frederick w. kagan - commonwealth institutethe american enterprise institute (aei) has there-fore...

NO MIDDLE WAY

The Challenge of E xit

Strategies from Iraq

FREDERICK W. KAGAN

A REPORT OF THE IRAQ PLANNING GROUP

AT THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

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As the debate over American strategy in Iraqheats up, many opponents of the current

counterinsurgency approach are seeking a middleway between the strategy General David Petraeushas designed and is executing and a complete with-drawal from Iraq that they recognize will gravelyharm American security and national interests. Thesearch for this middle way goes back to the IraqStudy Group’s report, which suggested that anexpanded diplomatic and military training effortcould permit a significant reduction in Americancombat forces in Iraq while still offering the prospectof at least partial success. In June, the Center for aNew American Security (CNAS) published a reportentitled Phased Transition: A Responsible Way Forwardand Out of Iraq that is the most detailed effort yet todescribe what a middle-way military strategy wouldlook like.

The importance of the debate over Americanstrategy in Iraq, and in particular the importance ofthinking through the challenges of moving from anactive counterinsurgency strategy to an advisorymission in Iraq, led the Iraq Planning Group at theAmerican Enterprise Institute (AEI) to conduct adetailed evaluation of the CNAS report and, moregenerally, the efforts to find a middle-way strategythat relies on expanded training efforts to permitrapid withdrawal of most American combat unitsfrom Iraq. This evaluation concluded that:

• It is possible to design a force structure ofaround 60,000 troops that can support itselfas the CNAS proposal desires;

• It is probably possible to conduct a with-drawal of eighteen American brigades byJanuary 2009 from a technical, logistical stand-point, as the CNAS proposal recommends;

However:

• There is a substantial contradiction withinthe CNAS assumptions about the securityenvironment in which the transition wouldoccur; to wit: the report assumes a benignsecurity environment in which the transitioncan occur, while at the same time justifyingthe change in strategy as a response to thedeteriorating security situation within Iraq;

• The execution of the CNAS report’s recom-mended new strategy would require signifi-cantly more than the 60,000 troops set outby the report as the cap on the number ofAmerican force levels in Iraq;

• U.S. forces in Iraq would have to be supple-mented by significant air power resourcesdeployed throughout the Middle East.

Most seriously:

• The remaining combat brigades that theCNAS report proposes leaving in Iraq as“Quick Reaction Forces” (QRFs) could notperform the missions proposed for them bythat report;

• The expanded advisory effort would placesignificant strains on American groundforces and would not achieve the desiredobjectives;

• The capabilities of the Iraqi Security Forceswould be significantly degraded throughoutmost of the transition period, despite theincrease in advisory presence; and

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Executive Summary

• The advisory mission as proposed in thecurrent security environment would putU.S. advisors at much greater risk of kid-napping and assassination than any U.S.forces now in Iraq currently face.

In addition:

• The CNAS report offers no evidence to sup-port its assertion that setting timelines forwithdrawal would incentivize the Iraqi gov-ernment to make necessary steps towardreconciliation, and it ignores significant evi-dence to the contrary;

• The report offers no evidence to support the notion that, precisely when U.S. forceswould be drawing down, an expanded diplo-matic effort would lead Iraq’s neighbors toplay a more positive role, and ignores muchevidence to the contrary;

• The proposed strategy does not take accountof the current disposition of al Qaeda in Iraqor the nature of that organization, and there-fore will prove ineffective in preventing ter-rorists from establishing bases in Iraq duringand after the U.S. withdrawal;

• The CNAS report does not consider theactivities of the extremist Shia militias inany detail and offers no plausible plan forcontrolling those militias or limiting Iranianinterference in Iraq;

• The likeliest results of the CNAS strategy inIraq are increased violence, the collapse ofthe Iraqi Security Forces, and ultimately thecollapse of the Iraqi government, followedby the collapse of any remaining Americanwill to continue the struggle there—leadingto the precipitate withdrawal the report wasdesigned to prevent.

The challenge of developing a sound strategy fortransitioning from the current counterinsurgencystrategy to an advisory role is real, and the CNASreport provides a service by highlighting this prob-lem. But the report, like most middle-way strategies,mistakes the conditions that would make such a transition successful: when basic security has beenestablished. Instead, it suggests that an immediatetransition to an advisory role—driven by hopes forbipartisanship in Washington but irrespective of thesecurity situation in Iraq—would allow the UnitedStates to withdraw most of its combat forces withoutcompromising its interests. That conclusion is false.At the moment, the choices before America are verystark: continue the current counterinsurgency strat-egy with something like the current level of forces inIraq until conditions actually permit transition to anadvisory role, or withdraw and abandon Iraq to sec-tarian cleansing and the vengeance of al Qaeda ter-rorists. Considering the successes the current strategyhas generated over the past eight months and theimportance of succeeding in Iraq, the choice is clear.

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The debate over strategy for the war in Iraq hasresolved into four basic approaches: maintain

current force levels indefinitely, reduce forces assecurity conditions and the capabilities of the IraqiSecurity Forces (ISF) and Iraqi government permit,reduce forces on a fixed timeline with the goal ofleaving behind a much smaller force to pursue keyU.S. interests, or leave as rapidly as logistically possible. The first approach is advocated by noone—the Bush administration, its commanders inthe field, and outside supporters of its strategyhave always been clear that they saw the currentincrease in American military presence in Iraq astemporary, with views of its length ranging from sixmonths to two years or so counting from January2007. The second approach is the current strategy.The fourth approach is advocated by some presi-dential candidates and a small number of Congres-sional leaders, as well as the anti-war movement.The disadvantages of precipitate withdrawal areobvious, which is why those opposed to the cur-rent strategy have devoted enormous efforts tofinding a middle way—a third approach that dra-matically reduces the number of U.S. forces in Iraqin a short period of time without sacrificing vitalAmerican interests in Iraq or in the region. It goes without saying that such an approach, if feasi-ble, would be highly desirable for strategic as wellas political reasons. The Iraq Planning Group at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has there-fore undertaken to evaluate in detail the mosthighly articulated vision of such a middle way in an effort to determine whether or not there is arealistic new strategic approach to the problems inIraq. This report presents the results of that sys-tematic evaluation.

Background

The argument at the heart of every middle-waystrategy is that Iraqis alone can solve their own

problems, especially their political and security problems, and coalition forces can only assist them in this endeavor. This argument informed Americanstrategy before, during, and immediately after majorcombat operations in 2003. The Bush administrationassumed that it would remove Saddam Hussein frompower and then help shepherd the Iraqis throughwhat some in the administration expected to be a rela-tively rapid and smooth transition to a new order ofaffairs suitable to both Iraqis and Americans. When itbecame apparent that the transition would be neithersmooth nor rapid and that the beginnings of a SunniArab insurgency were emerging, the administrationand incoming U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)commander General John Abizaid adapted the argument to the changing circumstances. The aimremained to establish an Iraqi political system asquickly as possible, and it was believed in the admin-istration that the establishment of that system wouldof itself dramatically reduce the violence that began togrow in late 2003 and that exploded in 2004. As theviolence continued in 2004, American forces weredrawn into quelling it directly, since there were toofew Iraqi forces available to do so, and U.S. troops putdown Sadrist uprisings in Najaf and Sadr City andalso cleared Fallujah of al Qaeda and Sunni insurgentswho had taken control of that city.

But General Abizaid and his subordinates neverwanted American forces to take the lead in puttingdown the violence, establishing security, or protectingthe Iraqi population and infrastructure. These were alljobs they felt would be better performed by the Iraqisthemselves. They changed the direction of the trainingof the ISF from the limited force designed primarily

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No Middle Way:The Challenge of Exit Strategies from Iraq

for external defense envisioned in 2003 to a muchlarger counterinsurgency force. Lieutenant GeneralDavid Petraeus took command of the Multi-NationalSecurity Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I), theorganization charged with overseeing the growth ofthis force, in June 2004. The mantra throughout U.S.headquarters in Iraq (often literally posted in com-manders’ offices) was the famous T. E. Lawrencequote: “Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that youdo it perfectly.”

From the start, the effort to train the ISF wasplagued with controversy. There had been no coher-ent plan developed to do so prior to the start of majorcombat operations in 2003. CENTCOM plannersresponsible for preparing for the post-war situationhad expected that there would be residual ISF ofsome kind available to assist with the maintenance ofpublic order. Initial plans for a small and externallyfocused Iraqi military had to be quickly replaced witha vision for a much larger and more sophisticatedforce. Pressure grew rapidly to produce large numbersof Iraqi foot soldiers as quickly as possible to join thegrowing counterinsurgency effort, on the (correct)principle that effective counterinsurgency requiredIraqis to interact with Iraqis rather than coalitionforces operating alone among the Iraqi population.

Helping to train the Iraqi military in counter-insurgency warfare should, in principle, have beenthe mission of the U.S. Army Special Forces, whichhas “foreign internal defense” as one of its core com-petencies. But the leaders of U.S. Special OperationsCommand (USSOCOM), with worldwide respon-sibility for prosecuting the War on Terror, primarilywere focused on the tasks of hunting al Qaeda andTaliban leaders in Afghanistan and striking thegrowing al Qaeda networks in Iraq. Further, whileArmy Special Forces are the largest single element inUSSOCOM, they are in any case far too small andimperfectly structured to train up a multi-hundred-thousand-strong military force from scratch in ashort period of time. The mission therefore fell onconventional Army and Marine units, both activeand reserve, which put together ad hoc advisoryteams, since there were no standing teams withinthe regular ground forces to perform this task.

Advocates of the advisory mission (as well as partic-ipants in it) complained regularly that both thenumber and the quality of the advisers assigned tothe mission were too low, and that the mission wasnot receiving the level of resources that would havebeen appropriate given its centrality to the strategyof letting Iraqis solve Iraq’s problems.

Despite the halting start, considerable progresshad been made in developing the ISF by early 2006,although significant challenges remained. Theemphasis on getting Iraqis into the fight had led tothe creation of a large force of light infantry that hadno organic transportation, armor protection, com-mand and control, firepower, or logistical capabilitiesto speak of. Individual Iraqi units could and did fightalongside coalition forces, but only when coalitionforces provided them with all of these capabilities.The ethno-sectarian make-up of the force was alsoproblematic. The 2006 ISF was recruited during aperiod in which most Sunni Arabs were refusing to participate in government, boycotting both elec-tions and recruiting drives. As a result, the ISF waspredominantly Shia and, furthermore, infiltrated byelements of Moqtada al Sadr’s Jaysh al Mehdi (JAM)militia, the Badr Corps militia belonging to theSupreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq(SCIRI, subsequently renamed the Supreme IraqiIslamic Council), and other militia forces. Theemphasis on bringing Iraqi forces to bear on thecounterinsurgency problem quickly required a focuson building the capabilities of the Iraqis who volun-teered to serve, rather than on vetting them for par-tisan leanings or on building up the infrastructure ofthe Iraqi military. U.S. commanders and advisers didnot entirely ignore these important issues, but theywere largely submerged under the push to produceviable soldiers and police as rapidly as possible.

The sectarian problems within the ISF came to thefore after the bombing of the al Askariyah Mosquein Samarra in February 2006. The Shia majority inIraq, which had tolerated more than two years ofSunni Arab insurgent and terrorists attacks withoutserious retaliation, finally lost its patience. Shia-on-Sunni violence exploded in the wake of the mosquebombing, sparking a spiral of sectarian violence that

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continued to grow almost unabated throughout2006. The ISF were not large or effective enough bythemselves to control this spiral, even if they hadfaced no internal sectarian tensions themselves. As itwas, elements of the ISF, particularly the police, beganto participate in “death squad” activities against SunniArabs in large numbers, and the ISF was ineffectiveat controlling the Sunni attacks against Shia. Thethrust of U.S. strategy did not change throughout2006, however—the focus remained on tacticaltraining of ISF and encouraging them to solve Iraq’sproblems themselves, although individual Americanunits did clear out pockets of terrorists and insur-gents in some areas.

The acceleration of violence throughout 2006continued despite the completion of political mile-stones that the administration had expected to bringthe insurgency under control—the seating of a freelyelected Iraqi government, the creation of a growingISF, the killing of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) leader AbuMusab al Zarqawi in June, and several efforts toreestablish order in Baghdad. The collapsing secu-rity situation in Iraq in turn led to the collapse ofpublic and political support in the United States forthe war effort and to the Democratic victory in bothHouses of Congress in the November elections. Itwas in this context of collapsing domestic supportfor the war and sectarian violence spiraling out ofcontrol in Iraq, that the Iraq Study Group (ISG),headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, developedits report, which it released in December 2006. TheBaker-Hamilton commission was the original effortto find a “middle way.”

Their explicit purpose was to find a strategy inIraq that could command bipartisan support—asdistinct from finding the ideal strategy for pursuingAmerican interests in Iraq. The premise of this andsubsequent similar efforts was that America has vitalinterests in Iraq from which it cannot simply walkaway, but that the political climate within the UnitedStates was moving dangerously in the direction ofsupporting a precipitate withdrawal that would com-promise those interests. The focus on achieving asustainable bipartisan strategy was an attempt to sal-vage an American position in Iraq from a crumbling

domestic political base. In this context, the value of“Iraqification” became its appeal to Americans wearyof the war, rather than its contribution to the coun-terinsurgency campaign. Its merit was measuredmore in Washington than in Baghdad.

