Operation IRAQI FREEDOM Key Decisions 

Monograph Series

DECISIONMAKING IN OPERATION IRAQI 

FREEDOM: THE STRATEGIC SHIFT OF 2007

Steven Metz

John R. Martin

Executive Editor

May 2010

Visit our website for other free publication

downloads

http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/

To rate this publication click here.

The views expressed in this report are those of the author 

and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of 

the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or 

the U.S. Government. Authors of Strategic Studies Institute 

(SSI) publications enjoy full academic freedom, provided 

they do not disclose classified information, jeopardize 

operations security, or misrepresent official U.S. policy. 

Such academic freedom empowers them to offer new and 

sometimes controversial perspectives in the interest of 

furthering debate on key issues. This report is cleared for 

public release; distribution is unlimited.

*****

This publication is subject to Title 17, United States Code, 

Sections 101 and 105. It is in the public domain and may not 

be copyrighted.
ii

*****

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be 

forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War 

College, 122 Forbes Ave, Carlisle, PA 17013-5244. 

*****

This monograph draws heavily on Steven Metz, Iraq and the 

Evolution of American Strategy (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 

2008). The author would like to thank John Martin, Peter Feaver, 

Alexander Cochran, Kelly Howard, and Meghan O’Sullivan for 

insightful suggestions. The monograph was much improved by 

their efforts and all shortcomings which remain are strictly those 

of the author. 

*****

All Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) publications are 

available on the SSI homepage for electronic dissemination free 

of charge. Hard copies of this report may also be ordered from 

our homepage free of charge. SSI’s homepage address is: www.

StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil.

*****

The Strategic Studies Institute publishes a monthly e-mail 

newsletter to update the national security community on the 

research of our analysts, recent and forthcoming publications, and 

upcoming conferences sponsored by the Institute. Each newsletter 

also provides a strategic commentary by one of our research 

analysts. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, please 

subscribe on our homepage at www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.

mil/newsletter/.
iii

*****

This monograph is the second in a series that discusses 

decisionmaking during the conduct of Operation IRAQI 

FREEDOM. The previous volume is:

1. Decisionmaking in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM: Removing 

Saddam Hussein by Force, by Dr. Steven Metz, March 2010.

ISBN 1-58487-441-4
iv

FOREWORD

In Volume 1 of the Operation IRAQI FREEDOM Key 

Decisions Monograph Series, Dr. Steven Metz skillfully 

studied the 2003 decision to go to war in Iraq. The results 

of that decision are widely called disastrous. In this 

second volume of the series, Dr. Metz looks carefully at 

the 2007 decision to surge forces into Iraq, a choice which 

is generally considered to have been effective in turning 

the tide of the war from potential disaster to possible—

perhaps probable—strategic success. Although numerous 

strategic decisions remain to be made as the U.S. military 

executes its “responsible withdrawal” from Iraq, Dr. 

Metz has encapsulated much of the entire war in these 

two monographs, describing both the start and what may 

eventually be seen as the beginning of the end of the war. 

In this volume, he provides readers with an explanation 

of how a decision process that was fundamentally 

unchanged—with essentially the same people shaping and 

making the decision—could produce such a different result 

in 2007. As the current administration tries to replicate the 

surge in Afghanistan, this monograph is especially timely 

and shows the perils of attempting to achieve success in one 

strategic situation by copying actions successfully taken in 

another where different conditions applied.

Subsequent volumes of this series will analyze 

intervening and subsequent decisions, but Dr. Metz’s 

two works have set a high standard for the succeeding 

monographs. I look forward to the needed debate that this 

volume and the others will generate.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, Jr.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute
v

PREFACE

Victory is still an option in Iraq.

Dr. Frederick Kagan1

The Strategic Shift of 2007.

By the time Fred Kagan penned the comment cited 

above, victory had already long been the wrong word 

to describe whatever outcome was going to befall 

the American adventure in Iraq. An argument can be 

made that victory—success against military foes in 

war—was an appropriate term in April 2003, when 

U.S. military forces deposed Saddam Hussein, but a 

military-only victory was far out of reach by 2007. The 

goal of victory articulated by Kagan and President 

George W. Bush perhaps still had merit in galvanizing 

public support of the war.2

 However, the better goal—

particularly by late 2006, when a virulent insurgency 

and sectarian violence were raging in Iraq’s cities—

was some semblance of strategic success, which would 

not come about purely by military action. That success 

would necessarily include a significant military 

component, but also required a broader approach 

that would support Iraq’s economic, political, and 

societal development. Just as victory over Adolf Hitler 

in World War II required the Marshall Plan to cement 

the achievements of combat in Europe, the “victory” 

of 2003 in Iraq would require by 2007 much more than 

just military force to produce conditions that would 

ultimately be helpful to advancing American interests 

in the Middle East.

The military component of the 2007 effort to achieve 

a positive result in Iraq became popularly known as 

“the surge.” In this second volume of the Strategic 
vi

Studies Institute’s Operation IRAQI FREEDOM Key 

Decisions Monograph Series, Dr. Steven Metz covers 

this critical decision in the Iraq war, but correctly 

posits that the surge was only part of a broad strategic 

shift that produced the success—still tenuous—of 2008 

and beyond. In doing so, Dr. Metz debunks some of 

the “surge triumphalism.” In this view, the surge was 

almost solely responsible for the improvements in 

security that enabled the emerging positive results in 

Iraq. General David Petraeus—the man whose name 

became synonymous with the surge—sees it differently. 

General Petraeus, who led the surge of troops into Iraq 

in 2007, freely admits that the success of the surge was 

due to a confluence of factors. Those factors include 

Iraqis tiring of both Sunni and Shi’a extremists, Iraqi 

Security Forces achieving at least limited capacity to 

provide security, and the U.S. military’s growth in 

tactical and operational prowess in counterinsurgency. 

Dr. Metz argues that a “perfect storm” of conditions, 

accompanied by “good thinking, good luck, and good 

timing,” were what allowed the success of the strategic 

shift that he describes. Dr. Metz may give short shrift 

to President George W. Bush’s resolve and to the skill 

that General Petraeus and other senior leaders brought 

to the surge—or the strategic shift—but he presents a 

solid case against using the surge as a model for future 

operations, including in Afghanistan. Without similar 

conditions—and good thinking, luck, and timing—

the surge of troops in Afghanistan may not produce 

anything like the positive strategic results that appear 

to be emerging in Iraq.

There are no easy fixes to the challenges identified 

by Dr. Metz, but his recommendations include:

• Be skeptical of basing force development and 

military strategy on the 2007-08 experience in 
vii

Iraq. Preparing to fight the last war may be the 

comfortable thing to do, but the situation will 

change and the enemy will adapt. Basing strategy and force development solely on how 

effectively the Army fought the counterinsurgency in Iraq is folly. At the same time, 

neglecting the lessons learned from Iraq would 

also be foolish.

• Use Army intellectual resources to lead a 

basic reconceptualization of the way the U.S. 

Government and American political leaders 

think about insurgency and counterinsurgency. Uniformed military leaders may have the 

right strategic thinking about insurgency and 

counterinsurgency. However, if their political 

leaders do not share that understanding—or 

refuse to accept military advice—future efforts 

at supporting allies in counterinsurgency efforts 

will be long and costly and may not produce 

desired results.

• Increase attention to strategic communication 

skills in leader selection and development 

programs. The development of military strategic 

leaders is an arcane art form, not a science. One 

of the talents needed in those leaders is the 

ability to communicate to broad audiences: 

to an indigenous population in the theater of 

operations, to international players providing 

support or coalition members, to the U.S. 

domestic audience. Even all these years after 

the Vietnam War, the U.S. military—especially 

at some of the most-senior levels—still remains 

wary of engagement with the media, which is 

essential for the strategic communication tasks. 

Although development of these skills will 

undoubtedly remain a challenge for years to 
viii

come, the task of identifying them in strategic 

leaders should not be so difficult. The ability 

to communicate on the strategic level must be 

considered when promoting general officers 

into the highest ranks.

• Develop a rapidly-deployable surge capacity 

for creating, training, and equipping local 

security forces. The recently-concluded 

Quadrennial Defense Review does not appear to 

include guidance to develop a separate force 

for this purpose, although it does suggest 

strengthening the ability of general purpose 

forces to do so.3

• Maintain the Army’s wartime adaptation 

speed. This recommendation should probably 

extend to the entire military, not just the Army, 

but the Army and the Marine Corps are the mostheavily engaged forces in Iraq and are probably 

adapting more rapidly than the other Services. 

