Did McCain Back the New Counterinsurgency Strategy

Robert Wright and Jim Pinkerton raise an important issue -- it's very clear from the record that John McCain strongly supported the dispatch of additional troops to Iraq, but it's not at all clear that he supported the suite of counterinsurgency tactics that he now wants us to believe is what the term "the surge" refers to. Indeed, the basic shape of the Anbar Awakening -- talk to your enemies, make concessions to bad guys to get them out of the terrorism business, etc. -- doesn't sound at all like the kind of thing McCain supports philosophically.

I'm open to being corrected on this point if anyone has evidence of McCain saying something like "we really ought to be reaching out to the insurgency and negotiating with them" during or before the summer of 2006 then I hope they'll let me know. But fundamentally the tactical turnaround that led to a lot of the successes north of Baghdad doesn't actually seem to have been anything McCain was calling for.

UPDATE: For example, here's a June 2006 speech on Iraq where McCain lays out his views and doesn't call for anything like the Anbar Awakening tactics.

Comments

The argument of this video is that McCain called for nothing of the kind, backed Bush to the hilt, and then in 2006 started claiming that he had been the war's biggest critic.

The Surge®, apparently, is McCain's gimmick to make people ignore his long support of an unpopular war.
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Posted by Grand Moff Texan | July 24, 2008 2:20 PM

I would just like someone to think about what the right's reaction would have been had a Democrat, much less a Democratic candidate, suggest publicly that what we needed to do in Iraq was start paying off and working with the Sunni militias which had been attacking our troops. I don't think the right wing would be clamoring to see who stood most closely to the Democrat pushing it.

Posted by El Cid | July 24, 2008 2:22 PM

Not only does he claim to have supported the surge tactics, he (and his surrogates) have claimed that he invented the tactics.

Here's Romney on the subject: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/16/the-audacity-of-dopes-rom_n_113219.html?page=4.

Posted by dckatiebug | July 24, 2008 2:27 PM

For example, here's a June 2006 speech on Iraq where McCain lays out his views and doesn't call for anything like the Anbar Awakening tactics.

Huh? Did Matthew not read thoe entire speech?

Here's McCain, from the linked speech: "What does victory mean? It is the classic reduction and eventual elimination of any insurgency. An economy that works, a government that functions, and a military and police that are able to combat and eventually eliminate and destroy an insurgency. That’s the way every insurgency in history is put down."

The "military and police" that are able to eliminate the insurgency, which McCain mentions, are exactly the Concerned Local Citizens groups that are the heart of the Awakening.

Posted by Al | July 24, 2008 2:30 PM

Great analysis, Matt. This "surge" argument is going nowhere for McCain - he even lost Joe Klein by tying himself in pretzels over it.

Of course he never advocated for counter-insurgency tactics - just as we've forgotten that he said the war would be easy and we'd be greeted like liberators.

The irony of this shitty week for McCain is that this has come in spite of the fact that the press has bought into his timeline of the war: asking Obama about his judgment surrounding the surge, but not about the start of the war.

http://strategy08.wordpress.com

Posted by Dan | July 24, 2008 2:36 PM

Indeed, the basic shape of the Anbar Awakening -- talk to your enemies, make concessions to bad guys to get them out of the terrorism business, etc. -- doesn't sound at all like the kind of thing McCain supports philosophically.

BTW, Matthew doesn't have this quite right.

The Awakening involved talking to local sheiks and other tribal leaders, not the leadership of the insurgency. The people we started talking to we targets of the insurgency, not perpetrators of it. To be sure, some of the people involved in the Concerned Local Citizens groups are ex-insurgents. But the leadership of the Awakening is not and never was.

What we basically did was coopt neutrals, not insurgents.

It doesn't surprise me that Matthew doesn't really understand the Awakening movement. He didn't follow it when it was getting started, opting instead to believe that it was doomed to failure. We know now that Matthew was profoundly mistaken about Iraq - we are succeeding, and success is probable so long as we don't prematurely surrender (as Matthew and Obama have previously counseled us to do). His mistake about the Awakening is just a subset of his earlier misjudgements about Iraq.

Posted by Al | July 24, 2008 2:40 PM

What we basically did was coopt neutrals

After they coopted themselves, you mean?

The turnabout began last September, when a federation of tribes in the Ramadi area came together as the Anbar Salvation Council to oppose the fundamentalist militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

....The council sought financial and military support from the Iraqi and American governments. In return the sheiks volunteered hundreds of tribesmen for duty as police officers and agreed to allow the construction of joint American-Iraqi police and military outposts throughout their tribal territories.

