[antimedia] FW: The Surge Is Succeeding

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 [See especially, below: > The situation as it stands is very close to that
of the final phase of 
> Vietnam.



> The Surge Succeeds
>
>
> By HYPERLINK "http://www.americanthinker.com/jr_dunn/"J.R. Dunn J.R. 
> Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker.
> Page Printed from:
> http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/the_surge_succeeds.html at July 
> 25,
> 2007 - 01:25:39 PM EDT
>
> God looks after children, drunkards, and the United States of America
> - Otto von Bismarck
>
>
>
> It's now quite clear how the results of the surge will be dealt with 
> by domestic opponents of the Iraq war.
>
> They're going to be ignored.
>
> They're being ignored now. Virtually no media source or Democratic 
> politician (and not a few Republicans, led by Richard "I can always 
> backtrack" Lugar) is willing to admit that the situation on the ground 
> has changed dramatically over the past three months. Coalition efforts 
> have undergone a remarkable reversal of fortune, a near-textbook 
> example as to how an effective strategy can overcome what appear to be 
> overwhelming drawbacks.
>
>
> Anbar is close to being secured, thanks to the long-ridiculed strategy 
> of recruiting local sheiks. A capsule history of war coverage could be 
> put together from stories on this topic alone - beginning with sneers, 
> moving on to "evidence" that it would never work, to the puzzled 
> pieces of the past few months admitting that something was happening, 
> and finally the recent stories expressing concern that the central 
> government might be "offended"
> by the attention being paid former Sunni rebels. (Try to find another 
> story in the legacy media worrying about the feelings of the Iraqi
> government.) What you will not find is any mention of the 
> easily-grasped fact that Anbar acts as a blueprint for the rest of the 
> country. If the process works there, it will work elsewhere. If it 
> works in other areas, that means the destruction of the Jihadis in 
> detail.
>
>
>
> Nor is that all. Diyala province, promoted in media as the "new 
> Al-Queda stronghold" appears to have become a death-trap. The Jihadis 
> can neither defend it nor abandon it. The Coalition understood that 
> Diyala was where the Jihadis would flee when the heat came down in 
> Baghdad, and they were ready for them. A major element of surge 
> strategy - and one reason why the extra infantry brigades were needed
> - is to pressure Jihadis constantly in all their sanctuaries, allowing 
> them no time to rest or regroup.
>
> A blizzard of operations is occurring throughout central Iraq under 
> the overall code-name HYPERLINK 
>
"http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/07/iraq_report_phantom_thu
nder_up.asp"
> Phantom Thunder, the largest operation since the original invasion. It 
> is open-ended, and will continue as long as necessary.
> Current
> ancillary operations include Arrowhead Ripper, which is securing the 
> city of Baqubah in Diyala province. Operation Alljah is methodically 
> clearing out every last neighborhood in Fallujah. In Babil province, 
> southeast of Baghdad, operations Marne Torch and Commando Eagle are 
> underway. (As this was being written, yet another spinoff operation, 
> HYPERLINK 
>
"http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/07/another_major_offensive_agains.
html"
> Marne Avalanche, began in Northern Babil.)
>
>
>
> The Coalition has left the treadmill in which one step of progress 
> seemed to unavoidably lead to two steps back. It requires some time to 
> discover the proper strategy in any war. A cursory glance at 1943 
> would have given the impression of disaster. Kasserine, in which the 
> German Wehrmacht nearly split Allied forces in Tunisia and sent 
> American GIs running. Tarawa, where over 1,600 U.S. Marines died on a 
> sunny afternoon thanks to U.S. Navy overconfidence. Salerno, where the 
> Allied landing force was very nearly pushed back into the sea. But all 
> these incidents, as bitter as they may have been, were necessary to 
> develop the proper techniques that led to the triumphs of 1944 and 
> 1945.
>
>
>
> Someday, 2006 may be seen as Iraq's 1943. It appears that Gen. David 
> Petreaus has discovered the correct strategy for Iraq: engaging the 
> Jihadis all over the map as close to simultaneously as possible.
> Keeping them on the run constantly, giving them no place to stand, 
> rest or refit. Increasing operational tempo to an extent that they 
> cannot match ("Getting inside their decision cycle", as the 4th 
> generation warfare school would call it), leaving them harried, 
> uncertain, and apt to make mistakes.