Wartime acts as a catalyst for adaptation, so it 

may be unrealistic to expect that same speed 

to be maintained whenever the military finally 

encounters a peacetime situation.

• Lead an effort within the joint community 

to develop and institutionalize procedures 

for reseizing the strategic initiative. Future 

conflicts—like Iraq—may see the United States 

lose the strategic initiative. It only makes sense 

now to prepare in education and exercises for 

that eventuality.

One final recommendation from Dr. Metz is included 

in the body of his report: he recommends that Congress 

consider formal establishment of a strategic council 

comprised of the Service chiefs and the combatant 
ix

commanders. Strategic advice that comes from this 

council should represent both the needs of any 

conflict—provided by the combatant commanders—

and the requirements for the long-term health of the 

individual Services—more likely to originate with 

the Service chiefs. Advice to the President and to the 

Secretary of Defense should cover both perspectives.

The Key Decisions Series.4

The first and second volumes of the Strategic 

Studies Institute’s Operation IRAQI FREEDOM Key 

Decisions Monograph Series act as bookends for the 

series. The first covered the decision to go to war in 

Iraq, while this volume covers the decision that may 

ultimately be seen as leading to the end of the war. 

While one of the volumes (challenges of withdrawing 

from Iraq) will cover events that happened after the 

surge, all the other decisions happened within the 

time frame of the decision to go to war in 2003 and the 

decision to surge forces in 2007.

Authors in this series are asked to concentrate on 

the decisions more than on the subsequent effects. 

The effort should focus on identifying the factors 

that influenced the decision—either positively or 

negatively—and determining whether the factors were 

idiosyncratic or systemic in nature. That determination 

is key in devising solutions to problems or to reinforcing 

positive factors. Authors should answer six questions 

about their analyzed decision:

1. Who were the key decision makers?

2. Who shaped or influenced the decision?

3. What was the political and strategic context of 

the decision?
x

4. What options were considered?

5. What decisionmaking and analysis process was 

used?

6. What criteria were used to make the decision?

While the Strategic Studies Institute is willing to 

consider proposals for studies evaluating other key 

decisions, those already selected for analysis are:5

1. The decision in 2003 to go to war. (Status: 

complete.6)

2. The decision in 2002 and 2003 to plan for a war 

of liberation, minimum reconstruction, and rapid turnover to an Iraqi government. (Status: an author has 

been identified.)

3. The decision in 2003 to occupy the country rather 

than quickly returning sovereignty to Iraqis. (Status: 

an author has been identified.)

4. The decision in 2004 to focus on development of 

the Iraqi Security Forces. (Status: an author has been 

identified.)

5. The decision in 2004 and beyond to follow a 

strategy of transitioning the security responsibilities 

to the Iraqi government. (Status: the Strategic Studies 

Institute is still seeking an author.)

6. The decision in 2007 to “surge” forces into Iraq 

as part of a strategic shift. (Status: complete with this 

publication.)

7. The various decisions that made the fight “more 

interagency.” (Status: an author has been identified.)

8. The various decisions that affected the 

establishment and functioning of the government 

of Iraq. (Status: the Strategic Studies Institute is still 

seeking an author.)

9. The various decisions that affect the responsible 

drawdown of forces in 2009 and beyond. (Status: the 

Strategic Studies Institute is still seeking an author.)
xi

*****

While the decision to surge troops into Iraq in 

2007 is widely seen as a good choice, it still requires 

the careful examination that Dr. Metz brings to all 

his work. Without such meticulous study, the wise 

decision in a particular theater at a certain point in 

time may be misconstrued to be a solid solution for 

other theaters where very different conditions exist. 

The Strategic Studies Institute hopes that study of the 

good decision—at least as judged by the emerging 

results—to surge troops into Iraq in 2007 will generate 

just as much debate as study of the many poor ones 

made in this particular war. Better understanding—of 

both good and bad decisions—should lead to better 

choices in future operating environments.

JOHN R. MARTIN

Executive Editor

OIF Key Decisions Project

Strategic Studies Institute

ENDNOTES - PREFACE

1. Frederick W. Kagan, “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success 

in Iraq,” Phase I report of the Iraq Planning Group at the American 

Enterprise Institute, January 25, 2007, p. 1.

2. President Bush used the rhetoric of victory many 

times, doing so officially in National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, 

Washington, DC: National Security Council, November 2005.
xii

3. “Quadrennial Defense Review Report,” Washington, DC: 

U.S. Department of Defense, February 2010, p. 29.

4. A fuller explication of the OIF Key Decisions Monograph 

Series can be found in the preface to the first volume of the 

series. See Steven Metz, Decisionmaking in Operation Iraqi Freedom: 

Removing Saddam Hussein By Force, OIF Key Decisions Monograph 

Series, Vol. 1, Colonel (Retired) John R. Martin, Executive ed., 

Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 

February 2010, pp. v-xvii.

5. Procedures for submitting unsolicited manuscripts are found 

at the SSI website, available from www.strategicstudiesinstitute.

army.mil. Submissions for this series should be directed to SSI’s 

Director of Research, who will provide them to the series executive 

editor.

6. This decision was studied in the first volume of this series. 

See Metz.
xiii

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

STEVEN METZ is Chairman of the Regional Strategy 

Department and Research Professor of National 

Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute 

(SSI). He has been with SSI since 1993, previously 

serving as Henry L. Stimson Professor of Military 

Studies and SSI’s Director of Research. Dr. Metz has 

also been on the faculty of the Air War College, the 

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 

and several universities. He has been an advisor to 

political campaigns and elements of the intelligence 

community; served on national security policy task 

forces; testified in both houses of Congress; and spoken 

on military and security issues around the world. He 

is the author of more than 100 publications, including 

articles in journals such as Washington Quarterly, Joint 

Force Quarterly, The National Interest, Defence Studies, 

and Current History. Dr. Metz’s research has taken him 

to 30 countries, including Iraq immediately after the 

collapse of the Hussein regime. He currently serves 

on the RAND Corporation’s Insurgency Board. He is 

the author of Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy

and is working on a book entitled Strategic Shock: Eight 

Events That Changed American Security. Dr. Metz holds 

a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University.

JOHN R. MARTIN joined SSI in mid-2009 and 

is the Institute’s specialist in joint, interagency, 

intergovernmental, and multinational issues. Professor 

Martin previously served at SSI from 2000 to 2004, 

serving as the Chairman of the Art of War Department 

and concurrently as the Institute’s Deputy Director. 

Professor Martin was also a visiting professor at 

SSI in 2006 and 2007. Professor Martin served in the 
xiv

U.S. Army for over 31 years, retiring as a colonel. He 

served extensively in the Republic of Korea, primarily 

in tactical Aviation, but also with the United Nations 

Command Military Armistice Commission and as 

commander of a liaison team with the Republic 

of Korea Army. He also possesses considerable 

experience in Washington, DC, where he worked on 

Army force structure, manning the force, the RAH66 Comanche helicopter program, and providing 

language training. While in the Army, Professor Martin 

was operationally deployed to Guam (1975: Operation 

NEW LIFE), Kosovo (1999: Task Force Falcon), Bosnia 

(1999-2000: SFOR), Afghanistan (2002: CJTF-180) 

and Iraq (2003: ORHA/CPA; 2005: MNSTC-I; 2007: 

MNF-I). Professor Martin was the Executive Editor of 

Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience. This 

major government report by the Special Inspector 

General for Iraq Reconstruction was published in 

early 2009 and analyzed the reconstruction of Iraq 

since 2003. Professor Martin graduated with highest 

distinction from the College of Naval Command and 

Staff at the Naval War College, Newport, RI, in 1988. 

He is a 1996 graduate of the National War College and 

holds Master’s Degrees in National Security Affairs 

from both institutions. Professor Martin also holds a 

Master’s Degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the 

U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and is a graduate of 

the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, MD. 

He is a 1974 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at 

West Point, NY.
1

DECISIONMAKING IN OPERATION 

IRAQI FREEDOM:

THE STRATEGIC SHIFT OF 2007

As to whether the United States has made mistakes, 

of course, I’m sure, we have. You can’t be involved 

in something as big as the liberation of a country 

like Iraq and all that has happened since, and I’m 

sure there are things that we could have done 

differently. . . .

