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US hawks criticize Obama for 'fundamentally flawed' Iraq strategy
After the fall of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria to Isis militants, critics say president’s strategy is no longer viable and US should step in
5/22/15
Displaced Iraqis from Ramadi cross the Bzebiz bridge fleeing fighting. Photograph: Karim Kadim/AP
Spencer Ackerman in New York
Thursday 21 May 2015 13.05 EDT
Last modified on Thursday 21 May 201513.57 EDT
Iraq hawks began to argue for re-Americanizing the war against the Islamic Stateon Thursday in response to nearly a week of audacious territorial gains in Iraq and Syria.
Key architects of the 2007-8 troop surge called Obama’s strategy in the nine-month-old war no longer viable now that Isis has seized Ramadi in Iraq andPalmyra in Syria. They stopped just short of urging the one step most allergic to the American president: returning US combat troops to the battlefield where nearly 4,500 of them died during the 2003-2011 occupation.
Calling Isis an “unfathomable evil” during a Thursday morning Senate hearing, Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute urged “a total of 15 to 20,000 US troops in Iraq in order to provide the necessary enablers, advisers and so forth. Anything less than that is simply unserious.”
Jack Keane, the former army vice-chief of staff and mentor to General David Petraeus, excoriated the Obama administration for a “fundamentally flawed” strategy that effectively cedes Syria to Isis. He said it was time to begin “serious planning” for the reintroduction of US combat brigades, something Obama has consistently ruled out since he began the anti-Isis war last summer.
But Keane stopped short of urging large-scale American involvement. Instead, US war planners should allow American forces to spot for air strikes, supplement the air war with attack helicopters and C-130 logistics transport planes, and special-operations strike teams should “routinely” raid Isis positions in Iraq and Syria.
Early indications after the fall of Ramadi and now the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra were that Obama is not considering such a sweeping recalibration.
“No, I don’t think we’re losing,” the president told the Atlantic magazine in an interview conducted a day before Palmyra fell and published a day after. “There’s no doubt there was a tactical setback, although Ramadi had been vulnerable for a very long time.”
The president put the onus on Iraqis to find a solution.
“And one lesson that I think is important to draw from what happened [after the 2003 invasion] is that if the Iraqis themselves are not willing or capable to arrive at the political accommodations necessary to govern, if they are not willing to fight for the security of their country, we cannot do that for them.”
General Martin Dempsey, the most senior US military officer and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, portrayed the rout of Iraqi soldiers and police in Ramadi as a calculated retreat.
Iraqi security forces “were not driven out of Ramadi; they drove out of Ramadi,” Dempsey told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
US officials indicated that they are considering another acceleration of arms and training to Sunni tribesmen attempting to recapture Ramadi. No decision has been reached on sending US special operations forces into the city, according to a top State Department official briefing reporters on Wednesday, nor have military officials recommended using US forces on the ground to call in airstrikes.
The most serious adjustment to US strategy, US diplomats and military officials indicated, is the abandonment of a months-long plan that placed recapturing Mosul as the defining military objective of 2015 – a coming battle for Iraq’s second city that General Lloyd Austin, the top US commander in the Middle East, has long called potentially “decisive”.
But now that Isis has captured the capital of Anbar province, “you got to do Anbar to isolate Mosul,” the State Department official said.
“Anyone who knows Anbar province from back when we were there, it’s going to be really hard.”
Barely a month before the fall of Ramadi, the Pentagon attempted to quantify its successes in Iraq. A map prepared by senior officials for public consumption boasted that Isis was losing its hold on territory it gained since last year, attributing the alleged brittleness of the group to US-backed Iraqi forces.
Iraqi troops, aided by US warplanes, were “forcing them out of areas”, interim Pentagon spokesman Col Steve Warren said on 13 April.
