LAT: U.S. Military Is Split on Insurgency Strategy

[Rose Siding]

HADITHA, Iraq — In the region around Qaim, a northwestern Iraqi town near the Syrian border, Marines are fanning out from their main base and moving into villages as part of a new strategy to root out insurgents who enter the country here.

The troops have set up 19 small base camps throughout the area and begun routinely patrolling insurgent hot spots north of the Euphrates River. The deployment follows a strategy favored by a new generation of counterinsurgency experts: disperse, mingle with the population and stay put.

But the shift comes as the Pentagon appears to be moving the overall U.S. military effort in the opposite direction across much of the country. Army units are being concentrated in "super bases" that line the spine of central Iraq, away from the urban centers where counterinsurgency operations take place.
.....
The idea behind the new campaign is to repeat the military's success last year in Tall Afar, where Army units cleared out insurgents and flooded the town with patrols and small-unit interactions with residents. Bush and others have touted the approach.

But not all military officials agree with the praise. Some senior Central Command officials have been dismissive of Tall Afar, telling military analysts and scholars recently that too much has been made of the success there. Duplication of that effort across Iraq would require many more U.S. troops than are available, they said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-insurgency13may13,0,4361395.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[PATRICK]

1. Catch-22 in effect

They just developed an effective policy, cop on the block so to speak, when the entire Bush plan calls for crusader castles and withdrawal of troops and smiting with weapons from afar. The embarrassment of having the counter policy actually achieving success cannot be tolerated. First they must insult and discredit, but no matter how the argument goes the policy and the execution is fixed(as was the pre-war intel) around the goals. You have to be somewhat in awe of inflexible focus like that, but focus is the prime active virtue of these Miltonic Satans.

On the other hand, the dutiful smart and highly trained strategists on the ground don't make policy, probably aren't allowed to "focus" because that would be competition. You have to feel for people taking their job seriously when the prime movers and controllers just want them to do things their way, no matter how evil and stupid- and then succeed. There is a lot of pathos in brilliant strategists trying to cure the common insurgency cold without taking into account the enmity of their own high command. Looking to the streets is not enough. There is someone else stabbing you in the back and it is not an Iraqi.