Bill already linked to this article in the Christian Science Monitor on the US strategy for Iraq but I just wanted to touch on it again in relation to the analytical differences within the US intelligence community since they're pretty handily highlighted in the article.
Retired Marine Col. Mackubin Owens, now a professor at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., wrote in a commentary for the New York Post earlier this month that US offensive operations are yielding more gains than many in the press are crediting, and points especially to US efforts in the province of Anbar along the Euphrates River towns that serve as support lines for foreign fighters entering the country for Syria, and for domestic insurgents within the country.
He argues that capture of key insurgent leaders, including up to two dozen lieutenants for the Jordanian Al Qaeda affiliate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is yielding intelligence that has had "a cascading effect, permitting the Coalition to maintain pressure on the insurgency."
This tends to be the school to which myself and I suspect Bill belong. While it has got very little play in the press, I'm reasonably certain that the capture of so many of Zarqawi's lieutenants prior to the Iraqi election was one of the reasons why they weren't able to turn the event into a bloodbath and that the continued pressure on his group is the reason why they haven't been able to act outside their geographic base in the Sunni Triangle area to the degree they could from April to November 2004.
The other point of view is, predictably, pointed out by none other than Juan Cole:
"It's indisputable that the insurgents are enormously more popular among the Sunni Arab community today than they were two years ago,'' says Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Michigan. "Every time you hear a suicide bomb has gone off ... I guarantee you that means there are 3,000 Iraqis who saw the preparations and decided that this would be a good thing."
I'm not quite so certain of that, actually. And ignoring the temptation to make a cheap jolk out of that quote ("How many Iraqis does it take to make a suicide bomber?") I think ignores the fact that a lot of the suicide bombers are killing a lot of Iraqis and in particular a lot of Iraqi Sunnis. While supporters of the insurgency can style themselves as anti-colonial resistance and focus on killing police, security forces, and soldiers, but near as I can tell, the majority of Iraqis being killed by insurgents don't fall into those categories. Moreover, the al-Qaeda element of the insurgency (which both myself and General Abizaid regard as the #1 Threat) now appear to be shifting away from anti-Shi'ism to anti-Sufism, the latter being a more acceptable target to the al-Qaeda leadership.
The CSM article also links to Cordesman's exhaustive studies (which I may eventually get around to summarizing, a la the ICG and Norwegian intelligence reports) that I think are well worth reading (of course, he also says that Iran at least tolerates al-Qaeda activities within its borders, which would be anathema to Cole and his fellow travelers who assure us that Shi'ites and Sunnis can never cooperate) because it illustrates what US has been saying all along: the bulk of the insurgency may be made up of Iraqis, but it is that 10% of foreign al-Qaeda fighters (though there are also Iraqi al-Qaeda members, a fact that is often ignored by many analysts) who are carrying out the overwhelming majority of these mass casualty attacks that most of us consider to be a staple of the Iraqi insurgency. That is one of the things that makes closing the rat lines, getting Syria to police their border, etc. so important to achieving victory in Iraq.
Capturing or killing the two dozen or so men that Owens references, as long as their positions remain vacant (and this is key, that the Bad Guys are not able to reorganize and come at us again), will not ensure an end to the insurgency but it will help to mitigate the most vehement aspects of it and enable us to focus on a solution to the native Iraqi component of the insurgency, the fate of which will ultimately be determined by events on the ground in Iraq, such as those suggested by commenter moradali:
The US could create a sympathetic militia from these nationalist-tribal elements, and use them to identify and focus its fire on the Islamists, when embarking on such operations. With positive incentives, such as monetary payments, US could appear less of an occupier and more of a protector of the nationalist Sunni elements.
I've long noted that the tribal levies fought with far greater effectiveness and reliability than did their police and national guard equivalents during the fighting against Sadr. I'm also not entirely convinced that such a thing would be as much of a direct rejection of the democratization process as some have suggested.
Also, for all those who are now complaining about how infiltrated the new Iraqi military, security, and police forces are, might I suggest that they consider this the next time they start screaming about how horrible the idea of de-Baathification is?
While it would obviously be a good thing to keep those posts vacant, even if they are not, it will still take time for the successor(s) to become accustomed to those roles.
The question is: "How deep is the al-Qaeda bench?"
Note that this is further complicated by the fundamentally clandestine nature of al-Qaeda and its activities (another reason why Cole is wrong). Thus, unless there's some kind of established chain-of-command (which is possible), any new leadership may or may not gain legitimacy in the eyes of either underlings or rivals for power or even those who control other systems (e.g., money, communications links to other cells, etc.).
I would consider Cordesman a third view.
