From the VVAW newsnet this morning:


> Why We're Staying in Iraq
>
> The Petraeus plan will have U.S. forces deployed in Iraq for years to
> come. Does anybody running for president realize that?
>
> By Michael Hirsh
>
> Newsweek
> The British are leaving, the Iraqis are failing and the Americans are
> staying--and we're going to be there a lot longer than anyone in
> Washington is acknowledging right now. As Democrats and Republicans
> back home try to outdo each other with quick-fix plans for the
> withdrawal of U.S. troops and funds, what few people seem to have
> noticed is that Gen. David Petraeus's new "surge" plan is committing
> U.S. troops, day by day, to a much deeper and longer-term role in
> policing Iraq than since the earliest days of the U.S. occupation.
> How long must we stay under the Petraeus plan? Perhaps 10 years. At
> least five. In any case, long after George W. Bush has returned to
> Crawford, Texas, for good.
>


> But don't take my word for it. I'm merely a messenger for a coterie
> of counterinsurgency experts who have helped to design the Petraeus
> plan--his so-called "dream team"--and who have discussed it with
> NEWSWEEK, usually on condition of anonymity, owing to the sensitivity
> of the subject. To a degree little understood by the U.S. public,
> Petraeus is engaged in a giant "do-over." It is a near-reversal of
> the approach taken by Petraeus's predecessor as commander of
> multinational forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, until the latter was
> relieved in early February, and most other top U.S. commanders going
> back to Rick Sanchez and Tommy Franks. Casey sought to accelerate
> both the training of Iraqi forces and American withdrawal. By 2008,
> the remaining 60,000 or so U.S. troops were supposed to be hunkering
> down in four giant "superbases," where they would be relatively safe.
> Under Petraeus's plan, a U.S. military force of 160,000 or more is
> setting up hundreds of "mini-forts" all over Baghdad and the rest of
> the country, right in the middle of the action. The U.S. Army has
> also stopped pretending that Iraqis--who have failed to build a
> credible government, military or police force on their own--are in the
> lead when it comes to kicking down doors and keeping the peace. And
> that means the future of Iraq depends on the long-term presence of
> U.S. forces in a way it did not just a few months ago. "We're putting
> down roots," says Philip Carter, a former U.S. Army captain who
> returned last summer from a year of policing and training in the hot
> zone around Baquba. "The Americans are no longer willing to accept
> failure in order to put Iraqis in the lead. You can't let the mission
> fail just for the sake of diplomacy."
>
> Many U.S. military experts now believe that, if there is any hope of
> stabilizing Iraq, the Petraeus plan is the only way to do it. The
> critical question now, they say, is whether we have anywhere near
> enough troops committed to the effort, and whether America has the
> political will to see the strategy through to the end.
>
>
>
> "This is the right strategy: small mini-packets of U.S. troops all
> over, small 'oil spots' [of stability] spreading out. It's classic
> counterinsurgency," says one of the Army's top experts in irregular
> warfare, who helped draft the counterinsurgency manual that Petraeus
> produced while commander at Fort Leavenworth last year--the principles
> of which the general is applying to Iraq. "But it's high risk and
> it's going to take a long time."
>
> How long? At his confirmation hearings in January, Petraeus was asked
> by Sen. Ted Kennedy about a timetable for the surge plan. "I can't
> give you dates at this time," he said.
>
> Defense Secretary Robert Gates was only slightly more specific at a
> hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 11. "I don't
> think anybody has a definite idea about how long the surge would
> last," he said. "I think for most of us, in our minds, we're thinking
> of it as a matter of months, not 18 months or two years." A White
> House spokeswoman said Thursday she could find no record that the
> president, national-security adviser Stephen Hadley or any senior
> administration official had volunteered anything more specific than
> that. But the Army expert in irregular warfare notes that
> insurgencies take on average 10 years to defeat. And while
> technically we're about four years into this one, the Pentagon was in
> such denial for so long about confronting the Iraqi insurgency--and
> wasted time on so many errant alternatives--that America may be at
> square one in fighting it, or possibly even "in negative numbers,"
> this expert says.
>
> The Petraeus plan returns U.S. troops to the role they played in the
> immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion (although back then there
> was no partnering with Iraqis at all). Paul Rieckhoff, a former U.S.
> Army reservist and the author of "Chasing Ghosts," a harshly critical
> look at the Iraq war, says he is disheartened that Petraeus is moving
> his troops back into the same turf that Rieckhoff's First Armored
> Division brigade, under Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, controlled in 2003.
> The Dempsey approach to U.S.-led policing was similar to Petraeus's,
> but it was abandoned in early 2004. "The 82nd Airborne is now
> returning to the area of Adamiyah [a neighborhood in central Baghdad]
> we left in 2004," Rieckhoff says. As a result of all the lost time,
> the anonymous irregular warfare expert worries about "whether we have
> the support of the American people for the multiyear commitment it
> will take," adding: "This is how great powers lose small wars."
>
>
>
> America's political will may depend, in turn, on whether the casualty
> rate stays the same--or goes even higher, as is likely for a time. An
> attack on a U.S. outpost north of Baghdad on Monday highlighted some
> of the hazards of the new approach. Insurgents sent suicide vehicles
> into an abandoned police station manned by a small contingent of U.S.
> troops, killing two American soldiers. "The troops are certainly more
> vulnerable than they are on super bases," says John Arquilla, who
> teaches irregular warfare at the Naval Postgraduate School in
> Monterey, Calif. "The mission now is less force protection of
> American troops and more protection of the Iraqi people."
>
> Yet like two planets spinning away from each other in different
> orbits, the Petraeus plan developing on the ground and the Iraq
> debate generating headlines back home seem to be disconnected,
> increasingly so. On Wednesday, most of the Democratic candidates for
> president gathered in Carson City, Nev., and pitched their various
> schemes for capping funds for the war and thus forcing at least a
> partial U.S. withdrawal. Back on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy
> Pelosi threw her support behind a proposed bill by Rep. John Murtha
> that would reduce the U.S. presence in Iraq by requiring troops to
> spend one year at home between deployments, among other provisions
> for readiness.
>
> Can any of these efforts succeed, when the highly esteemed Petraeus
> will be making regular visits to the Hill pleading for more time?
> Phil Carter, who is also a lawyer, believes the congressional efforts
> to cut off Petraeus will fall flat--although he's also skeptical that
> the general's plan can work without several hundred thousand more
> troops, which Congress is highly unlikely to authorize. "I just don't
> see Congress stepping up and drawing a line in the sand," he says.
> The analogy one hears most often is to the end of the Vietnam War,
> when Congress cut off aid to the South Vietnamese government. But
> Carter believes that comparison is a false one. "The myth on Vietnam
> is that Congress did it, but by the time they did Nixon had pulled
> out all the U.S. troops anyway," he says. "This is different."
>
> Even so, because the Petraeus plan will likely extend well into the
> next presidency, much will depend on the views and actions of whoever
> is elected in 2008. Ultimately, if we do withdraw prematurely, we may
> end up doing what embattled British Prime Minister Tony Blair has
> just announced he's doing in the southern Iraqi city of Basra:
> declare victory (though there is scant evidence of one), and go home.
>But not if Dave Petraeus and his dream team can help it.

>>> Like we're supposed to be surprised?

~Doc