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice1

INTRODUCTION

When the Bush administration elected to invade 

Iraq in 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein from power, 

no senior policymaker anticipated that there would 

be extensive and protracted armed resistance after the 

dictator was gone.2 The administration assumed that 

the Iraqi bureaucracy and security forces—both military and police—would return to work once they had 

new leadership untainted by association with Hussein. 

But American policymakers did not understand how 

fragile and precarious Iraq was after decades of 

pathological rule. As Iraqi security forces disappeared, 

the nation collapsed into a spasm of looting and street 

crime. All administration and public order collapsed. 

It was “Lord of the Flies” on a monumental scale. 

Anarchy sparked public anger which gathered energy 

with each passing week. Personal and sectarian 

hostility, which had been suppressed by Hussein, 

raged unfettered. Revenge haunted the streets—and 

it was armed. For a brief interlude, little violence was 

directed against Americans. But that did not last long. 
2

Trouble first exploded in the restive city of Fallujah, 35 

miles west of Baghdad. The U.S. military had bypassed 

the city in its assault on Baghdad, but elements of the 

82d Airborne Division arrived in late April. Fallujah 

did not take kindly to occupation, and the 82d did not 

take kindly to occupation duty. Within a few days, a 

rally celebrating Saddam Hussein’s birthday led to 

angry denunciations of the U.S. presence and heated 

demands for withdrawal. Shooting broke out, leaving 

at least 13 Iraqis dead.3

 Two more died the next day 

in a second round of clashes. Attackers then tossed 

grenades into a U.S. Army compound. 

In early May, two American Soldiers were killed in 

Baghdad. A few weeks later, two more died during a 

nighttime attack on an Army checkpoint near Fallujah. 

Violence spread to Baghdad and the region west and 

north of the capital known as the “Sunni triangle.” 

The initial attacks were unsophisticated, but this 

soon changed as veteran soldiers unemployed by the 

disbanding of the Iraqi army joined in. Armed bands 

began to focus on isolated checkpoints and slowmoving convoys. They made greater use of rockets 

and mortars, allowing them to retreat and fight again 

rather than die en masse as the Saddam Fedayeen 

irregulars had in the March and April battles. Iraqis 

who worked for the Americans or were part of 

the new government and administrative structure 

became targets. Translators were among the favorites. 

Insurgents sabotaged the electrical grid, water system, 

and oil pipelines. Like their forebears in earlier 

insurgencies, Iraqi fighters seemed to understand that 

a country’s rulers—the Americans in this case—were 

blamed for the lack of water, electricity, and fuel even 

when the insurgents themselves were responsible. The 
3

greater public anger and frustration, the insurgents 

knew, the better for them.

Over the summer, a group of Hussein loyalists 

calling itself al-Awda (“the return”) made open overtures to Islamic militants linked to al Qaeda. There 

were reports of former regime officials recruiting 

foreign fighters. U.S. forces soon encountered Syrians, 

Saudis, Yemenis, Algerians, Lebanese, and Chechens, 

indicating that the international jihadist network, born 

in Afghanistan in the 1980s, was refocusing on Iraq. 

Insurgent leaders began paying unemployed Iraqi 

men with military and police training and criminals 

released from prison earlier in the year to kill American 

troops.

As early as June, some strategic analysts warned 

that the fighting constituted an organized guerrilla 

war. But U.S. officials rejected this idea. Secretary of 

Defense Donald Rumsfeld attributed the violence 

to “the remnants of the Ba’ath regime and Fedayeen 

death squads” and “foreign terrorists” who were 

“being dealt with in an orderly and forceful fashion by 

coalition forces.”4 As summer wore on, though, it was 

increasingly difficult to sustain that position. Finally, 

on July 16, General John Abizaid, commander of the 

U.S. Central Command, admitted that the United 

States faced “a classical guerrilla type campaign.” 

“It’s low-intensity conflict in our doctrinal terms,” 

he said, “but it’s war, however you describe it.”5 The 

optimism of a month earlier, the hope of a quick and 

relatively painless transition to a post-Hussein Iraq, 

was shattered. 

Initially the United States did not develop a 

comprehensive strategy for counterinsurgency support in Iraq, or a national strategy which explained 

the rationale for U.S. involvement and the ultimate 
4

political objectives.6 These only took shape during 

2004 and 2005 as the insurgency grew. The strategy 

stressed increasing the size and effectiveness of the 

Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and turning over responsibility to them as quickly as possible. This reflected 

a long-standing truth of counterinsurgency support: 

outsiders can influence the outcome, but only locals can 

determine it. Ultimately the Iraqis themselves had to 

defeat the insurgents. In fact, some U.S. military and 

civilian leaders were convinced that American military 

forces provoked hostility among the Iraqi people, 

and thus sought to minimize the U.S. role, keeping 

American troops off the streets as much as possible 

and limiting their contact with the population. 

This did not work. Creating a new ISF proved 

harder than expected. With few effective Iraqi security 

forces and not enough Americans to secure all of the 

country around the clock, the insurgency spread and 

mutated. Attacks became better coordinated and more 

sophisticated, particularly those using improvised 

explosive devices (IEDs) and vehicle borne improvised 

explosive devices (VBIED). Foreign extremists linked 

to al Qaeda, and under the leadership of the Jordanian 

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, began targeting Iraqi Shiites. 

Nineteenth century Russian revolutionaries used to 

assert “the worse, the better,” meaning that anything 

that eroded public order and trust in the government 

helped their cause. The Iraq insurgents put this into 

practice. Eventually Shiite militias began striking back. 

“By the summer of 2006,” journalist Linda Robinson 

wrote, “Baghdad was on fire. Sectarian violence was 

spilling into all-out civil war, and it swept up hundreds 

of thousands of Iraqis.”7

 The ISF, while improving, 

were overwhelmed and remained weak in key areas. 

Some units were simply dysfunctional. Others joined 
5

the sectarian violence, serving the government by day 

and sectarian militias by night. By the end of 2006, 

the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) grimly noted 

that, “Attack levels—both overall and in all specific 

measurable categories—were the highest on record 

during this reporting period. . . .”8

Then things began to turn. In January 2007, 

President George W. Bush announced a new approach 

in Iraq which increased the number of U.S. military 

forces, refocused them on population security, and 

redoubled reconstruction assistance and support to 

political reform. While the strategic shift experienced a 

rocky start—American casualties increased during the 

first half of 2007—Iraq eventually began to stabilize. 

By March 2009, the DoD reported that, “violence has 

dropped dramatically in the last 2 years, and normal 

life continues to return to the country.”9

 Today attacks 

continue, but there is precarious stability. The U.S. 

military is no longer involved in combat operations 

and soon will have only a training and advisory force in 

Iraq. That country’s future certainly remains unclear—

renewed sectarian violence or a revived insurgency are 

possible. However, Iraq at least has an opportunity.

The popular perception is that the strategic shift 

of 2007, which is often simply called “the surge,” 

snatched victory from imminent defeat. According to 

this thinking, the United States was implementing a 

flawed strategy but then had a burst of insight. As a 

result of the surge, “America won and al Qaeda, the 

Ba’athists, and the Iranians lost.”10 Reality is more 

complex. The strategy which had taken shape by 2005 

was appropriate for that time, given both conditions 

in Iraq and the wider strategic context. During 2006, 

though, the essential nature of the conflict changed, 

thus requiring a strategic shift to allow the United 
6

States and the Iraqi government to recapture the 

initiative. The strategic shift of 2007 succeeded 

through a combination of good thinking, good luck, 

and good timing. This monograph will explore the 

decisionmaking process that led to the strategic shift, 

drawing implications and recommendations for 

military involvement in strategy formulation.

THE DECISION

Political and Strategic Context.

