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Skriven 2007-01-11 11:07:00 av ROSS SAUER
Ärende: "The Decider"
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See what happens when a dummy who ran away from the TANG becomes "The 
Decider?"

Bush to raise stakes with new Iraq strategy 
By Edward Luce in Washington

Published: January 10 2007 02:00 | Last updated: January 10 2007 02:00

In a broadcast tonight, George W. Bush will gamble what remains of his 
presidency on a counter-insurgency strategy drawn up by the general he 
appointed last week to take charge of US forces in Iraq.

The 168-page manual, that Lieutenant General David Petraeus completed 
last month, provides the blueprint for what supporters of Mr Bush's 
expected 20,000 troop "surge" hope the beefed up US forces will do in 
Iraq over the coming months.

The first US army counterinsurgency manual in 20 years, it recommends a 
starkly different approach to tackling the insurgency than most US 
commanders have followed since the April 2003 Iraq invasion.

It says that the principal goal of the US military should be to win the 
respect and support of the domestic population and that killing 
insurgents can often be counter-productive by creating even more to take 
their place.

Furthermore, it recommends that US soldiers and civilians learn Arabic 
and become culturally sensitive to the conditions of the local 
population as a way of improving critical intelligence. "Without good 
intelligence, counter-insurgents are like blind boxers flailing at an 
unseen opponent," it says.

On previous tours in Iraq, most notably in command of US forces in the 
northern city of Mosul, Gen Petraeus has put much of this into practice 
with good effect, say analysts. This time around, he is expected to 
apply it across Iraq but particularly in Baghdad and Anbar province.

Kenneth Pollack, an Iraq analyst at the Brookings Institution, said: "He 
comes with two very big advantages, which is that the previous strategy 
of chasing al-Qaeda fruitlessly around Iraq has failed.

"Second, he won't have Donald Rumsfeld breathing down his neck and 
vetoing everything he does. Bob Gates [the new defence secretary] is not 
like that."

However, Gen Petraeus will also face three obstacles, they say. First, 
the surge - or "escalation", as the Democratic party has called it - 
would need to be many times the expected 20,000 in order to pacify Iraqi 
population centres.

The report says the ideal ratio of troops to population in a counter-
insurgency operation is 20 per 1,000. This would imply the US would need 
to add at least 250,000 to its existing force of 140,000 - a logistical 
and political impossibility. Iraq's population is 26m.

Although Gen Petraeus is advocating what British strategists had long 
recommended, the UK's 8,000 force level was never enough to control 
Basra, a city of more than 1m. "The UK had the right idea but never 
putits money where its mouth was," said Mr Pollack. Second, Gen Petraeus 
cannot rely on the co-operation of all of Iraq's security forces, many 
of which are riddled with sectarian death squads. Patrick Clawson, a 
former administration official at the Washington Institute for Near East 
Policy, said: "The thing to watch out for is not the surge but the 
number of high-quality US trainers Mr Bush can provide for the Iraqi 
army."

Third, the focus on counter-insurgency might be years too late. Mr 
Pollack said: "The Iraqi civil war has acquired a psychological 
dimension that may now be impossible to control."

© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2007.

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