>
>
>
> The surge is more of a refinement than a novelty. Earlier Coalition 
> efforts were not in error as much as they were incomplete. American 
> troops would clean out an area, turn it over to an Iraqi unit, and 
> depart. The Jihadis would then push out the unseasoned Iraqis and 
> return to business. This occurred in Fallujah, Tall Afar, and endless 
> times in Ramadi.
>
>
>
> Now U.S. troops are remaining on site, which reassures the locals and 
> encourages cooperation. The Jihadis broke (and more than likely never
> knew)
> the cardinal rule of insurgency warfare, that of being a good guest. 
> As Mao put it, "The revolutionary must be as a fish among the water of 
> the peasantry." The Jihadis have been lampreys to the Iraqi people.
> Proselytizing, forcing adaptation of their reactionary creed, engaging 
> in torture, kidnapping, and looting. Arabic culture is one in which 
> open dealings, personal loyalty, and honor are at a premium. Violate 
> any of them, and there is no way back. The Jihadis violated them all.
> The towns and cities of Iraq are no longer sanctuaries.
>
>
>
> The results have begun to come in. On July 4, HYPERLINK 
>
"http://voanews.com/english/2007%EF%BF%BD%2707%EF%BF%BD%2718%EF%BF%BD%27voa1
6.cfm"
> Khaled al-Mashhadani, the most senior Iraqi in Al-Queda, was captured 
> in Mosul. On July 14,HYPERLINK 
>
"http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007%EF%BF%BD%2707%EF%BF%BD%2717%EF
%BF%BD%27us%EF%BF%BD%27strike_N.htm"
> Abu Jurah, a senior Al-Queda leader in the area south of Baghdad, was 
> killed in a coordinated strike by artillery,helicopters, and 
> fighter-bombers. These blows to the leadership are the direct 
> outgrowth of Jihadi brutality and the new confidence among the Iraqis 
> in what they have begun to call the "al-Ameriki tribe".
>
>
>
> We will see more of this in the weeks ahead. The Jihadis have come up 
> with no effective counterstrategy, and the old methods have begun to lose
mana.
> The last massive truck-bomb attack occurred not in Baghdad, but in a 
> small Diyala village that defied Al-Queda. An insurgency in the 
> position of using its major weapons to punish noncombatants is not in 
> a winning situation.
>
>
>
> You will look long and hard to find any of this in the legacy media. 
> Apart from a handful of exceptions (such as John F. Burns of the New 
> York Times), it's simply not being covered. Those operational names 
> would come across as bizarre to the average reader, the gains they 
> have made impossible to fit into the worldview that has been peddled 
> unceasingly by the dead tree fraternity. What the media is 
> concentrating on - and will to continue to concentrate on, in defiance 
> of sense, protest, and logic, to the bitter end
> - is peripheral stories such as the Democrat's HYPERLINK 
> "http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19797695/"Senate pajama party,  
> reassertions of the HYPERLINK 
>
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/17/AR200707170
1456.html"
> claim that the war has "helped" Al-Queda, and the latest proclamation 
> from the HYPERLINK 
> "http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/01/ftn/main3003207.shtml"world
> 's
> greatest fence-sitter.
>
>
>
> The situation as it stands is very close to that of the final phase of 
> Vietnam. Having for several years confused that country's triple-layer 
> jungle with the rolling plains of northwest Europe, William 
> Westmoreland in
> 1968 turned over command to Creighton Abrams. Though also a veteran of 
> the advance against Germany (he had been Patton's favorite armored 
> commander), Abrams lacked his predecessor's taste for vast (not to 
> mention futile) multi-unit sweeps. After carrying out a careful 
> analysis, Abrams reworked Allied strategy to embody the 
> counterinsurgency program advocated by Marine general Victor Krulak 
> and civilian advisor John Paul Vann.
