Glimpse inside President Bush's decision on the "Surge" or the real "3 am call"

To set the stage, first see 06OCT05 President Discusses War on Terror at National Endowment for Democracy and the 12JUL07 Press Conference by the President on the counterinsurgency "Surge".

Then, via the always excellent Small Wars Journal, see Troop ‘Surge’ Took Place Amid Doubt and Debate by NY Times reporter Michael Gordon. The article is a fascinating look inside the sharp debates, disagreements, and decision-making process that led to the present COIN strategy in Iraq.

In the same vein, also see Bush's Lonely Decision, the Wall Street Journal review of Bob Woodward's The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008. Excerpts from Woodward's book are serialized at the Washington Post: part 1, part 2, part 3. (h/t)

My biggest criticism of President Bush has been his reliance on delegating, which is not necessarily a poor leadership style, but in a war demanding evolutionary institutional changes, we've needed a President more like FDR who was more of a micro-manager.

Excerpt from the Gordon article:

But Mr. Bush’s penchant to defer to commanders in the field and to a powerful defense secretary delayed the development of a new approach until conditions in Iraq, in the words of a November 2006 analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency, resembled anarchy and “civil war.”

In this case, his penchant for delegating was near-disastrous, but when the crisis point was reached, he did take the necessary action. For the most part, President Bush is made out in the Gordon article to be a competent, committed leader who made a tough choice from among a set of strongly held diverging 'expert' views.

President Bush is often maligned as a bumpkin whose strings are pulled by a neo-con cabal, a view reinforced by his less-than-stately public demeanor. Even viewed sympathetically, I believe Bush could have — should have — made the call for the COIN "Surge" sooner had he been more of a micro-manager rather than a delegator.

However, the Gordon article and Woodward's book show President Bush chose a risky course of action under great pressure to do otherwise, with great deliberation, and so far at least, the course of action has been the correct one. In fact, the group that included GEN David Petraeus and advocated for the course of action that President Bush eventually chose — over the proposals of commanders in Iraq and top military and administration officials — does not seem like it was the most influential faction in the debate.

The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign featured an ad touting her as better qualified than Barack Obama to answer the "3 am call" and make a tough decision with far-reaching international implications. President Bush made his "3 am call" decision with the COIN "Surge".

How will Senator Obama or even Senator McCain fare when they face such an enormous decision without a clearly correct answer, when a decision must be made, when different factions are calling for radically different courses of action? Can either of them be as (eventually) decisive, committed to mission success, and deliberate as President Bush? As much as President Bush is degraded today by popular political culture, I would not be surprised if historians with access to now-classified records treat him much more kindly. Bush's decision for the counterinsurgency "Surge" is an exemplar of resolute principled American presidential leadership.

Add: George W. Bush is smarter than you and Bush ended financial crisis before Obama took office -- three important truths about 2008 by Bush senior economic advisor Keith Hennessey and Dubya and Me (backup) by Walt Harrington.

David Petraeus . . . my man

The always excellent Small Wars Journal posted a Times Online article, General David H Petraeus: The general's knowledge (archived), by Charles M Sennott, profiling General Petraeus, military commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

I already admired GEN Petraeus for the obvious reasons, but this quote from the article struck a chord:

“If we are going to fight future wars, they’re going to be very similar to Iraq,” he says, adding that this was why “we have to get it right in Iraq”.

I believe this deeply. With this quote alone, I feel as though GEN Petraeus represents me on the issue of Iraq better than any elected official. He gets it.

It seems obvious to me that our success or failure in Iraq will have far reaching implications. It will define and set the baseline. Operation Iraqi Freedom, as much as anything else, is a critical evolutionary learning curve for us in 4th Generation Warfare. Before OIF, even before 9/11, when I was a MI soldier, I realized we would have to confront our deeply entrenched phobias about guerilla war, moreso as it has evolved with globalization. I didn't invent the notion: over 40 years ago, President Kennedy announced that learning counterinsurgency was the American priority for the 20th Century. Unfortunately, we were hurt badly by the Vietnam War, which proved his point. Our defeat simultaneously provided a blueprint to the world for defeating us and made us phobic about engaging guerilla warfare. We are now struggling to catch up, evolutionarily speaking, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm reading John Robb's Brave New War at the moment and Robb has only further reinforced my view that our Iraq mission has long-term consequences. Add: Along the same theme of the need to be ready to compete with other forms of martial competition, see Science of Resistance by Paul Tompkins and Robert R. Leonhard.

