wrote:
> >
> > Mary Lou Troy wrote:
> > > What? you didn't bring the bill or piece of mail with your local
> > > address on it or was it some other frivolous bit of info? Because we
> > > have such a long drive to Easton, we brought lots of paper with us
> > > and I don't remember what I actually needed. I do remember that with
> > > the vehicles it cost me a lot more than in PA.
> > -----------------------------------------------------
> > I also migrated from PA to MD about 20 years ago,
> > and even then, the tariff for bringing in a vehicle
> > was outrageous.
> > /Robert
> > __________________________________________________
> > Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
> >
> __________________________________________________
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