Operation Phantom Thunder: The Spin Begins, Part II
Posted by: McQ
This time it is Juan Cole doing the spinning. Leveraging off of Sen. Richard Lugar's premature dismissal of the surge, Cole says:
His alarm has been illustrated by the difficulties the U.S. and Iraqi militaries faced in the recent offensive operation dubbed "Operation Arrowhead Ripper," aimed at subduing Baquba (pop. 300,000), the restive capital of Diyala province, located 31 miles northeast of Baghdad. American generals admitted that 80 percent of the guerrilla leadership there had slipped away, and that the Iraqi army lacked the equipment and training to hold areas taken in difficult hand-to-hand fighting. The U.S. military compounded its public-relations problem by implausibly branding virtually everyone it fought or killed in the Sunni-majority city as "al-Qaida."
The failure of the offensive casts doubt not only on its purpose of securing swaths of territory, but also on the way the strategy has been sold to the American public.
One more time:
"The center of gravity for the surge is Baghdad."
I cannot emphasize that point enough.
Cole is concentrating his "failure" message on an operation outside of Baghdad comprised on 3 brigades of a 25 brigade operation. But he's presenting it as a failure of the whole. Additionally, he's misinformed or doesn't understand the purpose of the operation or the desire end-state.
With that in mind, let's take apart the Cole paragraph.
First the last part. This "everything is al-Qaeda" meme has been thoroughly discredited. It was a meme started by Josh Marshall and Glenn Greenwald and has absolutely no basis in fact as Connecticut Yankee demonstrated here and here. And I also provided a quote from a June 22nd briefing given by LTG Ray Odierno which directly contradicts the claim:
Operation Phantom Thunder is a corps-level offensive operation that began on 15 June to defeat al Qaeda insurgents and extremists, deny enemy safe havens, interdict movement, logistics and communications. It is an open-ended operation that will extend through the summer and will be done in conjunction with civil-military operations to support political and economic efforts.
It consists of carefully synchronized simultaneous operations at division and brigade level to clear al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shi'a extremists in, near and around Baghdad. It also includes aggressive shaping operations by our Special Operations Forces focused on al Qaeda in Iraq and other special groups.
Apparently Cole couldn't be bothered to research the assertion, preferring instead to use the unproven claim because it better fits the spin he was trying to give his failure message.
Part two, of course, is the "80 percent of the guerrilla leadership there had slipped away" meme. I pointed out previously that his number would be the bone opponents to the war would grab and run with. And Cole is no exception.
As expected, Cole states the "offensive" is a failure and implies that's the primary reason. But as pointed out previously, that has little if anything to do with the primary mission. What it points out, however, is Cole's complete misunderstanding of the purpose of the operation in Babuqua. As LTC David Kilcullen, one of the architects of our counter-insurgency doctrine patiently explained about Babuqua:
When we speak of "clearing" an enemy safe haven, we are not talking about destroying the enemy in it; we are talking about rescuing the population in it from enemy intimidation. If we don't get every enemy cell in the initial operation, that's OK. The point of the operations is to lift the pall of fear from population groups that have been intimidated and exploited by terrorists to date, then win them over and work with them in partnership to clean out the cells that remain - as has happened in Al Anbar Province and can happen elsewhere in Iraq as well.
The "terrain" we are clearing is human terrain, not physical terrain. It is about marginalizing al Qa'ida, Shi'a extremist militias, and the other terrorist groups from the population they prey on. This is why claims that "80% of AQ leadership have fled" don't overly disturb us: the aim is not to kill every last AQ leader, but rather to drive them off the population and keep them off, so that we can work with the community to prevent their return.
Or, said shortly and sweetly: to this point, mission accomplished.
Cole then makes the following claims about the 5th Iraqi Army Division, presently deployed in the Baquba area:
The Iraqi 5th Army, which is largely Shiite, was supported by special police commandos from the Ministry of the Interior, a Shiite force mostly drawn from the Badr Corps paramilitary of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council — which was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. In practical terms, the U.S. military was helping a Shiite government and a Shiite security force impose itself on a majority Sunni population.
[...]
In mid-May, the Iraqi government relieved the 5th Army commander in Baquba, Brig. Gen. Shakir Hulail Hussein al-Kaabi, of his command. The U.S. military suspected him of seeking Shiite dominance in the mixed Diyala province, and of lending surreptitious support to Shiite militias and death squads while conducting punitive campaigns of his own against Sunni Arabs. After months of pressure from U.S. generals, the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki finally relented.