President John. F. Kennedy – Remarks at West Point to the Graduating Class of the U.S. Military Academy, 6 June 1962

Listen to President Kennedy explain the Iraq intervention to West Point graduates in 1962. It's captivating, a must-listen. The transcript of Kennedy's speech is here. Kennedy's copy of his prepared speech is here. (h/t)

Kennedy was only President from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. His main accomplishment in that short time was to set a firm direction for the young liberal superpower with eloquently and powerfully stated ideals and ideas.

Where his 1961 inaugural speech laid a foundation of American ideals, President Kennedy's Special Message to Congress on Urgent National Needs on May 25, 1961 built upon that foundation a set of clear goals and ideas. Most striking is Kennedy's grasp of the evolving nature of geo-politics and warfare, the kind of military we need, the challenges they face, and the kind of missions they need to perform. His speech to West Point's Class of 1962 was formed in the context of his 1961 inaugural speech and special message to Congress on urgent national needs.

Since we are in the midst of the type of war for which President Kennedy sought to prepare our nation, pay special attention to that part of his speech. I won't excerpt from it because the entire speech is worth listening to and reading, especially for any American politician who fancies himself or herself a successor of JFK and a champion of his legacy. Anytime you forget what it means to be a liberal, go back to President Kennedy's inaugural speech, special message to Congress on urgent national needs, and his remarks to the West Point class of 1962, and refresh yourself.

Snapshot of early challenges with and our hope for Iraq

In the excellent Belmont Club, an anti-war commenter referred to a wonderfully instructive snapshot from the Washington Post of the early challenges and our hope for Iraq: Occupation Forces Halt Elections Throughout Iraq by William Booth and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, June 28, 2003. (Article at commondreams.org) The article has been widely cited by anti-war people as proof that the liberal American promise for Iraq was a lie. I understood the article differently.

My reaction:

Thank you. That Washington Post article, in its entirety, is a highly worthwhile read as a snapshot of both the challenges we faced and the justification for our hopes at a critical early stage in the post-war. The WP piece agrees with stories told to me by a friend of mine who served in OIF I (as a soldier, not a CPA civilian). He was an EOD team leader whose jobs were the WMD hunt and destroying ammo stockpiles. He told me how local Iraqi leaders sought out any Americans in leadership positions — even him, an EOD SSG on a non-diplomatic mission — to start the process of building the post-Saddam Iraq. The problem was, while our soldiers were the only practical interface with Iraqis, it was not their job (as it is now) to manage the transition. It was the CPA's job, but they were absent on the ground.

It's terrific reporting by the WP. The Bush admin has been widely accused of being unaware of the conflictual complexities of Iraqi society. If anything, the record shows that the Bush admin was, perhaps, overly sensitive and cautious about those complexities (eg, Bremer's fear of Baathists and Sadrists filling the vacuum).

Given the internal conflicts, missing the right political structure, the Bush admin clearly didn't trust the Iraqi factions to avoid a civil war. In hindsight, perhaps we should have taken a step back from the outset, focused on security, and simply helped the Iraqis while they took the initiative in building their post-Saddam civil society. We would have needed to trust them that they could make that leap from their own history.

In any case, the WP piece captures the caution by Bremer over the complexities of Iraqi society, the desire to avoid the risks of local factions undermining national reconciliation, and the desire by Bremer for a deliberate controlled transition to a stable post-Saddam Iraq. He didn't want a nation-building project doomed to fracture due to a rushed transition cracked with instrinsic structural flaws.

Remember, we had recently watched Afghanistan and Yugoslavia fracture with bloody civil war. We didn't want that to happen in Iraq on our watch, and it was Bremer's job with the CPA to make sure it didn't happen.

The choice of Iraqi military leaders wasn't about creating a puppet government and keeping popularly elected leaders out of the political process, as was expressed by the disillusioned Iraqis in the article. Those generals were supposed to be interim managers who were trained to take orders, top-down, while the CPA organized a national political structure, according to a blueprint, that could incorporate democratically chosen leaders without the nation fracturing.