At the same time, the study group was attemptingto respond to a real problem on the ground in Iraq.Coalition forces, even operating with the growing ISF,appeared incapable of stemming the spiraling sectar-ian violence, and the group did not believe that theUnited States could send enough additional Americantroops into the country to take care of the problem. Italso embraced the argument the administration andits commanders had been making all along that whenAmerican forces performed tasks that the Iraqisshould be performing, they disincentivized the Iraqigovernment from taking responsibility for its ownproblems. The Baker-Hamilton panel hoped to forcethe Iraqi government to “step up” by making itresponsible for bringing the violence under controlthrough both political means and its own securityservices. The group also noted that Iraq’s neighborswere contributing to Iraq’s problems and called on theadministration to undertake a diplomatic initiativeaimed primarily at Iran and Syria to encourage themto play a more constructive role.

The commission’s primary military recommenda-tion was to increase dramatically the number andquality of American advisers working with the ISF. Itsought to make this advisory effort the main missionof U.S. military forces in Iraq, and to flow morequalified American personnel into Military TrainingTeams (MTTs), expanding their coverage of Iraqiunits down to the company level. (The lowest levelof Iraqi forces with MTTs embedded then as nowwas the battalion.) The panel also advocated sendingmany more advisers into the Iraqi police services,even including local Iraqi police stations. Thegroup’s report called for locating and deploying suit-able personnel from American and internationalpolice forces to support this effort.

The Baker-Hamilton recommendations did notestablish a timeline for the withdrawal or reduction ofAmerican forces from Iraq, but it did state that theUnited States should begin to scale back its support,

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both military and financial, of the government of Iraqif Baghdad failed to meet a set of specific benchmarks,which it specified. It noted that this withdrawal of |support could and should proceed independent ofthe situation on the ground in Iraq, if the Iraqi gov-ernment was not properly fulfilling its responsibilities.

The Baker-Hamilton proposals did not differfrom Bush administration strategy in one importantway. The Bush administration had been pursuing astrategy of train-and-transition virtually from theoutset, and at the end of 2006 General GeorgeCasey, commander of all coalition forces in the thea-ter, was stating that areas of Iraq being turned overto “Iraqi control” was the key measure of progress.The focus on training Iraqi forces as a means ofreducing the U.S. presence was not new to a presi-dent who had long since declared, “As they standup, we’ll stand down.”

The ISG’s plan differed from the administration’sapproach in three key respects, however: it aimed atachieving the most politically viable strategy ratherthan the ideal strategy for succeeding in Iraq; it pro-posed altering the quantity and composition of U.S.resources devoted to the fight and changing the allo-cation of those resources (diplomatic, political, eco-nomic, and military) among the various tasksrequired to succeed in Iraq; and it encouraged thepresident to declare that he would abandon Iraq to itsfate if its leaders did not demonstrate the necessarycommitment to succeed on their own—somethingthe president had been consistently unwilling to do.

President George W. Bush did not accept theBaker-Hamilton recommendations. Instead, on Janu-ary 10, 2007, he announced a new approach in Iraqand the deployment of additional American forces tosupport it. The new approach, a variation of thatadvocated by the Iraq Planning Group at the Ameri-can Enterprise Institute, continued to pursue thesame goal of creating a situation in Iraq in whichIraqis could eventually take responsibility for main-taining security and building up their government,allowing first the additional U.S. “surge” forces towithdraw and then, gradually, many of the rest of the American forces in Iraq to follow. The “surge,” asthe new approach came to be known, was always

intended as a temporary expedient aimed at bringingthe spiraling violence and terrorism under controland to a level at which the growing ISF would be ableto maintain security and continue to reduce the vio-lence. The new strategy, enunciated with increasingdetail by the new coalition commander, GeneralPetraeus, was also intended to create space withinwhich the Iraqi political system could establish itselfand make progress on key benchmarks. The presi-dent and his advisers repeatedly declared that theU.S. commitment to Iraq was not open-ended, that itdepended on Iraqi political progress, but that theywould announce no timetable for withdrawal andwould not make continued American support to theIraqi government contingent on that government’saccomplishment of particular milestones.

The president had not sought to adopt the strat-egy with the most bipartisan support, and he did notreceive such support. The new Democrat-led Con-gress almost immediately began efforts to compelhim to change strategy once again, with some advo-cating immediate withdrawal and others insisting onmore gradual, yet still firm, timelines. Over thespring and summer of 2007, it appeared that theadministration was losing ground politically, asprominent Republicans in Congress began to indi-cate their displeasure with the president’s strategyand their desire for a change to something like theBaker-Hamilton proposals, which emerged onceagain as the ideal way to forge a bipartisan consensuson Iraq strategy.

This was the context in which the Center for aNew American Security (CNAS) prepared and pub-lished its report, Phased Transition: A Responsible WayForward and Out of Iraq, in June. Although a numberof analysts had continued to advocate an increasedtraining effort accompanied by a reduction in Ameri-can forces engaged directly in counterinsurgencyoperations, and many politicians had continued topress for diplomatic solutions to Iraq’s problems,none had offered a study or a plan as detailed as theISG until CNAS produced its report. The seriousnessof this effort and the detail with which it presents itsconclusions have rapidly made the CNAS report intothe exemplar of this kind of strategic vision. As we

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shall see, Phased Transition offers an approach funda-mentally similar in its major outlines to that proposedby the Baker-Hamilton panel, although it goes intomore detail about the military implementation of itsproposals. It is worth examination as one of the bestpossible presentations of this particular view of Iraqstrategy, even apart from its significance as a rallyingpoint for those who seek a middle way in Iraq duringSeptember’s pivotal debate. These are the reasons whyAEI undertook to evaluate the CNAS proposals.

Phased Transition: Goals and Objectives

The aim of the CNAS report is to reduce Ameri-can military presence in Iraq dramatically by the

time the next president takes office, and then sustainit at a gradually decreasing level over several yearsuntil no American forces remain in Iraq. The reportbegins by noting how unpopular, unsuccessful, andcostly the war has been, but then shifts to an effortto build an American strategy in Iraq from theground up, starting with a consideration of basicgoals and objectives. It defines the goals with thenegative formulation of “the three no’s”: no al Qaedasafe havens in Iraq, no regional war, and no geno-cide within Iraq. It then lays out a number of morespecific and positive objectives necessary to achievethese overarching goals:

• encouraging the expansion of the grassrootsmovement among the Sunni Arabs in Anbar;

• overseeing a form of “soft partition” in whichmillions of Iraqis more or less voluntarilymove from mixed areas into more homoge-neous regions;

• building up strong regional security forcesin these more homogeneous Sunni, Shia,and Kurdish regions;

• negotiating with Iraq’s neighbors to stabilizethe situation in Iraq and throughout theregion;

• strengthening the Iraqi government’s abilityto function at the central and local levels;

• helping the Iraqi government pass criticalbenchmark legislation;

• maintaining security and progress in Kurdistan;

• strengthening the Iraqi military and policeat the national and local levels; and

• transitioning to a stable, sustainable, andappropriate U.S. military and police advisoryeffort while withdrawing most Americancombat forces by January 2009.

The ISG had proposed all but the first three ofthese objectives. The first one did not make it intothe ISG because the grassroots movement in Anbarwas still in its infancy when the ISG report came out,and few people recognized that it would become asmeaningful as it has. The ISG did not embrace theidea of partition either, and certainly did not pro-pose to have American forces oversee it. Accordingly,it also refrained from advocating strengtheningregional security forces to stabilize partition once ithad occurred. These issues aside, the core of theCNAS proposal is the direct offspring of the ISGreport in its overarching goals and preferred meansand allocation of resources.

The CNAS objectives are also, for that matter, lit-tle different from those of the current strategy, apartfrom the question of soft partition and the commit-ment to dramatic reductions in troop strength byJanuary 2009. The CNAS authors criticize the wayin which the Bush administration has pursued eachof these objectives, their prioritization, and theirtiming; but the objectives themselves are not reallyin dispute. The reason is simple. If one wishes todevelop a strategy that leads to some kind of stabil-ity in Iraq and in the region that will survive afterAmerican forces leave, then there is a certain irre-ducible and unarguable list of things that must beaccomplished first, including training and expand-ing the ISF, helping improve the capability of the


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Iraqi government at all levels, helping the Iraqisestablish and maintain security, and developing andexecuting a clear strategy of transitioning to an advi-sory effort at an appropriate time and under appro-priate circumstances. Any strategy that does notaddress these objectives in the current circum-stances will be virtually incapable of producing astable Iraq. The CNAS and ISG reports and virtuallyall who are trying to find a middle way in Iraq strat-egy are still clearly trying to find a way for theUnited States to succeed at least at the most basiclevel in securing its vital interests in Iraq and theregion. They stand in marked contrast to those whoare calling for an immediate withdrawal that willlead almost inevitably to regional destabilization.The question is: is there a middle way to be found?

Phased Transition: The Military Plan

Both the ISG and CNAS recognized that the devilis in the details of any plan aiming at accom-

plishing these common objectives. The ISG put con-siderable effort into describing the diplomatic effortsthat were the centerpiece of its proposal. The differ-ent environment of summer 2007 led the CNASteam to focus its effort on the military details. In par-ticular, the CNAS goal of finding a military strategythat could gain sufficient domestic support to allowthe next president to pursue an intelligent policy inIraq and the region led the authors to propose a fixedtimeline for the withdrawal of American forces andto specify the rough size of the forces they expectedto remain in Iraq after January 2009. Fundamentalthroughout the report is the presumption that nostrategy that did not set time and size goals for theAmerican posture in Iraq could gain bipartisan sup-port. An additional presumption is that the time goalmust be soon, and the size goal must be considerablysmaller than the current force. The CNAS reporttherefore set the target of not more than 60,000 U.S.troops of all services in Iraq by January 2009.

The report notes, quite rightly, that specific num-bers and the particular disposition of troops it advo-cates can only be rough and would have to be refined

by a military staff. The purpose of the evaluationoffered below is not, therefore, to pick nits with theparticulars of the military posture proposed by CNAS,but to explore what such a posture would look like on the ground and to examine its advantages anddrawbacks from the standpoint of the objectivesproposed in the CNAS report. It is worth noting,however, that a proposal of this type is likely toprove relatively inflexible in application. As Presi-dent Bush and his predecessors have found onnumerous occasions, numbers, benchmarks, andproposed timelines take on a life of their own whenthey have been publicly announced. If the numberof 60,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by January 2009 ispublicly discussed, it may prove difficult subse-quently to revise it. The date, moreover, is not reallysubject to change at all—the purpose of the plan isto reduce American forces to a sustainable size bythe time the next administration takes office. Other-wise, according to the CNAS report, the new admin-istration would likely be stampeded into aprecipitate withdrawal. In evaluating this and anysimilar plan, therefore, it is appropriate to considerthe proposed force caps and timelines as relativelyhard ceilings and inflexible dates.

One final caveat is that the CNAS report was writ-ten on the assumption that its proposals would beimplemented instantly, i.e., starting in July 2007,which of course has not happened. The evaluationbelow therefore assumes that the CNAS proposals takeeffect on or about October 1, 2007, which is about thebest case the CNAS authors could reasonably hope fornow. It assumes that the end-state remains 60,000troops by January 2009, because that date and figureflowed from CNAS assumptions about the politicalviability of any plan rather than from an evaluation ofwhat was feasible between July 2007 and the end ofBush’s presidency. This sort of problem will be a chal-lenge with any timeline-based plan.

From Securing the Population to Withdrawal to Training the ISF: Shifting the Main Effort

Any successful strategy in Iraq must include a transi-tion from current efforts to establish and maintain

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security directly to an advisory mission in which ISFtake full responsibility for that task. Planning andconducting that transition and the advisory effort tofollow will entail significant challenges, as the CNASeffort to describe it shows. The key problem is know-ing when to start the transition. As we have seen,train-and-transition had been U.S. strategy in Iraqfrom 2004 to the beginning of 2007, and it did notsucceed. Conditions had not been set either in termsof the capabilities of the ISF or in terms of the secu-rity situation on the ground, and so premature effortsto transition responsibility to the ISF led to a decreasein security. The current strategy aims to set the rightconditions for the transition by improving both secu-rity and the capacity of the ISF. But U.S. commandersand outside advocates of the strategy argue that thiseffort will require something like current force levelsin Iraq well into 2008. The authors of the CNAS studyargue that sustaining such levels is politically impos-sible, and so they have attempted to develop a plan toallow transition to begin immediately. The critiques ofthe CNAS plan that follow focus primarily on how itwould work in the situation as it is today in Iraqrather than on the principle of developing an advisoryapproach at all. (There are, however, a number ofproblems common to this and many similarapproaches dating back to the ISG proposals that willhave to be addressed to make any advisory effort suc-cessful when transition becomes possible.)

