Current Level of US Troops to Remain in Iraq Through 2010

McCain Supports General Schoomaker’s Plans for Iraq
For Immediate Release, McCain Senate Web Page
Thursday, Oct 12, 2006

Washington D.C. – U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today released the following statement in support of General Peter J. Schoomaker’s announcement on the Army’s long-term plans for Iraq: “Today, Army Chief of Staff, General Peter J. Schoomaker announced that the Army has plans to keep the current level of soldiers in Iraq through 2010."

We at WinTheGWOT.org know from experience that throwing more troops at the problem is not the answer. The troops in theater today are unable to provide the most basic of Iraqi needs—security and stability. Keeping troops there for a longer period without strategically changing how we employ them will not defeat the insurgents. We are fighting radical extremists, who by definition are willing to go to greater levels of violence than we are to win this war. Recall that Saddam Hussein only managed to control the latent insurgency in Iraq through brutal oppression and terror. Since the US cannot do the same, we must switch to a classic, and proven, counterinsurgency strategy.

McCain Press Release Continued: "Currently there are 141,000 troops in Iraq, including 120,000 soldiers. Earlier this year we heard reports that the Army would begin reducing the number of troops in Iraq to 100,000 by the end of the year. I support General Schoomaker's comments and believe we must increase troop strength if we are to win this war,” McCain said. “The announcement also reveals how imperative it is to begin immediately to increase the end strength of the Army and Marine Corps. We are overstretched at a time of widespread and very serious challenges. Congress has authorized increases in recent years that the Defense Department has not acted upon with the urgency Congress intended, and events so clearly warrant.“

We at WinTheGWOT.org believe that implementing a genuine counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, US troop strength would not need to be increased and might even be reduced. This would ease the strain on the military as a whole and prepare our troops for the types of conflict that they are likely to continue facing in the 21st Century (or at least as long as the US military remains a conventional super power). Any increase in spending and training for the Defense Department must focus on bringing our unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency capabilities to the same level as our conventional war-fighting capability.

More from the McCain Press Release: “Senior officers from National Guard units and Reserve Centers across the Nation report the signs of strain on National Guardsmen and Reservists as they prepare for additional deployments to Iraq. Soldiers and Marines are reporting for their third tours in Iraq. We must begin now to increase substantially the troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps by at least 100,000.”

Again, we at WinTheGWOT.org disagree. Increasing the size and strength of the most powerful military in the world, which already has access to the latest and greatest technology available has not shown any significant success or progress in this war. The very definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome. Instead, the number of unconventional troops and the amounts and level of their counterinsurgency training should be what is increased. If every single Special Forces soldier in the US Army were in Iraq right now, out of a total 140,000 troops in theater, they would make up less than 4% of the total. The only logical use for further military spending with respect to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror is to significantly increase the numbers and capabilities of our unconventional warriors who are better able to beat the insurgents at their own game.

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How We Should Be Winning in Iraq and Afghanistan

By Terry Daly

Writing in the October 5, 2006 USA TODAY from Doab, Afghanistan, Paul Wiseman describes a textbook example of insurgents in northern and western Afghanistan taking control of the people through violence and coercion. Although the insurgents are not Communists, their tactics are right out of Vietnam in 1963 when the Viet Cong were expanding their control of the countryside by intimidating or killing local officials, and authorities.

In Afghanistan, most media attention today is on spectacular suicide bombings and Improvised Explosive Device (IED) incidents, and large US and NATO “offensives” to kill insurgents. Wiseman describes the real danger: our failure to identify the people as the true objective and to make their protection our overriding goal. The people’s situation, therefore, is summed up in this anecdote (which also made the rounds in Vietnam!):

A US officer arrives in a remote village and asks, “When were the insurgents last here?”
“A week ago,” responds a villager.
“When will they be back?” the officer inquires.
“As soon as you leave.”

Regardless of the desires of the people, when the insurgents threaten them, and they know no one will protect them, least of all the government or the corrupt and out-gunned police, they are left with little real choice. In the single best book on the subject ever written, David Galula in his Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice writes:

"The population's attitude … is dictated not so much by the relative popularity and merits of the opponents as by the more primitive concern for safety. Which side gives the best protection, which one threatens the most, which one is likely to win, these are the criteria governing the population's stand."

It doesn’t make any difference how many soccer balls you try to hand out if the would-be recipients know they will have their throats cut that night if they accept them.

Download the text only version (.pdf) of the USA Today article here or go directly to it at the USA Today web site.

LTC Terence J. Daly USAR (Ret.) is a counterinsurgency, national security, and foreign policy specialist with over 30 years experience in many of the world’s critical political arenas, including time spent as a province level advisor to counterinsurgency programs in Vietnam.

