AFTER THE FIASCO

Everyone knows that the invasion stirred up a hydra-headed insurgency that bedeviled the US military,but less well known are the profound strategic changes undertaken by the US military in 2007 that started to turn the war around. Thomas Ricks’ impressive new book tells that story through the experiences of a small group of US and foreign military and civilian officials who,in the face of official disapproval and even hostility,took it upon themselves to re-write the military playbook in Iraq. Their success was nothing short of remarkable: not only did they formulate a new strategy for Iraq,but they also gained President George W. Bush’s support,obtained the green light for the famous “surge” in US combat forces in 2007,engineered changes in US military leadership in Iraq,and faced down a very hostile US Congress. Perhaps most impressive of all,the strategy worked: by the end of 2007,civilian and military deaths in Iraq dropped sharply,and countless no-go areas around Iraq were,for the first time in years,relatively stable and peaceful.

Ricks has first-rate qualifications to tell this story. A Washington Post correspondent who has covered the war from the outset,he previously authored Fiasco,which chronicled in depressing detail the disastrous early stage of the war. Ricks centres The Gamble on the man behind the US turnaround,General David Petraeus,who is fast becoming one of the most celebrated generals in US history. A physical “stud” capable of out-performing much younger soldiers in the gym and on the track,Petraeus has a PhD from Princeton and came first in class at both the physically demanding ranger training school and the army’s Command and General Staff College. He had served two tours in Iraq before he was assigned to head Fort Leavenworth in Nebraska. All too aware of US failures in Iraq,he assembled a group of officers and analysts to re-write the US army manual on counter-insurgency,a thinly veiled quest to find a workable strategy in Iraq.

As Ricks tells the story,Petraeus and other strategy experts,such as Johns Hopkins’ Eliot Cohen,understood that the US had no strategy in Iraq. By 2006,US troops had retreated into large bases on the outskirts of major population centers. They sallied forth in columns of Humvees to patrol and attack known enemy concentrations and subject to brutal ambushes and IED attacks,only to withdraw to their same heavily fortified bases and leave the streets to insurgent groups who terrorised civilians and each other. Fearful,edgy US troops treated Iraqis roughly at best,

brutally at worst,which only worsened the spiral of violence.

Petraeus and his many collaborators saw that restoring a measure of personal security to everyday Iraq was the keystone to a meaningful,if less ambitious US strategy in Iraq,and Petraeus had already seen it work. In 2005 and 2006,two US army colonels,H.E. McMaster and Sean MacFarland,had departed from US army doctrine and in their respective commands,Tall Afar and Ramadi,and followed a traditional counter-insurgency script. They made alliances with local sheiks,despite their ties to Sunni insurgents,placed US troops in permanent small bases right in the midst of enemy-controlled civilian areas,and tried to win over the locals as well as defend them from the insurgents. As McMaster summarised the new doctrine for his troops: “Every time you treat an Iraqi disrespectfully,you are working for the enemy.” The strategy worked,and Tall Afar and Ramadi went from no-go zones to peaceful in a matter of months.

Building on that experience,Petraeus and his small cohort eventually managed to overcome resistance in Washington to win approval for the strategy change and the addition of 30,000 US combat troops to re-take Baghdad itself,which by the end of 2007 was largely in the grip of insurgents. Petraeus assumed command of the US forces in Iraq and began following his new playbook,guided by an unusually brainy and diverse group of officers and civilians,almost all of who had Ivy League PhDs or other unusual qualifications,such as Australian counter-insurgency theorist David Kilcullen. US casualties soared in the first half of 2007 as they moved into insurgent territory and held their ground. But not long after mid year Iraqi civilian casualties dropped sharply and eventually so did US and Iraqi military casualties. By early 2008,it was clear that Petraeus’ plan was working,at least for the moment.

Ricks is careful — and rightly so — to make a distinction between that success story and the larger fate of Iraq in the post-Saddam era. Whatever the US military salvaged from the fiasco of the invasion has not been matched by political progress in Iraq on the many intractable conflicts surrounding ethnic and religious divisions. The peace hard won in 2007 could,all too quickly,surrender to chaos.

The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq,2006-2008
Thomas E. Ricks,Penguin,$27.95