Generals, Troops, Iraqis, Allies All Doubt "The Surge"

This is by way of being a follow-up to Earl's excellent post this morning, with two must-read articles about the surge.

The first is from the Washington Post:

When President Bush goes before the American people tonight to outline his new strategy for Iraq, he will be doing something he has avoided since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003: ordering his top military brass to take action they initially resisted and advised against.

Bush talks frequently of his disdain for micromanaging the war effort and for second-guessing his commanders. "It's important to trust the judgment of the military when they're making military plans," he told The Washington Post in an interview last month. "I'm a strict adherer to the command structure."

But over the past two months, as the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated and U.S. public support for the war has dropped, Bush has pushed back against his top military advisers and the commanders in Iraq: He has fashioned a plan to add up to 20,000 troops to the 132,000 U.S. service members already on the ground. As Bush plans it, the military will soon be "surging" in Iraq two months after an election that many Democrats interpreted as a mandate to begin withdrawing troops.

Pentagon insiders say members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have long opposed the increase in troops and are only grudgingly going along with the plan because they have been promised that the military escalation will be matched by renewed political and economic efforts in Iraq. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the outgoing head of Central Command, said less than two months ago that adding U.S. troops was not the answer for Iraq.

It goes on to point out that:

when Bush met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan, on Nov. 30, Maliki did not ask for more American troops as part of a new Baghdad security plan he presented to Bush, U.S. officials said.

Maliki's idea was to lower the U.S. profile, not raise it. "The message in Amman was that he wanted to take the lead and put an Iraqi face on it. He wanted to control his own forces," said a U.S. official familiar with the visit.

The second must-read comes from McClatchy Newspapers, who report that US officers in charge of training Iraqi troops don't think an influx of American soldiers will help much:

In the end, no matter what the Americans do, the Iraqis will find their own way, the U.S. commander of the trainers here said.

"There is no doubt in my mind that when the coalition does leave that this situation will get resolved within a fairly short period of time. These people will figure it out. It may be ugly. It may be very ugly. But they will figure it out," said Lt. Col. Jody Creekmore, who arrived in Iraq last summer from Huntsville, Ala., leaving behind his three teenage children.

...U.S. trainers also say their own preparation for Iraq was inadequate. While they received intensive monthlong training at Fort Riley, Kan., using a set of Iraqi-like scenes complete with Arabic speakers, they were unprepared for the severity of the problems they found.

The American trainers said teaching counterinsurgency doctrine had become secondary to more basic pursuits, such as how to load a weapon, take care of equipment and even find basic supplies: food, water and bullets. In U.S commanders' sparse offices and barracks, piles of books on counterinsurgency tactics sit unused behind desks.

Indeed, logistics is the biggest problem plaguing the new Iraqi army, said U.S. Col. David Puster, who's in charge of training the 5th Iraqi Army Division, whose territory includes Diyala province.

..."A lot of (Col. Ali's) time is spent just trying to keep his army fed, his army fueled, his army clothed, his army with blankets," Creekmore said. "That takes up a lot of time that he is not out there doing counterinsurgency because he is trying to take care of basics."

When the Iraqis can't come up with their own supplies, it falls to U.S. trainers to get them. Americans have provided food, water, bullets, communications, boots and uniforms. They spend hours pleading with the Iraqi government to share supplies with its soldiers. Desperate to wean them from U.S. dependency, officials here have begun cutting off fuel.

"We have to make an Iraqi system. We can't give and give," said Maj. Matt Gore, of Leavenworth, Kan., an Army reservist who's in charge of training the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 5th Division, based in Muqdadiyah.

I will add, as I posted yesterday, that Tony Blair intends to make it clear this week that Britain is not going to send more troops to Iraq and will will insist that the UK will stick to its own strategy of gradually handing over to the Iraqi army.

So everyone - generals, troops, Iraqis and allies - doubts whether a surge will be effective. Everyone, that is, except Bush and the neocon uber-right who talked America into war in the first place...oh, and Barney the dog.