Will the US military, in its latest push outward from Baghdad, just "propel the enemy from one area to another where there are not as many U.S. troops"? Thomas Ricks describes moves which look scattershot and ineffectual.
Many counterinsurgency experts agree. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., the director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a national security think tank, said flatly that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, does not have enough troops. "I suspect General Petraeus is taking a risk here, but that's what commanders do," he said.
Supporters of the surge on the right think it's all just fine-dandy.
Frederick W. Kagan, a military historian at the American Enterprise Institute who was involved in developing the plans for the recent troop increase, was more emphatic. "They have been very deliberate in setting conditions, including establishing both our forces and Iraqi forces in key areas and developing intelligence and trust relationships, including with some former insurgents, and these developments will facilitate the operation greatly," he said. "So I think that we have enough troops to get the level of violence down dramatically with this and successive operations."
Maybe. But maybe, once again, all the optimism is in the supportive think tanks, while reality must be borne by the troops, their command and, of course, their families.
Some officers in Iraq sharply disagreed with the assertion that the United States finally has enough personnel to bring security to the country. "I believe we have enough U.S. troops for this specific operation," said a U.S. military strategist there, referring to Phantom Thunder. "I do not believe we've ever had enough troops to do all of the tasks we should be doing in Iraq."
As Ricks points out, even military successes will not help much in a situation where there is so much political failure -- in the US no less than Iraq.
"We have lost the fight for public and political support, so no matter how successful we are militarily, we are being led to failure," said one U.S. intelligence expert involved in Iraqi operations.
