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Major Strategic Shifts

Iraqis Are in the Lead in Ensuring Success –U.S. in Support Role
•Place the responsibility for success on the Iraqis
•Recognize and expect that sectarian violence must be addressed by Iraqis
•Encourage Iraqis to reach national reconciliation
•Urge Iraqi Government to serve Iraqis in an impartial way

The Primary Mission Is Helping Iraqis Provide Security to the Population
•Help Iraqis provide greater levels of security in Baghdad in order to enable political and economic progress
•Help Iraqis create the security environment in which political deals needed to sustain security gains can be made
•Bolster Iraqi capabilities and transfer responsibility to able units as part of this effort

Moderates Will Be Vigorously Supported in their Battle with Violent Extremists
•Counter extremist portrayalof Iraq’s conflict as Sunni vs. Shi’a, rather than moderates vs. extremists
•Recognize and act upon the reality that the United States has a national interest in seeing moderates succeed
•Build and sustain strategic partnerships with moderate Shi’a, Sunnis, and Kurds

We Will Diversify our Political and Economic Effort in Iraq to Achieve Our Goals
•Increase attention to developments outside of the International Zone –emphasize flexibility
•Help Iraqi provincial governments deliver to their constituents and interact with Baghdad
•Extend the political and economic influence through the expansion of our civilian effort

We Will Further Integrate Our Civil and Military Efforts
•Harness all elements of national power; further augment joint civilian-military efforts throughout theater
•Resource at levels that assume a resilient enemy and realistic assessment of Iraqi capacity over the next 12 months

Embedding Our Iraq Strategy in a Regional Approach is Vital to Success
•Iraq is a regional and international challenge
•Intensify GOI and USG efforts to expand regional and international help, counter Iran and Syria meddling
•Invigorate diplomatic efforts to improve the regional context

We Must Maintain and Expand Our Capabilities for the Long War
•Acknowledge that succeeding in Iraq is the immediate challenge, but it is not the last challenge
•Ensure we have adequate national capabilities to fight the long war, on the military and civilian side

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/iraq/2007/iraq-strategy011007.pdf

From National Review:

Preview of tonight's speech [Mona Charen] Based on a just-completed White House background briefing, it looks like the President’s new Iraq strategy to be unveiled tonight looks promising.

The Administration recognizes a lot of what has gone wrong, for example, that is was unrealistic to assume that political progress could be made while the security situation remained so ghastly. The new emphasis is on security first. Five new American brigades will be sent to Baghdad to work with new Iraqi brigades securing the capital block by block. Unclear whether this will be sufficient force. Rules of engagement also to change so that there will be no more areas off limits to American forces.

The President also plans to ask for a larger army – a little late and so necessary! It will be interesting to see how the Democrats in Congress handle that one. All that talk of supporting the troops. . .

Possible problem areas: the strategy still depends heavily on Maliki’s bona fides. They believe his heart is the right place but he has suffered from lack of “capabilities.” That’s a gamble. There is also a “regional” component to the new strategy that seems to rely on another push for Israeli/Palestinian cooperation (Rice is traveling to Middle East within the week). That sounds like Baker/Hamilton bunk, but let’s see what she says.

Still, most of it sounds exactly right.