'We're Going to Win'
EDITORIAL 'We're Going to Win' It turns out you only have to attend a White House Christmas party to find out where President Bush is headed on Iraq. One guest who shook hands with Bush in the...
...Alone among proposals for Iraq, the new Keane-Kagan strategy has a chance to succeed...
...The sooner Bush orders the plan into action, the better chances are that next Christmas he'll be telling White House guests that winning in Iraq is not just a goal...
...Last Monday Bush was, at last, briefed on an actual plan for victory in Iraq, one that is likely to be implemented...
...Authored by Keane and military expert Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, the plan (which can be read at aei.org/publication25292) is well thought-out and detailed, but fundamentally quite simple...
...Bush, slightly startled but cheerful, replied, "Don't worry...
...He is prepared to defy the weary wisdom of Washington that it's too late, that the war in Iraq is lost, and that Bush's lone option is to retreat from Iraq as gracefully and with as little loss of face as possible...
...And it could be brought under control by the end of2007...
...It's not to be found among the 79 recommendations of Jim Baker's Iraq Study Group...
...It envisions a temporary addition of50,000 troops on the ground in Iraq...
...After which, the mass killings resumed...
...The initial mission would be to secure and hold the mixed Baghdad neighborhoods of Shia and Sunni residents where most of the violence occurs...
...The securing of Baghdad would be followed by a full-scale drive to pacify the Sunni-majority Anbar province...
...Bush's goal in Iraq, he said at the photo-op with Blair, is "victory...
...Fred Barnes, for the Editors...
...Nor was the scheme leaked by the Pentagon last week ever close to being adopted...
...It's Baghdad that has become the "center of gravity" for the insurgency, according to Keane...
...It is based on the idea—all but indisputable at this point—that no political solution is possible in Iraq until security is established, starting in Baghdad...
...Now he has one...
...Before Bush announces his "new way forward" in Iraq in early January, he wants to be assured of two things...
...Creighton Abrams cleared out the Viet Cong so successfully that the South Vietnamese government took control of the country...
...Now Bush is ready to gamble his presidency on a last-ditch effort to defeat the Sunni insurgency and establish a sustainable democracy in Iraq...
...Bush's second concern is to avert an explosion of opposition on Capitol Hill...
...Most of southern Iraq and all of the Kurdish north are close to being free of sectarian violence...
...Earlier efforts had cleared many of those sections of the city without holding them...
...The truth is that not all of Iraq needs to be addressed by an increased American presence...
...Rather, it is an application of a counterinsurgency approach that has proved to be effective elsewhere, notably in Vietnam...
...Why would the Keane-Kagan plan succeed where earlier efforts failed...
...Because this plan offers a credible prospect of winning in Iraq, moderate Democrats and queasy Republicans, the White House thinks, will be inclined to stand back and let Bush give it a shot...
...The report had never mentioned the possibility of American victory...
...It could actually be happening...
...Initial evaluations of the Keane-Kagan plan at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the government have been positive...
...The reverse—a bid to forge reconciliation between majority Shia and minority Sunni—is a nonstarter in a political environment drenched in the blood of sectarian killings...
...There, Gen...
...Retired General Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the Army, gave him a thumbnail sketch of it during a meeting of five outside experts at the White House...
...Safe from retaliation by terrorists, residents would begin to cooperate with the Iraqi government...
...The guest followed up: "I think we can win in Iraq...
...Local government leaders would receive protection and rewards if they stepped in to provide basic services...
...Only when Congress cut off funds to South Vietnam in 1974 were the North Vietnamese able to win...
...The president's reply was emphatic: "We're going to win...
...The ISG report was tossed aside by the White House...
...The result would be increased sectarian violence and an Iraqi army not yet equipped to quash the swelling insurgency-leading to a gap of time in which there would likely be a further—probably fatal—collapse of civic order in Baghdad, and then elsewhere in Iraq...
...The Keane-Kagan plan is not revolutionary...
...One guest who shook hands with Bush in the receiving line told him, "Don't let the bastards get you down...
...Another guest informed Bush he'd given some advice to the Iraq Study Group, and said its report should be ignored...
...Once neighborhoods are cleared, American and Iraqi troops in this plan would remain behind, living day-today among the population...
...The first is that his plan can succeed...
...Bush only needed what his press secretary, Tony Snow, called a "plan for winning...
...The president chuckled and said he'd made his position clear when he appeared with British prime minister Tony Blair...
...That plan would pull thousands of American troops out of a combat role and turn them into trainers of the Iraqi army...
...The president's reaction, according to a senior adviser, was "very positive...
...I'm not...
Vol. 12 • December 2006 • No. 15