Decisionmaking on national security is shaped not 

only by the particulars of a given issue, but also by the 

wider political and strategic context. During the Bush 

administration the “global war on terrorism” (GWOT) 

was the dominant contextual component or central 

organizing concept of American strategy. The Iraq 

conflict was understood and portrayed in relationship 

to this. The concern was not simply Iraq’s inherent

importance, but the symbolism of the conflict. The 

thinking was that America’s adversaries and partners 

would draw conclusions about the United States from 

the outcome in Iraq and act accordingly. An American 

defeat would embolden adversaries and frighten 

partners. Victory would have the opposite effect.11

By 2006, the Bush administration defined Iraq as 

the “central front” in the GWOT.12 “A failed Iraq,” 

President Bush stated in August 2006, “would make 

America less secure. A failed Iraq in the heart of the 

Middle East will provide safe haven for terrorists and 

extremists. It will embolden those who are trying to 

thwart the ambitions of reformers. In this case, it 

would give the terrorists and extremists an additional 

tool besides safe haven, and that is revenue from oil 
7

sales.”13 Building on this, the Bush strategy in Iraq, 

like all strategies, reflected a series of assumptions:

• The conflict in Iraq was a component of the 

global struggle between Islamic “moderates” 

(defined as those friendly to the United States 

who sought democracy) and “extremists” 

pursuing Taliban-style theocracies, in essence a 

struggle between freedom and its enemies;14

• The objective of al Qaeda and its affiliates was 

the downfall of the United States;

• Al Qaeda and its affiliates were interested in Iraq 

as a sanctuary and resource for the next stage 

of their offensive against America. Hence, Iraq 

was important because al Qaeda considered it 

important.

Unintentionally, this perspective allowed al Qaeda 

to define the conflict in Iraq. The United States was 

compelled to undertake counterinsurgency support 

not because it wanted to, but because al Qaeda—

America’s arch-enemy—had instigated insurgency. 

The problem was that insurgency is a type of conflict 

that avoids America’s strengths and exploits its 

weaknesses. Insurgency is, for instance, protracted 

and costly, often with ambiguous outcomes. 

Americans favor (and are good at) short conflicts with 

decisive results. Counterinsurgency lacks moral clarity 

since the regime which the United States supports 

is, by definition, deeply flawed. It may be corrupt, 

repressive, unrepresentative, fragmented, or simply 

ineffective. This makes it difficult to sustain the public 

and congressional support needed for long-term 

involvement. Because of this, Presidents committed 

to counterinsurgency support emphasize the strategic 

stakes, warning of the great costs and risks of defeat 
8

(and defining defeat as the failure to decisively defeat 

the insurgents). In Vietnam, the Johnson administration 

portrayed a communist victory as the beginning of 

communist control of all of Southeast Asia. In Iraq, 

the Bush administration stated that insurgent success 

would provide al Qaeda the type of victory that would 

make it a much more dangerous enemy. By portraying 

the stakes as expansive and dire, the United States 

becomes firmly committed to the regime facing an 

insurgency. While necessary from the perspective 

of domestic politics, this ties a President’s hands. It 

diminishes his influence over the allied regime and 

“hardens” the issue, leaving little flexibility in defining 

or adjusting ultimate objectives. 

That is precisely what happened in Iraq. To bolster 

support for American involvement in the conflict, the 

Bush administration portrayed a failure to do so as 

catastrophic, linking the survival of the Iraqi regime 

directly to American security. “The worst mistake 

would be,” according to President Bush, “to think 

that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us 

alone. They will not leave us alone. They will follow 

us. The safety of America depends on the outcome of 

the battle in the streets of Baghdad.”15 The security of 

the American homeland, in other words, depended 

on the counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq. As the 

debate unfolded, this took any serious reconsideration of strategic objectives off the table. Only the 

ways and means of the strategy were open for 

discussion. 

There was more opposition to the strategic shift 

of 2007 than any of the other key decisions that 

framed Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. Congressional 

resistance emerged early. In November 2005, the 

late Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), a veteran 

with a pro-military reputation, introduced House 
9

Joint Resolution 73 calling for the withdrawal of 

American troops. Murtha, according to Peter Feaver, 

“was advocating the wholesale abandonment of 

Iraq.”16 A July 2006 letter to President Bush from 12 

leading congressional Democrats asserted that “your 

Administration lacks a coherent strategy to stabilize 

Iraq and achieve victory” and “simply staying the 

course in Iraq is not working.”17 In 2006, the House 

of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution 

calling for a withdrawal deadline. But congressional 

opposition was thwarted—at least temporarily—by 

President Bush’s success in portraying the conflict 

as part of the struggle against al Qaeda, and in 

popularizing the notion that opposition to American 

involvement was tantamount to being opposed 

to the American forces fighting the war. But this 

simply bought time. Bush understood that Congress 

eventually would end U.S. involvement in Iraq if the 

conflict did not turn around. After all, it was Congress 

that had forced American disengagement from an 

earlier counterinsurgency campaign in Vietnam. There 

was, then, a closing window of opportunity.

Meanwhile, the public was bitterly divided. With 

the Internet, 24-hour cable news, and talk radio 

inflaming passions, Iraq became the most divisive 

partisan issue in modern American politics, surpassing 

even Vietnam.18 With Iraq a major factor, President 

Bush’s approval rating plummeted.19 But as often 

happens, the President facing an unpopular war—

Lincoln and the Civil War, Truman and Korea, Johnson 

and Vietnam—could not simply abandon it, whether 

out of concern for the wider damage to American 

prestige and security or with personal legacy. Like those 

earlier unpopular wars, the goal in Iraq became finding 

an attainable form of success even if it did not match 
10

the initial lofty goals. This interplay of strategy and 

politics reflected a deep tradition. Americans consistently blend strategy, public opinion, and electoral 

considerations. More than most other democracies, 

the United States considers national security a valid 

topic for partisanship. Politics and strategy are not 

simply linked—they are indistinguishable. Because 

the public has a role in shaping national security 

strategy but has a very shallow understanding of it, 

issues are simplified, painted in stark black and white. 

Information profusion adds to this, making nuance 

or compromise difficult, if not impossible. Political 

discourse and strategic debates often become a clash 

of opposing caricatures. 

As the 2006 mid-term elections approached, 

Democrats recognized that Iraq was the greatest 

vulnerability of President Bush and, by default, Republicans in general, so they made it the centerpiece of their 

campaigns. Republican (“Grand Old Party” [GOP]) 

candidates were in a bind: President Bush—the leader 

of their party—had staked his reputation and his 

legacy on an increasingly unpopular conflict. “Senior 

Republican strategists said they told candidates to 

avoid talking about the war, and even to distance 

themselves from it, and urged the White House to 

change its approach, at least through November,” the 

New York Times reported. “But that strategy was 

undercut by Mr. Bush and Mr. Dick Cheney, who 

kept making the case for victory in forum after 

forum, ensuring that the issue remained in public 

view.”20 That October 2006 was the deadliest month 

for American troops since 2004 made it even worse.

The November 2006 election led to a tremendous 

victory for the Democrats as they won control of both 

houses of Congress. The message was clear. As Senator 
11

Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) put it on election day, 

“Today is really a referendum on President Bush’s 

handling of the war in Iraq.”21 Support was even 

weakening within the GOP. A month before the 

election Senator John W. Warner (R-VA), chairman of 

the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that the 

United States should consider a “change of course” 

if the violence in Iraq continued to escalate.22 A few 

weeks after the election, Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) 

wrote that, “The United States must begin planning 

for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. The cost 

of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars 

and world standing has been devastating.”23 Even 

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in a November 

6 memo later leaked to the press, admitted that “what 

U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working 

well enough or fast enough.”24

In a post-election news conference, President Bush 

indicated his willingness to consider new options and 

work with the Democratic leadership in Congress, 

but again refused to contemplate withdrawal or set a 

date for it. He continued to portray the options in Iraq 

in stark terms, as victory or catastrophic defeat. Like 

Abraham Lincoln in the first 3 years of the Civil War, 

Bush was inflexible on broad strategic objectives but 

flexible on tactics, operational methods, force levels 

and, eventually, personnel. The day after the 2006 

election, he announced that Secretary Rumsfeld, who 

had been the primary architect of American strategy 

in Iraq since the decision to remove Saddam Hussein 

by force, would be replaced by Robert Gates, former 

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 

President Bush also launched a sweeping formal 

review of Iraq policy across his administration to 

build on several informal reviews which were already 
12

underway.25 The stage appeared set for a dramatic shift 

in America’s Iraq strategy.

Mounting stress on the U.S. military, particularly 

the Army and Marine Corps, also influenced the 

decisionmaking. Like the decline in public and congressional support, this added to the notion that a 

clock was ticking, that the opportunity to turn things 

around in Iraq was fleeting. Pressure on the ground 

forces increased as soon as the insurgency emerged. 