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How Can We Still Not Understand that Our Strategy in Iraq Cannot Work?

In Rowan Scarborough’s article, “Iraqi Forces Concern US Commander," in the October 16th Washington Times, he writes that General George Casey, commander of US troops in Iraq is concerned that Iraqi troops cannot take over the job of fighting insurgents fast enough.


The US strategy in Iraq appears to be to create an Iraqi military in our own conventional image with just a smattering of unconventional warfare instruction thrown in for good measure. Insurgency is not a war of tanks, helicopter gunships, and airplanes. The insurgents have none of these and by all accounts, they still have the initiative in this war.

The insurgents understand some key issues that we, and the Iraqis we are training, do not. First and most important, they understand that this is a political war of ideas and will—not a war of attrition and firepower as the US has been trying to wage it. That is like bringing a baseball bat to a golf game.

They believe in their jihadist cause and that the enemy of their people is the West and the US. For all sorts of reasons, ethnic, religious, and historic, they enjoy a significant amount of popular support as well. The Iraqi troops we are training are not so sure about the new Iraqi federal government, our western ideals of democracy, and they can see as well as anyone else that the US military is getting multiple bloody noses on a daily basis. Why would they be in a hurry to stand up and fight using a strategy that does not appear to work?

In his article, Scarborough points out that some military analysts believe the past three months of intense violence may be designed to influence the US midterm elections in favor of candidates who advocate withdrawal. Other military analysts add that it is in an attempt to weaken our will and erode US public support.

General Casey was quoted as saying, "I would also say that we continue to make progress with the Ministry of Interior and police forces….Now, the police have a bad reputation in Iraq, and from my view, that's undeserved. Broadly, it's undeserved."

These experts are quite correct, because the enemy understands that this is a political contest for the continued support of the Iraqi population and the continued erosion of popular support for the effort back in the US. Anything they can do to eat away at support for the government, create questions about the reliability of the police, demonstrate the incompetence of the Iraqi army, and impede the effectiveness of the greatest military on earth works greatly in their favor.

Does this sound familiar to anyone over the age of 40? We had the exact same issue in Vietnam where the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was hesitant to engage the enemy for the same reasons. We created a less than motivated military in our own image supporting a questionable government that faced a highly motivated and well-organized enemy that also enjoyed the backing of significant external sources.

And, like Vietnam, we will eventually pull our troops out of Iraq given the intensive pressure growing to do so already. Then we will watch on TV as the Iraqi government falls and the country collapses into a more violent civil war—unless we do something to change our strategy now.

We should not build a military and police force in our own image; rather, we should implement an unconventional strategy that builds faith in a workable Iraqi federal government. It should create a smaller, more reliable police force trained to deal with insurgents at the local level where they operate. All insurgencies are political, and all politics is local.

We must reengage the leadership of the various factions that are still open to it and work with them to establish local security while monitoring to ensure that other ethnicities and religious groups within those areas are also protected. We can only do this in a small section of Iraq at a time, but there is no other alternative that allows us to pacify an entire country. If we offer them the support and resources they need to be secure and prosper while standing ready to hold them accountable for any unwarranted hostility, we can stabilize Iraq one area at a time.

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The US is Directly Responsible for Civil War in Iraq

This weekend, two leading Republican Senators called for a new strategy in Iraq, and it is about time. Contrary to popular perception, the current instability in Iraq is not simply the result of Sunni and Shiite animosity. It is the result of a poorly planned and executed military occupation by the United States. Had we done a better job of managing our “liberation” of the country and not allowed it to crumble into a fumbling and inconsistent occupation we could have spent our time and resources developing relationships with the various factions and helping ensure their security and safety. That would have been the first step toward getting them to work together for a united and peaceful Iraq. As a result, we have no choice but to stay and try to prevent an escalating civil war.

We now have to reverse the “accomplishments” of the Coalition Provisional Authority that undermined the opportunity for unification through its harsh treatment of the people. The elected Iraqi government was left holding a bad hand. We must reduce the unemployment rate that we increased, and we must redress the humiliation that we inflicted on much of the middle and upper classes of Iraq. They have the education and experience to run the country’s infrastructure. Most importantly, we must stop driving away the people who will at least tolerate our presence for a while.

"The American people are not going to continue to support, [and] sustain a policy that puts American troops in the middle of a civil war," said Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) on CNN's "Late Edition."

I disagree. I think most Americans understand that we have a huge measure or responsibility for what has happened and that they would support our staying in Iraq if they had faith in a strategy that could stabilize the situation.

Senator John Warner (R-VA) correctly summed it up when he said on "Face the Nation" that "We have to rethink all the options, except any option which says we precipitously pull out, which would let that country fall into a certain civil war at that time, and all of the neighboring countries would be destabilized."

