Redstate

And Your Humble Blogger's Reaction

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | War — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I didn't see it, but I have read it. Some reactions below (read on):

The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people.

This assertion should, of course, be uncontroversial. Failure would indeed be a catastrophe. We agree here.

The most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security, especially in Baghdad. Eighty percent of Iraq's sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves and shaking the confidence of all Iraqis. Only the Iraqis can end the sectarian violence and secure their people. And their government has put forward an aggressive plan to do it.

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents, and there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have.

Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes. They report that it does. They also report that this plan can work.

Let me explain the main elements of this effort.

The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts.

When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations; conducting patrols, setting up checkpoints, and going door- to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.

This is a strong commitment. But for it to succeed, our commanders say the Iraqis will need our help. So America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad.

This will require increasing American force levels. So I have committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them -- five brigades -- will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations.

It would have been helpful if the President explained how the new Iraqi approach differs from the old Iraqi approach. It also would have been helpful if he explained how it was that he determined what number of American troops would be needed for any surge to be successful.

Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.

Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not.

Here are the differences.

In earlier operations, Iraqi and American forces cleared many neighborhoods of terrorists and insurgents but, when our forces moved on to other targets, the killers returned.

This time, we will have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared.

Again, an explanation regarding how the President arrived at the number of troops he believes are needed would have been very helpful. Absent that, we have from the President an assertion without an explanation. From a rhetorical standpoint, this is unhelpful.

In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter these neighborhoods. And Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.

The words "took long enough" come to mind at this point.

I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people. And it will lose the support of the Iraqi people.

Um . . . what? First, we are told (correctly) that we cannot afford to fail in Iraq. Now we are told that we will indeed pull up stakes and leave at some point? Don't these statements . . . you know . . . contradict one another? We stick and have stuck with any number of foreign policy/national security goals in the past because they are and they were worth our while to pursue (arms control discussions with the Soviets during the Cold War and persistent efforts to mediate the dispute between the Arabs and the Israelis come to mind most readily). Iraq is no different and the need to persist until American national security goals are achieved is no less pressing. And yet, despite clearly and distinctly explaining those national security goals, the President has turned around and said that we will leave if the Iraqi government doesn't shape up. It is one thing to remind the Iraqis in private that American patience, as a practical matter, is not limited. It is quite another altogether to announce to the public that America may quit Iraq before its national security goals have been achieved. The latter situation sounds like it is a hop, skip and a jump away from giving up.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November.

Good luck with that. Much as I would like to believe the President, there isn't a sand castle's chance in an earthquake that the Iraqi government will be able to live up to the President's expectations on that issue. Reconstruction will take years to succeed and we had better be prepared to settle in for the long haul if we want to give success a chance. And now we expect that within the space of ten months, the Iraqi government will be able to secure its provinces? What if it doesn't? Won't that simply add impetus to quitting Iraq before our national security goals are achieved?

Well, of course it will. And of course it will be to the detriment of the United States. Which is why it is so puzzling that this unrealistic paragraph found its way into the President's speech and into his policy.

To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.

To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend 10 billion dollars of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs.

We all like prosperity. Assuming that this will be pulled off, I'm fine with it.

To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year.

Again, it would have been nice if we had an explanation here. How is it that national elections last year failed to bring peace and security, but provincial elections will? Tip O'Neill, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, famously said that "All politics is local." Right. But isn't this pushing things a bit far?

America will change our approach to help the Iraqi government as it works to meet these benchmarks. In keeping with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, we will increase the embedding of American advisers in Iraqi Army units and partner a coalition brigade with every Iraqi Army division.

Okay. Sounds good to me. Why wasn't this done earlier? Was it because we had too few troops?

As we make these changes, we will continue to pursue Al Qaida and foreign fighters.

Al Qaida is still active in Iraq. Its home base is Anbar province. Al Qaida has helped make Anbar the most violent area of Iraq outside the capital.

A captured Al Qaida document describes the terrorists' plan to infiltrate and seize control of the province. This would bring Al Qaida closer to its goals of taking down Iraq's democracy, building a radical Islamic empire, and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad.

Our military forces in Anbar are killing and capturing Al Qaida leaders and protecting the local population. Recently, local tribal leaders have begun to show their willingness to take on Al Qaida. As a result, our commanders believe we have an opportunity to deal a serious blow to the terrorists.

So I have given orders to increase American forces in Anbar province by 4,000 troops. These troops will work with Iraqi and tribal forces to step up the pressure on the terrorists. America's men and women in uniform took away Al Qaida's safe haven in Afghanistan, and we will not allow them to re-establish it in Iraq.

Al Anbar province is highlighted here. I realize that securing Baghdad is a huge priority, and I admit to not being fully up on the number of American troops currently in the province, but it strikes me as weird and unrealistic that the President thinks that a mere 4,000 more troops are all that are needed to secure the province against al Qaeda.

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge.

This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.

The challenge to Iran and Syria is duly noted. But it is also vague. I realize that one must speak softly and carry a big stick and doubtless, through back channels, matters are being explained to the Iranians and the Syrians. But here, some blunt language may have been called for in explaining the consequences of further Iranian and Syrian meddling in Iraq and what the United States could and would do to stop such meddling in the future.

Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror. This group will meet regularly with me and my Administration, and it will help strengthen our relationship with Congress.

A nice gesture, but one that won't amount to much. This advisory committee will come together for a few nice photo-ops and nothing more. But I would be delighted to be proven wrong and for this group--nebulous as it appears to be at the present time--to help craft a bipartisan consensus on the war.

Overall, the President's speech was not a bad one. But it wasn't the "speech of his life" address that so many people demanded of him. To be sure, those demands may have set the bar too high for the President to clear. And yet, given the manner in which the public has turned against the reconstruction effort in Iraq, however high the bar was, the President needed to clear it. The good news is that in this endeavor, the President will not succeed or fail based on the content or delivery of a single speech. Rather, his success depends on whether he will commit to repeated and sustained explanations regarding what is at stake in Iraq, along with the calls for public support that would naturally accompany such explanations.