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Posted by Grand Moff Texan | July 24, 2008 2:58 PM

Almost every quote in his Iraq Timeline is "more troops." One mentions "counter-insurgency" people, but in the context of "more troops."

Posted by Alex | July 24, 2008 2:58 PM

"What we basically did was coopt neutrals, not insurgents." And then they co-opted insurgents. It was a proxy co-option of insurgents against foreign fighters so that they would stop shooting at American troops. Did McCain ever say he supported this? Nope.

Posted by Reality Man | July 24, 2008 2:59 PM

If you read the March-April 2008 article co-authored by Gen. MacFarland, he identifies some of the main reasons for the Awakening, including AQI overplaying its hand, assassinations creating leadership positions for younger and more aggressive leaders, and a concern that the US might leave. This last one should have resonated with the Republican (allegedly the personal-responsibility) party.

If anyone actually reads Obama's satement in January 2007, he is pessimistic about just adding new troops, but it's not "let's just leave." It's about encouraging Iraq to step up, and it has provisions for residual forces and adjustments based on political progress.

Posted by mike | July 24, 2008 3:00 PM

Al, we are succeeding in reversing some, but not all, of the things that were fouled up as a result of the invasion. In a country that there was no justification for invading in the first place. With a military force that we needed to divert from other, much more pressing needs.

In other words, even if we grant McCain the full credit for the "success of the surge", that pales in comparison to what Obama was right about and McCain was wrong about. Further, McCain wants to keep combat troops in Iraq indefinitely which will continue to result in additional US deaths, plus will antagonize the region, the world, and even the sovereign Iraqi government that we put in place.

Posted by Dilan Esper | July 24, 2008 3:02 PM

If you read the March-April 2008 article co-authored by Gen. MacFarland, he identifies some of the main reasons for the Awakening, including AQI overplaying its hand, assassinations creating leadership positions for younger and more aggressive leaders, and a concern that the US might leave. This last one should have resonated with the Republican (allegedly the personal-responsibility) party.

If anyone actually reads Obama's satement in January 2007, he is pessimistic about just adding new troops, but it's not "let's just leave." It's about encouraging Iraq to step up, and it has provisions for residual forces and adjustments based on political progress.

Posted by mike | July 24, 2008 3:03 PM

Oh, we have Pompous Fucktard Al in the hotseat today, pretending that the 1920 Revolution Brigades were just chopped liver.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 24, 2008 3:09 PM

So we have an expansive definition of "winning," but why are these matters (sound economy, etc.) a reason for the US to spend $15b per month in direct costs? What is the American interest? A stable Iraq is almost certainly going to be an Iran-friendly country unless it gets taken over by the next Saddam.

There were no WMD and there is no Saddam. Regarding AQI, it did not really exist in Iraq, then it did after the invasion but always a small numbers compared to fighting Baathists, and now is even smaller. Unless this is really mostly about oil, in which case there is unfinished business.

Posted by mike | July 24, 2008 3:10 PM

Oh, we have Pompous Fucktard Al in the hotseat today, pretending that the 1920 Revolution Brigades were just chopped liver.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 24, 2008 3:09 PM

THERE'S NO NEED FOR THIS KIND OF TALK, EVEN IF HE IS WRONG.

Posted by mike | July 24, 2008 3:14 PM

Local militias and strongmen aren't the kind of "military and police" (or future Iraq) that McCain or Bush envision. AQI rubbed enough rhubarb the wrong way that local militias stepped up and smacked them down. The pro-war supporters want to do away with the militias etc.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 24, 2008 3:15 PM

The people we started talking to we targets of the insurgency, not perpetrators of it.

Not all the insurgents were AQI. Some of the insurgents were targeting other insurgents. The Sunni tribes were enemies, not neutrals, of the Shiite government, until it became clear that America was leaving and AQI became more threatening than America.

Posted by Consumatopia | July 24, 2008 3:21 PM

THERE'S NO NEED FOR THIS KIND OF TALK, EVEN IF HE IS WRONG.

Umm, yes, there is.

Posted by voice of reason | July 24, 2008 3:30 PM

well, McCain was on board with everything McFarland was doing, and then with everything Petraeus recommended, and that covers all aspects of the counterinsurgency, so I think McCain is fine there.