>
>
>
> Abram's war was one of small units moving deep into enemy territory, 
> running down enemy forces and then calling in massive American 
> firepower in the form of artillery or fighter-bombers for the final 
> kill.(Anyone wishing for a detailed portrayal of this style of 
> operations should pick up David Hackworth's HYPERLINK 
>
"http://www.amazon.com/Steel%EF%BF%BD%27Soldiers%EF%BF%BD%27Hearts%EF%BF%BD%
27Transformation%EF%BF%BD%27Battalion/dp/0743246136/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002%EF%B
F%BD%277204606%EF%BF%BD%272895246?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184979360&sr=1%EF%BF%
BD%271"
> Steel My Soldiers' Hearts. It will surprise no one to learn that 
> Hackworth claims that the strategy was his idea and that he had to 
> fight the entire U.S. military establishment to see it through, but 
> it's a good read all the same.) This was a strategy that played to 
> American strengths, one that went after the enemy where he lived. By 
> 1970, Abrams had chased the bulk of the Vietnamese communists across 
> the border into Cambodia and Laos.
>
>
>
> But Vietnam also had its ruling narrative, one that had no room for 
> successful combat operations. That narrative had been born in 1968, at 
> the time of the Tet offensive. Tet was a nationwide operation intended 
> by North Vietnamese commander Nguyen Vo Giap to encourage the 
> Vietnamese people to join with the Viet Cong and PAVN in overthrowing 
> the government. It was an utter rout, with the communists losing 
> something in the order of 60,000 men.
> The Viet Cong were crippled as a military force, and never did recover.
>
>
>
> But panicky reporters, many of whom had never set foot on a 
> battlefield (not to mention figures at ease with manipulating the 
> facts, such as Peter Arnett), were badly shaken by the opening moves 
> of the offensive, among them an abortive attack on the U.S. embassy 
> grounds at Saigon. Their reportage, broadcast and printed nationwide, 
> portrayed a miserable defeat for the U.S.
> and its allies, with the Viet Cong and PAVN striking where they 
> pleased and making off at their leisure. The media portrait of a 
> beleaguered American war effort was never corrected, and became the 
> consensus view. (This process was analyzed in detail in Peter 
> Braestrup's HYPERLINK 
> "http://americanthinker.com/2005/12/the_legacy_of_tet.html"Big Story, 
> one of the most crucial -- and overlooked -- media studies ever to see 
> print.) After Tet, there could be no victories.
>
>
>
> The success of the Abrams strategy was buried for twenty years and more, 
> as
> the myth of utter U.S. defeat was put in concrete by "experts" such as
> Stanley Karnow, Frances FitzGerald, and Neil Sheehan. Only with the
> appearance of revisionist works such as Lewis Sorley's HYPERLINK
>
"http://www.amazon.com/Better%EF%BF%BD%27War%EF%BF%BD%27Unexamined%EF%BF%BD%
27Victories%EF%BF%BD%27Americas/dp/0156013096/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002%EF%BF%BD%2
77204606%EF%BF%BD%272895246?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184979656&sr=1%EF%BF%BD%271
"
> A Better War and Mark Moyar's HYPERLINK
>
"http://www.amazon.com/Triumph%EF%BF%BD%27Forsaken%EF%BF%BD%27Vietnam%EF%BF%
BD%27War%EF%BF%BD%271954%EF%BF%BD%271965/dp/0521869110/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002%E
F%BF%BD%277204606%EF%BF%BD%272895246?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184979795&sr=1%EF%
BF%BD%271"
> Triumph Forsaken has the record begun to be set straight.
>
>
>
> That was how it was played at the close of the Vietnam War. That's how 
> it's
> being played today.
>
>
>
> And what do they want, exactly? What is the purpose of playing so fast and
> loose with the public safety, national security, and human lives both
> American and foreign?
>
>
>
> Generally, when someone repeats a formula, it's because they want to 
> repeat
> a result. And that's what the American left wants in this case. During the
> mid-70s, American liberals held political control to an extent they had 
> not
> experienced since the heyday of FDR. The GOP was disgraced and 
> demoralized.
> The Democrats held the Senate, the House, and the presidency. There was
> absolutely nothing standing in the way of their maintaining complete power
> for as long as anyone could foresee... until Jimmy Carter's incompetence
> proved itself, which caused the whole shabby and illusory structure to 
> fell
> apart in a welter of ineptitude and childishness.
>
> The American left wants a return to the 1970s -- without Jimmy Carter.