Neither the Army nor the Marine Corps were configured for large scale, protracted counterinsurgency. A 

decade of defense transformation had created a force 

optimized for intense, short-duration operations, not 

stabilization or counterinsurgency.26 The U.S. military 

was like a finely-trained sprinter suddenly entered 

in a marathon. In September 2003, the Congressional 

Budget Office (CBO) published a widely-discussed 

report that questioned the ability of the Army to sustain 

its rotation in Iraq after March 2004 without extending tours beyond 1 year.27 Doing so could adversely 

affect recruitment and retention, potentially forcing 

service leaders to compromise on the quality of people 

who entered the military, and to spend additional 

funds keeping those they had. The CBO warning 

proved false—the Army did find a way to sustain its 

commitment. But the costs were real and seemed likely 

to mount as the insurgency dragged on.

Critics contended that at its existing size, the Army 

could not undertake protracted large-scale stabilization 

operations, continue transformation, perform its other 

worldwide missions, and sustain the quality of its 

troops, leaders, and equipment.28 The only solution, 

they felt, was increasing the overall size of the American 

military, particularly the ground forces.29 Congress, 

eager to demonstrate its seriousness in the war on 
13

terrorism, jumped on board.30 Secretary Rumsfeld 

resisted, arguing that additional troops would draw 

resources from the ongoing defense transformation 

that he badly wanted. “The real problem,” he wrote, 

“is not necessarily the size of our active and reserve 

military components, per se, but rather how forces 

have been managed, and the mix of capabilities at our 

disposal.”31

In 2004, the Army again extended the tours of 

some units in Iraq, returned others more quickly 

than planned, and began exploring other unpleasant 

measures such as shorter leaves. At that time General 

Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff, admitted 

that Iraq was “stressing” the Army but advised that 

he could support at least 3 more years at existing 

deployment levels without an overall force increase.32

Trouble, though, lay ahead. “What keeps me awake at 

night,” General Richard Cody, the Army Vice Chief 

of Staff, told Congress, “is what will this all-volunteer 

force look like in 2007.”33 The word “hollow,” which 

was used to describe the weakened, post-Vietnam 

Army, reappeared.34 By 2006 General Schoomaker 

grimly warned that the active duty Army “will break” 

under the strain of repeated rotations into Iraq and 

Afghanistan.35 In 2007, Admiral Michael Mullen, the 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), expressed 

concern that deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan 

left the Army and Marine Corps unprepared for large 

scale conventional warfare.36

The final—and most important—contextual component framing the strategic shift of 2007 was the 

decaying security situation in Iraq itself.37 Violence was 

endemic and paralyzing. Large parts of the country had 

minimal or no government control. The Iraqi security 

forces were expanding in size and effectiveness, but 
14

were still far from capable of securing the nation. There 

was no indication that this was about to change. 

Decisionmakers.

Because President Bush saw the GWOT as the 

preeminent task of his administration and Iraq as its 

central battlefield, he made the key strategic decisions 

himself. This reflects the long-standing tradition of 

American Presidents: the more important an issue, the 

more they directly make key decisions. To the extent 

that President Bush delegated responsibility for Iraq 

strategy, the most influential officials were Secretary 

Rumsfeld; General John Abizaid, commander of the 

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM); and General 

George Casey, commander of Multi-National ForceIraq (MNF-I). President Bush consulted regularly 

with his field commanders, but the focus appears to 

have been on operational level questions rather than 

broad strategic issues. He did regularly ask them if 

the United States should be doing things differently in 

Iraq. But there is no record of the President consulting 

uniformed leaders on whether the counterinsurgency 

effort or the commitment to the Iraqi government was 

appropriate. 

Bush’s claims that he always deferred to military 

advice was not wholly accurate if the reports of 

journalists are correct. Bob Woodward, for instance, 

describes a “simmering private battle” between 

President Bush and General Casey that had emerged 

by 2006, stemming largely from the President’s focus 

on insurgent casualties (which smacked of the “body 

count” mentality in Vietnam.)38 By necessity, contact 

between the President and his military commanders 

was regular—particularly compared to those in the 
15

Clinton administration—but not daily. With the 

exception of general officers who served as National 

Security Adviser (Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell), 

it is always difficult for those in uniform to form and 

sustain a close personal relationship with the President.

The Process. 

Until the second half of 2006, President Bush 

deferred to Rumsfeld’s insistence that a rapid transition 

to Iraqi security forces and a shift of the American 

role to support and training was most viable. Bush 

set the broad, overarching objectives and then tasked 

others to find ways to attain them. The issue—and 

it is a persistent one in American strategy—was the 

extent of presidential involvement in strategy. Both 

micromanagement and detachment from strategy 

making by a President create problems. The key is 

finding the appropriate balance. Until 2006, though, 

President Bush leaned toward detachment and 

delegation. Bing West—never one to mince words—

contends that, “Bush had recused himself from strategy 

as well as tactics. . . .”39 The result was a dissonance 

between Secretary Rumsfeld’s approach to Iraq and 

President Bush’s stated objective which persisted for 

several years. This led to confusing strategic guidance 

for the military commanders. As journalists David 

Cloud and Greg Jaffe explain:

Bush had told himself he would not micromanage his 

generals, the way Lyndon Johnson had done. Just as 

some parts of the Army had vowed never to refight 

Vietnam, so too had the president. But Bush took his 

own maxim to the extreme, leaving his commanders 

without any real instructions except for the advice 

they got from Rumsfeld. While the president was 
16

insisting that the United States was in a life-or-death 

struggle to change the Middle East, Rumsfeld was 

essentially telling his top commander [Casey] that he 

shouldn’t try too hard.40

This dissonance became starker as the security 

situation in Iraq eroded. Three major combined

U.S.-Iraq operations to stabilize Baghdad in 2006—

Operations SCALES OF JUSTICE, TOGETHER 

FORWARD, and TOGETHER FORWARD II—could 

not stem the violence.41 When U.S. forces moved into a 

neighborhood, violence dropped, but always resumed 

when they moved out. The ISF were simply unable or 

unwilling to hold the cleared areas, much less build 

sustained security. It was clear by the summer of 2006 

that the United States was not on track for victory as 

President Bush described it.

When the United States undertakes protracted 

counterinsurgency, stabilization, or peacekeeping 

operations, it must tailor its strategy both to attain 

national objectives and sustain support for the effort. 

The American public has a limited tolerance for U.S. 

casualties when it questions the importance of a 

conflict.42 The problem for the Bush administration 

was that its primary rationale for involvement in 

Iraq—that al Qaeda had deemed it important, and that 

fighting extremists there meant that we did not have to 

fight them here—simply did not take full root outside 

the political right. To preserve the increasingly fragile 

public and congressional support for involvement, the 

Bush administration needed a strategy which would 

minimize American casualties. But this detracted from 

mission effectiveness. As historian Kimberly Kagan 

describes it:
17

In 2006, the overwhelming majority of American 

combat forces had been concentrated on FOBs 

(forward operating bases), from which they 

reinforced Iraqi Security Forces and conducted 

patrols in violent areas. U.S. military operations 

tended to be reactive rather than proactive, episodic 

rather than sustained. The insufficiently trained and 

equipped Iraqi Security Forces had been pushed 

prematurely into the fight. Rather than conducting 

counterinsurgency operations they often relied on 

ineffective checkpoints. As a result, security ebbed 

and flowed throughout neighborhoods and towns 

but was rarely lasting, and the presence of Coalition 

Forces provided little sense of security for Iraqi 

civilians.43

As always, American strategy unfolded in a politicallycharged environment with what Carl von Clausewitz, 

the esteemed theorist of war, considered the “rational” 

dimension—using force to attain political ends—

intermixed with the emotions of public opinion, much 

of it based on limited information and understanding. 

