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IPS Writers in the Blogosphere » James Russell https://www.ips.org/blog/ips Turning the World Downside Up Tue, 26 May 2020 22:12:16 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 The Surge and Other Popular Neocon Myths https://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-surge-and-other-popular-neocon-myths/ https://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-surge-and-other-popular-neocon-myths/#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2013 15:14:19 +0000 Guest http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-surge-and-other-popular-neocon-myths/ via Lobe Log

By James A. Russell

As the Senate prepares for what will be contentious confirmation hearings for Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense, it is important to debunk some of the popularized narratives that are being offered by neoconservative commentators as they attempt to seize control of important issues [...]]]> via Lobe Log

By James A. Russell

As the Senate prepares for what will be contentious confirmation hearings for Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense, it is important to debunk some of the popularized narratives that are being offered by neoconservative commentators as they attempt to seize control of important issues that will likely come up during the confirmation process.

Hagel was one of the few who had the guts to question the Iraq invasion when it was politically unpopular to do so, was right about the disastrous consequences of the invasion for US power and prestige, and rightly raised questions about the increase in troop levels committed as part of the so-called “surge” in 2007. As noted by Wayne White in this blog, there are many misconceptions and myths perpetrated about the surge and its relationship to America’s experience in the war.

Neoconservative commentators have successfully shaped a popular narrative suggesting that the surge helped spur the famous Anbar Awakening that turned the tide in Iraq and somehow helped “win” the war. There are grains of truth in these assertions, but these half-truths have been used to support wholly unfounded and full-blown myths that are still spouted in print by columnists like Charles Krauthammer, Elliott Abrams and others.

My book on ground operations in Iraq from 2005-07 in Anbar and Mosul deals extensively with local politics in Anbar during the period and provides an entirely different picture of the awakening and its circumstances that had little to do with the surge. Like all complex phenomena, the awakening occurred in a particular context and with a history that has been largely omitted from popular narratives about the war.

The first of the so-called tribal “flips” started in 2005 in Al Qaim due in part to a dispute involving the Albu Mahal tribe and its interest in controlling border and smuggling operations. The Albu Mahals subsequently became the “desert protector” force in 2005; Marines issued them uniforms and installed them in local police stations to start directing traffic and performing other constabulary duties. In a pattern that would be repeated elsewhere around the province, the Marines turned a blind eye to the Albu Mahal’s smuggling operations in exchange for this support — so long as the smuggling did not support insurgent activities. The Marines initially tried to set up local militias in 2004 in the city of Hit in Anbar — efforts that failed miserably as the units disintegrated when insurgents attacked them.

The Awakening spread from western Anbar in 2005 and culminated in Ramadi in the summer/fall of 2006 — before the surge had even begun. By the time the surge happened in the spring of 2007, there were already over 1,000 former Sunni tribal and nationalist insurgents manning police checkpoints in and around Ramadi.

The tribal flip had to do with many factors – national-level political developments and the rising power of the Shi’ites and the realization by Sunni tribal leaders that only the US could protect them from the ascendant Shi’ites. They grasped the obvious in late 2006: their continued alliance with the jihadists would lead to their destruction. They had also become disaffected with the non-Iraqi jihadists and their brutal methods of intimidation. They also resented the way these jihadists had seized control over the smuggling routes in Anbar that had supported Sunni tribes for decades.

In the fall of 2006, US commanders in Ramadi stood by as the 1920s Brigade and other Sunni nationalist insurgents dragged the jihadists out of the mosques on Fridays and blew their brains out. Importantly, the improved tactical proficiency of US units — a proficiency driven by desperation and willingness to learn and adapt — played a role in supporting the awakening process. US brigade and battalion commanders deserve great credit for forming personal relationships with tribal leaders like Abdul Sittar Abdu Risha that helped immeasurably as the awakening process gathered momentum in the fall of 2006.

Contrary to popular myths now being offered up on the airwaves, the White House and Gen. David Petraeus were not involved in decisions by brigade and battalion commanders to start forming these local alliances. My research on this period of the war shows that these commanders took these steps out of desperation and because they couldn’t think of anything else to do to reduce insurgent violence.

Many myths surround the Awakening and the surge – myths popularized by the neocons and the mainstream media, as well as by fawning narratives in books by Paula Broadwell and others about how brilliant senior leaders engineered this change in the landscape of Iraq. Like all narratives, however, their stories contain only grains of truth.

The increase in US troop numbers were important in tamping down violence in Iraq, and the bloody and brutal campaign undertaken by the Joint Special Operations Command in 2007 in Baghdad eviscerated the insurgent networks in and around the capital. But, the surge was not responsible for the Awakening and it did not “win” the war, as asserted by the neoconservatives.

The net result of the surge was to help create circumstances to cover the US retreat so the neoconservatives and others could assert we had in fact achieved something worthwhile in Iraq. The problem with this is that there are still those out there that believe the information operations (IO) campaign that was itself part of the surge. We ended up believing our own invented press releases — a process now repeating itself in Afghanistan.

