Back from Iraq

Gen. David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, ambassador to Iraq, will report on the situation on the ground there this week before Congress. In preparation, here is an eclectic background reading file - summaries from some informed sources.

By the Times staff
Published September 9, 2007

1. In "The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq," Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies writes that "the United States now has only uncertain, high-risk options in Iraq. It cannot dictate Iraq's future, only influence it." Still, from his recent trip to Iraq, he believes there is reason to be patient "and for timing reductions in U.S. forces and aid to Iraqi progress rather than arbitrary dates and uncertain benchmarks." U.S. policy "will have to react to events, rather than shape them, and do so in a climate in which the odds of success in any given area are less than even." He continues: "These are unpleasant realities for a nation that prefers all of its solutions to be simple and short. The reality is, however, that even if the United States does withdraw from Iraq, it cannot disengage from it." And concludes: "It seems likely that the United States will ultimately be judged far more by how it leaves Iraq, and what it leaves behind, than how it entered Iraq."

2. In "A Failure in Generalship ," Lt. Col. Paul Yingling took a big chance in criticizing his superiors in the May issue of Armed Forces Journal. Yingling, who served two tours in Iraq, blames America's generals for failing to tell civilian authorities what it would take to win in Iraq. He believes Congress must step in: "To reward moral courage in our general officers, Congress must ask hard questions about the means and ways for war as part of its oversight responsibility. Some of the answers will be shocking, which is perhaps why Congress has not asked and the generals have not told. Congress must ask for a candid assessment of the money and manpower required over the next generation to prevail in the Long War. The money required to prevail may place fiscal constraints on popular domestic priorities."

3. Writing the "Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt " in the Small Wars Journal, Dave Kilcullen, an outspoken Australian who was a senior counterinsurgency adviser who worked as a civilian on Petraeus' staff, says a tribal uprising against al-Qaida in Iraq may have started over women. Adding to the increasing talk that the surge might subtly be working "from the bottom up," he notes that more than 85 percent of Iraqis claim some tribal affiliation, which matters more than "the facile division into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish groups. ... One of al-Qaida's standard techniques, which I have seen them apply in places as diverse as Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia, is to marry leaders and key operatives to women from prominent tribal families."

But, many tribal Iraqis see al-Qaida's form of Islam as utterly foreign. "One key difference is marriage custom, the tribes only giving their women within the tribe. ... Al-Qaida in Iraq killed a sheik over his refusal to give daughters of his tribe to them in marriage, which created a revenge obligation on his people, who attacked al-Qaida in Iraq. The terrorists retaliated with immense brutality" and that brewed up into a tribal uprising

[Last modified September 9, 2007, 06:54:38]