The Gamble

by Tom Ricks

Marc Lynch adroitly zeroes in on the ambivalence that is at the heart of The Gamble. I think he explicates well what this book is all about. (By the way, one other reviewer really delved deeply into this ambivalence, and especially into what it means for an opponent of the war and of the surge.)

But I disagree with Lynch's notion that without the surge, things in Iraq would have pretty much gone the same, but with fewer U.S. troops involved. Take the decline in violence in the summer of 2007. I think this happened for two major reasons: Because the Sunni insurgency had been put on the payroll, and because American troops had been ordered to make protecting Iraqi civilians their top priority.

The book's two big holes

Yes, Lynch and Stephen Walt are correct about the two absences in the book.

1. On the Status of Forces Agreement, I just don't think it is that meaningful.

As I watched it come together in Baghdad, it appeared to me to simply be a way of taking the American military presence off the table as a divisive issue in Iraqi politics. That is, it was much more about 2009 than about 2011. So I make less of it than others do. I might be wrong. Yes, I know a tremendous amount of time was spent on this at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, because I kept on hearing about it as I did my interviews last year. But expenditure of words is no indication of historical significance-just look at how screamingly irrelevant NATO is becoming, despite many speeches given in Brussels and at summit conferences. Similarly, in the book I didn't discuss the much-ballyhooed war czar, Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, because I didn't see that he mattered much to the course of the war.

That said, in retrospect, I should have devoted a paragraph or two to explaining why I think there is less to the SOFA than there appears to be.

2. On the absence of Iraqi voices, Lynch's criticism again is correct.

I was aware of this lack, painfully so, but decided against trying to paper it over with some desultory interviews. I don't speak Arabic and I am not an expert on Iraq, so I think I would have done of mediocre job of trying to figure out the Iraqi side of the story. What I know a lot about is the U.S. military. I even speak some of its dialects. So I decided to remain focussed on that. (Those who want to learn about the Iraqi side of things should read the works of  my old friend and old Washington Post colleague Anthony Shadid. The second half of his book Night Draws Near does a terrific job of showing how Iraqis reacted to the early days of the occupation.) But this is an explanation, not an excuse. The absence of Iraqis in my book is especially significant because Iraqi solutions will be the key to the end of this story. That is, Iraqis will make the decisions that determine how this all ends.

I disagree with Walt's assertion that the surge somehow succeeded (tactically) because ethnic cleansing was already largely completed. That assumes that the violence was mainly about ethnic cleansing, when I think it was more about the larger issue of who controls Iraq. Indeed, even though the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad was largely completed by late 2006, violence continued to increase there for several months. (See chart above.)

I also think the book covers in some depth the related reasons for the tactical success of the surge, such as the split in Anbar between al Qaeda and the tribes.

By the way, I don't think anyone who has spent time in Iraq over the last five years would agree with Walt that the surge somehow worked because of dumb luck, or "fortuitous timing." To believe that, you'd have to think that after four years of counterproductive operations, the U.S. military changed its chain of command and its entire approach to the war -- and just then, its luck changed. That places too much faith in coincidence for me. 

"Security Incidents" Sources:  SIGACTS (CF reports) as of 1NOV08; weekly beginning 03JAN04.

by Tom Ricks

I apologize for this. Consider it a down payment on the 12 hard months that it took me to pound out Fiasco. I do know what you mean about how difficult it is to re-live 2006 and early 2007. I think that one of the three big misunderstandings people back here have is a lack of appreciation of  how hard the surge period was. (The two other things people back here don’t get are that the surge failed, and that the war isn't over.)  

The shortcomings of the military establishment

I share Brose's puzzlement on this. By 2006, the entire U.S. national security establishment seemed stymied by the Iraq war, willing to stay with a losing strategy even after the White House had given up on it. Every general in the chain of command save Odierno opposed a big surge. U.S. policy in the war only became effective after retired General Jack Keane and two of his protégés, Generals Odierno and Petraeus, did an end run around that chain of command. I think this says some worrisome things about how we  pick, educate and judge generals. And that is the subject of the next book I plan to write.

Democracy vs. stability

Mr. Brose, please put that bottle of "W"-brand Kool Aid back in the drawer!

