In deriding the Brookings Institution's hosting of an Iraq policy briefing that will include Frederick Kagan presenting the American Enterprise Institute's call for escalating troop levels in Iraq, the usually level-headed Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo labels this plan as the one truly nutball idea about what to do in Iraq. Unfortunately, such rhetoric is not nearly good enough, because the AEI plan is not a nutball idea -- truly.
First let's briefly review what Kagan is going to be talking about; from the Brookings press release:
The war in Iraq has reached a critical juncture. With the mission faltering, popular and Congressional pressure on the administration to redefine US objectives and commit to reducing troop numbers in Iraq is growing. This approach has taken on added impetus with the recent release of the Baker-Hamilton report, whose suggestions parallel public opinion. In contrast, a group led by Frederick Kagan under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute has recently released a study proposing a radically new approach for stabilizing Iraq, titled Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq. The report proposes shifting the focus of the American military from training Iraqi forces to securing the Iraqi population and containing the escalating violence and increasing American combat forces in Iraq by roughly 30,000 troops. The report lays out why the AEI team believes such an increase would be useful and sustainable for the American military over the long-term.
Kagan and the AEI did not conjure this plan out of thin air. On the contrary, the plan closely follows the recommendations of the newly released DoD Counterinsurgency Field Manual. One of the persons largely responsible for this new manual, FM 3-24, is General David Petraeus. Petraeus currently oversees the training and education of Army officers at Fort Leavenworth, is on the short list to replace General Abizaid at the head of Central Command after Abizaid's just announced retirement, previously commanded the 101st Airborne in Iraq, and headed the effort to train Iraqi security forces. While in Iraq, Petraeus was responsible for some of the few successes in Iraq, articulating and pursuing the approach to counterinsurgency that was also followed by Colonel H. R. McMaster in Tal Afar when he commanded the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. The contrast of that approach (now a part of doctrine in FM 3-24) with the failed counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq was succinctly summed up by Tal Afar veteran, Major Jack McLaughlin:
There are two ways to do counterinsurgency. You can come in, cordon off a city, and level it, à la Falluja. Or you can come in, get to know the city, the culture, establish relationships with the people, and then you can go in and eliminate individuals instead of whole city blocks.
As reported by George Packer in his excellent New Yorker article entitled The Lesson of Tal Afar, and as followed up last month in the Washington Post, the counterinsurgency effort in Tal Afar, while still precariously balanced on the general instability in Iraq, has largely been a success.
In other words, Josh Marshall and many other critics are far too dismissive of Kagan and the AEI's plan for Iraq. That plan is squarely based upon the thoughtful efforts of some of the best scholar soldiers currently in the U.S. military and upon their successes in Iraq. Using Tal Afar as the model for how to succeed in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq is not a truly nutty idea. In fact, it is probably the best possible option -- or would have been two years ago.
In order to give the thinking of Petraeus, McMaster, Kagan, and the AEI the consideration they are due, you first need to come to grips with the history of Tal Afar. After that the questions that remain largely circle around whether the Tal Afar model can be successfully applied to Baghdad. It is not clear that it can be. A temporary surge of troops for a few months won't do it -- and that is not what the AEI plan calls for. Real questions must be answered about whether the AEI's proposed escalation by 35,000 troops for two years can even be accomplished before we can move on to the even more difficult questions of whether those troops would be sufficient to duplicate Tal Afar in Baghdad, whether Baghdad's sectarian divisions are too different and too fierce in comparison to those in Tal Afar for the model to succeed in Baghdad, and many similar questions before arriving at the bottom line: Even if what is effectively a best case scenario could be accomplished over the next two years, i.e. Baghdad then looking like Tal Afar does now, would that be worth all of the lives, effort, and expense?
However, the point remains that those are the kinds of questions that need to be asked and answered in a serious effort to understand and evaluate the experience in Tal Afar and the thinking behind the AEI plan. Even if doing so is politically palatable and persuasive, simply dismissing the AEI plan as a "truly nutball idea" is irresponsible and insufficient.