The CNAS report proposes: to withdraw U.S.forces from direct participation in establishing andmaintaining security immediately, to redeploy eight-een of the twenty-one U.S. brigade combat teamequivalents now in Iraq by January 2009, and to addaround 14,000 additional trainers to the 6,000 nowin country for a total of 20,000—the same numberproposed by the ISG in December 2006. Theseadvisers would include teams working with aroundhalf of the companies in the Iraqi Army (advisoryteams now go down only to the battalion level) andwould embed more than 8,000 military police inaround one-third of Iraq’s police stations. Theseadvisory teams would be charged with improvingthe capacity of their Iraqi units and also working tocounteract sectarianism within those units.

Over time, the advisory mission would becomethe main effort of U.S. military operations in Iraqand would receive priority in terms of manning andresources. Recognizing the challenge of filling out somany new military advisory teams, the CNAS reportrecommends pulling officers out of combat unitsalready in Iraq that are redeploying before their fif-teen-month rotation is up and then offering incen-tives to those officers to stay with their advisoryteams beyond the fifteen-month mark.

Supporting the Advisory Effort: Bases and Quick Reaction Forces

The CNAS recognized that American advisers dis-persed throughout Iraq would need the protectionof Quick Reaction Forces (QRFs) and air power, aswell as logistical support. They also noted that theISF remain heavily dependent on American logistics,and they advocated continuing to assist the ISF inthat and other areas. The purpose of the CNAS pro-posal, after all, is to enable the ISF to take fullresponsibility for security assisted only by Americanadvisers but without American ground forces indirect support of security missions. Such a proposalcan only work if the Coalition continues to providenot only logistical support, but also fire support andair power support to Iraqi forces that will remainpredominantly light infantry for some time to come.

To assist with this critical effort, therefore, theCNAS report proposes to leave three U.S. BrigadeCombat Teams in Iraq, with one or two more inKuwait. It specified possible locations and multiplemissions for the brigades, which it designated QRFs.One QRF would be stationed in or near Baghdad(the report suggests either one of the current campsnear Baghdad International Airport or ForwardOperating Base [FOB] Falcon or Balad); one inAnbar (the CNAS report suggests al Asad airbase tothe west of Ramadi); and one in Kurdistan (thereport does not suggest a precise location, but thelikeliest place based on the missions given this forcewould be near Irbil).

All of the QRFs would have the mission of pro-viding logistical support, fire support, air support,


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and rapid reaction capabilities to the advisory teamsnear them. In addition, the Anbar QRF has the mis-sion of supporting the Anbar Awakening movement.The Kurdistan QRF has the missions of workingwith Iraqi forces against the anti-Turkish terroristgroup the Kurdistan Workers Party, known by itsTurkish acronym of PKK; of deterring Turkish inter-vention; and of responding to problems in Mosuland Kirkuk. The Baghdad QRF has the additionalmission of protecting the so-called governmental“Green Zone” in central Baghdad and being the lead-ing edge of any effort to evacuate U.S. embassy per-sonnel if such an effort became necessary. All of theQRFs are also supposed to deter and, if necessary,respond to direct intervention by Syria or Iran, andto intervene to prevent death squad activity withinIraq if it threatens to break out. They are also sup-posed to support U.S. and Iraqi Special OperationsForces (ISOFs) working against al Qaeda terroristcells throughout the country.

To conduct those operations, the CNAS reportproposes leaving the current establishment ofroughly 3,000 SOFs in Iraq, as well as around 4,000U.S. Air Force personnel with adequate equipmentto support the anti-terrorist, advisory, and QRFefforts. These forces would presumably be locatedwith the QRFs at their bases. They would be accom-panied by some 22,000 additional troops providingthe necessary logistical and air power support to theeffort. The total number of U.S. forces required inIraq would be 60,000, a total that would be reachedby January 2009 and then sustained for some fewyears before additional reductions became possible.

Making the CNAS Plan Work

For all the detail offered in the CNAS proposal,more work was required to determine how

exactly the military plan would unfold and whatwould be required to make it work. AEI thereforegathered a number of active duty and retired mili-tary personnel for a two-day study of the technicalmilitary details of the CNAS plan. That study con-cluded that:

• It is possible to design a force structure ofaround 60,000 troops that can supportitself as the CNAS proposal desires;

• It is probably possible to conduct a with-drawal of 18 brigades by January 2009 froma technical, logistical standpoint.

However:

• There are contradictions within the CNASassumptions about the security environmentwithin which the transition would occur, andsome factual errors in those assumptions;

• The planning and execution of this transitionin such a short period of time would be anenormous challenge that would probablyrequire an initial reinforcement of U.S. forcesin Iraq before the withdrawal could begin;

• The requirement to continue supporting theISF would constitute an additional massiveplanning and execution burden on U.S. forces;

• U.S. forces in Iraq would have to be supple-mented by significant air power resourcesdeployed throughout the theater.

And, most important:

• The QRFs could not perform the missionsspecified in the CNAS report;

• The advisory effort would place significantstrain on the U.S. ground forces and wouldnot achieve the desired objectives;

• The capabilities of the ISF would be signifi-cantly degraded throughout most of thetransition period, despite the increase inadvisory presence;

• The advisory mission in the current securityenvironment would put U.S. advisers at

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greater risk of kidnapping and assassinationthan they now face.

We will consider each of these conclusions inmore detail below, but the overall conclusion is thatalthough the CNAS military proposals are techni-cally feasible, they are unworkable in reality.

CNAS by the Numbers

Former CENTCOM commander Anthony Zinnirecently commented that no military number pro-duced by a think-tank should be taken seriously,and there is some justice in his remark: accuratelydetermining the number of soldiers, units, oramount of equipment or time required to undertakeany military operation can only be done by a mili-tary staff. The CNAS report, like all of its predeces-sors on both sides of this issue, notes that itsproposed force-size is a rough estimate that wouldhave to be refined by professionals. But as the expe-rience of such previous outside reports has shown,numbers once published take on a life of their own.A president or a member of Congress who signs upto the CNAS plan may find it hard subsequently toexplain that the real requirement in January 2009 isfor 80,000 or 100,000 troops rather than for60,000, without appearing to suffer an unacceptablepolitical embarrassment. The AEI evaluation there-fore took 60,000 as a hard ceiling in its effort.

CNAS provided a breakdown of the 60,000 troopsit foresaw in January 2009 as follows:

• 9,000 military police in police training teams

• 10,000 officers and noncommissioned offi-cers (NCOs) in military advisory teams

• 11,000 personnel in three brigade-sized QRFs

• 3,000 SOFs

• 4,000 U.S. Air Force personnel

• 22,000 support personnel

CNAS did not provide detail on the support per-sonnel required, but the AEI military planning teamconsidered the problem and concluded that it wouldrequire:

• three combat aviation brigades to providetransportation and helicopter gunship sup-port to U.S. and Iraqi forces (around 9,600personnel);

• three engineer battalions, one to supporteach of the QRFs with road-clearing, fixeddefense, and other essential functions(around 2,250 personnel);

• headquarters for the force, the QRFs, andthe advisory effort totaling approximately2,000 personnel;

• around 8,150 personnel in logistical sup-port units.

This force structure could, in principle, feed andsupply itself, move around, and participate in limitedcombat, as well as provide some air support to theISF. It could not provide ground-based fire support tothe ISF on anything like the current scale, and itcould not provide logistical support to ISF units.Supplying the 20,000 advisers dispersed in smallteams throughout the country would be an enor-mous challenge that could probably be accomplishedonly through the use of fixed- and rotary-wing airmovements in most cases. This force structure wouldnot be able to secure roads within Iraq, even betweenU.S. bases, and would have to rely on the ISF to pro-vide such security, as well as to provide day-to-daysecurity for the advisory teams.

The Withdrawal

The movement of eighteen combat brigades out ofIraq by January 2009 would be a daunting under-taking, although probably just this side of technicallyfeasible. It would have to occur in several phases.American forces now deployed among the Iraqi


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population in joint security stations, combat outposts,and patrol bases would have to move back to largerFOBs, turning responsibility for security in their areasover to their Iraqi partners. But very few U.S. brigadesand regiments are now deployed with all of their sub-ordinate battalions and companies in a single area.Military operations have required the detachment ofbattalions and companies from their parent brigadesand their deployment to areas far from their head-quarters. Reassembling these pieces in preparation forwithdrawal from Iraq will be a significant and time-consuming process both in its planning and in its execution. It can be done, of course, and movingbrigades out of Iraq at the rate of around one-and-a-half per month is probably technically possible, but itwill absorb the full attention of staffs and command-ers for many weeks. To repeat: the first mission underthe CNAS plan is the withdrawal.

The movement itself will be extraordinarily com-plex. The lines of communication between the areasin which most American forces now operate andKuwait are limited, in places funneling into a singleroad—known as Main Supply Route Tampa. Thewithdrawal of U.S. combat forces entails more thanthe movement of people. Tens of thousands of vehi-cles must also travel along that single road, togetherwith perhaps 100,000 or more shipping containersworth of equipment and supplies. The convoys willhave to move under heavy guard and will be vul-nerable to attack in a variety of ways should any ofour current enemies in or out of Iraq choose toattack them. The most probable attacks are bombsagainst bridges along route Tampa, something thatAQI has already undertaken. Indirect fire attacks,either mortars or rockets, against FOBs are also pos-sible, particularly as the U.S. forces currentlypatrolling outside those bases are withdrawn intothem. The British experience in Basra is an exampleof what this kind of attack can look like.

The withdrawal will be complicated by the factthat remaining U.S. forces will be required to standup a substantially increased advisory presence,including identifying advisers, forming them intoteams, training them, and distributing them to Iraqimilitary and police units around the country. The

addition of 14,000 people to the advisory effort isthe equivalent of around four brigades, but the planning and movement for the advisory effort willbe much more complex than moving four brigadesaround, as it involves slotting 14,000 individualsinto twenty-five-man teams. From a purely logisticalstandpoint, the U.S. military will have to developand execute plans to move the equivalent of aroundtwenty-two brigades’ worth of people and vastamounts of equipment, supplies, and vehicles aroundIraq within fourteen months.

In reality, we are certain to leave behind a signifi-cant amount of equipment. Indeed, we must do soif we are to help equip the ISF rapidly, as the CNASreport calls for. Leaving materiel behind eases thelogistical burden in some senses—it means lessequipment has to be moved along our single line ofcommunication. But it complicates it in anotherway—we have to decide piece-by-piece what wewill leave and what we will take. Simply inventory-ing and locating everything we now have in Iraq willbe a massive undertaking. Choosing what to handover and what to leave will be another. Actuallymoving it around, either to Kuwait or to Iraqi units,will be a third challenge. And all of the planning forthese undertakings will have to occur within the firstfew weeks of the new strategy in order to ensure thatall the moving pieces move at the right times and inthe right directions.

It is extremely improbable that the current U.S.support forces in Iraq could plan and execute sucha complex task on their own. It would almost cer-tainly be necessary to augment them with additionalsupporters and planning staff at the start of theoperation, which would very likely lead to an initialincrease in the total U.S. force presence in Iraq.

Supporting the ISF

The ISF is heavily dependent upon Coalition forcesfor almost all of its support, including logistics,ground-based fire support, air support, intelligencesupport, communications, armor protection, andmovement, including route-clearing and engineer-ing support. As noted above, this dependence is not

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a failure of the plan to stand up the ISF, but the resultof the initial focus on getting Iraqis into the fight.Coalition forces and the Iraqi leadership are now atwork in building these capabilities into the ISF, butthe process will certainly take many months and,most likely, several years.

The ISF draws this support right now directlyfrom Coalition units and the support structure thatexists to maintain them in many cases. There is noindependent Coalition logistical system designed tosupport Iraqi units, and Iraqi logistics units and sys-tems are rudimentary and spotty. There is no sepa-rate Coalition fire-support or air-support system forIraqi units, no independent intelligence apparatushelping the Iraqis collect and analyze intelligence,and so on. Iraqi units draw their support in mostcases directly from Coalition forces operating intheir areas, or from Coalition assets they requestfrom the senior U.S. commanders.

If the United States rapidly withdrew most of itscombat forces and the support structure that main-tains them, the Iraqi Army would probably collapse.Even if Coalition commanders were given the mis-sion of continuing to supply the Iraqis, as the CNASreport proposes, there would be no system in placeto execute that mission. The prospects for setting upan Iraqi support system—including not only thebureaucratic and legal mechanisms, but also trainedpeople with all the necessary equipment—within thetime frame of the withdrawal proposed by CNAS arevirtually zero. So the Coalition would have to race todevelop an interim support structure virtually fromscratch to prevent the very rapid and serious degra-dation of ISF capabilities. This would be yet anothermassive planning and execution task placed uponthe staffs and support elements of U.S. forces. Thiswould be in addition to planning and conductingsimultaneously the withdrawal of U.S. forces andstanding up a large and complex advisory effort forthe ISF. It is highly unlikely, if not impossible, for allthree missions to be accomplished at the same time.

Even if they could, it is certain that we could notsustain an independent support system for the ISFas well as the advisory effort, the required QRFs, andoverall support structure within the 60,000-person

cap set by the CNAS report. There are more than150,000 soldiers in the Iraqi Army, and at least thatmany in the police forces. Bearing General Zinni’scomments in mind, this report will not attempt todetermine the number of supporters required forsuch a force, but tens of thousands is probably a lowestimate. The 8,100-some supporters we estimatedas fitting within the CNAS plan would be fully occu-pied supporting the U.S. troops with little or nospare capacity for supporting Iraqi forces—and cer-tainly no ability to sustain current levels of support.

