Iraq War, Surge
President George W. Bush, on January 10, 2007, announced that the US would surge at least 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, to improve security in the Baghdad to a point where the remaining Iraqi Security Forces could control violence from Iraqi sects and foreign sources. [1]
Intended to be more policing and engaging directly with the people, the approach was "population-centric" rather than "enemy-centric."[2]
Implementation
It was a campaign, ordered by GEN David Petraeus, the senior commander of coalition forces in Iraq (Multi-National Force-Iraq and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Planning was by a Joint Strategic Assessment Team led by COL H. R. McMaster (U.S. Army) and David Pearce (U.S. State Department). Operational control would be under Multi-National Corps-Iraq, under LTG Ray Odierno, with tactical operations under Multi-National Division-Baghdad, built around the 3rd Infantry Division under MG Rick Lynch.
Context
Linda Robinson, a journalist and author of Tell me how this ends: General Petraeus and the search for a way out of Iraq, was invited to discuss the general situation with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. While her talk focused on the surge, she said it was necessary to set a context, and began by saying that the insurgency was caused by the early decisions of the US Coalition Provisional Authority for debaathification and disbanding of the Iraqi military. While an insurgency was already in progress January 2005, the next contributor was having an election that was boycotted by the Sunni comunity. This election created the body that would write the constitution. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad made an "agreement was made that there would be constitutional revisions considered and implicitly a guarantee that some at least would be adopted within four months of the seating of the new parliament. And that agreement was never honored, still has not been to this day."[3]
Evaluation and recommendations
Opinions of its effectiveness vary with the source. It clearly reduced violence, but the issue of whether Iraqi forces can sustain the security is an open issue, fraught with complexity, and sometimes viewed through an ideological prism.
In January 2008, Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) termed the surge a failure. [4]
References
- ↑ George W. Bush (10 January 2007), President's Address to the Nation
- ↑ David Kilcullen (2009), The Accidental Guerilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780195368345, pp. 128-130
- ↑ Linda Robinson (2 December 2008), Remarks to the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
- ↑ Jack Reed (January 17-18, 2008), Iraq Trip Report by Senator Jack Reed (D-RI)