This IO campaign regrettably succeeded, and there is today no national-level debate over the disastrous US experience in Iraq. That absence means that columnists like Krauthammer and other neocons can make unsupported and unchallenged assertions about the “surge” and its circumstances.

Importantly, it means that the same neoconservative figures who helped sell the Iraq war in the first place can also, with straight faces, go after figures like Chuck Hagel, who, whatever his faults, turned out to be right about Iraq. If Hagel was right about Iraq, maybe it says something about other judgments he might have to make as our next secretary of defense.

Maybe this country would be better off with senior leaders willing to take politically unpopular positions on important questions and have the strength of their convictions to carry those arguments into the senior reaches of government.

– James Russell serves as an associate professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, Ca. The views in this article are his alone.

Photo: President George W. Bush makes a statement to reporters about the war in Iraq after his meeting with senior national defense leaders at the Pentagon May 10, 2007. DoD photo by Staff Sgt. D. Myles Cullen, U.S. Air Force.

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In Search of a Strategy for the Middle East https://www.ips.org/blog/ips/in-search-of-a-strategy-for-the-middle-east/ https://www.ips.org/blog/ips/in-search-of-a-strategy-for-the-middle-east/#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2012 14:07:40 +0000 Guest http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/in-search-of-a-strategy-for-the-middle-east/ via Lobe Log

By James Russell

As suggested most recently by Stephen Walt, a regrettable and recurring theme of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy in the Gulf and the Middle East over the last four years has been the lack of any sense of strategic priorities or objectives in the region. What lies [...]]]> via Lobe Log

By James Russell

As suggested most recently by Stephen Walt, a regrettable and recurring theme of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy in the Gulf and the Middle East over the last four years has been the lack of any sense of strategic priorities or objectives in the region. What lies ahead for the president’s second term?

I wish I thought that the administration had (gasp!) actually examined the possibility of containment (remember the strategy that won the 50-year Cold War?) as a viable strategy both to convince Iran not to build its own nuclear weapon and/or deal with the Islamic Republic if it does cross the nuclear threshold.

But “containment” has now become a watchword for those concerned about the political correctness surrounding the terminology we are supposed to use to discuss strategy and policy options to achieve related objectives. Actual strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski was himself loathe to even mention containment during a recent speech about Iran because it’s becoming such a loaded political term.

The unfortunate truth is that this country can’t have any kind of real and informed opinion about whether to go to war with Iran until it decides on its strategic objectives and is prepared to subject its strategy to open and transparent debate in the marketplace of ideas. There was once a day when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee actually served this purpose. Imagine that!

Instead, we are today left with the Israeli lobby and its acolytes proclaiming a coming day of doom if Iran gets the bomb and the marginalization of commonsensical arguments from people like Walt and Paul Pillar who are asking the basic questions about strategic objectives that should be answered before the United States decides to go to war with Iran.

And, we are left with the Iraq war model in which attempts are simply made to present a case that war is somehow inevitable. Even more disturbingly, we are left with a legislative branch that seems mindlessly bent on pushing the country down the path to war, step by step, with its ever-tightening noose of sanctions that only increase the chances of war and Iran deciding that it has no choice but to build its own bomb.

In this void of strategic thinking, the Obama Administration seems to trundle along managing the inbox in a haphazard and unpredictable way.

Syria burns; the Israelis tell the US to get stuffed once more while fully ready to jam a JDAM down the throat of anyone that sneezes in their direction; Egypt could be descending into a dictatorship; Bahrain and the Gulf States teeter; Iraq falls into Iranian orbit — and that’s just the beginning.

But what is the Administration really worrying about, according to the press? Who exactly makes it onto the drone strike joint prioritized effects list (those to be assassinated). If ever there was a tactical problem in searching for a strategy, it is this issue — strategy turned on its head. How the president found himself picking out and/or participating in the monthly target list meetings (reminiscent of President Johnson in the 1960s) is frankly mind-blowing, but says a lot about the lack of strategic direction for a country that is still the leader of the free world.

How do we explain this lack of direction? It’s easy to blame advisers on the National Security Council who are not strategists and the fact that we are now “between” new cabinet secretaries. It’s easy to blame our regional brain lock by the Israeli lobby. It’s easy to blame a disinterested public and their elected representatives. All of these have in some way contributed to the current state of affairs in which a straightforward and commonsensical argument by a Stephen Walt vanishes into the proverbial wind. This is all true — except that it’s been a hallmark of the last four years. The US has essentially “made it up” as it went along.

I wish I could say that I thought the next four years would be different, and I fear for the future and the prospect of more ill-advised wars started for spurious and stupid reasons that are disconnected from well thought out strategy and policy.

- James Russell is an associate professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. From 1988-2001, Mr. Russell held a variety of positions in the Office of the Assistant Secretary Defense for International Security Affairs, Near East South Asia and the Department of Defense. The views in this post are his alone.

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