I also thoroughly enjoyed H. R.'s presentation.

Re your problem with his last line: a strategic decision is made whether to aim for a sustainable outcome or simply to muddle through. There will no doubt be instances in which muddling through is deemed preferable (though when this comes at a high cost in treasure and human lives, the morality of pursuing such an option, to me, becomes problematic).

I think what H. R. was referring to are those situations where a 'sustainable outcome' are in fact being pursued. How do you even begin to achieve them? You commit the required resources. Now, clearly, if 55 advisers is sufficient, all the better, but I think the broader point is that this won't always be the case (and I am not even sure it was the case in El Salvador: it produced stalemate, not success). That's why I argue that there must be sufficient flexibility within the armed services for a direct and/or an indirect approach to be employed effectively, depending on circumstance.

See, the problem I have with the tempting notion of delegating COIN to advisers and SOF is that there will be times when a more direct engagement is necessary. There are just strict limitations to what advisers can achieve if there is no reliable, sufficiently competent partner to advise, assuming these partners even exist to begin with. That's why I always feel prompted to respond when the El Salvador model is presented as 'what we should be doing' - though I recognise that this may not have been your argument. Still, I think it bears noting that just like the direct engagement of general-purpose troops is problematic, so is the lighter-footprint El Salvador approach. In either case, the engagements are seldom optional, so we best be prepared for both.

The US government knowingly lied to the American people in order to wage an aggressive war in Iraq.

The US Government knowingly tortured and murdered Iraqi prisoners.

The US military high command went along with the criminal acts of US government leaders.

The US Military conducted information operations against the American people.

All high ranking government employees and elected officials, as well as officers of US flag rank involved in the prosecution of this war need to be investigated for war crimes. Following orders is not an excuse for murder, theft, and torture. Send these rotten criminals to GITMO.

As the old saying goes, CRIME DOES NOT PAY.

I would gladly provide a longer blog post, though I am afraid time is too limited to produce a structured piece. Let me however jot down a few thoughts on the matter.

First, I would recommend Benjamin Schwarz's study on El Salvador for RAND (www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R4042/), written in 1991. What Schwarz does is illustrate the critical weaknesses of the U.S. approach in El Salvador, most of which centre around its limited leverage: its inability to get the armed forces of El Salvador (ESAF) and the government (GoES) to do what the U.S. reforms asked of them.

That is to say, despite a daily expenditure of ca. $1.5m in military and economic aid to El Salvador, and the deployment of 55 advisers in country (more, at times), exogenous efforts at reform were only at best partially succesful.

What this meant in terms of the conflict is that while U.S. aid and assistance reversed the initial gains of FMLN, the end result, by the mid-1980s was stalemate. The U.S. and GoES could not defeat FMLN, and nor could FMLN threaten the overthrow of the government. That is why I suggest the indirect approach in El Salvador produced stalemate rather than success. Perhaps the biggest manifestation of this stalemate was the FMLN's final offensive of November 1989, in which, through the launch of major offensive operations, they were able to penetrate the capital, temporarily seize some of its territory and produce a Tet-like psychological effect both on GoES and on its U.S. backers.

Of course the conflict has since been lauded as a successful transition from war to peace. Yet it should be recalled that FMLN was not defeated, which had been the aim under Reagan. Instead, given the change of strategic context with the end of the Cold War, and the election of George H. W. Bush (who was eager to extricate the U.S. from El Salvador's stalemated conflict), the effort shifted from one of 'victory' to one of 'compromise'. That compromise was successfully achieved at Chapultepec, though it should be said that there are important qualification to be made on this point too (see the great research by Charles T. Call on this topic).

So whether it was a success or not depends a little on your standards. In one sense, FMLN were no longer an armed threat, but the initial aims of the campaign, which had by this point lasted ten years, cost a hell of a lot of money, as well as 75,000 lives, were not met - and perhaps they could not be met, given the intransigence of GoES to conduct reforms and the continued inefficiency and inflammatory human-rights abuses of ESAF. In that sense, the U.S. effort in El Salvador was 'saved by the bell', if by bell we mean the significant changes in global politics around the end of the 1980s. Without this change in circumstances, the stalemate would likely have continued or, absent greater responsiveness to U.S. pressure, its aid would have declined (particularly given the mood within the U.S. Congress at this time), allowing for an outright eventual FMLN victory.