The American goal of democracy in the Middle East is at odds with the American goal of stability there. In Iraq, as elsewhere in the Middle East, democracy -- or at least its first step, fair elections-tends to be destabilizing. The Bush administration never seemed to be to grasp this.

But don't worry about this debate. As it happens, I don't think we will get either democracy or stability in Iraq, even in the "long term" that Bush Administration veterans so like to invoke -- especially fevered academics. I think that eventually a new strongman will emerge who is stronger and tougher than Saddam Hussein. He likely will reveal himself to be anti-American. He may then harness Iraq's oil revenue and buy himself a new generation of weaponry. And he may bid for leadership of the Arab world on the platform of revenge against the Americans. At that point, as Israel faces an existential threat, I will want to hear from all the Bushies who have said in recent years, "Say whatever you want, at least we got rid of Saddam." 

Was the surge worth it?

Barely, I'd say. I'm a 51 percent supporter. The best we can say for the surge is that it improved security at least temporarily.

And that's not a bad thing, considering what the alternatives were. Kicking the can down the road may not be satisfying, but sometimes is the least bad solution. For example, it might be the best we can hope for in Pakistan for the next several years. And in both Iraq and Pakistan, I'd say that it beats the other possible outcomes. 

chrisdlugosz/Flickr

by Tom Ricks

Dan Drezner asks this. He proposes that instead we could have just dumped the Iraq mess on Iran, which he thinks would have been a good idea.

Ai yi yi. His idea is an interesting roll of the dice, but it advocates taking a lot more risk than I would be willing to take on. It reminds me a bit of the many people at my book talks over the last week who have arrived at the hard-hearted position that we should just leave Iraq ASAP and let the chips fall as they may.

This came up, for example, last Tuesday night when I spoke at Book Passages, near Mill Valley, California. When I said that a damn-the-torpedoes pullout might result in a bloody civil war or even genocide, I heard the stunning response, "So what? Genocides happen all the time." I am not ready to accept that, especially when we helped create the situation. 

Was it a good thing for General Odierno to bypass the chain of command prescribed by the Goldwater-Nichols Act?

An astute observation by Drezner. This is worrisome indeed. In this instance, it worked. American policymaking in the war didn't become effective until Odierno and Petraeus bucked the chain of command. But if the surge had turned out to be a disaster, they would have been blamed, and may well be retired by this point.

I like accountability, but I share Drezner's worry that there is something lacking in the way the chain of command has worked under Goldwater-Nichols. It especially seems to tamp down needed dissent and overly reward consensus. Fortunately, I now hang my hat at a boutique think tank, the Center for a New American Security, and one of the first projects I am taking on there is a look at how Goldwater-Nichols has affected strategic decision making. 

topher76/Flickr

Thanks to the four of you for these comments, which are smart, insightful, and civil. Your praise means a lot to me. Also, I appreciate your taking the time to write these thoughtful responses to The Gamble. I read most of them on a flight Wednesday night from San Francisco to DC, and then read Susan Glasser's after it was posted yesterday.  

What follows is my own addition to the discussion that's appeared on this blog over the last week.  

by Stephen M. Walt

Like his 2006 book Fiasco, Tom Ricks' The Gamble is a gripping read. It is also a useful preliminary account of the shift in U.S. tactics that helped stop the escalation of violence in Iraq in 2007. To call it a "preliminary account" is not veiled criticism, because even the best journalism amounts to "instant history" and is subject to revision once more sources become available and once scholars are able to take a more detached view of these events.

For me, the book's main lessons are not about Iraq. Rather, it tells us a lot of useful lessons about military organizations, about the oft-neglected relationship between tactics and strategy, and about America's capacity to shape events in unfamiliar societies. Yet the evidence Ricks provides suggests a different conclusion than the one he draws; namely, that the United States has to stay in Iraq for many more years. Let's start with the lessons, and then consider the disconnect between Ricks' own account and his (surprising) bottom line.

First, The Gamble clearly shows that America's armed services are not immune to the various pathologies that can compromise military leaders and undermine effectiveness in the field. After the United States defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War and won lopsided victories against a set of third-rate opponents (Iraq in 1990-91, Kosovo in 1999, the Taliban in 2002), some people began to think our armed forces were almost magical: that a combination of technology, training and far-sighted commanders meant we could take on any opponent and win quickly, easily, and on the cheap.