Degradation of the ISF

The result of any precipitous American withdrawal,therefore, would most likely be a significant degrada-tion in all of the capabilities of the ISF. Most Iraqiunits can already feed and house themselves, so theirmost basic life support would probably not be seri-ously compromised. But very few Iraqi units havetheir own vehicles, and almost none outside the sin-gle mechanized division have armored vehicles. MostIraqi units do not possess artillery or mortars. TheIraqi Air Force has no meaningful ground-attackcapability. Iraqi intelligence analysis operates at amuch lower level than that of the Coalition, where itoperates at all, and is subject to political and sectar-ian interference. Most Iraqi units do not have theirown secure communications systems. The ISF lacksany medical system and does not have adequateengineering assets. It also lacks any serious counter-improvised explosive device (IED) program.

The ISF would probably continue to exist, there-fore, in that the personnel could remain with theirunits in bases and continue to survive, but it prob-ably could not function as an effective military force.The lack of engineering assets and armored vehicleswould make it extremely difficult for ISF units tomove through areas in which the enemy could plantIEDs. U.S. counter-IED capabilities now permitcoalition forces to handle a great many varieties ofIEDs that would be very effective against Iraqi forceslacking those capabilities. In short, small and sim-plistic IEDs that now pose little serious threat to themovement of both U.S. and Iraqi forces would do


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great harm to Iraqi units operating without directU.S. support and assistance. The probable resultwould be that most Iraqi units would find them-selves more or less confined to their bases unlessthey were willing to take very high casualties simplyto move around.

The absence of ground- or air-based fire supportwould be another major problem for the ISF. Iran hasbeen providing Shia militias with heavy mortars androckets. In many cases, these militias can outgun IraqiArmy units they face. The U.S. presence has redressedthis imbalance in many cases. Where U.S. brigadesand regiments operate, they provide artillery, mortar,tank, and rocket support directly to their partneredIraqi units. Where U.S. forces do not operate, par-ticularly in the Shia south, they provide air support,both fixed-wing and rotary-wing, to Iraqi forces inneed. Polish units in Diwaniyah also provide ground-based artillery support, and the Georgian brigadenow deploying into Kut may do so also.

U.S. QRFs established as described by the CNASplan could provide ground-based fire support toIraqi formations within range of their guns, but theeffective coverage of that fire would be far smallerthan it is now. They would not be able to providearmor protection or direct-fire support from tanks,Bradleys, or Strykers, for reasons we will considerbelow. The American contribution to Iraq’s fire sup-port needs, therefore, would come almost entirelyfrom fixed-wing air power, using assets based withinIraq, Kuwait, the Persian Gulf, and throughout theregion. The United States could provide enormousamounts of fixed-wing air support, of course, butwith a number of requirements and possibly unan-ticipated consequences.

To begin with, the requirement for air powerwould rise as the availability of ground-based fire-power fell. The United States would have to rely oncarrier-based aircraft, all airbases currently in use inthe region, and possibly some that are not now beingused to support strike missions in Iraq. The burdenof supporting the war will shift from the Army andMarines to the Air Force and Navy, although it willvery likely be a more manageable burden. Perhapsmore important, from the standpoint of public

perception in Iraq, the region, and around the world,air power will become the primary means of U.S.participation in the war. Advisers generally makeheadlines only when something bad happens, andthe QRFs are small and very likely to be limited intheir operations, as we shall see. But continual U.S.air raids on Iraqi targets will grab the attention ofIraqi and Arab media, particularly as accusationsgrow that the United States is preferentially targetingone side or the other, as they surely will.

Worse still, it will be extremely difficult forAmerican commanders to know whether the targetsthey are being asked to bomb are actually legitimateand not part of an ethno-sectarian cleansing cam-paign. U.S. units on patrol in Iraq now develop theirown sources of information and analyze it inde-pendently of what they receive from their Iraqi part-ners. Advisory teams—even those described by theCNAS report—do not have this capability. They willbe limited to receiving calls for fire support from theunits they are advising, making their best guessesabout the validity of the targets, and passing themalong to U.S. aircraft. It is inevitable that some of thetargets will be invalid. We have already seen cases inwhich Iraqi forces have tried to entice Americanunits to target individuals for sectarian reasons—cases in which the American units refused becausetheir own intelligence revealed the problem. Ameri-can air power will thus almost certainly come to beused as flying artillery by both sides of the sectarianstrife, and both sides will loudly complain aboutinappropriate American support of the other.

Even with no ill will, errors in targeting willinevitably increase as American forces ceasepatrolling. Iraqi abilities to analyze intelligence willdecline, as noted above, but in many areas even theirabilities to gather intelligence will diminish. It is amyth of this war that Iraqis are always best suited togetting information from local people. In some areaswhere the ISF are drawn predominantly from onesect while the population belongs to the other, theAmerican units receive more information than theIraqis. American units also have technical means ofcollecting information that Iraqis do not have—and that we surely will not give to Iraqi units in any

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short period of time. As the quality of intelligencediminishes, errors in targeting rise. As our reliance onair power increases in that context, the number ofinnocent victims and the amount of collateral dam-age will also rise. The Bush administration has madethe mistake of preferring air power solutions overground forces before; now would be a poor time torepeat this mistake in Iraq.

Still another problem is that, as the advisoryteams come to play a key role as air-support coordi-nators, they will need to be designed with that mis-sion in mind. The CNAS report offers a detaileddescription of what an advisory team would looklike, and their team does not include a forward aircontroller (FAC)—someone trained to call in andadjust air power against ground targets. Simply addinga FAC to every team will be another problem—thereare not all that many FACs available. This problemcould be managed, but it would place strains on the services and impose dangers on the advisoryteams and their Iraqi units that should be taken into consideration.

As American units now partnered with Iraqiswithdraw, the Iraqis will also lose access to a secureand reliable communications system—somethingthey do not have and that American forces havebeen providing. The likeliest solution is an Iraqione—they will probably resort to using cell phones.The spottiness of cell phone coverage and the vul-nerability of cell phone towers to terrorism will cre-ate problems, which the ISF will probably solve overtime by buying satellite phones. Then the mainproblems will be interoperability—U.S. soldiers donot communicate sensitive information by cellphone—security, reliability, and the inherent limita-tions of cell phones compared to sophisticated data-centered command networks. Iraqi command andcontrol will suffer as a result.

The ISF also lacks a medical service at themoment, and wounded Iraqi soldiers are treated atAmerican combat hospitals. Removing U.S. units andtheir medical teams and combat hospitals will exposeIraqi wounded to much greater suffering and dangerif they have to be treated in local hospitals (whereIraqi soldiers have been targeted by opposing sects,

militias, and terrorists). Limiting the U.S. presence tothree bases, we should also note, will mean longerflight times for MEDEVAC operations for most U.S.advisers as well. In reality, longer flight times willtranslate into a higher death rate from injuries sus-tained in combat, which advocates of this plan alsoneed to take into consideration.

The rapid withdrawal of American combat forceswill place incredible strains on the Iraqi Army in twokey ways. First, it will simply crush nascent Iraqicommand and control capabilities with a prolifera-tion of new tasks. Second, the growth in sectarianviolence that is almost certain to follow such a with-drawal will begin a struggle for the soul of the army.

Iraqi Army units in the most difficult areas—Baghdad and its environs, Diyala, Salah-ad-Din,Anbar, and Ninewah—are partnered with Americancombat units now. The American units share respon-sibility for establishing and maintaining security,developing and analyzing intelligence, and conduct-ing time-sensitive raids on high-value targets like terrorist cell leaders or Iranian agents. When theAmerican units withdraw to their basis in prepara-tion for leaving the country, the Iraqis will be entirelyon their own in executing all of these missions.Advisers can advise them, but they cannot actuallyexecute operations. So Iraqi units that now routinelyconduct joint planning with U.S. forces and go outon joint raids will suddenly find themselves obligedto do all the planning and all the raiding themselves.And they will be doing so without the assistance ofsome 80,000 American soldiers in combat units. Inother words, the immediate impact of the CNAS pro-posal will be to pull around 80,000 troops out of thelines and require the Iraqis to fill their shoes. TheIraqis will not be able to do that. It would be hardenough to recruit, train, and equip 80,000 additionalIraqi soldiers in fourteen months (in addition tothose needed to make up for combat losses). Even ifthat task were accomplished, 80,000 inexperiencedIraqi soldiers are not equivalent to 80,000 combat-hardened Americans. Simply dropping such a bur-den on the Iraqi Army suddenly would crush it.

Worse still, growing sectarian violence will placetremendous strains on the Iraqi Army. Radical


15

elements within the government will want to useIraqi Army units to conduct or support sectariancleansing. The professionalizing officer corps of thatarmy will want to resist such operations (as it hasbeen doing in much milder circumstances this year).Growing numbers of Sunni recruits into the forcewill complicate this equation. Increasing respon-sibility to include providing all security everywherewill overload command capabilities. The likeliestoutcome is that the Army will break—good com-manders will leave or be fired, bad ones morealigned with radical sectarianism will replace them,soldiers who are comfortable with sectarian cleans-ing will remain, those who are not will leave or bechased out. American soldiers and commandersnow provide key counter-pressures to support theprofessional elements within the Iraqi Army. Part-nered units offer both role models and checks onillegal behavior—Iraqis are extremely reluctant to beseen to conduct sectarian cleansing while Americacombat units are around. But advisor teams cannotbe everywhere, and wherever they are not, this dis-incentive will evaporate.

The CNAS Training Effort: High Pain and High Risk toSolve the Wrong Problem

Like the ISG, the CNAS report proposes a dramaticincrease in the number and quality of U.S. militaryand police advisers embedded within Iraqi units,including the deployment of thousands of militarypolice to individual Iraqi police stations around thecountry, and the deployment of expanded twenty-five-man training teams with individual Iraqi Armycompanies. The premise of these proposals is thatthe United States can only responsibly draw downits forces if the ISF is capable of taking up the secu-rity challenges, and that premise is true (although itneglects the role the United States can play in mak-ing those security challenges more manageable forthe ISF before the handover). And, as noted above,any successful U.S. operation in Iraq will transitionto an advisory effort at some point as American unitsare no longer needed in direct support of ISFpatrolling on the streets. The ISG and CNAS are

quite right to point out the importance of planningfor that transition carefully and seriously.

The current American advisory effort has severalcomponents. The MNSTC-I oversees police andMTTs that assist the Iraqi Ministries of Defense andInterior, higher headquarters, and the efforts to buildup Iraqi logistics and support systems, as well as theIraqi Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard. The IraqAssistance Group, under the command of Multi-National Corps-Iraq (the operational command ofcoalition forces in Iraq), coordinates the activities ofMTTs embedded with Iraqi divisions, brigades, andbattalions; National Police Training Teams (NPTTs)embedded with National Police divisions, brigades,and battalions; and training teams working with Iraqilogistics elements at the regimental level. In addition,the 89th Military Police Brigade coordinates theactivities of NPTTs embedded with Iraqi police unitsat the provincial, district, and station level. Embed-ded training teams now coordinate closely withcoalition brigades operating in their areas, drawingsupplies, information, protection, and support fromthose units. For the most part, embedded advisersare never very far away from Coalition combat units.In addition, many Iraqi military and police opera-tions are now conducted in partnership with Coali-tion units, which means that embedded advisershelp the Iraqis plan and conduct operations and alsohelp to coordinate with Coalition combat units par-ticipating in the same operations. The net result isthat embedded advisers in Iraq today exist within alarge and complex framework of support and pro-tection provided by the coalition combat unitsengaged in active counterinsurgency operationsalongside the Iraqis.

The CNAS proposals increase the risk to Americantrainers without improving the advisory program.Embedded trainers can serve several functions. Theycan be actual trainers, helping soldiers, NCOs, andofficers learn how to perform basic and essentialtasks. They can be fire-support coordinators, as dis-cussed above. Or they can be advisers, whose job it isto work with soldiers and officers already proficientwith many basic tasks to help them reach the nextlevels of proficiency and build professional military

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organizations that can continue to grow and improve,ultimately without much outside assistance.

The CNAS proposal focuses almost entirely onthe role of training. By scattering thousands ofAmerican officers and NCOs among Iraqi com-panies and thousands of MPs among Iraqi police sta-tions, the CNAS report places the emphasis onhelping low-level Iraqi soldiers and junior officersachieve basic proficiency in daily tasks and on help-ing the Iraqis do better the one thing they already dopretty well, namely fighting. Across Iraq today, tensof thousands of soldiers and police fight the enemyeveryday, with or without embedded U.S. advisers.American units partnered with Iraqis regularly notethat they do not do things quite the way we would,but they generally find ways to accomplish theirmissions when they are motivated to do so by agood commander. As in any new army forming inthe midst of conflict, some units fight better andharder than others, but the average quality of theIraqi soldier has been steadily rising as the IraqiArmy has been bloodied in repeated combat, andeven the quality (if not the reliability) of many policeunits is increasing. The one thing the Iraqis do notneed is an influx of thousands of American juniorofficers and mid-level NCOs into their companiesand stations to train them to be fighters.

