Actually, Bill Ardolino and others pointed out that the IA was welcomed in places like Fallujah, long before the ’surge’. Looked at that back at the start of 2007, which indicated an entirely different course going on than the MSM was trying to peddle. In that I look at Bill Roggio also spending time in late 2006 in Fallujah and the basic analysis was that the ’small footprint’ had allowed for the US forces to learn far more about the local Iraqi populations than a large occupation force could have done. That would become critical to the success of ‘the surge’ as that line of operations is built on that understanding and reaching out to local tribal leaders.

To get to the point where the IA was trusted required creating an army and that was no simple task. ‘The surge’ required an accountable IA to work, and some reliable security units as well. Without that you don’t get ‘the surge’. That, actually, will continue out at least until 2015 if not 2020, to help stand up the logistics, budgeting, forecasting and all other parts of the IA that need to make for an efficient and accountable force. There have been a few posts on the IA Inspector General system being set up and has already had a number of prosecutions under its belt, that seen over at Roggio’s Long War Journal which is one of the best sources for important news on the GWoT, Iraq and Afghanistan plus other analyses.

What this lead-up was is unexpected: the limited punditocracy was expecting an old fashioned ‘oil-drop’ and forgot that has prerequisites to it that were not on the ground. The actual strategy took time to unfold and yet could be clearly seen by analysis of events on the ground. Without the prerequisites of cities like Ramadi beginning to re-open factories in the start of 2007, long months before ‘the surge’ started, nor the shift in culture inside Iraq, you don’t get the foundations that would make ‘the surge’ a success. And as we missed a nearly doubling in size of the IA from start to end of ‘the surge’, and continuing to this day, the absolute key element has been glossed over by the MSM and wide majority of the punditocracy. Neither the MNF or IA could have done it alone: it took a coordinated effort that was deep and went far beyond the military but had the armed forces as the necessary structure to hold it together. Getting the IA structure to stick requires accountable government, working infrastructure and a stand-up of the entire economy. The catalyst sites for those were already there before ‘the surge’ and it was the stability coming to Ramadi and Fallujah that would allow for that massive change-over started in AUG 2006 when the tribes formally organized against al Qaeda.

And declared war on them.

Damned if those tribes don’t take war seriously…

We could learn something from them, if we listened.

ajacksonian on September 1, 2008 at 7:54 AM