The Gamble disabuses us of that notion. While painting a vivid picture of individual dedication and heroism by numerous soldiers and junior officers, it also presents a devastating picture of blind civilian leaders and rigid, unimaginative, and overly politicized senior commanders. Other writers have made the same point -- notably Lt. Col. Paul Yingling in a much-discussed essay in Armed Forces Journal -- but Ricks' account will do nothing to repair the reputations of the civilians and generals who mismanaged the war from the beginning. Ricardo Sanchez, Donald Rumsfeld, Tommy Franks, and Peter Pace will not be giving copies of this book to their friends.

Second, and following from the first point, The Gamble also shows how difficult it is for military organizations to change course, particularly when it involves rethinking basic tactics, rules of engagement, and the core values and world-views informing how it approaches battle. Although it was clear by 2005 that the U.S. effort in Iraq was failing, it took nearly two years for that realization to sink in and for a new approach to emerge. Getting the Army and Marines to pursue a different approach ultimately depended on interventions by an ad hoc coalition of retired officers (e.g., Jack Keane), academics, intelligence advisors, and a commander (David Petraeus) who had served in Iraq but was state-side when the reappraisal began. 

A third lesson involves the relationship between tactics and strategy. In a sense, both Ricks's earlier book (Fiasco) and this new volume remind us that tactical success and strategic victory are very different things. In 2003, the United States won an overwhelming tactical victory over the overmatched Iraqi forces, occupying the country in record time and at very low cost.  But as the earlier book showed, that impressive display of tactical and operational expertise did not translate into strategic success. Similarly, the new book argues that the tactical achievements of the 2007 surge -- a dramatic reduction in the level of violence in Iraq and the apparent defeat of jihadi groups like al Qaeda in Iraq did not produce the political reconciliation that it was intended to achieve. Indeed, of the eighteen "benchmarks" outlined by President Bush in his speech announcing the surge, only three had been achieved a year later and most remain unfulfilled to this day. Hence Ricks's depressing conclusion: the United States will have to stay in Iraq for many years to come.  

Unfortunately, it's at this point that the argument breaks down. As Marc Lynch points out in his own comment in this forum, a key omission (possibly due to publication deadlines) is any discussion of the November 2008 Status of Forces Agreement. If the United States observes the letter and spirit of that accord, an end to major U.S. involvement will come much sooner than Ricks predicts.

A second omission is the lack of any significant discussion of the alternative explanations for the surge's success. The Gamble focuses on the various things that the U.S. military did to bring the violence under control, but other accounts suggest that the killing declined because ethnic cleansing was nearly complete by the time the surge began, so there was less incentive for sectarian violence. In this view, the success of the "surge" was partly the result of fortuitous timing. Similarly, the reversal of fortune in Anbar province may have been due in part to the new American approach, but also to the split between the Sunni/Ba'ath insurgency and al Qaeda in Iraq that occurred after AQI overplayed its hand. 

To be sure, the debate about the relative contributions of these different factors undoubtedly reflects political biases -- those who supported the surge think it is solely responsible while some who opposed the surge are reluctant to give it any credit at all -- but there is a genuine analytical question here: how much of the reduction in violence was due to increased numbers and smarter tactics, and how much was due to other features of the overall situation? Ricks does not really attempt an answer, and we will have to wait for a more thorough and dispassionate assessment of this question before we know exactly how much credit to give the architects of the surge and the brave soldiers who implemented it.

Most important of all, the evidence in The Gamble points to a different conclusion than the one Ricks advances. His account shows is that even after the United States got the right commanders in charge, employed the right approach, and adopted more realistic goals, it was still unable to achieve its broader strategic objectives. Thus, Ricks's belief that we must stay for another ten years or more doesn't really follow from his own account: if we couldn't win under the best circumstances we can reasonably expect, why linger on? 

And let's be clear about what staying in Iraq entails. Keeping U.S. forces in Iraq indefinitely means we will continue to hemorrhage our power and wealth on behalf of a government that has 1) already forced us to sign an agreement to withdraw, 2) is openly hostile to Israel, 3) friendly to Iran, 4) lukewarm about us, and 5) increasingly uninterested in Washington's desires. And this is the regime on whose behalf we should expend more blood and treasure?