US officials nevertheless conceded that Isis had consolidated and even expanded its Syrian territory. Territorial gains in Iraq against Isis that drove the Pentagon to boast concentrated around Kurdish areas, where peshmerga irregulars have fought Isis for a year, and the belts around and south of Baghdad.
On the Pentagon’s map, however, Isis-held snaked from Syria’s Deir az-Zour southeast through the al-Qaim border crossing and deep into Anbar Province. In its midst, the Pentagon placed a burnt-orange dot on Ramadi to dub it a “contested city”.
Dempsey signaled disinterest in the city in a 16 April briefing while the assault on Ramadi intensified: “The city itself is not symbolic in any way, it’s not been declared part of the caliphate on one hand or central to the future of Iraq … I’d much rather that Ramadi not fall, but it won’t be the end of a campaign should it fall. We’ve got to get it back.”
Further adjustments to US strategy may follow changes to US personnel. Dempsey is soon to retire, to be replaced by the Marine general Joseph Dunford. Dunford, the former commander of US troops in Afghanistan, persuaded Obama to slow his withdrawal of US troops from America’s longest war, to the chagrin of many of Obama’s supporters. His elevation to chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has been perceived by many in defense circles as a signal of course correction against Isis.
Much of the current political debate over Iraq has been characterized by recrimination. The Republican presidential candidates have rushed over each other to swear they would not have invaded Iraq in 2003, capitalizing on Jeb Bush’s vacillation and eventual reversal on the subject. Those Republicans have blamed Obama for withdrawing from Iraq in 2011, while Obama aides have shot back that the fundamental flaw of the war was the initial invasion.
Keane said the US needed to get over its “political psychosis on Iraq” and escalate the war. He faulted Obama for downplaying the rising fortunes of Isis out of a desire to avoid a deeper American commitment, considering administration pronouncements reminiscent of the unrealities of the Rumsfeld Pentagon – a critique that is gaining purchase within defense observers on either side of the Isis debate.
There is “a disturbing and frightening echo of the summer of 2006,” Keane said, when “these officials looked at you and defended that strategy and told you that overall the strategy was succeeding.”
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After the fall of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria to Isis militants, critics say president’s strategy is no longer viable and US should step in
5/22/15
Displaced Iraqis from Ramadi cross the Bzebiz bridge fleeing fighting. Photograph: Karim Kadim/AP
Spencer Ackerman in New York
Thursday 21 May 2015 13.05 EDT
Last modified on Thursday 21 May 201513.57 EDT
Iraq hawks began to argue for re-Americanizing the war against the Islamic Stateon Thursday in response to nearly a week of audacious territorial gains in Iraq and Syria.
Key architects of the 2007-8 troop surge called Obama’s strategy in the nine-month-old war no longer viable now that Isis has seized Ramadi in Iraq andPalmyra in Syria. They stopped just short of urging the one step most allergic to the American president: returning US combat troops to the battlefield where nearly 4,500 of them died during the 2003-2011 occupation.
Calling Isis an “unfathomable evil” during a Thursday morning Senate hearing, Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute urged “a total of 15 to 20,000 US troops in Iraq in order to provide the necessary enablers, advisers and so forth. Anything less than that is simply unserious.”
Jack Keane, the former army vice-chief of staff and mentor to General David Petraeus, excoriated the Obama administration for a “fundamentally flawed” strategy that effectively cedes Syria to Isis. He said it was time to begin “serious planning” for the reintroduction of US combat brigades, something Obama has consistently ruled out since he began the anti-Isis war last summer.
But Keane stopped short of urging large-scale American involvement. Instead, US war planners should allow American forces to spot for air strikes, supplement the air war with attack helicopters and C-130 logistics transport planes, and special-operations strike teams should “routinely” raid Isis positions in Iraq and Syria.
Early indications after the fall of Ramadi and now the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra were that Obama is not considering such a sweeping recalibration.
“No, I don’t think we’re losing,” the president told the Atlantic magazine in an interview conducted a day before Palmyra fell and published a day after. “There’s no doubt there was a tactical setback, although Ramadi had been vulnerable for a very long time.”