Again, no time for more carefully structured thoughts on this topic. I refer you to a forthcoming RAND publication on COIN, led by John Gordon and William Rosenau, to which I contribute a chapter on this very conflict and difficult question.

So we were grinding the Sunni for an extra year? Really.

Did Brig. McMaster say what the 'central' entity directing the conquest of Baghdad was? Muqtada's JAM? Hakim/ISCI/Badr? Iran/Quds? The coordination of IA to disarm and militia to attack is quite a trick, given the chaos and intense US oversight.

Calling out the 'central direction' seems kinda important, if same players are on the scene now.

Inability to turn and name the beast (until after he's ravaged) is a recurring nightmare in our foreign adventures, including El Salvador.

I would suggest that if directed ethnic cleansing wasn't opaque in 2005-2006 (pre-surge), then maybe it was tolerated at high levels, as a path that would lead to 'early withdrawal of our brigades.'

In 1993, the United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador cited the officers responsible for the worst atrocities committed during that country’s brutal civil war. Over two-thirds of those named were trained at the School of the Americas.

Their crimes include:

--Assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero (1980)

--Murder of four U.S. Churchwomen (1980)

--El Mozote Massacre (1980)—more than 900 killed

--Sheraton Hotel Murders of labor leaders (1981)

--Lake Suchitlan Massacre (1983)—117 killed

--Las Hojas Massacre (1983)—16 killed

--Los Llanitos Massacre (1984)—68 killed

--San Sebastian Massacre (1988)—10 killed

--University of Central America Massacre (1989)—8 killed

""The soldiers from the Atlacatl Battalion came at seven in the morning. They said they had orders to kill everyone. Nobody was to remain alive. They locked the women in the houses and the men in the church. There were 1,100 of us in all. The children were with the women. They kept us locked up all morning. At ten o’clock the soldiers began to kill the men who were in the church. First they machine-gunned them and then they slit their throats."

The US government training El Salvadorians to terrorize and murder their own people. You call that success? I'd like to know what you consider failure? Unreal.

Admiral, as you see from the years of the incidents you cite most of them occurred in the early 1980s. U.S. training, advice and pressure, on the whole, reduced the number of atrocities, though they were never eliminated - and there was a resurgence of death-squad activity in 1988-1989-ish. Still, it is too often forgotten that U.S. assistance did have some positive effects too: it didn't just ESAF a free license to kill and maraud, more effectively than otherwise.

I am probably in the growing minority on this, but I still do not consider the Iraqi situation to be a failure yet. I will consider it a failure when the multiple armed factions decide to go back to outright civil war, and a partial failure if a central leader emerges who assumes the role of dictator. At the moment things are obviously not good there, but if we think back to 2006 there has been a large decrease in the numbers, abilities, and most importantly popularity of the different insurgent groups.

Tom,
I'd agree that Petraeus' strategy for Iraq succeeded tactically, but failed strategically. I simply wonder how so many in the nationally security intelligensia have taken so long to say so. From Kagen to Krepinevich and Watts to the military itself - there seems a disconnect as we look back to our stated objectives for surge/ COIN in Iraq post-2007 and what we've actually achieved. Iraq is far short of our stated strategic goals and risks sinking towards our worst fears.

Frankly, this was predictable from the moment Petraeus first testified on the Hill -- the political parties and sects of Iraq would postpone the final reckoning until our surge and attention fizzled. Honestly, name one action from 2004-2006 that indicated the Iraqi government and it's various factions would make concessions for the good of the country. I've spent over 35 months in Iraq and i've meet very few Iraqis -- I've met Kurds, Shias, Sunnis and party members. There are more "Iraqis" living in Dearborn than in Mesopotamia.

