FP:

Let’s begin by stepping back. We appeared to be losing in Iraq in 2006. How did the war turn around? You have four basic causes of this turnaround to share with us today.

West: Yes.

There were several interconnected reasons. Foremost, the Sunni population switched from attacking American (and Iraqi Army) soldiers to aligning with them. What prompted that switch was the contrast in behavior of the American versus the al Qaeda fighters. Beginning in 2003, the Sunnis had invited or at least accepted al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The rate of infiltration from Syria, primarily into western Anbar Province, was about 100 to 200 a month in ’03 thru late ’05. This small minority proselytized among the dozen of resistance cells, many of whom were Baathist-led or influenced. AQI recruited the weak-minded and especially the criminal elements. AQI, wrapped in the banner of jihad, was ruthless and intimidation of the population proceeded at a remarkable pace.

On the other side, in ’03-’04, the Americans were the robo-cop outsiders, tough in battle but not understanding of the environment. The nadir was the April ’04 retreat, ordered by President Bush, from Fallujah. AQI under Zarqawi, who was in Fallujah, gained enormous prestige for supposedly beating the vaunted US Marine Corps. There followed, of course, the return in November of ’04.

Anyone could have predicted what would happen when the Marines were ordered to take the city. Amidst the destruction, AQI leadership fled, causing bitterness in the Sunni resistance ranks. AQI, however, benefited when the coalition lacked any follow-up. For the next 18 months, AQI solidified its hold over the Sunnis in Iraq. But at the same time, the Americans had learned to act with restraint, while still prevailing in every test of strength. And the US military finally convinced the State Dept. to allow colonels and generals to meet with the resistance. The American message was simple: why are you fighting us? We bring you contracts, protection and a buffer/ombudsman with the Baghdad government that is too sectarian. You Sunnis have it backwards. You roll over for the AQI who are killing you, and you sullenly ignore or abet attacks by your young men against us, when we are looking out for your best interests. In late ’05, a dozen prominent sheiks in the Ramadi area tried to organize against AQI. Their movement was blasted apart by suicide murderers and assassins.

There were two fronts in the war. The western front was Anbar, the linkage to Syria and stronghold of the insurgency, home to a million Sunnis with a tradition of rebellion. Through ’06, Anbar accounted for 40% of American casualties. The eastern front was Baghdad and the belt of farmlands encircling it, home to about five million Shiites and three million Sunnis. It too accounted for about 40% of American casualties.

By mid’06, it seemed that Iraq was lost. Shiite death squads, backed by the Iraqi police, were killing and driving Sunnis from Baghdad. AQI was blowing up Shiite markets inside Baghdad and had a stranglehold grip over the population in Anbar, Diyala and the belt of farms south of Baghdad.

FP: And then the turnaround.

West: Yes the turnaround.

By the fall of ’06, in Anbar the Marines had placed at least one solid security leader in each city. Some were local police chiefs with links to the tribes; others were Iraqi battalion commanders. Then a brave sheik, Abu Risha Sattar, began the Awakening, demanding that the tribes turn against the AQI, by then hated but feared.

This movement would not have started if the Americans had remained robo-cops operating from bases apart from the population. Instead, the Americans were out among the people. Sattar knew the American leaders by name. The Americans parked a tank on his front lawn to protect him. I asked Sattar if the turnaround in Anbar could not have come years earlier, and saved much grief. He thought for a moment, then said no.

“We Sunnis had to convince ourselves,” he said. The most remarkable leader I witnessed in Iraq was Abu Risha Sattar, later assassinated by AQI.

FP: So the first cause of the turn around?

West: The first basic cause of the turnaround was the decency and strength of the American soldiers and marines whom the Sunnis came to know out on the streets. The turnaround came from the bottom up. The Sunnis came to hate AQI, but would not have rebelled if they did not have another side to turn to. It is incorrect to say AQI “overplayed its hand”, as if war were poker. The Americans, although foreign infidels, at the squad level had shown for two years that they were stronger and more decent than AQI.