Indeed, Ricks offers one final lesson for how the United States should deal with clients that is at odds with his conclusion that we should stay there for the long haul. As he recounts, another reason the surge worked was the willingness of U.S. officials to play hardball with the Maliki government and demand that Maliki appoint competent commanders and begin to crack down on Shi'ite and Sunni insurgents alike. The lesson is clear: U.S. forces cannot prop up venal, incompetent, or corrupt leaders, and threatening to go home and leave them to their fate is often the best leverage that we have. And if a government we are trying to help cannot help itself, then exercising that exit option is the right response. I hope Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Zardari are paying attention, but I hope Obama is, too.

DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images

by Dan Drezner

Praising a book is boring to readers of book reviews, so let's get this out of the way quickly. The Gamble is a well-researched analysis of the surge that also happens to be a gripping and honest read. Partisans on both sides will now be permanently out of sorts with Ricks -- those on the right for Fiasco's withering critique on the first few years of the war, and those on the left for this book, in which good words are said about the American Enterprise Institute. For those of us more comfortable with the reality-based community, this is all to the good.

Furthermore, in a time of doom and gloom, the book made me feel surprisingly good about America. The Gamble demonstrates the dynamic learning capabilities of the U.S. military. America's armed forces did something that Ricks acknowledges to be extraordinary -- they regained the strategic initiative in Iraq after four years of being on the losing side of the conflict (the contrast with the British military's strategic stasis in southern Iraq is stark).

As a political scientist, it was also cheering to observe that many of the architects of the surge strategy*, from David Petraeus on down, acquired poli sci or international affairs degrees during their military service (Bill Rapp, one of Petraeus' key aides, was in my entering Ph.D. class at Stanford). Petraeus and Ray Odierno potentially find themselves in rarefied company -- in American military history, only George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Matthew Ridgway pulled off this kind of dramatic strategic change. 

I use the word "potentially" in the last paragraph because The Gamble left me vexed about the past and future counterfactuals about the surge strategy. As Marc asked yesterday, I kept wondering, "what if there had been no surge?"

The book implies in Chapter Seven that the outcome would have been disastrous for Iraq and for the United States in the region. That may well be true, but a fuller examination of all the possibilities would have been good to see. A realpolitik logic suggests that a withdrawal strategy might have served the United States equally well. Such a move would have dumped much of Iraq onto Iran's plate, transferring a strategic liability from the Washington to Tehran. The Sunni states bordering Iraq would have had little choice but to balance against Iran, pushing them further into America's arms. From a humanitarian perspective, this would have been a calamitous result, but from a geopolitical perspective, the United States would have saved itself significant amounts of blood and treasure. 

The future counterfactuals are equally vexing. The Gamble suggests that while Iraq is significantly less violent in 2009 than in 2006, it is more politically unstable. Here I will throw caution into the wind and part ways with both Tom Ricks and Marc Lynch -- the political situation strikes me as dramatically improved since 2006. Nouri-al Maliki is no Thomas Jefferson, but neither is he Nguyen Van Thieu. The new SOFA agreement clarifies the future relationship between the U.S. and Iraq. The recent provincial elections do not appear to have brought about an uptick in violence (though political assassination might be in vogue), nor have they improved Moqtada al-Sadr's fortunes. The Gamble's last chapter and epilogue suggests that Sadr is simply lying in wait, having infiltrated much of Iraq's security apparatus. I certainly can't refute that possibility, but it does suggest that Sadr possesses superhuman levels of patience for an aspiring political leader.

Isn't there an alternative possibility -- that Sadr miscalculated when he ceded the tactical advantage to government forces in Basra and Sadr City? If nothing else, the surge showed Iraqis the virtue of not resolving political questions through street fighting. Could this newfound appreciation for peace constrain the ability of Maliki challengers to return to insurgency tactics? Is it possible that significant political progress has been achieved since The Gamble was written?

The most troubling aspect of The Gamble, however, was the process through which the surge strategy became U.S. policy. On the one hand, a key factor was the electoral disaster that Republicans experienced during the 2006 midterm elections. This is a good thing -- it's nice to know that policy failures are still punished at the ballot box. 