For example, Cordesman gives a deep and comprehensive view of the insurgency - most of which validate the points you and Bill have been making here about the makeup of the insurgency. But there are a few differences.
a. There isn't the sense of "we are over the hump" from Cordesman, or turning every analysis into good news. A couple of mentions that the Iraqi security forces have been fighting better, and that's it.
b. If Cordesman, you, Bill mostly agree with the comprehensive analysis of the insurgency, the comprehensive list of Bush adminstration mistakes that Cordesman lists sounds a LOT more like Juan Cole than I believe you would ever admit.
So again, this third way - Sober, realist liberals Against Terrorism and in support of the Liberal Order - the spirit of international relations since Truman.
is the correct and right engagement of the United States with the world.
All snark aside, I'm serious about this. This shouldn't be left or right, it's the hard-fought wisdom of 50 years that is being thrown away.
The Red on Red thread below this one is pretty good evidence that Al Qaeda has worn out its welcome among Iraq's Baathists.
Here are some related stories. The first is an AP story about a terrorist group in Iraq saying on Tuesday that it had "formed a unit of potential suicide attackers who are exclusively Iraqis in an apparent bid to deflect criticism that most suicide bombers in Iraq are foreigners." The second is from today's Strategy Page about more fighting between Al Qaeda and Iraq's Sunni Arab Baathists, who do not want to suffer ethnic cleansing at the hands of Iraq's Shia majority plus the Kurds.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050621/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_suicide_bombers
http://www.strategypage.com//fyeo/qndguide/default.asp?target=IRAQ.HTM
You could also read this as a new fase in the war. A fase in which the locals don't need the extremists. Wonder what that means to the US? Packing time i guess.
Well, 'a', I suppose you could read it that way. But on what evidence would you base such a reading? (I am assuming that you mean by "don't need the extremists" you mean "don't need the extremists to fight the US for them".)
Lurking Observer:
The problem is that al-Qaeda maintains its command and control largely through social network rather than traditional hierarchy organization. We cleaned out most of Zarqawi's top lieutenants during the fighting in Fallujah but they were replaced in fairly short order by guys who had been their deputies or aides and retained their personal contact and trust with Zarqawi. You eliminate Zarqawi as well as the top and make certain those top spots stay vacant and I think you'll see a great deal of difference as far as the number of mass casualty attacks. What will also be required, dare I say it, is for Syria to shut down the network that is bringing these guys into Iraq - permanently.
JC:
I'm quite pleased, if nothing else, that you share the level of respect that I have for Cordesman's analysis of the insurgency.
As far as the more salient points:
a. He also mentions progress against the insurgency, such as the defeat of Sadr, as well as coalition progress with regard to defeating the insurgency. He simply doesn't see us as "over the hump," which is quite a valid interpretation of the data at this point.
b. No offense, but the criticisms that Cordesman lists (and believe me, I can write eloquently on my problems with post-war planning) and Cole agrees were hardly original when they first appeared over at Informed Comment. They've been floating around for quite awhile now and even that notorious left-wing Weekly Standard wants Rumsfeld's head on a pike as a result of many of these same criticisms. As far as Cole's concerned, Cordesman is part of the massive Likud conspiracy because he buys into the notion that Iran at a minimum tolerates al-Qaeda's movement across its territory.
I'm somewhat confused as to how Cordesman's analysis of the Iraqi insurgency is linked to Bush and Truman's contrasting visions of the UN ...
i see on both the "quagmire" side and the "we've got them on the run" side of the public debate a tendency to look on this like a conventional war.
There is a tendency to focus on inputs, on car bombings in the one case, and on apparently succesful search and destory ops in the other. On Iraqi civilian and security force casualties in the one case, and on insurgent casualties, insurgent leaders captured or killed, and arms caches destroyed, in the other.
The purpose of these activities is to achieve strategic goals, and AFAICT BOTH the coalition(including Iraqi forces) AND the insurgents are having difficulty converting inputs into achievements of goals.
The coalitions goal is to reduce the number of attacks, both the FRE type attacks on infrastructure, political figures, Iraqi recruits, and the AQ type mass attacks on civilians. The last two months, at least, makes it appear we have failed, and that the lull after the election was a fluke. Evidently they have a pretty deep bench, or maybe the Juan Cole is right, and they can refill out of the mass of the Sunni Arab population.
OTOH, the insurgents are failing as well. They kill recruits, and yet the Iraqi forces continue to grow. They kill pols, etc yet the Iraqi political process proceeds apace. The bench of Iraqis ready to oppose the insurgency, at the risk of their lives, is pretty deep as well.
It seems to me that the capacity of the Iraqi govt (in everything from political legitimacy to troops on the ground) is steadily growing. OTOH the capacity of the insurgency is NOT declining, despite all our ops. Thats why things looks so contradictory.
Now eventually this contradiction will be resolved. There WILL be sufficient Iraqi capacity to defeat the insurgency. But the resilience of the insurgency indicates that this capacity will have to be dramatically greater than it is today, and that will take quite a bit of time.