Unknown back in Washington, in the fall of ’06, tribal gangs – vigilantes – began to show up in the cities and villages of Anbar. The Marines spent months working out rules of engagement to corral the gangs and to assuage the Iraqi battalions and police, who were in many cases angered that their former enemies were racing around in Nissan pickups waving their AKs. But those gangs knew those who had not come over. AQI members and affiliates had no place to hide. Warnings were shouted in the mosques and bodies were found in the streets. By January of 2007, the war in Anbar was essentially won and violence had dropped abruptly. The marines were able to negotiate terms between the Iraqi Army and provincial police and the tribes. This led to the gradual integration of the tribal gangs into the Iraqi security forces.

FP: Cause #2?

West: The second cause of the turnaround was the drawn-out decision by President Bush to change military commanders and surge 30,000 more troops into Iraq. Stephen Hadley, the national security council adviser, skillfully orchestrated this decision by using the NSC staff, especially J.D. Crouch, Meghan O’Sullivan and William Luti, to pull an end run around the sluggish Pentagon. The president’s show of resolve changed the dynamic and atmosphere in Iraq. It showed he was determined to stay the course and increased the size of the commitment for his remaining two years in office.

The process of reappraising the confused US strategy in Iraq began in the summer of ’06, when Baghdad was falling apart, and did not conclude until January of 2007. Bush was passive and waited for coordinated staff work. He was not decisive. But he was well served, as was the nation, by the quiet, unassuming Hadley.

FP: Cause #3?

West: The third cause of the turnaround was the operational decisions the new Corps commander in Iraq, LtGen Raymond Odierno, and the overall commander, General David Petraeus. Ordered by outgoing overall commander General George Casey in December of ’06 to design a “decisive operation” to stabilize Baghdad, Odierno introduced the “Gap Strategy”. In the absence of competent Iraqi government forces, the Shiite militia and the AQI were filling the gap of providing security in local areas. Odierno decided to deploy US soldiers in the neighborhoods to fill the gap, displacing the AQI and militias. He also decided to deploy US units into the farmland belt around Baghdad to take away AQI’s lair where they prepared the suicide bombers.

Petraeus took command a few months later and issued the dictum, “don’t commute to work”. This meant that US soldiers should live in the neighborhoods, not on large bases. Eventually inside Baghdad 67 Joint Security Stations – equivalent to police precinct stations – were staffed by US and Iraqi soldiers and police. Beginning in early ’04, throughout the eastern front, US soldiers had pulled back to bases, rolling out for daily mounted patrols that left the neighborhoods unprotected most of the time.

The rationale for this was twofold. First, there was the theory that Americans were an irritant in an Arab society, their presence being a cause of the fighting they were trying to prevent. Second, US forces were only to clear neighborhoods, which would then be handed over to Iraqi forces to hold. The Casey strategy was to hand an ongoing war over to the Iraqis while the US exited as fast as possible. While this strategy was at odds with the Bush vision of victory, it went unchallenged by the White House from 2004 until late 2006, when Baghdad was falling apart. Having put up with two successive Shiite-controlled governments that were corrupt and sectarian, Casey in December of 2006 requested two more US brigades to control Baghdad. But he wanted Maliki and the Iraqi government to get into the fight, and they hadn’t done so.

So prior to ’07there were two contradictory operational strategies being employed by US units. On the western front, where there were few large bases, US units were deployed in cities and in the countryside in company and platoon outposts. They were clearing and then holding Iraqi battalions and local police. Yet this wasn’t done in Baghdad or extensively on the eastern front until ’07. Successive corps commanders permitted a large degree of decentralized decision-making at the division level.

The press had covered in detail the clear, hold and hand-off operation of Colonel H.R. McMaster in Talafar in late ’05. The press had ignored the fact that the same concept had been employed in Fallujah since late ’04 and in al Qaim along the Syrian border in late ’05.