History demonstrates that when an outside 

power undertakes counterinsurgency support, the 

effectiveness of the partner government rather than 

the strategy of the outsider is the ultimate determinant 

of success. But in Iraq, there were deep questions 

about the willingness and ability of the inexperienced 

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his key 

advisers to control the sectarian violence which had, 

by 2006, surpassed the insurgency in intensity and 

destructiveness. General Casey and U.S. Ambassador 

Zalmay Khalilzad devoted extensive time to helping 

Maliki understand the role of a national leader in the 

face of an insurgency. But after a visit to Iraq, National 

Security Adviser Stephen Hadley noted that Maliki 
18

offered “reassuring words,” but was either secretly 

empowering “an aggressive push to consolidate Shia 

power and influence” or was “ignorant of what was 

going on.”44 Testimony by Air Force General Michael 

Hayden, Director of the CIA, to the Iraq Study 

Group—a blue ribbon commission created by Congress as a source of fresh ideas—painted a depressingly bleak picture.45 It was increasingly clear that 

without significant change, the Democrats would use 

their control of Congress to force disengagement.

“Although Bush knew the strategy in Iraq was in 

trouble,” Bing West wrote, “he didn’t know what to do 

about it.”46 In a June 2006 Camp David strategy session, 

Rumsfeld, who still dominated strategy making at that 

point, continued to advocate a more rapid transition 

to the ISF.47 He alone among the administration’s key 

figures had an overarching theory of American global 

military strategy. The problem was that it was based 

on quick, decisive applications of high-tech military 

power, and the Iraq insurgency did not fit within it. 

Participating by video conference, General Casey 

advised President Bush that he had adequate forces to 

train the Iraqis and put them in the lead, but not to 

hold the cities.48 He continued to advocate accelerated 

transition from U.S. to Iraqi military operations. The 

meeting thus left President Bush where he began—

with key advisers advocating continuity in the face of 

eroding security. No one could explain why continuing 

to do the same thing would lead to different results. 

Following the Camp David meeting, the search for 

new ideas intensified. On the President’s instructions, 

General Peter Pace, Chairman of the JCS, began a 

review, relying on a team of veteran colonels. The 

National Security Council (NSC) instigated its own 

internal assessment led by Meghan O’Sullivan. Stephen 
19

Hadley had begun to believe that an increase in 

American troops might be the only way to synchronize 

the strategy with the President’s objectives, but he also 

knew that Rumsfeld and the uniformed military leaders 

opposed the idea. Hence he instructed William Luti 

of the NSC staff—a former Navy officer with a Ph.D. 

from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy—to 

assess the feasibility of a troop buildup, but to do so 

without DoD involvement.49

The Democratic victory in the November election 

added urgency to the search for a new strategy while 

the resignation of Secretary Rumsfeld immediately 

afterwards removed one of the obstacles to major 

change. Altering the Iraq strategy was both imperative 

and possible. In November and December, the NSC 

launched a formal interagency strategy review led by 

Deputy National Security Adviser J. D. Crouch. By 

December it was clear that the President was leaning 

toward a troop increase and a shift in mission, but he 

had not made his final decision. On December 13, 2006, 

President Bush and Vice President Cheney met the JCS 

to solicit their input. While the service chiefs were not 

enthusiastic about a troop increase, Bush assuaged the 

concerns of General Schoomaker, the Army Chief of 

Staff, and General James Conway, the Marine Corps 

Commandant, by supporting an increase in the size of 

the land forces (which Rumsfeld had opposed).50

The questions then were, what should the size of 

the troop increase be, and what to do with them. Pace 

and Casey recommended a surge of two Army brigade 

combat teams and two Marine battalions, with most of 

the new forces dedicated to training and advising the 

Iraqis.51 But President Bush approved the maximum 

increase that the Pentagon said it could support—five 

brigades—and, importantly, using them for popula- 
20

tion security rather than simply training and advising. 

In a January 10, 2007, press conference, he explained:

It is clear we need to change our strategy in Iraq. 

. . . I’ve committed more than 20,000 additional 

American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of 

them—five brigades—will be deployed to Baghdad. 

These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and 

be embedded in their formations. Our troops will 

have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and 

secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local 

population, and to help ensure the Iraqi forces left 

behind are capable of providing the security that 

Baghdad needs.52

Thus was born what became popularly known as “the 

surge.”

Decision Shapers. 

All strategic decisions have “shapers” both 

inside the government and outside it. Two types of 

outsiders were important for the strategic shift of 

2007: counterinsurgency experts and policy analysts. 

The community of experts, although small, played an 

important role because the U.S. military, the intelligence community, and other government agencies had 

largely abandoned and forgotten counterinsurgency 

after the end of the Cold War. The experts, most in the 

professional military educational system and various 

Washington research institutes, drew on history to 

spark the relearning process. For instance, Dr. Kalev 

Sepp, a former U.S. Army Special Forces officer and 

veteran of the counterinsurgency campaign in El 

Salvador who was serving on the faculty of the Naval 

Postgraduate School, became an adviser to General 

Casey and penned an article on counterinsurgency 
21

“best practices” which helped shape thinking across 

the Army.53 Bruce Hoffman and his colleagues at the 

RAND Corporation reminded political leaders and 

strategists of counterinsurgency’s historical lessons.54

Experts who had cut their teeth during the Cold War 

were joined by younger thinkers inside the military. 

Most important were Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, 

whose book on counterinsurgency in Malaya and 

Vietnam was widely touted within the U.S. military; 

and Australian Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, 

who advised General David Petraeus, Casey’s 

replacement as the U.S. commander in Iraq, and who 

wrote widely on counterinsurgency.55

One of the most important contributions from the 

community of experts was a 2005 article in Foreign 

Affairs by Andrew Krepinevich, president of the 

Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis.56

Krepinevich, a Ph.D. and former U.S. Army officer, 

was one of the original conceptualizers of the 

“revolution in military affairs” during the 1990s and 

thus understood Secretary Rumsfeld’s notion of 

defense transformation—a phrase Krepinevich helped 

coin while serving on the National Defense Panel.57

But having written an influential book on the U.S. 

Army’s performance in Vietnam, he also understood 

counterinsurgency.58 His article argued that simply 

“killing insurgents” did not reflect “the principles of 

counterinsurgency warfare.” Instead, Krepinevich 

wrote, the U.S. military should “concentrate on 

providing security and opportunity to the Iraqi people, 

thereby denying insurgents the popular support they 

need.”59

The emphasis on population security reflected 

the long-standing notion in counterinsurgency 

strategy—derived primarily from the British and 

French experience fighting communist and nationalist 
22

insurgencies in the 20th century—that separating the 

insurgents from the population is crucial. Insurgents 

require at least the acquiescence of the population and 

prefer active support in terms of information, sanctuary, recruits, and funds. In many insurgencies, 

the rebels force the population to provide these. 

This position, in other words, assumes that little of 

the population willingly supports the insurgents, 

but is compelled to do so. If security forces protect 

the population from the insurgents, the support 

dries up. In fact, the population will actively begin 

to support the government, most importantly by 

providing information about the insurgents. From this 

perspective, population security is not an alternative 

to offensive operations against the insurgents, but is a 

vital part of them. 

As Krepinevich and other counterinsurgency 

experts explained, the primary method for protecting 

the population was what French counterinsurgency 

experts during the Cold War called the “oil spot” 

technique in which selected areas were first cleared 

of insurgents and fully secured, then expanded. This 

was the inspiration for the “hold” component of the 

“clear/hold/build” approach which President Bush 

eventually adopted.

The wider community of policy analysts, 

commentators, and pundits helped shape the decision 

environment by providing intellectual ammunition 

both for the Bush administration and its critics. Those 

on the political left contended that the Bush strategy 

was fatally flawed and thus advocated either immediate or rapid withdrawal from Iraq. The most impor–

