Joe Klein: Iraq Surge ... What Lessons for Afghanistan
[Joe Klein joined TIME magazine in January 2003 to write a regular column on national and international affairs.]
I've just finished a remarkable book called The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel. It is the best grunt's-eye view of the war in Iraq that I've read; certainly, it's the best written. But it also raises, implicitly, the mystery of our qualified success there. Finkel follows an Army battalion through the 2007 surge, as it attempts to secure a particularly nasty and neglected area of Baghdad. This was the first attempt to implement the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine, and the troops have their doubts about the new tactics. Major Brent Cummings, the second-in-command, reads the doctrine and is perplexed by sentences like "Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is." Cummings is an infantryman. He has been trained to "close with and destroy the enemy." This new form of warfare is not only weird, but dangerous: instead of living on one of the big, heavily guarded bases outside town, the battalion is based in New Baghdad, the area where it fights. Part of the job is partnering with the local Iraqi security forces; part of the job is providing social services, figuring out sewage problems.
It is difficult, from the ground up, to tell if any of these new tactics have an impact. The partnership with the Iraqis is tentative at best. The social services don't pan out. The troops continue to patrol in humvees, as before; they are blown up by IEDs, as before. The counterinsurgency manual gathers dust on the battalion commander's desk, then disappears. But somehow ... it works. A year later, the neighborhood is markedly quieter — but it's hard to say why.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, I decided to make an intense effort to get to know the U.S. military. My education was turbocharged by General David Petraeus, who invited me to spend some time learning counterinsurgency at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., while he was leading the team that wrote the new doctrine. The intellectual rigor of Petraeus' team, their willingness — no, their joy — when it came to chewing over even the most unlikely questions were flat-out exciting. It was certainly at odds with the hidebound image of the military I'd grown up with. I became an auxiliary member of the counterinsurgency cult — in theory. When it came time to apply it in Iraq, I had my doubts. It seemed too little, too late. But I was wrong, and the surge's relative success was attributable in no small part to the general's creative flexibility.
Now another President is faced with another decision about counterinsurgency doctrine, this time in Afghanistan. "They have a track record," a member of Obama's decision-making team recently said of Generals Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal. "I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt." True enough, but the mystery at the heart of The Good Soldiers remains: By what magic process did Iraq turn around, especially since the counterinsurgency tactics were so unevenly applied?..
Read entire article at Time
I've just finished a remarkable book called The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel. It is the best grunt's-eye view of the war in Iraq that I've read; certainly, it's the best written. But it also raises, implicitly, the mystery of our qualified success there. Finkel follows an Army battalion through the 2007 surge, as it attempts to secure a particularly nasty and neglected area of Baghdad. This was the first attempt to implement the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine, and the troops have their doubts about the new tactics. Major Brent Cummings, the second-in-command, reads the doctrine and is perplexed by sentences like "Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is." Cummings is an infantryman. He has been trained to "close with and destroy the enemy." This new form of warfare is not only weird, but dangerous: instead of living on one of the big, heavily guarded bases outside town, the battalion is based in New Baghdad, the area where it fights. Part of the job is partnering with the local Iraqi security forces; part of the job is providing social services, figuring out sewage problems.
It is difficult, from the ground up, to tell if any of these new tactics have an impact. The partnership with the Iraqis is tentative at best. The social services don't pan out. The troops continue to patrol in humvees, as before; they are blown up by IEDs, as before. The counterinsurgency manual gathers dust on the battalion commander's desk, then disappears. But somehow ... it works. A year later, the neighborhood is markedly quieter — but it's hard to say why.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, I decided to make an intense effort to get to know the U.S. military. My education was turbocharged by General David Petraeus, who invited me to spend some time learning counterinsurgency at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., while he was leading the team that wrote the new doctrine. The intellectual rigor of Petraeus' team, their willingness — no, their joy — when it came to chewing over even the most unlikely questions were flat-out exciting. It was certainly at odds with the hidebound image of the military I'd grown up with. I became an auxiliary member of the counterinsurgency cult — in theory. When it came time to apply it in Iraq, I had my doubts. It seemed too little, too late. But I was wrong, and the surge's relative success was attributable in no small part to the general's creative flexibility.
Now another President is faced with another decision about counterinsurgency doctrine, this time in Afghanistan. "They have a track record," a member of Obama's decision-making team recently said of Generals Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal. "I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt." True enough, but the mystery at the heart of The Good Soldiers remains: By what magic process did Iraq turn around, especially since the counterinsurgency tactics were so unevenly applied?..