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Explaining McCain's Misunderstanding of the Surge
In his attempt to walk back his incorrect understanding of the history of the surge in Iraq John McCain has only made the situation worse. First, he misrepresented the basic facts of the history of the Anbar Awakening and how the surge began to Katie Couric on CBS News. The next day he followed it up by trying to redefine the word surge, even though he has consistently used that word to mean the increase of American troops starting in January of 2007.
MISTAKE #1: John McCain confuses surge timeline. Katie Couric asked McCain, "Sen. Obama says, while the increased number of
U.S. troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni
awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there
might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response
to that?" McCain responded, " I don't know how you respond to something that is
such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarland was
contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able
to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening.
I mean, that's just a matter of history." [CBS News, 7/22/08]
REALITY:
McCain's history is wrong,
according to Colonel McFarland.
the time, wrote an article detailing his first-hand experiences there in
starting the Awakening. The timeframe he discusses is
June 2006-February 2007. McFarland notes that the first surge troops were
just arriving as his men were leaving Anbar. McFarland was therefore not even
in Iraq when McCain places him there. [Military Review, March/April]
according to Petraeus Advisor Dave Kilcullen. "The uprising began
last year [2006], far out in western Anbar province, but is now affecting about
40% of the country. It has spread to Ninewa, Diyala, Babil, Salah-ad-Din,
Baghdad and - intriguingly - is filtering into Shi'a communities in the South.
The Iraqi government was in on it from the start; our Iraqi intelligence
colleagues predicted, well before we realized it, that Anbar was going to
"flip", with tribal leaders turning toward the government and away
from extremists." [Small War Journal, 8/29/07]
before the surge.
As Colin Kahl noted in Foreign Affairs, "The
Awakening began in Anbar Province more than a year before the surge and took
off in the summer and fall of 2006 in Ramadi and elsewhere, long before extra
U.S. forces started flowing into Iraq in February and March of 2007." [Foreign Affairs, July/August]
MISTAKE #2: John McCain claimed yesterday that when
he spoke about the "surge" he actually meant the counterinsurgency strategy -
changing a definition that he, the Bush Administration and the American public
have been using for the last 18 months
McCAIN:
... Prior to that they had been going into places, killing people or not
killing people, and then withdrawing. And the new counterinsurgency 'surge'
entailed going in, and clearing and holding, which Col. MacFarland had already
started doing. And then of course later on, there were additional troops. And
Gen. Petraeus has said that the surge would not have worked and the Anbar
Awakening would not have taken place -- successfully -- if they hadn't had an
increase in the number of troops. So, I'm not sure, frankly, that people really
understand, that a surge is part of a counterinsurgency strategy, which means
going in, clearing, holding, building, building a better life, providing
services to the people, and then, clearly, a part of that, an important part of
that, was additional troops to ensure the safety of the sheikhs, to regain
control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge continued
to succeed in that counterinsurgency.
REPORTER:
So when you say 'surge' then, you're not referring to just the one that
President Bush initiated, you're saying it goes back several months before that?
McCAIN:
Yes.
[John
McCain, 7/24/08]
REALITY:
In May, McCain defined the
surge as the troop increase - not the counterinsurgency strategy. This
has been his position all along.
that the U.S. has drawn down to pre-surge levels, McCain asserted that, "The
surge, we have drawn down from the surge and we will complete that drawdown to
the end -- at the end of July. That's just a factual statement." In these
statements, McCain asserts that the surge is coming to an end. However,
by McCain's most recent definition, this statement would also mean that
counterinsurgency strategy was over, which would be news to General Petraeus
and our troops in Iraq. [MSNBC, 5/30/08;
Democracy Arsenal, 7/23/08]
acknowledges that the surge began in 2007 and uses it to argue that he can
pursue a better strategy than George Bush did from 2003-2006. "John McCain has been a
leading advocate of the "surge" and the counterinsurgency strategy carried out
by General David Petraeus. At the end of 2006, four years of a badly conceived
military strategy that concentrated American troops on large bases brought us
near to the point of no return." Spencer Ackerman write "By conflating
the pre-2007 approach with the post-2007 approach...McCain completely messes up
his own argument for why he's better equipped to prosecute the war. Unless the
July 2008-era-McCain wants to argue that we really were succeeding in Iraq in
2005! (After all, that's when Bush unveiled the clear-hold-build-based "National
Strategy for Victory.") " [JohnMcCain.com.
Spencer Ackerman, 7/24/08]
John McCain's attempt to cover his
tracks simply by changing the definition of the word "surge,"
makes no sense.
on turning the Sunni tribes for months, well before the Surge was even a glimmer
in George Bush's eye. The Anbar Awakening initiative began in October of 2006
(and MacFarland had been working for months before that to convince the Sunnis
to switch sides). At the time, General George Casey--whom McCain has rightly
skewered--was in charge of MNF-I and he was no fan of counterinsurgency (coin)
tactics. If you really want to be technically correct--and who
doesn't?--Petraeus didn't really begin the implementation of coin tactics in
Baghdad until the Joint Security Stations were established in late Spring of
2007. (Remember how people like McCain were saying during the very bloody
months of May and June of 2007, "The surge has only just begun." He
was absolutely right about that.)" [Time, 7/23/08]