Posted on 07/27/2007 7:25:45 AM PDT by BGHater
When it comes to the troop surge in Iraq, a bunch of arm chair generals in Washington are influencing the Bush Administration as much as the Joint Chiefs or theater commanders.
A group of military experts at the American Enterprise Institute, concerned that the U.S. was on the verge of a calamitous failure in Iraq, almost single handedly convinced the White House to change its strategy.
They banded together at AEI headquarters in downtown Washington early last December and hammered out the surge plan during a weekend session. It called for two major initiatives to defeat the insurgency: reinforcing the troops and restoring security to Iraqi neighborhoods. Then came trips to the White House by AEI military historian Frederick Kagan, retired Army Gen. John Keane and other surge proponents.
More and more officials began attending the sessions. Even Vice President Dick Cheney came. "We took the results of our planning session immediately to people in the administration," said AEI analyst Thomas Donnelly, a surge planner. "It became sort of a magnet for movers and shakers in the White House." Donnelly said the AEI approach won out over plans from the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command. The two Army generals then in charge of Iraq had opposed a troop increase.
In January, President Bush announced the surge, which kicked off the next month. "I think without the AEI exercise, it would be highly unlikely we would have followed a completely different course over the last six months in Iraq," Donnelly said.
Keane already had done some ground work. He won a private meeting with then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in September. The retired four-star bluntly told him that he would lose the war unless he changed tactics.
The emergence of AEI as a power player on Iraq belies the notion that neo-conservatives are on the decline in Washington. AEI brags an impressive roster of neo-con thinkers. Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, an Iraq war architect, arrived at AIE this summer, joining such prominent conservatives as John Bolton, David Frum and Michael Ledeen.
With its plan in place, the AEI Iraq team is not sitting still. Keane is an adviser to Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. He has inspected war conditions on two visits. Kagan left for Iraq this week.
"It was kind of the 11th hour, 59th minute," Donnelly said of AEI's surge plan. "It's the function that think tanks are supposed to perform to provide independent advice and analysis."
Whats the big deal? The MSM takes the word of retired arm chair Generals over active duty troops 100% of the time.
You want to succeed in wars, business or relationships? Conduct a ton of historic research in advance of making your moves and then continue conducting primary research for behavior/response fluxuations. All the USA had to do to have won the post-war was to read the tens of thousands of intelligence documents from the French on the Algerian conflict with militant Islam in the 50’s. General Patreaus’ current strategy is right out of that playbook and guess what? It’s working.
This must mean the surge is doing quite well; no one seems to have a real criticism of it.
Yeah, well the French lost Algeria.
The Pentagon itself is full of “armchair generals”. Very few of our military decision-makers have actual battlefield experience. They seem more interested in persecuting their own soldiers than actually winning this “war”.
Here’s some armchair advice: how about not giving the world advance notice of all our war plans? Surprise is certainly no element in this war—which makes General Petraeus’ success thus far even more remarkable.
Ditto. Also, one could call this thinking outside the box (or the Pentagon).
Ditto. Also, one could call this thinking outside the box (or the Pentagon).
I don’t care who designed the so called surge.All I care about are the results.So far things are looking good.
I agree. The panic and hyperbole by some Democrats only assures me that we are on the right course.
Personally, I think Scarborough's piece is a crock. Gen Petraeus is the acknowledged expert in counter-insurgency, and the surge is the product of his and others' accumulated knowledge on the subject. Not to say that Gen Keane isn't also expert, but to attribute it to neo-cons is silly.
As a matter of fact, Bolton is on record a couple months ago saying that he wasn't a supporter of the Iraq strategy in the first place. He wanted to go in, break things, change governments, warn that we'd IMMEDIATELY do it again if we weren't left alone, and then get out. I believed in that strategy at the beginning. But the President was the CINC and there was nothing unethical or illogical about wanting to rebuild Iraq. He deserved his shot. I admire his courage for taking it and sticking to his guns. The good Lord knows we must insist that we'll not allow any Mid-East minions to project power against the US.
Now I favor a backup Plan B that calls for the confederal equivalent of a tri-partite Iraq....divide and conquer.
Curious how two strident arch Dincon Iraq critics like Frum and Ledeen are now suppose to be part of the group claiming credit for the Surge’s success.
Funny how NONE of these people ever wrote anything supporting their supposed Iraq strategy.
Curious how the ONLY source for this claim is the group itself. There is no independent verification of the claims.
I would take this claim with a very large grain of salt.
Same reason we will lose Iraq, loss of public support at home by socialist leadership that got into power. The French were winning. We were winning Vietnam. Same reason (socialists come to power) we lost in Vietnam. The net result to not finishing the job on the bad guy is always 20 times more civilian casualties.
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