BLACKFIVE: How to exploit the success in Iraq

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How to exploit the success in Iraq

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

The goals in COIN shift considerably when you transition from kinetic operations to a strategy that aims to change minds, put simply a move from breaking things to fixing things.

The first part of that is a large reason why we gave ourselves the insurgency we did. The Thunder Run to Baghdad and the complete disappearance and dissolution of Saddam's army failed to deal the Sunnis who supported him any serious blow to their prestige or will. It's much easier to make peace if you have defeated your enemy, ours just stepped out of the way and put on track suits.

They simmered in Sunni tribal regions and with no livelihoods and no love for us the insurgency began. The chance to deal a KO was lost and now we had the makings of a quagmire. Ironically we needed the insurgency to grow to a point where it was a credible adversary and then to deal it the blow we never did initially

This happened with the surge of troops last year and the change of strategy to COIN ensured that the people saw us as security and then stood beside us to protect their neighborhoods. Al Qaeda in Iraq lost it's ability to hide in Sunni areas when the sheiks in Anbar got sick of all the Sunnis they were killing. The Anbar Awakening began the process of Iraqis taking back their own country from the extremists who made it a Hell for everyone. This has now spread through the Shia areas and the militias have returned their power drills to the auto shops.

There is still much to do before we can feel any real comfort about the security situation, but the signs are very positive. Now there are several things that need to happen to continue the progress. The first we discussed as Prime Minister Maliki has tied himself personally to the Iraqi military efforts against Shia militias in Basra and Baghdad and now Sunni and AQI bad guys in Mosul. He is increasing his clout and his Big Man status and that will lead to security as deals are brokered with all the previous troublemakers except AQI. They won't deal, but they have nowhere to hide once Mosul is deverminated so they will simply become dead tangos

That leaves the next step of improving everyone's quality of life and while a much preferable phase to the shootin' and killin' it is a very difficult task and not one our military is particularly suited to do. The people in our units do a tremendous job of building rapport at the individual level, but we need a comprehensive plan that takes those connections and ties them to the larger reconstruction and reconciliation efforts. The real challenge is getting the military and the State Department to work together in any useful way. Now there are plenty of instances where there have been fruitful partnerships, but overall it would be fair to call the relationship less than cordial.

It is a distinct advantage to changing this in having an architect of our COIN strategy as the theater commander. Petraeus knows that the battle is now in the heads of the Iraq populace. The question is who is the State Department's Petraeus, holder of the clue bag who can explain to the pantywaist crowd that the knuckledraggers serve a useful purpose and actually are doing some good things. They damn sure need one and I'll say I was hopeful Condi Rice could make some progress, but I'm hard-pressed to see any. State could use a purge of the legions of weak-kneed, appeasementologists that inhabit the place. Heck so could CIA for that matter, maybe we can render them all to the EU.

More to come on working with Diplomats.