> (Okay, without disco, either.) They want a cowed GOP. They want control of
> the institutions and the branches. They want a miserable, defeated country
> they can manipulate. And they want it all under the gaze not of the Saint 
> of
> Plains, but of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who can assure that left-wing
> predominance will continue for a generation or more.
>
>
>
> Will they get it? That's a question worth some thought. Because as it
> stands, neither of the program's necessary elements is coming to fruition.
> The war is not being lost, and their great political scandal has fizzled.
>
>
>
> The other half of the equation was Watergate. Vietnam would not have been
> anywhere near as much a disaster without it. Watergate paralyzed the Nixon
> administration. It turned Nixon himself from an odd, unlikable, but
> incredibly capable politician to a half-crazed ghost sobbing in the Oval
> office in the middle of the night. It transformed his last great 
> triumph --
> the Paris peace accords that ended the war on an acceptable standoff --  
> into
> ashes. The left wing of the Democratic Party, shepherded by people like
> George McGovern and Mark Hatfield, proceeded to undercut the settlement as
> quickly as they could manage. Two separate appropriations acts passed in
> June 1973 cut off all further aid to the countries of Southeast Asia. (A
> third such act passed in August 1974 has gained more attention but it only
> duplicated the effects of the first two.) From that point on it was a 
> matter
> of time. Nixon resigned a little over a year later. Less than a year after
> that, in April 1975, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all fell.
>
>
>
> (The price tag for this, which liberals don't care to bring up, was over 2
> million dead in Cambodia, 165,000 dead in Vietnam, another 200,000 plus
> drowned and murdered on the high seas during the exodus of the boat 
> people.
> Laotian numbers can only be estimated but must have been in the thousands.
> The price of Indochinese "peace" was nearly twice that of the war itself.)
>
>
>
> And that, in case you were wondering, is what Plamegate was about. The
> Democrats needed a scandal - and not merely a run-of-the-mill, everyday
> scandal, but a mega-scandal, a hyper-scandal, something that would utterly
> cripple the administration and leave it open to destruction in detail. The
> targets were Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, held by the MoveOn crowd to be the
> actual brains behind Adolf W. Chimp. When nothing at all could be dug up 
> on
> the administration principals, the scandal was effectively over. Knocking
> off a vice-presidential aide might cause excitement within the Beltway, 
> but
> nobody in the real world could be expected to care. It may be a bitter
> thought to I. Lewis Libby that he was taken down through sheer proximity,
> like a bystander during a drive-by shooting, but it was in the very best 
> of
> causes. Libby's sacrifice not only saved the administration, it may well
> save tens of thousands of Middle Eastern lives in the years to come. (This
> also explains why the President was so circumspect in dealing with the
> investigation - he knew exactly what the opposition was up to, and could
> afford to give them no ammunition whatsoever.)
>
>
>
> Plamegate ended last Thursday with a judge HYPERLINK
>
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp%EF%BF%BD%27dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/
AR2007071901395_pf.html"
> throwing Plame's suit out of court on strictly
> technical grounds. (This is something of a disappointment - I would really
> have liked to see what that pair of hustlers would do when cross-examined 
> by
> a competent defense attorney.) People like John Conyers are trying to 
> create
> a conflagration by blowing on the embers of the attorney firings and the
> vice-presidential subpoenas. To no avail. Scandals, like forest fires, 
> occur
> only when conditions are perfect. Through their failed efforts, the 
> liberals
> have in effect set a backfire, surrounding the administration with wide
> barriers of burned-over ground. The Democrats themselves have rendered 
> Bush
> unassailable, and all the slumber parties, the empty votes, and the 
> rhetoric
> are intended to camouflage that fact. Bush will have hard days yet, but he
> will not be Nixonized.  He will be able to fight his war as he sees fit.
>
>
>
> That means a continuation of the surge, and of the strategy of General
> Petreaus. Will that be enough? It's impossible to say. But the past few
> months have been the most surprising in the entire Iraq saga to date. I 
> have
> a feeling that Al-Queda (and the media, and the Democrats), will have a 
> few
> more surprises coming in the months ahead.
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
> "If It Weren't For The United States military"
> "There Would Be NO United States of America"
> "Home of The Free, Because of the Brave"
>
>