But does he even know what the counterinsurgency entailed, specifically? To judge from his remarks yesterday, he does not.

Here's more of what McCain said yesterday in the cheese aisle of that Bethlehem, PA grocery store:

“First of all, a surge is really a counter-insurgency strategy," McCain said. "[Colonel McFarland] had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is a counter-insurgency. And he told me at that time that he believed that that strategy, which is quote the surge, part of the surge, would be, would be, successful. So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to carry out this insurgency. Prior to that -- counter insurgency. Prior to that they had been going into places, killing people or not killing people, and then withdrawing. And the new counter-insurgency, the surge, entailed going in and clearing and holding, which Colonel McFarland had already started doing. And then of course, later on, there were additional troops, and General Petraeus said that the surge would not have worked, and the Anbar Awakening would not have taken place, successfully, if they hadn’t had an increase in the number of troops."

McCain's description of the "surge" is utterly wrong.
First of all, he claims that "a surge is really a counter-insurgency strategy." What? Any and all "surges" in troop levels in any theater of war are only for the purposes of mounting a counter-insurgency? That's ludicrous.

Second, his basic understanding of the Iraq war is fatally flawed: "going in and clearing and holding" is NOT a counter-insurgency. That is simply how you win traditional territorial wars. That was our strategy for 3 years, and it was failing. It failed because after clearing and holding any given sector, we were having to withdraw--because we didn't have enough troops in Iraq to make it that kind of war and win it. When we withdrew from a sector, the combination of MNF-I forces and Iraqi security forces left behind would invariably lose ground, and many times fail altogether.

The counter-insurgency, which certainly couldn't have been mounted without the surge, has enabled us to clear, hold, and STAY, at least in Baghdad, to a greater extent than we were able to before. But there are many more specific tactical qualities of Petraeus' counter-insurgency, such as troop strength and placement--the Joint Security Stations Joe Klein mentions--working with and paying locals to a greater degree, and generally tighter and more nimble oversight of the entire Baghdad theater, that were much more important to our success than simply "clearing and holding."

McCain here is displaying an extraordinary misapprehension of military tactics.

Posted by along | July 24, 2008 4:25 PM

"What does victory mean? It is the classic reduction and eventual elimination of any insurgency. An economy that works, a government that functions, and a military and police that are able to combat and eventually eliminate and destroy an insurgency. That’s the way every insurgency in history is put down."(from McCain speech)

Weak tea indeed. The Anbar Awakening was a deal we made with Sunni tribal sheiks that if they turned against al qaida we would give them support.

This worked only because before the awakening the tribal sheiks tolerated or supported al qaida, so the sheiks had support they could withdraw (if the Sunni sheiks had always fought al qaida how could they turn against al qaida as part of a deal?).

It was a good idea, and it worked. It preceded the surge, which up to two days ago was universally recognized as the increase in US forces (about 30,000 troops). What is a surge? A temporary swelling.

I agree with Matt that McCain has not exactly been a loud proponent of classic counter-insurgency tactics (like making deals with tribal sheiks who themselves have dirty hands). I second his challenge to find McCain statements that show a deeper level to counter-insurgency tactics than bland boilerplate about a functioning government.

In particular counter-insurgency involves continually soliciting and talking with the insurgents themselves and their supporters, offering them a better deal (carrot) while trying to kill them (stick).

Bush (finally) seems to understand that talking with the enemy and his friends is a really good idea, because sometimes you can strike deals that work. This is a new developent with Bush, and McCain, if anything, is behind Bush in this regard.

Classical counter-insurgency in Iraq entails talking with and striking deals with terrorists who have attacked American soldiers. That just isn't McCain's style. It isn't Bush's style either, but failure on the ground backed him into a corner. Has McCain learned those hard lessons? Does he support talking with Iran? Does he support a deal with N. Korea (which is, let's face it, paying off a blackmailer). It answers itself, doesn't it?

Posted by tomtom | July 24, 2008 4:36 PM

Does "cut the bullshit" count?

Posted by MSB | July 24, 2008 4:40 PM

Let's put the Awaking Consul strategy into words and see if any US politician would support it.

Start talking to and then working directly with, and then sending money to the Sunni groups who were responsible for around 75% of all US casualties before mid 06. The vast majority of those casualties caused by IED's and snipers.

Of course McCain would never support that. Obviously Bush didn't, so we assume nobody told him about it.