On the other hand, the ways in which the architects of the surge got their way seems like an exact replay of how the architects of the invasion and initial occupation got their way -- operating through bureaucratic backchannels and endruns, ideologically simpatico think tanks, and -- of course -- Dick Cheney's office. For those of us who want the policymaking process to work, this looks like another fiasco. Petraeus's decision to co-opt the Sunni insurgents, for example, was made without consulting the president. Doesn't that echo J. Paul Bremer's disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi military without consultation? Petraeus, Odierno, and Jack Keane might have been right on the merits, but to get their way they bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CENTCOM commander, the State Department, and the NSC interagency process. The Gamble argues that these actors were impediments to the right strategy. All well and good, but what is to stop another cluster of bureaucratic "insurgents" from bypassing the chain of command and telling political leaders what they want to hear on, say, Afghanistan, North Korea or Iran? Is there a need for another, more ambitious version of Goldwater-Nichols?

A raft of books (cough, cough) are coming out about the failures of American policymakers to develop viable means of strategic policy planning.  The Gamble suggests that such failures are endemic to the American political system -- and that is the most sobering lesson of all.

*By surge, I am referring to the new counterinsurgency strategy, which included the turning of Sunni insurgents, a reduced emphasis on force protection, and the elevated levels of troops.

Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images 

by Christian Brose

2006 was a year that I'm not keen to relive. It was the year that everything finally fell apart for the Bush administration, a year from which it never fully recovered. And what's worse, 2006 really began in late summer 2005. That was when Iraq truly started to unravel, slowly at first, then with accelerating speed and ferocity in the early months of 2006 after al-Qaeda bombed the Golden Mosque in Samara.

The time after that seemed like an eternity, as Iraqi politicians dithered for months trying to form a government while their country imploded all around them. Everyday I would drag into the State Department, where I worked for Condoleezza Rice, to read the latest intel and press reports about U.S. troop losses and Iraqi civilians kidnapped, ethnically cleansed, blown apart, decapitated, and worse. Until that point, I never deluded myself that things in Iraq were good, but I always thought we'd pull out of it somehow. 2006 was when I first really started to think that we would literally be driven out in defeat.

It's hard to recapture the sense of hopelessness and horror that hung over that time. But thanks to Tom Ricks, much of those feelings came rushing back while reading his superb new book, The Gamble. Thankfully, so too did the improbable other feelings I associate with the surge, which in the interest of full disclosure I supported at the time as the least bad option we had. These are feelings not of triumph or victory per se, but of pulling out of the nosedive and knowing that the Iraq story was not over yet, for better or for worse.

Many reporters have put in the legwork, often at risk to their own lives, to help us understand events in Iraq, but few have done so with such thoroughness, thoughtfulness, and sympathy as Tom. The Gamble is the latest expression of this.

From its subtitle, one would think this is a book solely about General David Petraeus, but it is so much more than that. Through Tom's reporting, we are introduced to characters who did just as much to conceive and execute the surge, but who have mostly remained obscure -- the intrepid commanders who learned counterinsurgency the hard way before the surge ever happened, the think tank scholars who helped to change the policy in Washington, the brilliant warrior-intellectuals in Petraeus's inner circle, the oddball collection of foreigners who advised him, and the younger officers who made the whole thing work in Iraq's neighborhoods. Tom helpfully reminds us that the surge was not the work of one man.

From this, a few points stand out to me that might help to kick off our discussion:

1. General Jack Keane and the chain of command.

One of the remarkable subplots of The Gamble is how a retired general wakes up one day in fall 2006 and decides he's going to change U.S. policy in Iraq - and does. This story is amazing because it happened, but arguably more amazing because it had to happen. I don't know what exactly it says about the institutional U.S. military that the most important national security policy of the past 30 years had to be rescued from defeat by a retired general, some think tank scholars, and several dissident officers -- all operating largely outside and often in complete violation of the chain of command -- but whatever it is, it's not good. How could the biggest institution in America fail in this way? To me, there seem to be two explanations: one, the institutional military didn't believe it was failing in Iraq; or two, it recognized it was failing but there was no accountability to change. I don't know which is worse.

