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derrida · #26

Basically, the new strategy is like the "strategic hamlets" one used in Viet Nam, where we set up gated communities with high concentrations of US forces and basically focus on keeping those areas safe and productive. I think it can work, if only on a tactical level, as long as sweeps are frequent enough.

The rhetoric has pretty much shifted away from "the primary goal of US troops is training a new Iraqi army."

kahljorn · #27

I think there's still a focus on training iraq troops. It has just gotten to the point where we are securing areas that we have already previously secured and then abandoned to be unsecured; that is being recognized as stupid as far as killing guirella fighters goes.
The new strategy is to secure areas and keep them secure.
The second part of the strategy is that there's a certain region of iraq that started with an R where terrorists are currently "massed" and they are sending 4,000 us troops to help the iraqis move them out.

As for the first part of the strategy my girlfriend made the observation that our previous "strategy" amounted to troops and terrorists running around to benny hill music doing the old switcheroo.

Honestly this war isn't being "Fought" but I guess it's hard to fight terrorist forces. Isn't there any historical precendent for fighting small guirella units?

Preechr · #28

Nutshell:

Up until now, apparently the strategy has been to kill terrorists wherever they are found and that's about it. This strategy has been limited by the Iraqis to only certain areas, however, like NOT Sadr City. We go in and shoot or capture some bad guys and then leave. The governing ideology behind the leaving part was that we did not want to be seen as "occupiers." The upshot of this strategy is that we were "liberating" the same areas and neighborhoods over and over, just to have terrorists move back in as soon as we left.

Kahljorn's Benny Hill analogy was pretty apt, I suppose.

Now we have extracted various commitments from the Iraqi government, such as the end of off-limits areas and the beginning of a more pro-active Iraqi presence in the hot-spots. Our "surge" will be met with an approximate ratio of about one of our guys to every five or six Iraqi soldiers in Baghdad. They have also pledged $10 billion of THEIR money to reconstruction.

I heard Rudy yesterday comparing the new plan to his method for reducing crime in Manhattan. Baghdad has 9 zones, each of which will be assigned a commander and each of which will be held to metrics measuring their success. As areas are cleaned, our forces will be sticking around to protect them from re-infestation.

In addition to what was said in the speech, I think it's important to note OPEC's sudden and timely drop in oil prices, which hits Iran right in the wallet, and Egypt's sudden and timely call for Iran to butt out in Iraq, which was totally unexpected, at least by me.

derrida · #29

Well preechr, it's not as if this strategy hasn't been tried before. In fact, one of the first places we tried it was Fallujah. We also tried it in Tal Afar, which has been more successful.

Kahljorn: Yes, there is precedent for this kind of war, but not exactly parallel. Blowhards like Victor Davis Hanson (who tends to get some credence around here) like to mention the british counterinsurgency against the maylays in the 50's, but the british (actually their chinese proxies brimming with ethnic hate for the maylays) only had to kill 7,000 guerillas over the course of 10 years. Compare that with American generals placing an estimate of 50,000 insurgents killed so far and then stating that the insurgency is in fact growing.

Preechr · #30

It's not just about killing people. It's actually all about providing a secure environment where killing people is counterproductive, no matter why you feel killing somebody might be the best way to accomplish your goals.

Additionally, the only reason VDH might be considered popular around here is because I occasionally post some of his articles, and I regretfully admit right here, right now, that it's been a while since I've checked him out... so I'll go get his most current addition to the blowhardedness and post it separately...