For all the blather about just talking to Iran what we did in the Sunni heartland was a zillion times more conciliatory. You can bet that in the last month some guys who blew up many a US soldier or shot their heads off from afar too some money from Uncle Sam.

Posted by rapier | July 24, 2008 6:59 PM

Nothing - repeat, NOTHING - that Petraeus did in Iraq had any impact whatsoever on the insurgency.

It was entirely initiated by the Sunni insurgents and al-Sadr. The Sunni insurgents simply decided they couldn't fight the Shia AND the US at the same time, so they hooked up with the militarily stronger party which would eventually leave - and who was also stupid enough to pay them.

For Sadr's part, he stood down his militia to some degree at least in order to burnish his religious and political credentials, also recognizing that he couldn't directly take on the US military as he did in 2004.

Both these decisions were taken unilaterally by the Iraqi factions themselves. Nothing Petraeus did was relevant. In fact, most of what Petraeus has done has been both ineffective and had negative impact. Walling off entire neighborhoods into ghettos might have had some short term security impact, but does nothing to address the overall problem.

The bottom line is as I've said before:

1) It is impossible to do COIN as a foreign occupying power.

2) You need at least 20 troops per 1,000 population to do COIN. Effectively that means one platoon of troops for every single neighborhood - and those troops have to be EMBEDDED in that neighborhood, meaning they speak the language, know the culture, and can make the intelligence contacts necessary to catch insurgents. The US never had that ratio or those capabilities and never will. The same applies to Afghanistan. So dumping another 10,000, 30,000 or even 160,000 troops into either country is a complete waste of time and money and US and civilian lives.

McCain doesn't understand that. Neither does Obama. Neither does Petraeus.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 24, 2008 7:18 PM

I think Al hit on the fundamental truth that Matthew isn't really interested in understanding and acknowledging the success of the counter-insurgency strategy, and never has been. What he was always interested in doing was declaring failure in Iraq and withdrawing as soon as humanly possible.

Posted by Tim K | July 24, 2008 7:42 PM

More important than whether McCain ever called for these tactics is the point that Obama never opposed them. So if we give McCain his definition of 'surge', then Obama never opposed the surge, and McCain can't criticize his judgement.

Posted by NCS | July 24, 2008 9:15 PM

Couple of thoughts. First, the jihadists conducted the stupidest insurgency ever. They were blowing up and murdering the people they were going to hide among. Where they gained local authority they imposed a harsh sharia law that pissed the locals. They should have studied HoChiMinh. The Taliban is no better. They have come thru the now-open high passes from Jihadistan to Afghanistan to engage NATO and local forces and they are dying in wholesale lots. But not before pissing off the indiginant tribesmen with their extreme form of Islam.
We are very lucky in our enemies.

Second, there is no reason at all for a naval aviator to be a serious student of insurgency. OurJohn's remark about 'this is how every insurgency is defeated' shows his ignorance. Serious insurgents are almost never defeated.

Third, I am amazed to have to say that Mr RS Hack is right about the manpower requirements of a counter insurgency. And add that if you are using air strikes or artillery, you are losing.
A major flaw of our effort in Afghanistan.

Posted by JohnMcC | July 24, 2008 9:32 PM

"So if we give McCain his definition of 'surge', then Obama never opposed the surge, and McCain can't criticize his judgement."

Nicely said, NCS. Sums it up.

Posted by tomtom | July 24, 2008 9:50 PM

Unfortunately, JohnMcC, you're mostly wrong about the insurgents, mostly because you confuse Al Qaeda in Iraq with the insurgents. Al Qaeda comes from that crowd of terrorists who believe blowing anything and everything up is the way to operate. The Sunni insurgents in Iraq really had nothing to do with that. They might blow up some Iraqi civilians in the course of their operations, but they weren't deliberately targeting Iraqis (except maybe some Shia down the road.)

Depending on what you want to accomplish, such "chaos terrorism" can be effective. While the Marighella principle - force the government to crack down, thus alienating the population who will then turn to the terrorists - never worked that well in South America, it can be effective.

The problem with your perception of the Taliban is that it's out of date. The current groups involved in the Afghan insurgency are a mixture of "old" Taliban and "new" Taliban, as well as warlords, drug smugglers, and people pissed off by the current Afghan government.

I sent this email to Matt last night:

If this book is correct, there is even LESS likelihood of a "win" in Afghanistan than I thought.

