That's what we learned from today's op-ed in the Post. The piece, written by 12 former Army captains and titled "The Real Iraq We Knew," is no doubt an accurate portrait of Iraq circa 2005. As many folks have already pointed out, "Only two of the 12 captains had been in Iraq as late as 2006, with the rest all departing in 2005 or before. None of them are currently on active duty." Which is why this graph is so troubling:
Against this backdrop, the U.S. military has been trying in vain to hold the country together. Even with "the surge," we simply do not have enough soldiers and marines to meet the professed goals of clearing areas from insurgent control, holding them securely and building sustainable institutions. Though temporary reinforcing operations in places like Fallujah, An Najaf, Tal Afar, and now Baghdad may brief well on PowerPoint presentations, in practice they just push insurgents to another spot on the map and often strengthen the insurgents' cause by harassing locals to a point of swayed allegiances. Millions of Iraqis correctly recognize these actions for what they are and vote with their feet -- moving within Iraq or leaving the country entirely. Still, our colonels and generals keep holding on to flawed concepts.
How do they know that the surge is a failure? It seems like they did play wack-a-mole during their time in Iraq, but they are too quick to dismiss the current success as a flawed concept. A lot has changed in Iraq since 2005.
Which isn't to say we haven't gotten a similarly hopeless message from soldiers currently serving, but the soldiers who wrote this piece for the New York Times in August were not captains, but sergeants and specialists. What we really need is a general who is currently serving in Iraq to give us an assessment of the situation that accounts for recent trends and a which can provide a national perspective. We got that, but the antiwar crowd didn't like what it heard. If they prefer hearing about Iraq as it was in 2005, that's not terribly surprising.