But this story is more problematic still. The policy for which Keane, Petraeus, Odierno, and others executed their flanking maneuver was a long shot, and it could have easily turned out the other way. And if it had, wouldn't the narrative of the surge, and likely the theme of Tom's book, be that this bucking of the sacred chain of command by a cabal of folks in and outside the military, including those neo-cons at AEI, is perhaps the most egregious example yet of the Bush administration's disregard for law and principle?

This is not to say they shouldn't have done it. And Tom allows that this whole enterprise was bordering on or even outright insubordination. It is just to ask whether we should be a bit more circumspect in our praise of the surge's origins -- and whether, in solving this problem by extreme measures, it made the larger problem of institutional failure worse. As Tom writes in another context, every victory has within it the seeds of new problems.

2. The transformation of General Odierno.

Tom addresses this question somewhat in the book and has elaborated on it further in his interviews, but it's worth raising here. After all, Tom portrayed Odierno as the villain in Fiasco, the personification of the U.S. military's worst heavy-handed tactics in support of a failed strategy in Iraq. Now Odierno reemerges as the hero, who has learned the lessons of counterinsurgency, who has as a key member of his staff a female British pacifist Middle East expert, and who arguably deserves pride of authorship for the surge as much as anyone else, Petraeus included.

Full disclosure, again: I know Odierno -- not well, but we traveled the world together when he was Condoleezza Rice's military advisor and I her chief speechwriter. I think highly of him. I'm comfortable with the simple, straightforward explanation -- that Odierno, being a smart commander and critical thinker, saw the flaws of the old approach and came around to the wisdom of counterinsurgency. It's probably true as well that the fact that his son was wounded fighting in Iraq strengthened Odierno's resolve to find a way to succeed and make all that sacrifice worth it in the end. What I'm still wondering, though, is how much Odierno learned counterinsurgency on his own as opposed to having these ideas fed to him by others, seeing their merit, and then implementing them.

3. The whole democracy thing.

Tom makes a lot of the fact that Petraeus and his crew lowered our goals in Iraq from democracy to "sustainable security," even while Bush and others continued to proclaim the former. Tom sees this "minimalist" approach as a higher realism that stands in stark and flattering contrast to Bush's messianic, faith-based policy. That the bulk of Petraeus' efforts focused on preventing the worst outcome in Iraq is undeniable, but I wonder whether the security vs. democracy dichotomy is a false one.

Perhaps a better way to think about the trade off, as Peter Feaver has suggested, is in terms of short-term and long-term goals. In fall 2006, the need to restore security was immediate and paramount. Without it, nothing else was possible. Thus the Bush administration and U.S. commanders focused their limited resources on merely stabilizing Iraq, and they ran some high but necessary risks to do so that didn't always support the cause of Iraqi democracy or its elected government in Baghdad. Foremost among these decisions was putting the Sunni insurgency on the U.S. payroll, a strategy that Tom's book makes clear took shape before the surge, was enabled and expanded by it, and was really the key event around which everything else fell in place.

But the emphasis on short-term security is not inconsistent with the long-term goal of supporting a democratic Iraq. Indeed, the surge salvaged that goal and kept it alive as a possibility. It created conditions for this story's other amazing transformation -- that of Iraq's Prime Minister Maliki -- from a risk-averse ruler totally beholden to sectarian interests to one increasingly serving national interests, expanding the writ of Iraq's democratic state, and taking on extremists of all stripes. It is largely because of this that Maliki's list did best of all in Iraq's recent provincial elections - a messy, fractious affair to be sure, but considering where Iraq was two years ago, a triumph, and another important benchmark that signals the slow emergence of democratic politics in Iraq.

4. Was it worth it?

Tom paints a pretty grim picture at the end of the book about the future of Iraq. Among the options he lays out are a return to authoritarianism (possibly with Maliki as its head), a military coup, civil war, and Iranian domination -- all the while with U.S. troops mired in the middle, in Tom's estimation, for many years to come. Still, he maintains throughout that the surge was the right policy. But believing what Tom does about Iraq's future, I'd think the logic of his argument would lead him to a different position -- that the surge just wasn't worth it.