I know why many military officers went along with this "strategy", which essentially softened our failure in Iraq by reducing violence, minimizing casualties, decreasing the need for multiple deployments and generating some positive news coverage, however, it's lousy strategy toward meeting our national interests in the region. Failure hurts and it's very easy for a military officer to say give me the resources or go home in a lecture hall. With due respect to BG McMasters -- when the time came for him and the military command in 2007 to "think what a sustainable outcome" for Iraq would be -- knowing the finite long-term resources available vs. the scope of the issues in the country, they chose a course which was doomed to succeed tactically, but fail strategically. They did not tell the President to walk away and go home - even though they knew they lacked the resources to sustain the outcome they told the American people they were pursuing. It's not a criminal "deraliction of duty" for officers like Petraeus and McMasters, but the truth is when pressed into the strategic decision McMasters' addresses at the end of his speech - he, Petraues and the Army - chose not to follow his prescription.

I think part of the problem with Iraq not meeting all of the goals of the Surge is because Iraqis don't care about some of the goals set by the U.S.

For example, many U.S. ideas of Iraq are based upon sectarian politics. The Shiites need to reconcile with the Sunnis for example. Many Iraqis are rejecting sectarian politics and political parties are crossing those lines all the time. The parties that stick to that formula, the Supreme Council for example, are losing votes and followers left and right. Other issues like integrating the Sons of Iraq are considered American interests only, not Iraqi ones since the SOI were created by the U.S. The Anbar Awakening in contrast has been thoroughly integrated into the Iraqi security forces, almost all of the police and soldiers in Anbar come from the tribes, and into Iraqi politics, the Anbar tribes now run the province and are making deals with Shiite parties to run in the 2010 elections. In another example, the U.S. has been pushing elections as a mean of reconciliation, especially if Sunnis get seats, but the situation in Ninewa when the Sunni led al-Hadbaa party got elected in 2009 has only gotten worse because they are explicitly anti-Kurdish. Again, the U.S. is thinking in their terms, and not Iraqi ones.

At this point especially, with U.S. forces on the way out, Iraqi politicians are barely listening to the U.S. and domestic politics play a much larger role in governance and violence than anything the U.S. does.

Iraq still has massive problems like over reliance upon oil, budget problems, massive corruption, daily violence, refugees/displaced, etc. but it's at the point where Iraqi politics can sputter along for years.

Mr. Ricks,

I enjoy reading nearly everything you've written, but to say that the Surge was successful tactically but failed strategically seems a bit premature. For example --sitting here at Al Faw Palace or in the IZ 18 months ago would have been a completely different experience in terms of the amount of the amount of metal rain. Moreover, how can we say we've failed strategically, when we still haven't defined what "success" is?

I also have to question your interpretation of McMaster's line, "Think what is a sustainable outcome. And then commit the damn resources or go home." But by "resources" can you be certain he meant "troops?" I take him to mean that at the start of the war, the Bush Administration failed to properly plan for the types of resources and amount of resources that would be needed. They also failed to define what they wanted in terms of a "sustainable outcome." By 2005 and 2006, the military was left to an ad-hoc planning mechanism that couldn't quickly adjust to the growing insurgency. The Surge was designed to correct those failures.

D Maye
C3 JFEC
VBC Iraq

Jesus H. Christ! What is the fucking mission in Iraq?

All text book policies were thrown to the wind by the first Pro-Consul in Iraq. (Remember him; Mr. Paul Bremmer?) 1- The Iraqi Army was dissolved. 2- Political structures were dissolved. 3- Relying on one section of the population while treating the other section with suspicion (the Kurds were long out of all this). 4- relying on heavy handed military operations, as opposed to proper policing actions with good intelligence. 5- Alianating the Arab neighbours of Iraq, instead of trying to have them on board to participate in bringing stability to Iraq. All that was only the beginning.

khairi janbek.paris/france

Somewhere in the problem definition is the inherent weakness in the argument: How do you commit the necessary resources if you don't know what the problem really is?

Diane is right that Al Faw tends to be safe; I remember a night at JVB when one mortar fell on a night that the IZ got hammered with 30. But the metal rain count at neither makes a country safe or stable.

We are leaving (probably sooner than later), and without a sustainable relationship left behind. Popular vote will say leave. All major Iraqi contracts got to non-US parties. Why is that?

Our goal (all the BS aside, and not that it was a "military" objective) was to build a sustainable allied relationship with an ongoing and sufficiently powerful entity in Iraq. We missed that by a wide margin. Why is that?

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