The president put the onus on Iraqis to find a solution.
“And one lesson that I think is important to draw from what happened [after the 2003 invasion] is that if the Iraqis themselves are not willing or capable to arrive at the political accommodations necessary to govern, if they are not willing to fight for the security of their country, we cannot do that for them.”
General Martin Dempsey, the most senior US military officer and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, portrayed the rout of Iraqi soldiers and police in Ramadi as a calculated retreat.
Iraqi security forces “were not driven out of Ramadi; they drove out of Ramadi,” Dempsey told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
US officials indicated that they are considering another acceleration of arms and training to Sunni tribesmen attempting to recapture Ramadi. No decision has been reached on sending US special operations forces into the city, according to a top State Department official briefing reporters on Wednesday, nor have military officials recommended using US forces on the ground to call in airstrikes.
The most serious adjustment to US strategy, US diplomats and military officials indicated, is the abandonment of a months-long plan that placed recapturing Mosul as the defining military objective of 2015 – a coming battle for Iraq’s second city that General Lloyd Austin, the top US commander in the Middle East, has long called potentially “decisive”.
But now that Isis has captured the capital of Anbar province, “you got to do Anbar to isolate Mosul,” the State Department official said.
“Anyone who knows Anbar province from back when we were there, it’s going to be really hard.”
Barely a month before the fall of Ramadi, the Pentagon attempted to quantify its successes in Iraq. A map prepared by senior officials for public consumption boasted that Isis was losing its hold on territory it gained since last year, attributing the alleged brittleness of the group to US-backed Iraqi forces.
Iraqi troops, aided by US warplanes, were “forcing them out of areas”, interim Pentagon spokesman Col Steve Warren said on 13 April.
US officials nevertheless conceded that Isis had consolidated and even expanded its Syrian territory. Territorial gains in Iraq against Isis that drove the Pentagon to boast concentrated around Kurdish areas, where peshmerga irregulars have fought Isis for a year, and the belts around and south of Baghdad.
On the Pentagon’s map, however, Isis-held snaked from Syria’s Deir az-Zour southeast through the al-Qaim border crossing and deep into Anbar Province. In its midst, the Pentagon placed a burnt-orange dot on Ramadi to dub it a “contested city”.
Dempsey signaled disinterest in the city in a 16 April briefing while the assault on Ramadi intensified: “The city itself is not symbolic in any way, it’s not been declared part of the caliphate on one hand or central to the future of Iraq … I’d much rather that Ramadi not fall, but it won’t be the end of a campaign should it fall. We’ve got to get it back.”
Further adjustments to US strategy may follow changes to US personnel. Dempsey is soon to retire, to be replaced by the Marine general Joseph Dunford. Dunford, the former commander of US troops in Afghanistan, persuaded Obama to slow his withdrawal of US troops from America’s longest war, to the chagrin of many of Obama’s supporters. His elevation to chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has been perceived by many in defense circles as a signal of course correction against Isis.
Much of the current political debate over Iraq has been characterized by recrimination. The Republican presidential candidates have rushed over each other to swear they would not have invaded Iraq in 2003, capitalizing on Jeb Bush’s vacillation and eventual reversal on the subject. Those Republicans have blamed Obama for withdrawing from Iraq in 2011, while Obama aides have shot back that the fundamental flaw of the war was the initial invasion.
Keane said the US needed to get over its “political psychosis on Iraq” and escalate the war. He faulted Obama for downplaying the rising fortunes of Isis out of a desire to avoid a deeper American commitment, considering administration pronouncements reminiscent of the unrealities of the Rumsfeld Pentagon – a critique that is gaining purchase within defense observers on either side of the Isis debate.
There is “a disturbing and frightening echo of the summer of 2006,” Keane said, when “these officials looked at you and defended that strategy and told you that overall the strategy was succeeding.”
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