Sensitive tasks. On their face, Bremer's decisions made sense. In a more 'laboratory' setting, if Bremer had fewer variables, fewer destructive agents, more time, and better constructive agents, he maybe could have done his job.

Unfortunately, we know what happened. Bremer failed. He could not implement his blueprint for post-Saddam transition in Iraq in the deliberate controlled fashion he — and most of us — wanted.

The WP piece backs up my ex-EOD friend's experience that Iraqis did, in fact, trust Americans and were willing to work with us in the early post-war. Clearly, however, that trust was (understandably) conditional and it had its limits. The enemy successfully moved to exploit those limits at the same time Bremer and the CPA, while well-intentioned, were insufficiently competent to accomplish their mission.

Some say that the Iraqis had to go through the bloody turmoil of the last 5 years, a cruel learning curve, to arrive at where they are today. I can't be certain that view is wrong, but I disagree. I believe if GEN Petraeus and his COIN warriors had been in charge in Iraq immediately in the post-war, we would have a far different story in Iraq today.

As is, the Iraqis gave us a real chance to fulfill the American promise in 2003, and we failed them then. If they've given us another chance, I hope we don't fail the Iraqi people again.

Again with realists and Iraq

I chimed in on a neoneocon post about Barack Obama. Regarding the Iraq mission, Obama strikes me as a more-palateable redux of John Kerry in 2004 in that he holds promise for both Iraq mission supporters and opponents.

From the comments thread:

“The various anti-war factions, from the incredibly harmful right-wing realist camp to the isolationists to the leftists, are illiberal. “

Thats interesting. Which faction are the “harmful right-wing realist camp”? Are you talking about those conservatives too anti-McCain to either vote for him or vote against him? Im not sure what you meant there. Other than that, the only truly anti-war Republican Im aware of is Ron Paul camp, and he strikes me more libertarian than right wing.

My response [with some copy editing]:

President Bush, 2004: “Some who call themselves “realists” question whether the spread of democracy in the Middle East should be any concern of ours. But the realists in this case have lost contact with a fundamental reality. America has always been less secure when freedom is in retreat. America is always more secure when freedom is on the march.”

Google ‘realist Iraq’ or a similar variation, and you will find many articles by the top proponents of realism explaining their opposition to our Iraq mission. They have been prolific in their opposition of the mission since the first day the Bush admin made it a prospect. Indeed, it would almost seem that the vindication of their fundamental beliefs as relevant in the 21st century, ie, after the Cold War in which they made their mark, relies upon a defining failure of liberalism in Iraq. It’s been a symbiotic relationship between right-wing realists and radical anti-war protestors. You find few realists stridently protesting the Long War with guerilla theatrics, but their opposition has provided much of the substantive material and legitimacy for the anti-war movement, which in turn, has obliged the realists by applying theory to practical use. Why? Due to their Cold War legacy, realists are highly respected and entrenched authorities in the academic, military, and political (foreign policy) establishments. For its part, the anti-war movement is highly adaptable, because while most of it is ostensibly leftist, it is able to freely adopt and sample the right-wing realist opposition to the Iraq mission. Doing so is not a contradiction for them. The “anti-” of the anti-war movement means their standard of judgement is less about upholding an affirmative belief than whether something can be practically used to attack our nation’s strategy or more specifically target the Republican party or this Bush administration. As such, the realists have been eminently useful in fueling the anti-war movement.

In sum, the realists oppose the Iraq mission because it has been shaped as a Wilsonian progressive liberal mission. Much of the prevailing anti-war argument against the Iraq mission as a (liberal) “fool’s errand" is realist-based. However, Barack Obama presents himself as an enthusiastic, even aggressive, Wilsonian progressive liberal who wants the US to be a proactive, leading liberal change-agent in the world. So, how can Obama’s classically liberal principles square with his professed allegiance to the illiberal anti-war movement? Well, the hope — my hope — is that those principles cause him to be the enthusiastically liberal CinC upholding the Iraq mission that we’ve needed all along. Or, he could be anti-war. Much like John Kerry in 2004, Obama holds forth both promises.

BTW, I had close access to realist thinking as a recent Poli Sci/IR grad from Columbia University, where the realist school is dominant. As a campus activist, I also had close observations of the anti-war movement.