tant of these were former Pentagon official Lawrence 

Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American 

Progress; and Steven Simon of the Council on Foreign 

Relations.60 A few realist thinkers like Zbigniew 
23

Brzeziński, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security 

Adviser; and retired Lieutenant General William 

Odom, director of the National Security Agency 

during the Reagan administration, also advocated 

disengagement, basing their arguments on the conten–

tion that the strategic costs of continued involvement 

outweighed the expected strategic benefits.61

Because of its senior participants and bipartisan 

composition, the Iraq Study Group attracted the most 

attention among the outside groups.62 Opponents 

of U.S. involvement in Iraq hoped the Study Group 

would win over some of the Bush administration’s 

less committed supporters to their position. The 

administration itself initially believed the Study Group 

would bolster its position but eventually recognized 

that this would not happen. The group’s final report—

released in December 2006—advocated withdrawal 

with the minimum strategic damage rather than 

decisive victory. While President Bush indicated that 

he would seriously consider the study group’s advice, 

he did not adopt its major recommendations such 

as a diplomatic initiative to engage Iran and Syria, 

and linking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the one 

in Iraq.63 Still, the study group’s criticism of existing 

strategy must have influenced Bush’s thinking. It was 

one thing when the political left criticized the war; that 

criticism the administration could disregard. It was 

something altogether different when esteemed experts 

and experienced leaders from across the political 

spectrum did so. This probably made President Bush 

more amenable to high risk options since increasing 

the U.S. troop presence soon would be politically 

infeasible. In strategy, negative trends often increase 

the risk tolerance of decisionmakers. 
24

Meanwhile, the political right worked to maintain 

public and congressional support for the Bush 

strategy. While the noisiest components—like talk 

radio and cable news pundits—focused on the mass 

public, the most important was a group of experts 

associated with the American Enterprise Institute 

(AEI), particularly military scholar Frederick Kagan 

and retired U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff General 

John Keane. Keane’s involvement was important. In 

a September 2006 meeting with Secretary Rumsfeld 

and a December meeting with President Bush, Keane 

argued that there was a serious gap between the 

President’s declared goal of decisive victory and the 

way the U.S. military was being employed in Iraq.64 He 

was realistic that there would be a short-term spike in 

casualties with the increased numbers of troops and 

the new approach, but believed that was a necessary 

price of long-term success.65 That this came from a very 

experienced military officer showed that there were 

multiple positions even among military experts—

something that Rumsfeld had kept hidden by ensuring 

that he and the uniformed senior leaders spoke with 

one voice. Since Keane was retired, he could be brutally 

frank. In all likelihood, President Bush had not heard 

senior military leaders warning of outright defeat or 

advocating a politically unpopular troop increase 

while Rumsfeld controlled the flow of information. 

In the autumn of 2006, Keane and Kagan led an AEI 

study group which eventually advocated a major troop 

increase and a shift in mission to population security 

and controlling the sectarian violence in Baghdad.66

Unless this was done, the group’s report contended, 

it was impossible to train and advise the ISF or crush 

al Qaeda. This approach had profound implications. It 

would not only add a new task—quelling Iraq’s civil 
25

war—but would also reshuffle the priorities among 

existing missions. The key was population security. 

While experts long argued that this was the centerpiece 

of counterinsurgency, and U.S. military doctrine 

codified the idea, American strategy in Iraq did not 

reflect it. Instead, it delegated population security 

to the ISF, which were unable or unwilling to do it.67

Thus, the AEI group concluded, U.S. strategy was at 

variance with U.S. doctrine. It went on to suggest both 

how additional troops should be employed and how 

the military might make them available. While the AEI 

report did not lead President Bush in new directions, 

it made him aware of the feasibility of a surge, despite 

less enthusiasm from the Pentagon or CENTCOM 

(both of which were convinced that a troop increase 

would have a tactical effect but not a strategic one 

without a parallel effort to translate improved security 

into political gains). As with the initial development 

of American nuclear strategy in the 1940s and 1950s 

and the creation of counterinsurgency strategy in 

the 1960s, the community of nongovernment experts 

was an important source of ideas unconstrained 

by bureaucratic or organizational imperatives. 

Traditionally, much of the creativity in American 

strategy comes from outside the formal system.

As debate raged and the various assessments 

moved forward, dissatisfaction grew in Congress. Most 

Democrats favored an immediate or quick withdrawal 

from Iraq, contending that the cause was lost. A few 

legislators—most importantly Senator John McCain 

(R-AZ)— favored an increased U.S. military presence. 

Like Hadley and Keane, McCain believed that the 

existing strategy did not reflect President Bush’s 

objectives. But he was in the minority, increasingly 

even within his own party. By 2006, a number of 
26

moderate Republicans like Lindsay Graham (R-SC), 

George Allen (R-VA), Kay Bailey Hutchinson (RTX), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), and 

Olympia Snowe (R-ME) expressed dissatisfaction with 

the conduct of the war.68 Like the Iraq Study Group, 

this showed President Bush that time was running out 

on his existing strategy, leaving him with little hope 

that he could sustain support for it in the absence of 

clear progress. 

The discipline of the Bush White House makes it 

difficult to assess who among the President’s senior 

advisers had the greatest influence on Iraq strategy. 

Hadley was extremely important, working closely 

with General Pace to navigate the tricky civil-military 

aspects of the shift. Vice President Cheney likely played 

a major role. Following the September 11, 2001 (9/11) 

attacks, he had been the leader of the administration’s 

hard liners, pushing for armed intervention to remove 

Saddam Hussein and most actively portraying Iraq 

as the front line in the conflict with al Qaeda.69 It 

is difficult, though, to know exactly how Cheney 

shaped the President’s thinking on the strategic 

shift of 2007.70 Their consultations were private, and 

Cheney was the ultimate loyalist who would never 

indicate any divergence with the President even if it 

existed. Publicly, his role was to rally support for the 

administration. 

Both as National Security Adviser and, later, as 

Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice was clearly a close 

confidant of the President and undoubtedly shaped 

his thinking on Iraq. In the initial period of the Iraq 

insurgency, though, Rice did not appear to be a major 

player (although, of course, it is impossible to know 

at this point what her role was behind the scenes). As 

Bob Woodward put it, “Rice and Hadley, her deputy 
27

at the time, had worked on Iraq nonstop, and yet they 

never got control over the policy making. They were 

no match for Rumsfeld.”71 The only public instance 

where Rice staked out a position that clearly propelled 

the administration’s thinking was in a November 2005 

Senate testimony when she described existing policy 

as a “clear/hold/build” approach.72 Woodward contends that Secretary Rice had not discussed this with 

Generals Abizaid or Casey, or with Secretary Rums–

feld, and that it ran counter to their support for a 

diminution of U.S. involvement in holding secured 

areas and handing them over Iraqi forces.73 But 

President Bush quickly picked up on the phrase, thus 

making it part of U.S. strategy.

There is little indication that the Chairmen of the 

JCS—Air Force General Richard Myers, and later, 

Marine General Peter Pace—had significant influence 

on broad strategic decisions. Despite the fact that, 

by law, the Chairman serves as the primary military 

adviser to the President, Secretary Rumsfeld insisted on 

serving as the conduit for military advice and assured 

that he and the Chairman spoke with one voice. The 

other Service chiefs—who again have statutory roles as 

advisers to the President—had very little direct access 

to President Bush and appeared to play a minimal role 

in shaping U.S. strategy in Iraq.74

Decision Criteria and Dynamics.

The dominant decision criteria in the strategic shift 

of 2007 were identifying clear, unambiguous victory as 

the overarching objective (thus ruling out a negotiated 

settlement, which often happens in counterinsurgency), and the priority accorded to Iraq within the 

broader scope of American strategy. The definition of 

victory had not changed since its articulation in the 
28

Bush administration’s 2005 National Strategy for Victory 

in Iraq:

• Victory in Iraq is Defined in Stages

— Short term: Iraq is making steady progress 

in fighting terrorists, meeting political milestones, building democratic institutions, and 

standing up security forces.

— Medium term: Iraq is in the lead defeating 

terrorists and providing its own security, with 

a fully constitutional government in place, 

and on its way to achieving its economic 

potential.

— Longer term: Iraq is peaceful, united, 

stable, and secure, well integrated into the

international community, and a full partner 

in the global war on terrorism.

• Victory in Iraq is a Vital U.S. Interest

— Iraq is the central front in the global war on 

terror. Failure in Iraq will embolden terrorists 

and expand their reach; success in Iraq will 

deal them a decisive and crippling blow.

— The fate of the greater Middle East—which 

will have a profound and lasting impact on 

American security—hangs in the balance.

• Failure is Not an Option

— Iraq would become a safe haven from which 

terrorists could plan attacks against America, 

American interests abroad, and our allies.

— Middle East reformers would never again 

fully trust American assurances of support 

for democracy and human rights in the 

region—a historic opportunity lost.

— The resultant tribal and sectarian chaos 

would have major consequences for American security and interests in the region.75
29

But while the end state remained constant, the time 

horizon changed. President Bush recognized that the 

existing approach was not leading toward victory 

rapidly enough given eroding support for American 

involvement in Iraq. This left two options: accept the 

pressure for withdrawal with the foreknowledge that 

this was unlikely to lead to victory as defined in the 

2005 strategy; or pursue a “game changer” that might 

shift the dynamics of the conflict. But, Bush knew, 

the window of opportunity for a game changer was 

closing. This increased his willingness to accept 

increased short-term risk in order to preserve the 

chance of long-term success. 