The three efforts illustrated the complexity of the war. Talafar had a mixed Sunni-Shiite population, with weak Al Qaeda roots. The challenge was restricting the sectarian instincts of Shiite officials. Fallujah harbored a core of Al Qaeda assassins determined to hold onto the city. The challenge was supporting a police chief, who had been an insurgent, as he flushed them out. Out on the Syrian border, Al Qaim had been the first successful tribal revolt against al Qaeda. It was fostered, however, by a remarkable American, LtCol Dale Alford, who broke his battalion down into 13 outposts manned by marines, Iraqi soldiers and police recruited from the local tribe. One ‘cookie-cutter’ model could not be applied across Iraq.

The upshot was that from ’04 through ’06, a diversity of operational approaches were undertaken in the absence of definitive guidance whether the US units should employ a “clear & hand-off” strategy or a strategy of “clear & hold” with integrated (“partnered”) units. In ’07, Petraeus and Odierno made it clear the operational concept was the latter. By then, the Sunni attitude across Iraq had changed. So the atmosphere was conducive. Had Petraeus and Odierno encountered the sullen resistance prevalent in Sunni communities in ’04 – when the Sunnis did not want to be protected by the infidel invaders who had handed power to the Shiites - they could not have protected the population from AQI.

FP: Cause #4 . . .

West: The fourth cause of the turnaround was the gradual disintegration of the Mahdi Army or Jesh al Mahdi (JAM) originally led by the Moqtada Sadr. The Mahdi’s bastions in Baghdad of Sadr City and Shulah were not included by Petraeus in his deployment of US troops. Destroying Al Qaeda was the primary US goal. US soldiers referred to “good JAM” and “bad JAM”. The latter were ‘rogue’ groups who employed Iranian-supplied roadside bombs to kill Americans.

Prime Minister Maliki had repeatedly resisted Casey’s demands that Special Operations Forces be permitted to raid “bad JAM” headquarters in Sadr City and elsewhere. When Petraeus took over in ’07, conditions had so deteriorated that Maliki had to relent, even though Sadr’s bloc in the National Assembly had voted for Maliki.

In August, Sadr’s militia in Karbala, in a shoot-out with rivals, killed dozens of Shiite pilgrims. Maliki rushed to the city with reinforcements for the army and arrested a top Sadr supporter. When Shiite opinion swung sharply against Sadr, he declared a “ceasefire”, grandly announcing his followers would cease attacks against the American occupiers.

It was an empty gesture. Most member of the JAM weren’t attacking Americans in first place. Those that were – the “bad JAM” –were being hunted down by US special forces. In essence, the surge strategy focused on the Sunni neighborhoods and eradicating al Qaeda, leaving the Shiite militias intact in their redoubts in Sadr City and Shula.

That changed in April of 2008 when Maliki – without consulting with the Americans - rushed to Basra to attack the JAM. The Iraqi army wasn’t ready for the complexities of urban combat. Though irritated, Petraeus sent in intelligence assets and air controllers. JAM reacted by launching Iranian-provided missiles from Sadr City against the homes of Iraqi officials in the Green Zone. This solidified Iraqi political support for Maliki while, once again, the “bad JAM” foolish enough to venture outside with weapons showed up on American sensors and were cut down.

The JAM militia as a fighting force fell apart. Several hundred leaders fled to Iran, where they were trained in terror tactics by Hizbollah operatives. JAM lost its control over Sadr City.

By the fall of 2008, violence in Iraq had diminished sharply. Al Qaeda, clinging to a last lair around Mosul, still could mount suicide bombings. But it had lost control of the Sunni population. Sadr, whose synapses don’t fire normally, was hiding in Iran. The JAM had lost control inside Iraq. Maliki was feeling overconfident, and the Americans were gradually withdrawing.

FP: So what is the end game in Iraq?

West: That is up to two men: Maliki and the next American president. Maliki must offer reasonable terms to the Sunnis. He has to bring well over 20,000 Sunni Sons of Iraq into the government’s security forces, or he risks renewed violence.

The next president must heed the experts – the US military commanders – in determining the pace of withdrawal. America is the strongest tribe. If we simply pull out regardless of conditions on the ground, we will be seen as quitting and Iraq will fall apart.