Last week President Bush claimed that he invites a change in strategy “…if the plan isn't working.” He also doggedly restated that we would not leave until the job is done.

If the plan isn’t working? I guess that depends upon how you define “if.”

Here is a workable strategy should the President feel his plan is not working.

The first rule is that all insurgencies are local. We must reengage the leadership of the various factions in each area and work with them to establish local security while monitoring to ensure that other ethnicities and religious groups within those areas are also protected. We can only do this in a small section of Iraq at a time, but there is no other alternative that allows us to pacify an entire country. If we offer them the support and resources they need to be secure and prosper while standing ready to hold them accountable for any unwarranted hostility, we can stabilize Iraq one area at a time.

We must start in the areas where there is still some semblance of support for the US strategy and where it will be relatively easiest to accomplish. Once we have stabilized one area we can move onto another, and another. As we build up the amount of support from previous areas, we can take on more and more until the entire country is relatively stable. Meanwhile, we can train and professionalize the Iraqi police and military forces and leave them in place to keep it that way.

Of course, this will take decades.

To do this we must integrate US Special Forces troops and civilian advisors into the local governments, their police, and their militias to manage and coordinate professional training and support—and most importantly, to provide (or coordinate) the funding and resources they need to operate. These forces can effectively deal with the local insurgents. At the same time, the Special Forces troops and their civilian partners can work with other military and civilian agencies to help manage high visibility civic action projects in the local areas that create jobs and engage the people in something other than expressing their anger and frustration via attacks on US convoys and other religious/ethnic factions.

Contrary to popular opinion, we must reduce the Iraqi perception of the US military presence. We should do this by moving the larger conventional units out of the high visibility areas they now occupy, but keeping them close by as a quick reaction force. We could even bring some of the heavier units back home, since we really do not need 130,000 troops in Iraq. We just need a number of independent and highly mobile brigades to remain and support this unconventional strategy. This way they can react to any overwhelming hostile action taken against the Special Forces troops and their allies. If the insurgents decide to attack the smaller Special Forces units in force, then the larger US units can come to the rescue and then return to their bases. Otherwise, the local forces supported by Special Forces should deal with the terrorist insurgents.

The simple fact is that we must offer the Iraqis something better than we have offered them to date, and we must hold them accountable whenever they refuse to take advantage of that offer.

We are the occupiers of Iraq and we have allowed this civil unrest to explode. We must face the fact that we are now the only ones who are really in charge there. We have a moral obligation to stand in the way of a civil war. Furthermore, we cannot forget that allowing a civil war would be the exact failure that Al-Qaeda needs to generate more sympathy and support for its cause. In this sense, President Bush is correct that we cannot lose in Iraq.

It is clear that the Iraqi government is powerless to provide the carrots and to use the sticks as appropriate. Nonetheless, the US can—and should—do both. We just need a lot more carrots and a lot less stick, and when the stick comes out, it must be precise, swift, and certain.

We can continue to act as hostile occupiers and watch the situation spin further out of control while Iraqi citizens and US troops continue to die. There will come a point where we cannot stop it.

Alternatively, we can change our strategy and act like the liberators we once were and slowly stop the situation from eroding any further. Once we get to that point, we can begin helping the Iraqis to rebuild their country.

Unfortunately, we do not have two years to wait until the next President is in office. By then it will be too late. We must act now.

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Iraq’s “Good Guys” Pay the Ultimate Price Too

A bomb, likely planted in his office, recently killed 35-year old Salam al-Maamuri, commander of the Iraqi police commando unit known as the Scorpions in the southern city of Hilla. Colonel al-Maamuri was considered a true public servant who treated both Shiites and Sunnis equally. It was not the first attempt on his life.

He rejected the idea of giving up after an assassination attempt and was quoted in the media saying, "You can get killed in Iraq even if you sit all day in your house. What should I do, sit around and wait to die, or try to stop the people who are killing?"

Colonel al-Maamuri fully believed that he was not there to serve Sunnis or Shiites, but to serve all Iraqis. In Iraq’s police and army, statements like this are common, but tangible actions demonstrating those beliefs are not quite as common. Many who knew him fully believed in his sincerity. So much so, that this may have been the reason he was killed. Iraqi officials suspect that the assassination may have been an inside job because the killer was able to access Colonel al-Maamuri's office. Any public official who can overcome the ethnic and religious divides in war torn Iraq is a threat to just about every faction vying for control—even his own Shiite brethren.

The death of a leader like Colonel Salam al-Maamuri who genuinely believed in a united and peaceful Iraq is a tremendous loss. However, it also reminds us that the objectives he believed in are worth fighting for and that the enemy is fighting against them. Although the war in Iraq should be managed much differently than it is today, this does not take away from the fact that security, justice, and the opportunity for prosperity and hope are still the basic desires of people all over the world.

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