The McCain surge

The Washington Times reports that John McCain favored a troop surge in Iraq well before rise of the insurgency, but it wasn't until December of 2006 that he was finally able to persuade George Bush to send in more troops.

For much of his 3 1/2-year advocacy for the surge - an attempt to persuade the president to adopt a strategy that his commanders said was unnecessary, that Democrats in Congress angrily opposed and that Mr. McCain's Republican colleagues bitterly resented - the former Navy pilot was an army of one.

But after Republicans lost control of Congress in November 2006, Mr. McCain gained leverage in his argument with a president who was soon to face an empowered majority of Democrats and a Republican panicked by the idea that the election was a mandate on Iraq.

Soon the architects of the failing strategy in Iraq - the generals and their civilian superiors - would be banished, and a dissenting general who had sought an increase in troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy would take charge of the war in Iraq.

The president, with no acknowledgement then of Mr. McCain's arguments, would adopt the senator's plan. Democrats who predicted the failure of what they mockingly called "the McCain surge" would fall silent when the 20,000-troop increase led to a dramatic reduction of violence, falling to a low of just 11 troops killed in July.

"They don't call it that anymore," Sen. Lindsey Graham said, smiling in triumph.

The South Carolina Republican, an early convert to the McCain cause who observed much of the senator's backdoor efforts, is unabashed in his praise for his longtime friend, blinking back a tear as he recalls trips he took to Iraq with his colleague.

"Without John McCain, there would never have been the surge," he said emphatically.

Mr. McCain's views contrast sharply with those of his Democratic rival in the November election. Sen. Barack Obama, a freshman senator from Illinois, joined his party's elders to oppose the surge, even after military leaders agreed that it was necessary, and now only grudgingly acknowledges the success of the surge.

Mr. McCain, who would not be interviewed for the Washington Times story, refuses to take credit for the surge saying that success belongs to the troops.  Until very recently Mr. Obama refused to admit that the surge was a success.

Comments

[Smithington]

Saw the below from McClatchy. Something the necons are not interested in dealing with now anymore than they were 5 years ago.

In regards to the McClatchy article, I’m shocked! Shocked!

Seriously, this is news? You mean in a country run under Shiite Sharia Law, there is no room for Sunnis in the security forces? No!

A Shiite Sharia “democracy”.

Now there’s an oxymoron for you.

I don't think the word collapse in the headline is appropriate. In order for something to collapse, it had to be there in the first place and there is nothing different here than there was 5 years ago or that there will be 5 years from now.

Key U.S. Iraq strategy in danger of collapse

BAGHDAD — A key pillar of the U.S. strategy to pacify Iraq is in danger of collapsing because the Iraqi government is failing to absorb tens of thousands of former Sunni Muslim insurgents who'd joined U.S.-allied militia groups into the country's security forces.

American officials have credited the militias, known as the Sons of Iraq or Awakening councils, with undercutting support for the group al Qaida in Iraq and bringing peace to large swaths of the country, including Anbar province and parts of Baghdad. Under the program, the United States pays each militia member a stipend of about $300 a month and promised that they'd get jobs with the Iraqi government.

But the Iraqi government, which is led by Shiite Muslims, has brought only a relative handful of the more than 100,000 militia members into the security forces. Now officials are making it clear that they don't intend to include most of the rest.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/49538.html

[Jack Dailey]

The Surge has an erie reminance of the bulge. It is inevitable that that longer we keep our troops fighting abroad, that we develop new tactics to counter our enemies. However exposing our own counter insurgency tactics is reckless. The mandate is up in 2011 and the prime minister wants us out. If we have developed the strategy and tactics to indeed win in Iraq, then it is a perfect time to withdraw without exposing our enemy to the strategy that they will ultimately learn to counter. After all something is going to bring us back into that part of the world again.