The implication? The 5th is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Yet Michael Yon, who is actually on the ground in Baquba and monitoring both the situation and the 5th IAD says:
The Fifth Iraqi Army Division is considered an increasingly competent group of fighters, and from the limited scope of 5th IA that I personally witnessed, that judgment seems correct. The 5th is committed to battle. Whereas the Iraqi Army is coming into the fight, and playing increasingly critical roles, the local police force is less impressive.
The part of Cole's assertions left unaddressed, of course, was the result of the relief of the 5th's commander. Obviously when a commander is relieved, the new commander is going to bring in his own people. If the 5th is the problem Cole believes it to be, Yon, a practiced and experienced observer, certainly isn't seeing it. Yon does, however, see a problem with the local police, which, of course, everyone has acknowledged to be a problem for quite some time.
Cole then tries to support his assertions by describing various and sundry alliances and how these are misreported or misrepresented. Yet, to that point, Cole has seriously misreported and misrepresented everything about the Baquba operation. Why would anyone who realizes that take anything he says afterward with more than a grain of salt?
Cole, like many, are declaring the surge a failure based on their misunderstanding of the purpose of a supporting operation, dated information and baseless assertions made by bloggers such as Greenwald. What Cole attempts to do is paint a false picture which depicts the effort in Baquba as the main effort as well as an effort which is ignoring one of the biggest threats in Iraq, the Mahdi army. Additionally, he infers that we're essentially arming the Mahdi army through the 5th IAD.
Yet Bill Roggio reports:
While the major offensive operation is occurring in the Baghdad Belts against al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent holdouts, major raids continue against Sadr's forces and the Iranian cells in Baghdad and the south. Two major engagements occurred against Sadr's forces since Monday — one in Amara and one in Nasariyah. Scores of Mahdi Army fighters were killed during both engagements after Iraqi Special Operations Forces, backed by Coalition support, took on Sadr's forces.
The Iraqi government and Multinational Forces Iraq are sending a clear message to Sadr: when the fighting against al Qaeda is finished, the Iranian backed elements of the Mahdi Army are next on the list if they are not disbanded. Also, the Iraqi military and Multinational Forces Iraq possesses enough forces to take on Sadr's militia if they attempt to interfere with current operations.
So much for "all al Qaeda all the time."
Which brings us to the statement that finally makes an informed reader recognize that Cole has absolutely no idea of the scope of the mission or what is meant by "synchronized simultaneous operations":
Games of Whack-a-Mole like those being played in Diyala province at present are highly unlikely to deliver a decisive victory to the U.S. military or to its Iraqi allies.
That's simply uninformed twaddle. It is colossally ignorant. If the effort in Diyala were a stand alone operation, Cole could make such a claim. But since it is one of many "synchonized simultaneous operations", something he apparently doesn't understand, he hasn't a leg to stand on.
Maybe, just maybe, Cole will avail himself of other sources besides Greewald. For instance, Frederick Kagan, who explains the overall strategy in recent testimony to Congress:
Generals Petraeus and Odierno did not allocate the majority of the new combat power they received to Baghdad. Only 2 of the additional Army brigades went into the city. The other 3 Army brigades and the equivalent of a Marine regiment were deployed into the areas around Baghdad that our generals call the "Baghdad belts," including Baqubah in Diyala province. The purpose of this deployment was not to clear-and-hold those areas, but to make possible the second phase of the operation that began on June 15. The purpose of this operation—Phantom Thunder—is to disrupt terrorist and militia networks and bases outside of Baghdad that have been feeding the violence within the city. Most of the car bomb and suicide bomb networks that have been supporting the al Qaeda surge since January are based in these belt areas, and American commanders have rightly recognized that they cannot establish stable security in the capital without disrupting these networks and their bases.
But even this operation—the largest coordinated combat operation the U.S. has undertaken since the invasion in 2003—is not the decisive phase of the current strategy. It is an operation designed to set the preconditions for a successful clear-and-hold operation that will probably begin in late July or early August within Baghdad itself. That is the operation that is designed to bring security to Iraq's capital in a lasting way that will create the space for political progress that we all desire.
As Kagan explains, we're in the second phase of a multi-phase operation which is not centered in Baquba as Cole attempts to infer and as I warned you would happen. As Kagan says:
To say that the current plan has failed is simply incorrect. It might fail, of course, as any military/political plan might fail. Indications on the military side strongly suggest that success—in the form of dramatically reduced violence by the end of this year—is quite likely. Indications on the political side are more mixed, but are also less meaningful at this early stage before security has been established.
So to the Juan Coles of this world, it might be useful if you made an attempt to actually understand the operation and its goals, not to mention where we are in its execution before declaring it a failure. And that goes for Sen. Lugar as well.
(Part one spinning Operation Phantom Thunder here.)