What they do need is a body of advisers who canhelp them set up support structures to address all of thedeficiencies noted above. They can also use the con-tinued presence of advisers—rather than trainers—working with battalion, brigade, and divisioncommanders and staffs to help move those organi-zations from basic proficiency to skill in planningand conducting counterinsurgency operations. Theprimary problem in the Iraqi police force now is sec-tarianism rather than incompetence. If we simplytrain the Iraqi police and the National Police (whichthe CNAS report oddly fails to mention, althoughthey are the most problematic sectarian actorswithin the ISF today) to be more effective, we will betraining them to be more effective sectarian actors.

American units partnered with these organiza-tions have instead focused on reducing sectarian-ism within their operations, but that is something

that small dispersed training teams will find it veryhard to do. Because they cannot develop their own intelligence, training teams have a very difficult timeevaluating the real sectarian nature of the operationsof the units they are embedded with. Because theycannot act independently of those units and do notcontrol the resources those units need to operate inmany cases (as U.S. combat units partnered withIPs, NPs, and Iraqi Army units now do), they cannoteasily prevent their Iraqi counterparts from misbe-having. About all they can do is report up their ownchain of command when they observe or suspectsectarianism, with what effect it is difficult to pre-dict. Spreading small teams throughout Iraq willhelp the Iraqi forces most where they need it least,while reducing our ability to address the most seri-ous problems they face.

The massive trainer surge the CNAS report pro-poses will place an extraordinary strain on Americanground forces. The meat of these training teams willbe the mid-level officers and NCOs who man it (theinfantry squad the CNAS report wants to add toeach team simply allows it to move more easily andprotect itself—it does not add at all to its ability totrain or advise). In the case of company-level teams,the burden will fall heavily on Army and Marinecaptains and sergeants. Considering that the Iraqiunits they will be embedded with have almost allbeen fighting for some time, these captains and ser-geants need to be combat veterans to be respected.The captains really need to have had company com-mands if they are to advise Iraqi company com-manders and be listened to. The CNAS emphasizesthe need for quality personnel—in this case, qualitytranslates into a fairly high bar for qualifications.

Post-command captains are one of the rarest breedof mid-level officer in the Army, however, and one ofthe ranks most under pressure from the standpointof retention. Promotion rates from captain to major(a measure of how many post-command captainsstay in the force) now approach 100 percent. Mid-level and senior sergeants have also suffered signifi-cant attrition. Finding enough of these officers andNCOs to man the hundreds of training teams theCNAS proposal calls for will be challenging, to say


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the least. It will also compromise efforts (which CNASalso insists on) by the Army and Marine Corps tofocus on resetting and rebuilding U.S. ground forcesrapidly. It is precisely these veteran officers and NCOsthat are essential to that process. Could it be done?Certainly, but the price is very high for what is likelyto be a low payoff on the ground in Iraq.

The proposal for increasing police training teams is even more problematic. The 9,000 MPs the CNASproposal calls for deploying around Iraq constitutemore than half of all active duty MPs. Since, in thiscontext, we could hardly deploy female MPs on thismission, the base is even further reduced. The strainon that branch would be intolerable. Furthermore,MPs are not trainers. We have made this mistake in thepast. Knowing how to be a policeman (or a soldier, forthat matter) is not the same as knowing how to teachsomeone else to be a policeman or soldier. A signifi-cant retraining period is required—U.S. forces deploy-ing into MTTs now go through a sixty-day course. TheMPs would have to set up a similar course. Unless weare to send personnel with no training in how to betrainers into a complex and dangerous environment, itwill be several months before the first teams show upwith their units—months in which the ISF will havebeen under great stress and suffering from the degra-dation in their capabilities resulting from the with-drawal of their partnered U.S. units.

Some of these problems are inherent in the CNASplan—the emphasis on training rather than advisingand the focus on the lower levels of the Iraqi organi-zations rather than the higher levels and supportstructure. These problems could and should beaddressed with plans that focus on the real areas ofchallenge in the ISF today.

Some problems are a product of the CNAS time-line. Soldiers, NCOs, and officers can be found andtrained to serve on advisory teams, the institutionalArmy and Marine Corps can make adjustments tosupport that effort, and so on, but not overnight.The problem with trying to portray a massive train-ing effort as the means to allow a rapid withdrawalof combat forces is that it places intolerable pressureon already stressed U.S. military institutions toundertake a difficult task instantly.

Some of the problems are inherent in the incon-sistency of the CNAS assumptions about the threatenvironment in which this operation will be occur-ring, a theme to which we will return shortly.

In sum, although the CNAS report, like the ISG,was right to emphasize the fact that the U.S. effortwill at some point have to transition to an advisoryrole, it makes the same mistake of imagining thatthat transition can come very rapidly and that it canbe used as a means to reduce the U.S. presence inIraq dramatically without compromising the pursuitof our vital interests in the country.

The QRFs

The most serious technical problems with the CNASproposal affect the QRFs that the authors wish todeploy in Anbar, Kurdistan, and in or near Baghdad.Each force is to consist of a single brigade combatteam (around 3,500–4,000 combat troops withsome organic support elements). The CNAS reportgives each of these forces several missions. All aresupposed to:

• defend locations in which large numbers ofAmericans remain, especially the Green Zone;

• provide immediate support to Americans,both military and civilian—including com-bat search and rescue missions and “inextremis the conduct of a large scale Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation”;

• “deter and if necessary respond to cross-bor-der incursions or aggression, e.g., by Syria orIran”; and

• “contribute to deterring and, if necessary,stopping genocide.”1

In addition, the QRF in Kurdistan is to “providea stabilizing influence” in Mosul and Kirkuk andsupport operations against the PKK terrorist group.

In reality, three brigades are not capable of per-forming all of these tasks. The CNAS report proposes

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putting one at al Asad airbase west of Ramadi (morethan two hours by helicopter from Baghdad); onenear Baghdad (either near Baghdad International Air-port, at FOB Falcon to the south of the city, or atBalad, our current major base but a considerable dis-tance north of the city); and one in Kurdistan (giventhe mission to support operations in Mosul andKirkuk, this one would need to be based near Irbil,although the report does not specify its location).None of these bases is now a major logistics supportarea, so the logistics planners would have to set upthree new support bases while they accomplished allof their other tasks.

Each base would need to defend itself with sig-nificant combat forces “on the wire:” manningcheckpoints, guard towers, patrolling, and so on.Because the plan relies so heavily on air power andair resupply, each QRF would have to defend notonly its own FOB, but also the adjacent airfield,adding considerably to the defensive combat powerrequired. QRFs at al Asad and Irbil could probablyget away with devoting one battalion to such pro-tection, leaving two battalions (in principle) forother operations.3 The QRF in Baghdad would havemuch greater requirements, which we will considerin a moment.

The idea of a QRF is that it is a body of troops thatis on standby to load into helicopters and/or groundvehicles at short notice and move rapidly to the assis-tance of soldiers or civilians in trouble. To maintain aQRF requires rotating units through that stand-bystatus; a single unit cannot be ready to go at amoment’s notice 24/7 for days at a time. Two battal-ions might be able to keep two to three companies onstandby at any given time, if they are not performingany other missions. A company includes around 150soldiers and their vehicles. So advisory teams, civil-ians, and Iraqi units in Anbar and Kurdistan couldhope to have perhaps 300 American soldiers moverapidly to any one location if they got into trouble, or150 soldiers racing to two locations. Any prolongedpresence—in support of operations against the PKK,say—would virtually eliminate the QRF’s ability toreact rapidly. And a wily enemy who can generatethree or four crises simultaneously can reduce the

QRF’s support to one or two of them to air powerwithout any hope of rapid ground reinforcement.

The situation of the QRF in Baghdad is much moredire. The CNAS report explicitly states that we willcontinue to have a large presence in the Green Zone.The notion of putting the QRF at FOB Falcon isundermined by the fact that the QRF base must coveran airfield. Balad is too far away from the Green Zoneof Baghdad over unsecured roads. The only sensiblelocation is near Baghdad International Airport (BIAP).We now have several FOBs at BIAP, some housingcombat units, others containing headquarters. Thesewould presumably be consolidated into one, prob-ably FOB Striker, which is nearest the BIAP airportfacilities. MNF-I and its subordinate headquarterswould presumably move to that FOB, where the QRFwould also be based. But Baghdad International Air-port is a very large airfield, and defending it is mademore complex by the fact that half of it is run by theIraqi government as the civilian airport for Baghdad.Protecting the military part of Baghdad InternationalAirport and the military headquarters, as well as theFOB itself, will almost certainly require two battal-ions, leaving only one available.

But defending the Green Zone is also a significantchallenge. The Green Zone, even just the Americanportion (which is presumably all that we would takeresponsibility for defending in this scenario, whereaswe now also cover elements of the Iraqi govern-ment) is a large area that includes our embassy, thelarge trailer park in which most embassy personnellive, the large dining facility that serves them, motorpools, and so on. It is difficult to imagine commit-ting less than a battalion to the task of guarding theperimeter of an area that contains so many high-ranking American officials.

The QRF assigned to Baghdad, therefore, wouldbe stretched simply conducting a static defense ofBIAP, the military headquarters, and the Green Zone.It would not be able to secure the airport road thatconnects BIAP and the Green Zone, so travelbetween the two would have to be by helicopter—or would have to rely on ISF security of that route.In addition, there would be no American forcesavailable to patrol areas from which rogue JAM cells


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have been firing mortars and rockets at the GreenZone, let alone clearing them out of those areas, asU.S. forces have undertaken to do in recent weeks.Protection against this indirect-fire threat (IDF)would come in the form of counter-battery fire(artillery, mortar, rockets, or airstrikes launched afterincoming rounds are fired or land against the loca-tions from which they were fired). The problemwith this form of defense against IDF is that it is rela-tively ineffective—most mortar teams run from theirfiring sites as soon as they have fired, so counter-battery rounds usually land on nothing, and JAMrocket teams usually set their weapons off withtimers so that they are not even present when therockets are launched. Another problem is that JAMhas taken to setting up rocket launchers and mortarsin the midst of populated areas, so 155-millimeterartillery rounds fired back kill innocent civilians (tosay nothing of what air-launched joint direct attackmunitions do). It is difficult to see how we couldprevent the enemy from regularly hitting the GreenZone with rocket and mortar fire without doing agreat deal of collateral damage in the course ofmostly ineffective counter-battery fire.

The complete commitment of the Baghdad QRFto fixed defense will leave U.S. advisers in the Bagh-dad area almost entirely without any rapid reactionforce to support them. That’s a significant problembecause the Baghdad area is one of the most dan-gerous in which advisers can operate due to thepresence of mixed neighborhoods, ongoing efforts atsectarian cleansing, and the high-profile attacksagainst U.S. forces there. The lack of any real QRFcapability in Baghdad also means that U.S. advisersoperating in Diyala, southern Salah-ad-Din, andBabil provinces will be effectively without support—again, mixed areas that pose significant danger andchallenges to advisers embedded with Iraqi units.

Still another problem with the entire concept ofthe QRFs as it is laid out in the CNAS report is thatU.S. forces would control no roads in Iraq. There areno forces available in the CNAS structure to conductregular patrols of key routes to monitor for and deterIED emplacement, let alone to conduct IED-clearingoperations. A QRF moving out of its FOB in support

of Americans in danger will face the choice of mov-ing rapidly and running into the inevitable IEDambushes, or moving slowly while its engineeringassets clear the road ahead of it, or moving by heli-copter, which means without vehicles and poten-tially having to land in unsecured landing zones.None of these options would inspire great confi-dence in the advisers that help could reach themrapidly if they got into trouble, again, except in theform of fixed-wing air support. There have beeninstances in Vietnam and Afghanistan when seniorcommanders called in airstrikes on their own posi-tions as they were about to be overrun, and modernAmerican air power makes such an idea less terrify-ing, in principle, than it was in the 1970s or 1980s.Even so, it is a less-than-ideal solution to the prob-lem of protecting American advisers dispersedthroughout Iraq.

A last question about the QRFs concerns the oneor two brigades that the CNAS report proposes toleave in Kuwait. It describes them as serving asQRFs for southern Iraq, but does not addressanother key question: are they also a theater reserve?That is, if additional support were required in theareas in which QRFs were already deployed in Iraq,could the theater commander bring one or bothbrigades from Kuwait into Iraq to assist? This is akey question, because if the answer is yes, then theCNAS report contemplates at least temporaryincreases above the 60,000-troop force cap. If theanswer is no, then there is no reserve to come to thedesperately over-committed QRFs in Iraq.

In sum, the QRF concept in the CNAS report isunworkable. The proposal gives too many missionsto a force that is barely large enough to defend itselfand critical support infrastructure. It would leavethe advisers without reliable ground support in caseof emergency. And the notion of one brigade inAnbar and one in Irbil deterring or resisting Iranianand/or Syrian invasions is frankly unrealistic. IfAmerican air power were not enough to preventsuch movements, single brigades would not makeup the difference. Likewise, the notion that 3,500soldiers, at least a third of whom were committed todefending their base, could intervene to prevent

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genocide or death-squad activity in their areas is alsounrealistic. Death squads operate where Americanforces are not present. Reining in their activities inhas required establishing a permanent U.S. militarypresence in the areas in which they had been oper-ating. Even a larger number of American forces con-fined to FOBs would be hard-pressed to preventdeath squad killings, as the death squads simplywait until American forces have withdrawn beforeoperating. The tiny forces the CNAS proposalswould assign to this mission will be incapable ofpreventing even large-scale death-squad activity inwhich the extremists move rapidly in areas wherethere are no U.S. forces—which will be almosteverywhere—and withdraw or disperse before theQRF can react. The QRF structure outlined in theCNAS report could protect itself and some keybases, provide very limited quick-reaction capabili-ties in Anbar and Irbil, and nothing else.

