{"id":221,"date":"2007-01-06T07:10:37","date_gmt":"2007-01-06T12:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=221"},"modified":"2007-02-27T22:02:09","modified_gmt":"2007-02-28T03:02:09","slug":"surge-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=221","title":{"rendered":"Surge Protection"},"content":{"rendered":"
Even as the Democratic leadershi<\/title>Even as the Democratic leadership <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2007\/01\/06\/ap\/politics\/mainD8MFLU8O0.shtml\"> declares its opposition to a “surge”<\/a> in Iraq, it should also be noted that not all Neocons agree on military tactics <em>and <\/em>there are significant political and strategic divisions among those who make the tactical case for more troops in Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 The debate about military escalation sometimes conceals more than it reveals about serious political disagreements among foreign policy elites about the balance of forces in Iraq and in the Gulf.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Neocon Splits on Military Strategy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As Peter Spiegel suggested in his <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em> report on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-neocons4jan04,0,3526730,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines\"> Neocons and the surge<\/a>, there has always been a split between those who backed Rumsfeld’s “military transformation” vision and a “light footprint” strategy in Iraq and those who favor boots on the ground.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Some leading neoconservatives do not embrace the troop surge proposal.<\/p>\n<p>Wolfowitz, for instance, ridiculed the notion that more troops would be \tneeded to secure Iraq than were used in the invasion.<\/p>\n<p>And Richard N. Perle, a former top advisor to the Pentagon who also \tadvocated for smaller troop numbers at the time of the invasion, is known to \tbe skeptical of the idea of a surge.<\/p>\n<p>The plan’s advocates acknowledge the split.<\/p>\n<p>“Before the war, I was arguing for a quarter of a million troops in \texpectations we’d be there five or 10 years,” said Gary J. Schmitt, an \tanalyst at the American Enterprise Institute who has worked closely with \tKristol and Kagan. “Richard Perle, obviously somebody else who’s thought of \tas a neocon, thought we should go in” with far fewer U.S. forces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These splits go way back.<\/p>\n<p>Kristol and Kagan backed McCain in 2000, not Bush.\u00c2\u00a0 Perle and Wolfowitz were on the Bush team from the start.<\/p>\n<p>For the McCain crowd, the focus is on the direct demonstration of American power.<\/p>\n<p>The Right Zionist “family” around Perle–the authors of “<a href=\"http:\/\/www.iasps.org\/strat1.htm\">A Clean Break<\/a>“–is more focused on Israel and the exercise of military power in support of strategic alliances with indigenous “clients.”<\/p>\n<p><strong>Whose Military Escalation?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Even among those who currently champion an escalation, there appear to be some significant disagreements about the nature and <em>purpose<\/em> of such a surge.<\/p>\n<p>The key split is between those who link a surge with a renewed effort to <em> crush the Sunni insurgency<\/em> in support of the Shia and those who think a surge should be used to <em>crush Sadr’s Shiite militia<\/em>, even as the US continues to try to court the Sunnis.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, all those folks seem to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aei.org\/events\/eventID.1446\/event_detail.asp\">hanging out together at the American Enterprise Institute<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 But at some point, the differences will be come more visible.<\/p>\n<p>Here is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aei.org\/publications\/filter.all,pubID.25266\/pub_detail.asp\"> Gerecht<\/a> at AEI on the purpose of a surge:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"BodyText\">Let us be clear: The Sunni insurgency and holy war \tagainst the Shiite community cannot be broken unless <strong>the cities of \tBaghdad and Ramadi are pacified<\/strong>. Unless these two towns are cleared and \theld, there is no way any Shiite government in Baghdad can begin the process \tof slowly neutralizing the murderous Shiite militias that now operate often \twith government complicity. The militias have gained increasing support from \tthe Shiite community because they are the only effective means of \tneighborhood protection and offensive operations against Sunni insurgents \tand holy warriors…<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"BodyText\">And the Americans, who started withdrawing from \tBaghdad’s streets in the fall of 2003 (perhaps the most catastrophic \tdecision ever made by General Abizaid), have retreated further into large, \twell-fortified bases. Revenge killings of innocent Sunnis are an ugly and \tunavoidable outgrowth of this process. They cannot be stopped unless the <strong> \tUnited States and the Iraqi government first significantly diminish the \tSunni Arab menace–that is, clear and hold Baghdad and Ramadi<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span class=\"BodyText\">But McCain (with Lieberman) was also on hand recently at AEI.\u00c2\u00a0 The <em>Washington Post<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/01\/05\/AR2007010501179.html\"> transcript of the event<\/a> suggests that McCain’s surge is intended to serve a different purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A troop surge is necessary but not sufficient for American success in \tIraq. By controlling the violence, we can pave the way for a political \tsettlement. Once the government wields greater authority, however, Iraqi \tleaders must take significant steps on their own.<\/p>\n<p>These include a commitment to <strong>go after the militias, a reconciliation \tprocess for insurgents and Baathists<\/strong>, more equitable distribution of \tgovernment resources, provincial elections that will <strong>bring Sunnis into \tgovernment<\/strong>, and a large increase in employment- generating economic \tprojects.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>McCain is not alone in his focus on Sadr.\u00c2\u00a0 The military is <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=158\">itching for a fight<\/a> with Sadr.<\/p>\n<p>These are potentially very <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/01\/05\/AR2007010501080.html\"> different surges<\/a>, the “success” of which would be judged very differently by different US factions.<\/p>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even as the Democratic leadershiEven as the Democratic leadership declares its opposition to a “surge” in Iraq, it should also be noted that not all Neocons agree on military tactics and there are significant political and strategic divisions among those who make the tactical case for more troops in Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 The debate about military escalation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}