The New Strategy in Iraq

As you all no I was unable to catch the Presidents speech a few weeks ago due to my busy schedule on my tour of Israel, however since home I have read the speech as well as a few commentaries on the new strategy.

I feel that Americans as a whole are to focused on the part of the new strategy which sends 21,000 more troops to Iraq. I feel that it has been necessary for several months now to increase the troops in order to bring an end to the war. Their was however, a completely separate part of the speech which many seemed to have overlooked or missed which outlined a new strategy in Iraq. President Bush said in his speech:

“Now let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations -- conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.

This is a strong commitment. But for it to succeed, our commanders say the Iraqis will need our help. So America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels. So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them -- five brigades -- will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.”

The change in strategy is as follows, the new Iraqi government needs to gain the support of its people. The primary role of any government is to protect its people without doing so, the Iraqi citizens will continue to look towards others for security which insurgents seem to do very well. Once the Iraqi government gains the support of its people violence should slow. The new larger American force will be set-up as a support system which the weak Iraqi military and police needs in order to succeed.

The Small Wars Journal says:

What matters here is not the size of forces (though the strategy will not work without a certain minimum force size), but rather their tasks. The key element of the plan, as outlined in the President’s speech, is to concentrate security forces within Baghdad, to secure the local people where they live. Troops will operate in small, local groups closely partnered with Iraqi military and police units, with each unit permanently assigned to an area and working its “beat”.

This is different from early strategies which were enemy-centric (focusing on killing insurgents), or more recent approaches that relied on training and supporting Iraqi forces and expected them to secure the population.

The new strategy reflects counterinsurgency best practice as demonstrated over dozens of campaigns in the last several decades: enemy-centric approaches that focus on the enemy, assuming that killing insurgents is the key task, rarely succeed. Population-centric approaches, that center on protecting local people and gaining their support, succeed more often.

I think that this plan is a great opportunity for America to finally see some sort of victory and to see some of our boys come home. However I do believe American forces will be in Iraq for eternity, just like we continue to keep forces station in Korea and Vietnam.

What do you think?