Posted by
Always To The Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 2:58:46 PM
The Anbar Awakening only preceded the “surge” if one defines it
strictly as an increase in troops. But the “surge” was much more than
that, and it long preceded the troop increase. The troop increase
intended to fully support the change in tactics and strategy that had
been adopted with success by local American commanders in Anbar to a
true counterinsurgency effort, which coincided with Sunnis in the
region switching sides and opposing the insurgents.
Barack Obama reveals a lack of understanding by harping on this
point. He doesn’t grasp — and he never has — the difference between
merely increasing troop levels and laying out a comprehensive strategy
for attacking insurgents. That’s what led him to assert in January 2007
that adding 20,000 or more troops would not reduce violence in Iraq,
and might in fact provoke worse violence. As events proved, the
counterinsurgency strategies employed in the fall of 2006 and expanded
into theater-wide doctrine as more troops arrived succeeded, and
exposed Obama as not terribly adept at military strategy.