The second part of Bob Woodward's book-excerpt is full of fascinating nuggets of information; in particular, that generals on the ground in Iraq opposed the surge:
The president was not listening to [General George] Casey's boss, Gen. John P. Abizaid at Central Command, anymore, either.
"Yeah, I know," the president said to Abizaid at a National Security Council session in December, "you're going to tell me you're against the surge."
Yes, Abizaid replied, and then presented his argument that U.S. forces needed to get out of Iraq in order to win.
"The U.S. presence helps to keep a lid on," Bush responded. There were other benefits. A surge would "also help here at home, since for many the measure of success is reduction in violence," Bush said. "And it'll help [Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki to get control of the situation. A heavier presence will buy time for his government."
Now, we've seen that the heavier presence has not bought time for the government to do much of anything -- the political situation continues to be tenuous. Admittedly, Maliki looks like he's trying to set himself up as a political strongman, but that might not be quite what Bush had in mind. What's interesting is that this is the same Bush who said, "Troop levels will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C." Hmmm. And this is the same subject that John McCain has used to attack Barack Obama, saying, "First, he opposed the surge and confidently predicted that it would fail. Then he tried to prevent funding for the troops who carried out the surge. Not content to merely predict failure in Iraq, my opponent tried to legislate failure."
Were Abizaid and Casey trying to fail? Or maybe they understood the limits of military force in Iraq. It's clear that the COIN strategy that General Petraeus brought to Iraq when he replaced Casey as commander is a better way to fight in Iraq, but once again the question should be asked: What does victory look like? And how does military force get us there? McCain hasn't answered those questions.
--Tim Fernholz