Yes, it would have been bad to start leaving Iraq in 2007, especially with al-Qaeda still largely intact, but if all we'll get for our trouble is another Saddam or another civil war, wouldn't it have been better to pull the plug earlier? In short, if Iraq is largely doomed anyway -- if, as Tom says, "the surge worked militarily but failed politically," which is to say it failed, since war is just politics by other means -- why maintain that the surge was the right call?

These are all questions or quibbles with a gripping, outstanding book. But there is one deeper criticism I would make. In many ways, Tom has taken on an impossible task: He must recreate the sense of uncertainty that pervaded a policy, an enormous "gamble" as it were, that most people now accept has worked. When people know how the story ends, at least this chapter of it anyway, it's kind of hard to maintain the suspense.

And this is one thing that didn't feel quite right to me -- the sense of inevitability about it. The situation in Iraq too often feels like it is crying out for a counterinsurgency strategy with more troops, and the champions of the surge come off too neatly throughout as wise men battling political foolishness or military foot-dragging. Now, both are right -- in retrospect. And it is probably impossible to recover that absolute, terrifying uncertainty of what the United States was getting itself into with the surge -- how back then, there were serious and entirely legitimate debates over whether it was simply too late even to do the right thing, or whether to dump Maliki for an undemocratic solution led by someone like Ayad Allawi, or whether to consider something truly awful like the "80 percent solution."

Even in the hands of one of our best war correspondents, I think it is nearly impossible to recreate the psychology of the leap in the dark that was made in 2007. And that only makes this story, and the many people who brought it about, all the more remarkable.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

by Marc Lynch

The Gamble is perhaps the best of the rapidly proliferating crop of "Iraq surge" books.

While it shares the generally admiring tone for the architects of the surge common in such books, it maintains the critical vantage point which characterized Fiasco. It captures effectively the inherent tensions and limitations of the surge strategy, especially the tenuous relationship between security and political progress. It moves comfortably back and forth from the tough street fighting in Iraqi cities to the political battles in Washington DC. And its combination of skepticism and empathy allows it to offer a persuasive mixed verdict on the ultimate impact of the surge. 

The Gamble's main flaw is that it pulls back from the brink before fully grappling with the profound gap between its grim analytical conclusions about the surge and the author's clear admiration for the men who pulled it off. Ricks concludes that:

It is unclear in 2009 if he did much more than lengthen the war... Petraeus found tactical success -- that is, improved security -- but not the clear political breakthrough that would have meant unambiguous strategic success.  At the end of the surge, the fundamental political problems facing Iraq were the same ones as when it began." (p.9)  

But if that's the case, shouldn't that more fully shape the evaluation of those who pushed for and implemented the surge?     

Ricks has been coming under withering criticism from some on the Left for his conclusion that the United States will likely remain in Iraq for many years to come. This is ironic, because he arrives there in no small part because he agrees with many of the main Center-Left criticisms of the surge: that its tactical successes did not add up to a strategic victory, that security gains were not leading to political reconciliation, that the Awakenings risked fragmenting the Iraqi state. Ricks focuses with brutal precision on the never-resolved tension between the military successes of the surge and its political objectives. For all his admiration for the architects of the surge, his reporting and analysis largely vindicate the perspective of the skeptics -- and shows that many of those on the inside shared their concerns all along.

His characterization of the status quo is important because, to paraphrase The Gamble's most well-publicized tagline, the political battles for which this book may be remembered probably haven't happened yet. The Gamble should be essential reading for those anticipating Republican efforts to blame Obama for squandering the "success" of the surge if things go bad. Ricks shows clearly how fragile a situation the surge has left behind, and how few of the underlying political problems it resolved. This should deeply complicate the narrative on which the potential political attack would be based -- but should also remind those on the other side of how likely such backsliding may really be. Ricks makes clear that the constant warnings from Petraeus, Odierno, Crocker, and so many others of the fragility of the security gains were never just window-dressing. Ricks doesn't find many people on the inside claiming that the war is over, or that it has been won. That might not be convenient for those anxious for rapid withdrawals, but it does accurately reflect their views.

Is it possible to recognize the fragility of the situation in Iraq today and still advocate for early, significant troop withdrawals? Yes. The key is the contentious relationship between security gains and political reconciliation.  Advocates of the surge and of a "go slow" approach on troop withdrawals from Iraq have generally argued that security gains would lead to political reconciliation. 