Vulnerability of U.S. Advisers

As a result of the QRFs’ limited capacity, Americanadvisers deployed in Iraqi police stations and withIraqi Army companies would be at the mercy of theirpartnered units and would be dependent on the com-petence of those units to survive. This situation willcontrast sharply with the current advisory effort inwhich embedded trainers are frequently in contactwith U.S. combat units operating alongside of theIraqis in the field and are rarely far from help. Embed-ded advisers operating without benefit of patrollingcombat units from their own country are always atrisk, but we must ask: is the condition of the ISF andof security in Iraq generally now such that we couldfeel comfortable with such an arrangement? It is verydifficult to answer this question in the affirmative. TheISF, particularly the police, is known to be infiltratedby JAM and its sympathizers. AQI is known to makea priority of kidnapping and executing Americanspublicly. It is almost inconceivable in current circum-stances that American advisers alone with Iraqi unitsand far from help would not fall victim to one or theother of these foes, and very quickly. What wouldhappen then? U.S. forces in Iraq would have very

limited means for conducting rapid search-and-res-cue operations, and routes from the FOBs to the loca-tions of the kidnappings or attacks would surely belined with IEDs and ambushes. Air power is useful insuch cases only in retaliation—and against whomwould it be used? In current conditions, we wouldhave to expect that periodic kidnapping and murderof American advisers would be the norm—and it isextraordinarily difficult to imagine such a situationpersisting for very long, even if 2008 were not a presi-dential election year.

Al Qaeda in Iraq

Still another problem with the CNAS report’s pro-posals is that they mistake the nature and currentdisposition of AQI. The CNAS authors assumed thatAQI was predominantly based in Anbar, and there-fore that the QRF in Anbar could support SOFs act-ing against AQI. In fact, there is relatively little AQIleft in Anbar. Apart from the area around Karmah inAnbar, most AQI fighters are concentrated in Diyala,with a number in Salah-ad-Din, north Babil, andNinewah and, of course, cells scattered throughoutBaghdad and Kirkuk. Meeting the challenge of fight-ing AQI, therefore, requires far more than stationinga brigade in Anbar. The CNAS report appears toassume that Special Forces and Iraqi troops will betaking the lead in this fight. As we have already seen,the ability of the ISF to fight al Qaeda withoutAmerican direct assistance will be extremely limitedin the near term. Nor is there any evidence to believethat Special Forces alone will be effective against thisenemy. AQI does not maintain large training bases inthe desert, as al Qaeda in Afghanistan did. It inter-mingles with urban populations by preference, andcan only be separated from those populations bytroops operating within the urban environment.Special Forces can and do eliminate senior leaders,but unless the population is protected against AQIreprisal attacks, the movement has shown itselfremarkably adept at regenerating leadership. TheCNAS report does not analyze this critical problemin any detail beyond asserting that the U.S. presencein Iraq is a recruiting tool for the global al Qaeda


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movement, that reducing that presence would dis-rupt this narrative, and that negotiating with Sunniinsurgents would drive a wedge between them andal Qaeda. There is no significant evaluation of alAQI’s aims, capabilities, vulnerabilities, and meth-ods at all.

The Inconsistent Basis of the CNAS Study

The major problems in the CNAS report, and simi-lar proposals, flow from a single inconsistency. Thereport advocates a change in strategy on the groundsthat the present strategy will not succeed in estab-lishing security or building up a workable ISF, buttheir proposals only work after security has beenestablished and the ISF is functioning pretty well.The challenges of moving around, of supplyingadvisers and Iraqi forces, of defending key bases,and of having advisers dispersed around the countryflow in considerable part from the fact that multipleenemies continue to attack bases, lines of communi-cations, and isolated Americans. If the security envi-ronment were benign (roads pretty clear of IEDs,few AQI or JAM cells operating mortars or kidnap-ping rings, and so on) or if the ISF could and wouldreliably protect the advisers embedded with them,then this or an appropriately adjusted advisorymodel might make sense.

But according to the CNAS report, that will notbe the scenario facing American forces in 2008 or2009: “the situation in Iraq may not yet be hopeless,but it is both dire and precarious. America’s endur-ing interests—preventing the establishment of alQaeda safe havens, preventing genocide, and pre-venting regional war—are at grave risk . . . The surgeof U.S. troops to Baghdad and Anbar province in2007 will not produce anything close to ‘victory.’”The direness and precariousness of the situation inIraq and the likely failure of the surge seem muchmore questionable in August than they did in June,but the logical problem remains the same. If thesurge actually is working and may actually producea situation in which a responsible transition to anadvisory role would be possible, then it would seemlogical to continue it. If it is not working and is not

going to work, then such a transition will be mili-tarily infeasible, at least at the force levels and on thetimeline the CNAS report advocates. In either event,the one thing that does not make sense is assumingthe direness of the current situation and advocatingan immediate transition to a strategy that can onlysucceed in a relatively benign security environment.

Other Issues

The problems identified above were treated in detailbecause they are common to all or most “middle-way” approaches to the situation in Iraq. In addition,the CNAS report made other errors and omissionsthat are important enough to mention briefly:

• Supporting Grassroots Movements. The devel-opment of a grassroots movement againstAQI among Sunni tribes is perhaps themost important development of 2007, andthe CNAS report rightly recognizes it assuch. The report advocates supporting andstrengthening this movement, but does notconsider the implications of its proposedchange of strategy for doing so. Again,whereas the CNAS report assumes that thismovement is primarily occurring in Anbar(where it was, to be sure, most visible inJune), the movement has now spreadthroughout Iraq to Baghdad, Babil, Diyala,and Salah-ad-Din provinces. Placing abrigade at al Asad airfield will do little tomaintain the grassroots movement inAnbar, and nothing whatever outside theprovince. Nor is it likely that Americanadvisers will be able to assist very much—since they will be embedded with ISF units,and not neighborhood watches or groups ofconcerned citizens, the forms in whichmany of these grassroots groups operate.And the report also ignores the fact thatAmerican forces operating among the Iraqipopulation are the key bridge between theSunni tribes and the Iraqi Government thatis making this movement possible. Tribes

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that are suspicious of, or even hostile to, the government, will work with us againstAQI. If our forces leave quickly, it is highlyunlikely that they will start to work insteadwith an Iraqi government that is also suspi-cious of them. Grassroots movements likethis take time to solidify, even more time tolink into the statewide governmental struc-ture. Removing the American bridge prema-turely will probably lead to the contractionor collapse of this movement, and will cer-tainly not encourage it to grow.

• Shia Militias. Because the CNAS report doesnot consider the enemy in any detail, it doesnot take adequate account of the influenceof Shia militias in the Iraqi government andits security forces. Over the past fewmonths, Shia militias, particularly elementsof the JAM, have increased their attacks onAmerican forces, actively supported byincreased Iranian aid in the form ofweapons, training, and advisers. There is noreason to imagine that these attacks willstop if American forces adopt the proposedCNAS posture (the Sadrist movement doesnot object to having 140,000 Americantroops in Iraq; it objects to having any). Thislacuna in the report causes two problemsfor its proposals. First, as we have seen, itleads to a serious underestimation of thedanger facing isolated American trainingteams embedded within JAM-infiltratedunits. Second, it leads to a failure to developany serious plan for reducing sectarianismwithin the ISF and the Iraqi government ingeneral. In truth, it turns out that partneringAmerican combat units with Iraqis and hav-ing both patrol the same neighborhood, isabout the most effective way to address sec-tarianism. U.S. units develop their ownunderstanding of the neighborhood and canevaluate the actions of their partnered unitsindependently. They also have the force andresources to delay or prevent sectarian

actions by those units. Advisers have noneof these capabilities. The CNAS plan is verylikely to be far less effective at addressingthis critical problem than the current strat-egy, and, again, it does not consider thisproblem in any great detail.

• Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). ThePRTs have long suffered from the problem offinding ways to move safely around Iraq. Themost effective solution to this problem hasbeen embedding PRTs with brigade combatteams that then become responsible for theirsafe movement. Removing the patrollingBCTs will severely restrict the movement ofthe PRTs that remain, once again limitingtheir effectiveness. The CNAS report, more-over, does not really consider the PRTs in anydetail, and so does not offer a recommenda-tion about whether their mission, composi-tion, and support would need to be changedin line with the report’s new strategy.

• Detainees. U.S. forces now hold more than20,000 detainees in several camps in Iraq.These detainees are held under the provi-sions of the UN Security Council Resolution(UNSCR) under whose auspices Coalitionforces operate in Iraq. Many of thesedetainees are held based on intelligence oftheir activities that would not be admissibleas evidence in Iraqi courts, even assumingthat the Iraqi judicial system was workingadequately, which it certainly is not. TheUNSCR could be extended in support of thisrevised plan, or the U.S. and the governmentof Iraq could come to a bilateral agreementabout the terms of holding, releasing, ortransferring these detainees (which includesome extremely committed AQI terroristsand JAM leaders), but the CNAS proposalleaves no U.S. troops to oversee the campsand does not address the issue at all. Guard-ing the camps now occupies nearly abrigade’s worth of American soldiers. Will


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we turn the camps over to the Iraqis, whodo not have enough personnel trained tomanage them? Will we dump the detaineesinto the Iraqi judicial system, which doesnot have the capacity to process them evenif there were adequate evidence (as opposedto intelligence) on all of them? Will we justrelease them? These are critical questionsthat go unasked in the CNAS report.

• Humanitarian Assistance. The CNAS reportmakes a point of calling for humanitarianassistance for the millions of displaced Iraqisit foresees as a result of the soft partitionscheme it advocates. But there is no provisionin the report for the distribution of this assis-tance or for protecting those providing it.

• Coalition Participation. There are now fourcoalition combat brigades in Iraq: a SouthKorean brigade in Kurdistan, a Polishbrigade in Diwaniyah, a Georgian brigade inKut, and a British brigade in Basra. TheCNAS report does not consider what willhappen to these forces, and what the effectof their remaining or departing might haveon the coalition overall and on internationalsupport for the effort. But the report’s finaldepiction of force levels appears to suggestthat they would all have left. Consideringthat the Poles and Georgians are dependentupon the presence of a large U.S. force inIraq for their security, and that the will ofthe British government to remain appears tobe flagging even faster than that of theUnited States, this seems a good assump-tion. It is nevertheless an important issuethat should have been considered.

• Regional Repositioning. Maintaining adequateU.S. air cover for U.S. forces remaining inIraq will almost certainly require an increasein the number of American aircraft in theregion. Some can be provided by aircraftcarriers in the Persian Gulf (although that

prospect has to be considered in tandemwith our expectations about Iranian reac-tions to developments in Iraq), but somewill require additional basing in the region.Will it be forthcoming? The report does notconsider this problem, which is serious con-sidering the difficulties the U.S. has experi-enced in the past in using bases in Turkey insupport of combat operations in Iraq.

Iraqi and Regional Reaction

The CNAS report, like the ISG and many other“middle-way” reports, assumes a number of

things about the likely Iraqi and regional response toits plans without really exploring its assumptions inany great detail. The key assumptions are that set-ting a timetable for withdrawal will incentivize theIraqi government to make the hard decisions that ithas been resisting and that an appropriate diplo-matic initiative (i.e. one different from anything theBush administration has ever tried to do) wouldbring Iraq’s neighbors to play a more constructiverole in Iraq. On the other hand, this report (like theISG), pays very little attention to likely regional reac-tions to the American withdrawal from Iraq on afixed timeline and the ensuing situation in thatcountry. To examine this aspect of the proposal, AEIconvened a daylong seminar that included regionalexperts and Iraqi and regional nationals, as well asexperts on the American political scene. The con-clusions presented below were informed by this discussion but should not be taken to be consensuspositions or to represent the views of any particularparticipant other than the author of this report.

Iraq

The CNAS report considers the reactions of some ofthe key players within Iraq to the announcement ofa withdrawal as it proposes, but it does so in anextremely constrained way: “The United Statesshould initiate an extensive negotiating effort withIraq’s national and local leaders. These negotiations

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would not aim to resolve all of Iraq’s myriad politi-cal controversies (though such negotiations areneeded). Rather, the negotiations would establishthe conditions and timetables for an American with-drawal and what the mission of remaining ‘transi-tional’ forces will be.”3 Considering that the reporthas already laid out the conditions and timetablesfor the proposed withdrawal, as well as the specificmissions of the remaining “transitional” forces, it is alittle hard to see how these “negotiations” with Iraqiactors could have meaning. Nevertheless, the CNASreport concludes, “If successful, this could be thestarting point for broader political and economicnegotiations, and might help augment the U.S. roleas a credible honest broker among Iraq’s variouspolitical actors.”