The next president must also place firm pressure on Maliki. America gave the Shiites their freedom and their power. An overconfident Maliki, ignorant of the dynamics that produce security, has yet to prove that he is the leader of all Iraq, and not a narrow-minded sectarian politician.

The end game, if we don’t pull out abruptly, will be a country with continued violence, with Americans removed from the daily combat, with corruption and gross inefficiencies and with lingering sectarian politics. It won’t be a beacon of democracy in the Middle East; it will not be a satrap of Iran; it will not be a close, overt ally of the US. But it was the battleground where al Qaeda chose to confront the US and was driven out because the Sunni population turned against the jihadists.

That narrative of defeat will over the next few years spread across the Middle East.

FP: What lessons from Iraq pertain to Afghanistan?

West: First, the US must find a method of gaining and retaining leverage over the leaders of a sovereign country wracked by corruption, drug money and narrow, selfish interests. Particularly, the US needs to have a strong voice in selecting the leaders of the Afghan army and police.

Second, we need a comprehensive strategy with goals that are realistic. We wasted $21 billion in Iraq trying to reconstruct an economy. We could pour $50 billion into Afghanistan and change little. I don’t believe our objective should be nation-building.

I have grave reservations about a “clear and hold” counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan. I’ve only been there twice. It’s not clear to me whether a large portion of the Pashtun tribe willingly supports the Taliban. If so, I don’t know how we protect the population from itself. If the Pashtuns don’t support the Taliban, then a COIN strategy seems possible. But it must be analyzed in troop-to-task fashion. I don’t know where this figure of three US brigades being the number of additional troops needed came from.

As for training 200,000 reliable Afghan soldiers and a like number of police, that is possible only if we commit for at least another five years and have much more authority in promotions and reliefs for cause.

Then there is the sanctuary problem of the Pakistan frontier. My instinct is that we have been too concerned about the rhetoric of Pakistani officials who have played a deceitful game since 9/11. Afghanistan cannot be secure as long as Pakistan is a sanctuary for the enemy.

America gradually divided bitterly along political party lines over Iraq. Regrettably, a repeat appears likely in Afghanistan. If McCain is elected, the Democrats are likely to demand concessions on Iraq for their support in Afghanistan. If Obama is elected, the Republicans may demand concessions in Iraq for their support in Afghanistan.

FP: You fought in Vietnam, served at the top of the Pentagon and wrote three books about the war in Iraq. How do you assess our military? Are we the strongest tribe?

West: As a nation, we have become accustomed to fighting with very few casualties. The mainstream press approaches war in gotcha fashion. In WWII, the press highlighted valor and accepted mistakes. Iwo Jima was a strategic mistake that cost 6,000 American lives; we honor Iwo for the courage of our fighting men. Today, we highlight mistakes and take for granted valor and sacrifice. I am concerned about our values as a country.

FP: Some final thoughts?

West: There are major issues that have yet to be resolved, though. The most glaring is the treatment of prisoners. Iraq and Afghanistan show the new face of war. Our enemies do not wear uniforms because the war would be over in a few months if they did. We are now treating captured enemy as possible criminals – entitled to Miranda rights, with our soldiers signing arrest sheets and bagging evidence for presentation to local judges who are corrupt. There’s no sure way of knowing who is innocent, who is a small-time offender and who is a major threat. In past wars, we kept prisoners of war until the war was over. The average jail sentence in Iraq for an enemy soldier has been 300 days. That is not a smart way to fight a war.

This problem is festering. Guantanamo was simple in that the numbers – perhaps 200 – granted habeas corpus and the best pro bono lawyers from Ivy League law schools are manageable. But consider – in Iraq and Afghanistan the US holds about 5,000 extremely dangerous jihadists that cannot be turned over to local judges because they might be let go. As the combat increases in Afghanistan, so will the number of prisoners.

We have not as a nation – the Executive Branch, the military, the Supreme Court and the Congress – reached agreement and codified how we fight when the enemy does not wear a uniform.

FP: Bing West, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

West: Thank you.