Majority of Afghan insurgents not Taliban
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C07%5C24%5Cstory_24-7-2008_pg7_62

The vast majority of Afghan insurgents are not necessarily the Taliban, but those who feel spurred to fighting by broken promises, lack of a stable government, blood feuds and economic considerations, according to a new book ‘Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare’, released here by the Centre for Naval Analysis (CAN), a local defence-related research establishment.

According to Daniel Marston, who contributed the book’s chapter on Afghanistan, the Pashtun insurgents have been members of a group recently displaced from a position of political power and dominance within its own society.

The main focus of the Taliban is more political and economic than ideological, Marston writes, adding all three insurgent groups in the period from 2001 to 2007 relied upon the vast Pashtun belt of the Pakistani FATA for troops, supplies and support. Pakistan played an important role in the insurgency campaign, despite its governmental stance of support for US and coalition forces, he argues and says the reality of the Pashtun belt is its long history of resistance to government control and its close relationships with Pashtun tribes on the Afghan side of the border.

The Pashtun areas of Pakistan provided safe havens for insurgent troops, and considerable scope for cross-border traffic and smuggling activities, he continues Pakistan sent thousands of troops into the region to wage a campaign against “Taliban” forces and heavy but inconclusive fighting ensued, he says, adding the campaign was a drain on the Pakistan Army’s resources and was highly unpopular with the Pakistani public.

The 2006 peace deal reached by Pakistan with tribal leaders eased the political situation within Pakistan but greatly disappointed Pakistan’s coalition allies as it allowed the Taliban to retain considerable advantage, with sanctuaries over the border, providing volunteers, money and intelligence, he writes.

Marston concludes that carrying out a successful counterinsurgency campaign takes a substantial amount of money, and even more importantly, a substantial amount of political will, which may include the undertaking that such a campaign could last for decades, and that casualties are inevitable in providing security and holding cleared areas.

“For all – military participants on the ground and civilians following through news reports – this means looking at the situation from the perspective of the local community, and remembering that a Western upbringing and perspective is not a great help, and is frequently an active detriment, to understanding the world in which the average Afghan lives.

Another article I sent Matt follows:

Experts question whether Afghan troop surge can work
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080717/wl_sthasia_afp/usafghanistanmilitary

Pentagon officials have not said how many additional forces can be mustered or what they will do with them, but it's clear that a top priority is to stop the flow of fighters into Afghanistan from safe havens in Pakistan.

"The border there is a really critical issue that we're going to have to solve," Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday.

The Pakistani government, however, has resisted US entreaties to do more to control their side of the border, pulling army troops out of the region under a truce struck with militants in March.

"It's very clear that additional (US) troops will have a big impact on insurgents coming across that border," Mullen asserted Wednesday.

But others are doubtful that more US combat troops can seal an ill-defined border that runs through towering mountains and open desert.

"You cannot seal borders," British Defence Minister Des Browne said here last week.

"We could not seal 26 miles of border between north and south of Ireland with 40,000 troops. Please do not demand of Pakistan and Afghanistan that they try to seal the many hundreds of kilometers of mountainous border between these two countries," he said.

Moreover, sending more troops into a country with a long history of resistance to outside forces may further inflame the insurgency, some experts warn.

"The past history is that a large footprint in Afghanistan has engendered a quick turn by locals," said Sam Brannen, an analyst at the Center for International and Security Studies.

"There is a historical threat there that says that Afghans don't like large occupying forces," he said.

"If this was a NATO surge, I would tell you it's exactly what the country needs but a US surge is risky," he said.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 25, 2008 12:19 AM

If McCain meant "counterinsurgecy strategy" when he talked about the surge, how then can he claim credit for the surge as he has been doing and been receiving credit from the press for.

If the Anbar awakening started in June 06, and McCain was only briefed in Dec 06, it is clear that he deserves NO CREDIT AT ALL for originating a surge that had started 6 months before he ever heard about it!

He can't have it both ways.

Posted by Ohmy | July 25, 2008 6:02 AM

"He can't have it both ways"

The MSM is not going to do a good job of pointing out McCain's internal contradictions as he tries to take credit for the Anbar Awakening, and to tie the Awakening to the surge. However, blogs are doing a pretty decent job filling in.

It will be interesting to see if the blogosphere has enough reach to shape the narrative in this election. Blog readership is small, but insight and analysis does filter out at the coffee cooler and the dinner table.

Posted by tomtom | July 25, 2008 12:22 PM