The thrust of the CNAS recommendations forconducting these negotiations is that the Shia-Kurdcentral government should be persuaded to makethe necessary concessions to the Sunni insurgents tocontinue the momentum of the ongoing grassrootsmovements, and the Kurds must be both protectedand restrained. Moqtada al Sadr, the report notes,will probably be happy to see the “occupiers” go and“this may provide some room for co-opting at leastsome elements of the movement . . .” How does thereport propose to get the Shia-Kurd government tomake the necessary concessions? It notes, “The Shi-ite government and its supporters realize that theyare not ready to stand on their own and so mustcontinue to rely heavily on the United States, par-ticularly for military logistics and air support. TheKurds know that good relations and at least a mini-mal U.S. presence are important to deter Turkishintervention. Thus, the United States retains someleverage with the Shiites and the Kurds that itshould be able to exploit in the context of a generaltroop drawdown.”4

This logic is rather hard to follow. If the mainleverage the United States has with the Shia in Iraq’sgovernment is their recognition of their dependenceon American military support, why will that lever-age increase as the military support is reduced? Thereport argues elsewhere that “setting a timeline [forwithdrawal] will provide incentives for Iraqi political

leaders to take necessary steps on political reconcil-iation . . . By setting the terms of our own disen-gagement well in advance, the United States willprovide incentives for Iraqi political leaders to takenecessary steps to move toward a functioning albeithighly decentralized federalized state.”5 But thereport notes, “In general, the dominant Shiite andKurdish factions would likely prefer to be uncon-strained in order to deal with the ‘Baathists’ and ‘ter-rorists’ in their own way. As time goes on andsectarian identities harden, there is a growing chancethat several Shiite or Kurdish elements will attemptto implement their own ethnic and sectarianagenda.”6 Against this probability the CNAS reportsets only the leverage of continued Shia-Kurddependence on an ever-decreasing American mili-tary assistance program. If these tendencies existamong the Shia leadership now, and if elements inthat leadership would “prefer to be unconstrained”in order to deal with their problems “in their ownway,” then why would they make more concessionsas the constraints on their actions imposed byAmerican forces were reduced? And if the currentlevel of military support is not incentivizing them tomake deals they would prefer to avoid, why willreducing that support create more leverage to forcethem to make the deals?

The purpose of parsing the language of the CNASreport so closely is not to show a flaw in that lan-guage, but to underline a critical flaw in the think-ing that forms a key basis of almost all middle-wayplans: that reducing the American military presencewill increase both the pressure on and the incentivesfor the Iraqi government to make concessions itwould prefer not to make. Apart from the fact thatthere is no evidence to support this assertion—thepliability of the Iraqi government has not variedaccording to the increase or decrease of Americanforces over the past four years—the argument itselfis inherently contradictory. The CNAS report rightlynotes that elements of many factions appear to bewilling to contemplate civil war in order to achievetheir objectives. One might add that these elementsare prominently represented in a Council of Repre-sentatives chosen by a list-based system (designed


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by international elections officials under UN aus-pices) that tended to throw power to extremistsrather than moderates, and that these extremists areplaying a key role in blocking movement towardreconciliation that many moderate leaders in Iraqappear to favor. It notes that some of these extrem-ist leaders would prefer to execute their ownschemes for “solving their problems,” by which wemean sectarian cleansing at best and attempts atgenocide at worst. It then implies (as other propos-als have asserted) that forcing these extremists tostare down the barrel of a real civil war will some-how push them toward moderation. But if these arethe extremists who seek civil war, why should theyblanch from it when the opportunity presents itself?

In addition, the report paints a rosier militarypicture of the transitional period than is warranted,as we noted above. In reality, the capabilities of theISF will degrade significantly and almost immedi-ately. American support will be minimal, will notinclude logistical support, and will be largely con-fined to bombing things the Iraqis say they wantbombed and advising Iraqi units that are probablylargely confined to their bases. What will happenthen? Will Sadr’s militias disband when they see thetwo forces that are now opposing them mostfirmly—the Americans and the Iraqi Army—retreat?Or will they be emboldened to pursue the more rad-ical agendas now circulating among them? Will AQIrejoice at the partial departure of the “great Satan,”or will it begin to attempt to terrorize the Sunnisinto supporting it again? Will the Sunni insurgentsput down their arms in expectation of a deal thatthey were not offered while 160,000 Americans pro-tected them, or will they take up arms again out offear for their lives?

There has been no previous test of this experi-ment by which to judge the outcome on the scale ofthe country, but there have been numerous tests atthe regional level that should give us an idea. As theBritish forces withdrew into their base in Basra andcontinued to cede territory and cease patrolling out-side, the Shia militias they had been fighting did notgracefully accept the withdrawal and allow them tolive in peace. They moved up their mortars and

rockets and have been attacking the British com-pound ever more aggressively, even as they began to fight one another for the spoils. When Americanforces cleared neighborhoods in Baghdad in latesummer of 2006 and then turned them over to ISFto hold, the enemy—both al Qaeda and JAM—focused on those neighborhoods to demonstrate thefailure of the U.S. effort. Within weeks, attacks andkillings in Baghdad were higher than they had beenbefore the clearing effort began. U.S. forces, actingon a local tip, killed AQI leader Abu Musaab al Zar-qawi near Baqubah in June 2006. By the end of theyear, Baqubah was a major AQI base and the “capi-tal” of al Qaeda’s puppet “Islamic State of Iraq.”Where American forces have pulled out of areas pre-maturely and attempted to hand security over tounready ISF troops, the results have been consistent—locals do not compromise with one another or theIraqi government, sectarian polarization increases,as does violence and death. On the other hand,where U.S. forces have moved in among the popu-lation in Baghdad, Anbar, the southern belt, andDiyala, locals have come forward to make cease-fireswith us, have volunteered their sons for the IraqiArmy and Iraqi Police, and have begun to fight AQI.Violence has decreased, cross-sectarian negotiationshave begun, and death rates have fallen. There issimply no evidence to support the CNAS report’sassertions about what a U.S. departure will bring. Tothe contrary, there is ample evidence to call theminto question.

It is also necessary to examine the reactions ofparticular actors in much more detail than theCNAS report does, or than it is possible to do in thiscontext either. Since the center of gravity of middle-way proposals is the reaction of the Iraqis to theannouncement of a timetable for withdrawal, thepaucity of evidence and analysis of that reaction is amajor flaw in such studies.

It is difficult to predict exactly what will happento Prime Minister Nuri Kemal al Maliki’s governmentin the event of a rapid U.S. withdrawal. His DawaParty has no militia of its own, and is dependentupon the ISF (and the Americans) for its security inthe face of AQI and JAM attacks. As the Americans

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leave and the capabilities of the ISF degrade, it isextremely unclear that Prime Minister Maliki will beable to maintain himself in power, or that he will tryto do so.

The most obvious candidate to succeed him isDeputy Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mehdi, thepolitical leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council(SIIC), controlled by Abd al Aziz Hakim and,because of his illness, now his son, Amar. SIIC hastraditionally been an ally of Iran and has a relativelysmall militia, the Badr Corps, but it has been work-ing to Iraqify itself and the Badr Corps has largelyeither joined the ISF or moved on to more peacefulactivities. SIIC controls the largest bloc of Shia votesin the Council of Representatives, and Adel Mehdi iswell thought of as a likely successor to Maliki, but itis unclear what the effect of such a shift might be, orif it could happen in the context of an Americanwithdrawal. The basic characteristic of SIIC at thispoint is that it dominates the leadership of provin-cial councils in the south and has a strong hand inparliament, but has little grassroots organization orsupport. In the context of a deteriorating securitysituation, it is not likely that SIIC will prosper.

The most likely de facto successor to Malikiwithin the Shia community is therefore Moqtada alSadr or some political leader nominally under histutelage. The Sadrist Trend, as it is commonly calledin Iraq, is an extraordinarily complex phenomenon.Sadr trades on the name of his illustrious father,some rather dubious claims to clerical authority, andhis ability to pose as a nationalistic representative ofthe downtrodden Shia majority. He has parlayedthese attributes into a major role in the Iraqi securitysituation and a significant if lesser role in the politi-cal situation. It appears that he continues to exercisesolid control of the political wing of his movement,the Office of the Martyr Sadr, but his control of themilitary wing, the JAM, is much more doubtful.

It is clear, in fact, that JAM, which is by far thelargest and most active Shia militia, has not onlyslipped from Sadr’s control but fragmented into anumber of groups. The fragmentation has occurredon both regional and ideological lines. JAM hasbases in Najaf, Basra, and Baghdad, but the groups

in these three areas do not always see eye-to-eye.The increasing tilt of the movement toward Iran,moreover, has set up counter-currents within amovement that has always seen itself as nationalistic(and therefore Arab rather than Persian). Infightingbetween JAM groups has been reported, and itseems clear that Sadr returned from Iran earlier inthe summer with advisers and the intention toregain control of part of his wayward military wing.

The fragmentation of JAM has been greatly facilitated by continuous American attacks on JAMleadership, particularly the leaders of the secretcells, who are part of a network that works aroundSadr directly with Iranian Quds Force agents. TheUnited States has captured or killed well over athousand leaders and facilitators in this network,compromising the Iranians’ ability to form andmaintain a coherent structure within JAM, and frus-trating Sadr’s attempts to regain control of themovement. Almost all of these raids have beenintelligence-driven and dependent upon a signifi-cant American combat presence on the ground,even though many were conducted by AmericanSpecial Forces. Without that presence, the ISF raidsconducted into places like Sadr City would be muchmore dangerous. Limited avenues of approach to keytargets could easily lead to Mogadishu-like disastersif American forces were not regularly patrolling thearea and in easy distance to assist any Special Forcestroops in distress. It is also open to question whetherAmerican advisers working with Iraqi units heavilyinfiltrated by JAM would be able to obtain the time-sensitive intelligence necessary to conduct such tar-geted raids.

The pressure both on JAM and on the secret cellswithin it would be significantly reduced by an Ameri-can withdrawal, therefore, leaving both Iran and Sadrin a considerably better position to destabilize thecurrent Iraqi government, which has been their con-sistent aim. Given the degradation of the ISF capa-bilities and the withdrawal of American combatpower, it is highly likely that they would succeed inthis endeavor. Even if they did not, the pressureagainst JAM efforts to conduct sectarian cleansingwould vanish almost completely with American


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forces, and it is very probable that such cleansingwould accelerate dramatically.

Increased JAM pressure on the remaining SunniArabs in and near Baghdad would do great harm tothe grassroots movement the CNAS report seeks tosupport. The “concerned citizens” now fighting AQIand working with us because they believe we willprotect them will focus instead on fighting JAM.Their turn will relieve the pressure on AQI, whichwill work hard to reestablish itself among Sunnicommunities terrorized by both JAM and al Qaedaitself. It will likely succeed. In sum, the most likelyimmediate effect of the beginning of a prematuredrawdown will be the ignition of a large-scale civilwar in central Iraq.

It is less easy to predict with certainty the role theKurds will play in these developments, but they areunlikely to take great risks to intervene in the Arabcivil war to their south. They are likelier instead towork to seal their own borders against spillover andpossibly to expand their control over contested areaslike Kirkuk, northern Diyala, and northernNinewah, to establish a buffer zone between theircore territories and the violence. They will probablypursue these aims through ethnic cleansing of theirown, using their militia, the Peshmerga, and Kur-dish settlers. This movement will add fuel to the firein Arab Iraq by creating more displaced persons andmore opportunities for AQI to re-emerge as the onlyreliable defender of Iraqi Sunni Arabs.

AQI is certain to take credit for defeating theUnited States in Iraq. Osama bin Laden took creditfor defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, aclaim that is ludicrous on its face but that has nev-ertheless proven effective as an al Qaeda recruitingtool. The presence of American forces in Iraq is nodoubt another recruiting tool for al Qaeda, as theCNAS report notes, but there is no reason to believethat reducing that presence will reduce the effective-ness of the tool. The principle that groups like alQaeda (and Sadr, for that matter) follow is not thatthere is some acceptable number of American forcesin Muslim countries, but that any American pres-ence is an intolerable occupation. AQI will thereforecertainly increase its attacks on the remaining

American forces even as it claims credit for drivingmost of “the Crusaders” out of the country. Its aimwill then become establishing itself in the popula-tion and driving the rest of the Americans out toensure a completely free hand. Spectacular attacks,attacks against advisers, and complex attacks againstour remaining bases will all be tried; some will suc-ceed. Given the extreme vulnerability of Americanadvisers in this sort of scenario, it is quite possiblethat casualties will increase as a percentage of forcesdeployed, even though they will probably decreaseas an absolute number.

One of the key arguments proponents of middle-way approaches make is that their recommenda-tions can lead to some sort of acceptable situation inIraq, even if it is short of the president’s stated goals.The best that can be said about this argument is thatit is unproven. Close examination of the situation onthe ground in Iraq suggests that it is highly unlikely.Until and unless its advocates can actually advancesome evidence in support of this key assertion, itwould seem unwise to build a strategy upon it.