I've argued repeatedly (see November's Foreign Affairs and in a January post on ForeignPolicy.com), that improved but unconditional security actually reduces the incentives for Iraqi politicians to make painful concessions (and hence the strategic importance of a credible commitment to withdrawal). Both sides of this great debate will find support in recent events. But it is striking to read General Ray Odierno musing to Ricks in December 2008 that:

"What we're finding is that as Iraq has become more secure, they've... moved backwards, in some cases, to their hardline positions." (p.296; for more skepticism about political reconciliation among the MNF-I brain trust, see 261-272). 

That's just as I warned. It's obviously not the last word on this crucial analytical and strategic argument -- but it should be sobering.  

Ricks also shows, as have many of the other recent Surge Books, that many in the Bush White House were fully aware by 2006 (at least) that its critics were right about conditions in Iraq even as it waged a scorched-earth political campaign against them in public. They may have bought short-term political support at the expense of their longer-term political credibility with the American public -- a classic example of tactical gains undermining the strategic objective.  After the dishonest rhetoric of 2005 and 2006, is it any wonder that claims of progress in 2007 met with such skepticism? Petraeus himself clearly recognized the dangers of such rhetoric; as Ricks reports, he "began keeping an eagle eye on the president's speeches, using their weekly video teleconferences to convey caution against inflating the rhetoric. He usually succeeded, but not always." (p.164)

Two major flaws do mar the book, for all its strengths. 

First is the near-complete absence of the Status of Forces Agreement, which Iraqis call the Withdrawal Agreement. The SOFA sets an end-date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, at December 31, 2011. It also sets a series of binding provisions for the behavior and deployment of U.S. troops in the interim, including returning American troops to the bases this summer and giving Iraqi political leaders say in authorizing operations. This is now a legal, binding requirement with obvious relevance for the future of America's role in Iraq. If a referendum set for this summer fails, the required American exit may be even quicker.

But to the best of my ability to discover, there is not a single mention of the SOFA or even the negotiations in the entire book. Ricks may feel that the United States will ignore these requirements, or that the Iraqis don't really mean it, or that they are a bad idea. But he makes no argument one way or the other, instead acting as if it simply doesn't exist. To the extent that this reflects the mindset among his key informants, that's a problem.  It's also baffling given the tremendous amount of MNF-I and the U.S. Embassy's time in 2008 which was spent on these negotiations.

Second is the near-complete absence of Iraqis. In 325 pages of text, I could find only ten pages which quoted an Iraqi of any description, and only two unmediated by an American military official. Page 41 quotes two average Iraqis, and p.45 quotes a Sunni member of Parliament and several ordinary Iraqis. Every other quote of an Iraqi which I could find involves an American officer's account or (occasionally) a newspaper account.

This is not unique to Ricks -- virtually all of the recent surge of books about the surge rely almost exclusively on American sources, and Ricks is far from the worst offender. This tells us something extremely important about the American media's approach to the war -- it's about America, as understood by Americans and as shaped by American actions. This renders the Iraqis themselves invisible, passive recipients of American policies or inscrutable obstacles to be overcome. What about their perceptions, their interests, their fears, or their expectations? What do they think about the implications of U.S. strategy or policy debates? It isn't like Iraqi politicians are difficult to speak to, whether in the Green Zone or on their frequent trips through Washington, DC.  

Finally, I would like to pose the question which rarely gets seriously addressed in this debate: what if there had been no surge?

None of the current crop of Surge Literature really grapples with this counter-factual, though Ricks comes the closest (see his chapter seven). Most simply assume the worst-case counter-factual, that without the surge Iraqi civil war would have escalated to genocide and the United States would have fled with tail between legs. But this is simply not a sure thing. By the time the surge brigades arrived in Iraq, the Sunni Awakening's turn against al-Qaeda had long since taken place (in the fall of 2006). The sectarian cleansing of Baghdad was far advanced (and continued through the surge). Moqtada al-Sadr's calculations vis a vis Iran, competing Shia groups, and the United States were already changing. Strategic exhaustion may already have been setting in. Had the Iraq Study Group been heeded, would Iraq today look much as it does now -- only with half the U.S. military presence and a much faster track towards political reconciliation?

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