Iran

Another key assumption of the CNAS proposal, likethe ISG, is that Iran ultimately has an interest inestablishing and maintaining a stable Shia govern-ment in Iraq, and that Tehran can be brought toplay a constructive role in pursuing that aim if onlyit were approached properly. As with the assertionthat a timetable would incentivize Iraqis to behaveproperly, the assertion that Iran seeks generally the same end-state in Iraq that we do is offeredwithout substantiation.

What evidence is there that Iran actually doeswant to see a stable Shia government in Iraq? On thecontrary, Iran expanded the infiltration of its agentsand the range and capabilities of their networks inIraq after Maliki’s Shia government was formed inMay 2006. If their aim was to support a stable Shiagovernment, they had only to assist Maliki to rein inthe extremists on his side and defeat al Qaeda andthe Sunni insurgents on the other. Instead, Iranianagents have provided significant support to virtually

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every fighting faction in Iraq except the Maliki gov-ernment. Iranian advisers, trainers, and weaponsarm the most extreme elements of JAM, supportingtheir attacks against Sunnis, against Americans, andagainst the ISF. Iranian rockets and mortars haverained down on the Green Zone for months not onlyat American targets, but at the Iraqi government aswell. Maliki has repeatedly requested that Iranreduce its support for JAM and other fighting groupsin Iraq, but that support has only increased. Themullahs in Tehran may well dislike Maliki, his ties tothe United States, and the ineffectiveness of his gov-ernment, but their consistent support for groupsattempting not only to drive the United States outbut also to overthrow that government offers no evi-dence of their commitment to a stable Iraq.

There is little evidence, in fact, that Iran is inter-ested in stability in the Middle East in general. Theactions of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas inPalestine, both Iranian clients, to say nothing ofSyria—another key Iranian ally—in both Lebanonand Iraq, offer no basis to believe that Iran is inter-ested in stability in its region.

In the popular discussion about the Middle Eastit is often forgotten that the difference between Araband Persian is older than the difference betweenSunni and Shia. Shia Iraqis may take help from Iran,but few are willing to be branded as allies, still lessservants, of Persians.

Iran, furthermore, is a self-identified revolution-ary regime. Its leaders today were young membersof the Khomeini movement that seized power—and American hostages—in 1979. Revolutionarymovements do not always seek to establish stabil-ity on their frontiers. The Soviet Union, after all,worked assiduously throughout its existence toundermine the stability of non-Communist gov-ernments, but proved much less able to establishstable Communist governments without directlyoccupying other countries. Some regimes are sim-ply less inclined to seek stability, and less able to doso, than others, and we should avoid falling intothe trap of imagining that because Iran is a state, itacts like “all other states” in seeking state-like sta-bility throughout its region.

What could the United States offer Iran to changethis calculation? A free pass on Iran’s nuclear pro-gram, Lebanon, Afghanistan, leaving the Gulf? Noneof these are acceptable foreign policy options forAmerica, and it is not clear that the Iranians wouldaccept such a deal anyway. Even if they did, the Ira-nians’ ability to help Shia factions in Iraq reach outto the Sunni and heal the sectarian rifts is highly lim-ited. They could work to establish a stable Shia gov-ernment in Baghdad in the same way that extremistswithin that government now wish to—by cleansingthe Sunni Arabs from central Iraq.

The CNAS report appears willing to accept thissolution, but offers no reason to imagine that it willbe stable. Will the Iraqi Sunni accept being drivenout of Baghdad, Mosul, Baqubah, and trapped in the desert? What sort of openings for AQI will sucha development present? How will the “grassrootsmovements” the CNAS Report is rightly eager tosupport continue in the face of sectarian cleansing?As with other key assumptions in the CNAS report,there is little evidence to accept the conclusion, andmuch to contradict it.

Gulf States

A precipitous American withdrawal from Iraq willlikely be portrayed in the region as a defeat for theUnited States and as a victory for Iran. Arab statesare already concerned about the growth in Iranianpower and pretensions in the region, but few havethe capability to do more than complain. The Saudisand the Gulf states are no match for Iran militarily,and would almost certainly seek an accommodationwith Tehran rather than allowing themselves to bedrawn into a major confrontation. The Saudis andSyrians have already been supporting Iraq’s SunniArabs in their struggle against the Iranian-backedShia, and they would probably increase this supportas American forces withdrew. In some scenarios,they might press military forces a short distance intoIraq in order to stem the flow of refugees or providemore immediate assistance, but they are unlikely toengage directly in combat either against Iraqis oragainst Iranians.


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Kenneth Pollack and Daniel Byman have arguedpersuasively that civil wars of the sort that is likely tooccur in Iraq as we depart in accord with the CNASscenario generally spread. Most of Iraq’s neighborsare mixed either along sectarian lines or along ethniclines or both, with co-religionists and members ofthe same ethnicity represented in Iraq’s fighting.Syria’s Allawite government represents a small per-centage of the population of that overwhelminglySunni country; Saudi Arabia has a small but signifi-cant proportion of Shia, as do many Gulf states. If theSunni-Shia struggle emerges as the dominant charac-teristic of Iraq, it is possible that it could spread in theform of internal strife among Iraq’s neighbors, via theflow of Iraqi refugees, or through state-to-state hos-tilities, or some combination of all three. One thingis certain: increasing violence in Iraq is very likely tobe destabilizing throughout the Middle East, andIraq’s neighbors cannot intervene in Iraq withoutincreasing that destabilization.

A possible side effect of the U.S. withdrawal is theestablishment of Iranian hegemony in the MiddleEast. Tehran certainly seeks a predominant positionin southern Iraq (including Baghdad), and it wouldbe in a position to put great pressure on Saudi Ara-bia and the Gulf States in the absence of a largeAmerican presence in the region following a visibleU.S. defeat. That pressure might include efforts todeny the U.S. the use of bases or to support Iranianinitiatives in the region and in the nuclear realm.The perception of an American defeat at the handsof Iran is likely to fuel seismic shifts in the politics ofthe Middle East, none of them to our advantage.

America

One of the stated purposes of the CNAS report wasto develop a strategy that would be sustainablewithin the American political spectrum for severalyears to come. Like the ISG, the CNAS report holdsout the hope of forming a bipartisan consensusaround its proposals. It is possible to imagine form-ing such a consensus this fall, although improve-ments on the ground in Iraq appear to be shifting theconsensus in the direction of sustaining the current

strategy. But the long-term viability of these propos-als will depend very heavily on how their executionis perceived and on what actually happens in 2008and 2009. Given the monumental challenges in exe-cution, the high likelihood that the withdrawal willbe perceived as a defeat, and the extreme likelihoodof increased violence against Americans remaining inIraq, the CNAS strategy is unlikely to survive thechange of administrations in 2009.

The sheer scale of the challenges of planning andconducting the withdrawal of 100,000 soldiers andtheir gear in fourteen months will make the opera-tion look like a chaotic mess, however well it actuallyproceeds. AQI and probably JAM elements as wellwill very likely attack retreating U.S. forces andremaining American bases, causing more chaos andcasualties. Increasing sectarian violence will be well-covered by the media, which will remain interestedin documenting the withdrawal (and it will be heav-ily covered by the regional media, some of which willspill over into the American press). The kidnappingor assassination of American advisers will generatespikes in media attention focused entirely on nega-tive events. There is no reason to suppose that theIraqi government will make political progress or thatany positive trend will continue, as we have seen.Absolute numbers of U.S. casualties may go down,but casualties as a percentage of deployed forces willprobably rise, and the nature of the casualties willchange—and it does matter to the public whethersoldiers are killed in firefights or by IEDs, or whetherthey are slaughtered with knives on videotape.

The demands of the anti-war movement are notfor reductions in the number of American forces inIraq, but for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces. As withAQI and the Sadrists, there is no reason to imaginethat people calling for an “end” to the war will be sat-isfied with a reduction to 60,000 more vulnerablesoldiers engaged in what can only look like failure.

The virtually certain absence of positive newscombined with the likely increase of negative newswill undermine whatever support for the militaryeffort remains. The CNAS report acknowledges thatsectarian cleansing and violence will increase. Thatincrease will be seen by many as evidence of defeat

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and failure. Whatever the desires of an incomingDemocratic or Republican president in 2009 mightbe, it is very hard to see how this strategy increasesthe likelihood of a responsible policy of continuedmilitary engagement in Iraq. It will probably insteadlead to the rapid withdrawal of any remaining U.S.forces—precisely the opposite of what the CNASproposal claims to desire—and a complete failure tosecure any of America’s vital interests in Iraq.

Conclusion

The efforts by CNAS, like those of the ISG, to findplausible and viable middle-way strategies in

Iraq are laudable and contribute positively to thediscourse on this important topic. The CNAS reportin particular presents the most detailed military planto support such a strategy, and therefore facilitates aserious evaluation of the approach. In a world inwhich it is far easier to criticize than to create, anygroup that produces a thoughtful and well-basedproposal deserves praise and serious consideration.

But the work of the CNAS team has not produceda viable strategy. Their failure does not result fromtheir incapacity or lack of effort, but rather from theimpossibility of the task. It is simply not possible todesign a militarily feasible plan to draw down U.S.forces dramatically and on a rapid timeline that stillpermits the accomplishment of America’s vital inter-ests in Iraq and the region. The CNAS report hasraised the extremely important question of devisinga sound plan for transitioning to an advisory role,and this question deserves a great deal of carefulstudy in the months ahead. But now is the time tostart thinking about that transition, not to startimplementing it prematurely.

Any plan that requires a withdrawal based on atimeline, rather than on conditions on the ground,is likely to lead to failure. The notion that imposingtimelines would somehow force the Iraqi govern-ment to “do the right thing” and thereby resolve theproblems in the country is always presented with-out any evidence. It is a logical argument withoutsubstantiation that appears to be contradicted bypast precedent and by facts on the ground. It is amirage that some people cling to as a way of con-vincing themselves and others that an action likelyto lead to complete failure in Iraq will instead leadto at least partial success. As the president and Con-gress deliberate on the best way ahead for the UnitedStates in Iraq, therefore, the choices are quite stark.Either the United States can continue its efforts toestablish security while improving the capabilitiesof the ISF or it can abandon those efforts, withdraw,and allow Iraq to sink into chaos where terroristscan flourish.

Notes

1. CNAS Report, 62.

2. A BCT now includes nominally two maneuver battalions

and one reconnaissance squadron (a formation lighter and smaller

than a maneuver battalion). BCTs in Iraq have dismounted their

artillery battalions and trained them as infantry to provide an

additional small battalion. Considering the need for fire support,

it is not clear that this practice could be continued under the

CNAS plan. Calculating three disposable battalions for each BCT

is generous, but possible.

3. CNAS Report, 41.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., 39.

6. Ibid., 41.


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Glossary of Acronyms

AQI Al Qaeda in IraqBCT Brigade Combat TeamBIAP Baghdad International AirportCENTCOM U.S. Central CommandCNAS Center for a New American SecurityFAC Forward Air ControllerFOB Forward Operating BaseIED Improvised Explosive DeviceIP Iraqi PoliceISF Iraqi Security ForcesISG Iraq Study Group (Baker-Hamilton)ISOF Iraqi Special Operations ForcesJAM Jaysh al MehdiJDAM Joint Direct Attack MunitionMTT Military Training TeamMNF-I Multi-National Forces-IraqMNSTC-I Multi-National Security Transition Command-IraqMP Military PoliceMSR Main Supply RouteNCO Noncommissioned OfficerNP National PoliceNPTT National Police Training TeamPKK Kurdistan Workers PartyPRT Provincial Reconstruction TeamQRF Quick Reaction ForceSCIRI Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in IraqSIIC Supreme Iraqi Islamic CouncilUNSCR United Nations Security Council Resolution

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About the Iraq Planning Group at AEI

The following individuals participated in the Iraq Planning Group sessions ofAugust 2007:

• Khairi Abaza, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies• Ali Alfoneh, AEI• Joel Armstrong, Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired• Max Boot, The Council on Foreign Relations• Soner Cagaptay, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy• J.D. Crouch• Thomas Donnelly, AEI• James Gavrilis, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army Special Forces• Mark J. Hovatter, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army• Frederick W. Kagan, AEI• Frederick Kienle, Colonel, U.S. Army, Joint Forces Staff College• Bob Killebrew, Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired, Private Consultant• Hassan Mneimneh, Iraq Memory Foundation• Michael O’Hanlon, The Brookings Institution• Danielle Pletka, AEI• Rend al-Rahim, Iraq Foundation• Gary Schmitt, AEI• Andrea R. So, Captain, U.S. Army

The following members of the AEI staff provided invaluable assistance and support:

• Claude Aubert• Abheek Bhattacharya• Leah Gould• Colin Monaghan• Scott Palmer• Nicole Passan• Isak Poirer• Caroline Sevier• Tim Sullivan• David Straszheim

The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarilyreflect the views of any of the participants or the agencies by which they are employed.

Figure 1

Current Disposition of Combat Forces in Iraq

SOURCE: Reprinted with permission of Mapresources, available through http://www.mapresources.com/. Additional edits by author.

Figure 2

Consolidation and Redeployment of U.S. Forces

SOURCE: Reprinted with permission of Mapresources, available through http://www.mapresources.com/. Additional edits by author.

frederick w. kagan - commonwealth institutethe american enterprise institute (aei) has there-fore...

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