President Bush’s overall decisionmaking style 

was similar to that of Ronald Reagan: he set broad 

strategic objectives, gave general guidance, and then 

let advisers develop the details. He was less involved 

in the specifics than some of his predecessors, like 

Clinton. Such a method is effective if the president is 

given a full range of options and an assessment of the 

strengths, weaknesses, costs, and risks of each. Reagan 

had a diverse group of assertive senior advisers who 

provided this. No single adviser dominated. Until 

2006, this was less evident in the Bush administration. 

Secretary Rumsfeld, with the support of Vice President 

Cheney, dominated strategy making. The uniformed 

military, including the two JCS chairmen, did not 

provide an independent perspective. Other figures 

who might have played a major role—Secretary of 

State Powell until his resignation in 2005 and Condoleezza Rice in her role as National Security Adviser and 

then Secretary of State—could not counter Rumsfeld 

and Cheney (who were backed by the uniformed 

military).

As the security situation in Iraq eroded, Rumsfeld’s 

influence declined. From 2003 to 2006, Iraq was “Mr. 
30

Rumsfeld’s war.” With Rumsfeld fading, President 

Bush became more directive. Initially, he was hesitant 

to overrule advice from uniformed military leaders. 

But Bush opted for the maximum troop increase and 

shift in mission priority to population security even 

though the Service chiefs, Pace, Abizaid, and Casey 

were, at best, unenthusiastic. As Bing West put it:

It was Hadley and the NSC staff . . . who had 

orchestrated the surge by quietly gathering a 

consensus among insiders, especially [thenLieutenant General Raymond] Odierno, Pace, and 

Petraeus, and outsiders. . . . while Keane added the 

stature of a four-star general and Kagan contributed 

concrete specifics.76

Options Considered. 

As the Bush administration developed and assessed 

strategic options in the second half of 2006, it grappled 

with three important unknowns. The first was whether 

Maliki could or would control his fellow Shiites, 

particularly the Jaish al Mahdi forces of Muqtada alSadr, and other sectarian militias involved in violence 

against Sunni Arabs. As West put it, the core problem 

was “the feckless performance by Maliki and his 

government.”77 This involved two interrelated 

questions—whether Maliki was capable of exerting 

control over the Shiite militias given his limited 

experience at high level political leadership, and 

whether he was interested in doing so. This was simply 

the latest manifestation of an enduring problem the 

United States faces in counterinsurgency support: 

finding a partner who is effective and committed 

to resolving the root causes of the conflict. When 

Washington was able to do this—Napoleon Duarte in 
31

El Salvador or Ramón Magsaysay in the Philippines—

it met with some success. When America’s partner 

was ineffective or more committed to retaining power 

and rewarding clients than addressing the deep 

problems that fueled the insurgency (such as Ngo 

Dinh Diem, Nguyen Van Thieu, or any of South 

Vietnam’s other despots), the counterinsurgency effort 

failed. In 2006, it was not clear whether Maliki was a 

Duarte/Magsaysay or a Diem/Thieu. Despite concern 

from senior officials like Rice and Hadley, President 

Bush remained convinced that Maliki was capable of 

and dedicated to controlling the Shiite militias, and 

based his decisions on this assumption.78

A second important unknown was whether the 

Sunni Arabs recognized that they could not regain 

domination of Iraq by violence and would accept 

American protection. If they did, assigning U.S. forces 

to population security was viable. If not, it would 

fail. Since there was no way to accurately gauge 

this, President Bush and his advisers had to rely on 

assumptions. As it turned out, the assumption that 

the Sunni Arab community was willing to accept an 

increased American military presence was correct. In 

strategy, doing the right thing at the wrong time is as 

much a recipe for failure as doing the wrong thing. 

Committing U.S. military forces to population security 

prior to 2006 would not have worked because neither 

the Sunni Arabs nor the Shiites wanted it. Both seemed 

to believe that they could attain national dominance. 

By 2006, though, the two communities, particularly 

the Sunni Arabs, seemed to have reached a level of 

fear, desperation and exhaustion that made them 

amenable to having the American military in their 

neighborhoods. That had become a lesser evil than the 

presence of al Qaeda extremists and Shiite militias. 
32

The third important unknown was whether there 

was enough remaining support among the American 

public and Congress to sustain an increase in troop 

levels and spike in casualties, particularly since this 

would take some time before producing results. Poll 

numbers suggested otherwise but President Bush 

believed that he could mobilize and sustain backing 

for a troop surge. Moreover, Bush had often made clear 

that he would disregard polls when he was convinced 

of the rightness of an unpopular action.

Over the summer, the NSC informal policy review 

developed a range of options:

• Adjust on the margins (i.e., continue with the 

current approach on the assumption that the 

ISF would reach a point where they could 

conduct the counterinsurgency campaign 

with limited U.S. help before support from the 

American people and Congress collapsed);

• Target efforts (i.e., continue to attack al Qaeda 

in Iraq but stay out of the sectarian conflict);

• Double down (i.e., increase troop levels and 

assistance and attempt to broker the raging 

sectarian conflict); or

• Bet on Maliki (i.e., write off the Sunni Arab 

community and simply strengthen the Maliki 

government to the point that it could crush 

resistance).79

The “double down” option had led National Security 

Adviser Hadley to ask William Luti if this was feasible 

given the strains on the military. The NSC did not want 

to debate options that could not be implemented.
33

Later, General Pace’s JCS study also focused on 

four options:

1. “Go Big” (i.e., an increase in U.S. forces);

2. “Go Home” (disengagement and withdrawal);

3. “Go Long” (a smaller U.S. military footprint 

and increased emphasis on the advisory and training 

mission); and,

4. A hybrid which combined components of the 

other options.

However, the Service chiefs remained skeptical of 

a troop increase since it was not clear to them how 

this would be linked to the attainment of political 

objectives. As a result, General Pace’s study went 

forward with only one of the options which had been 

developed by the “Council of Colonels” who built 

the assessment: continuing the existing approach—

with its emphasis on training and advice—but on an 

accelerated schedule. 

According to a former NSC staff member, even 

though General Pace was sympathetic toward the idea 

of a troop increase and more direct U.S. involvement 

in population security, he did not feel that he could 

overrule his field commanders and the Service chiefs 

by recommending an option they did not support.80

This reflects an enduring conundrum for the Chairman 

of the JCS: he has both an individual role as an adviser 

to the President and an institutional role as the senior 

member of the uniformed military. Senior civilian 

officials with dual roles, such as the Secretary of 

State or Secretary of Defense, always emphasize their 

individual role as presidential advisers rather than 

their institutional role as the leader of an organization. 

There is no question that loyalty to the President takes 

priority over their responsibility to their institution. 
34

For the Chairman, things are not so clear. Only Colin 

Powell, while serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, 

overtly leaned toward his individual rather than his 

institutional role. This duality inherently limits the 

influence of the Chairman with the President.

At an even broader level, the limited impact of 

the Chairman’s Iraq study demonstrated one of the 

deepest shortcomings of the American system for 

strategy development: the lack of an adequate method 

to integrate political and military planning. The NSC 

deconflicts, but does not integrate. The military’s vast 

planning apparatus was not optimized for political 

planning. To the extent it was able to do this, it did 

so because of the political understanding of individual 

planners—something that may or may not be available 

when needed. On the other hand, the State Department 

and NSC were better equipped for political planning, 

but their military expertise was coincidental rather 

than institutional or ingrained. Eventually this shortcoming was overcome because some influential 

military leaders like General David Petraeus developed 

an astute sense of the political component of strategy 

making, and some individuals on the policy side like 

William Luti understood military planning. But again, 

this was due more to serendipity and luck than to 

systemic design. In this case, the system worked but 

there is no assurance it will in the future short of a 

major redesign which effectively integrates political 

and military planning.

During the formal NSC strategy assessment in 

November and December, the DoD representatives 

(Stephen Cambone and Peter Rodman), although more 

open to a troop increase with Secretary Rumsfeld gone, 

continued to push an accelerated transition to the ISF. 

This was inspired by the strain that the Iraq conflict 

continued to place on the military’s ability to sustain 
35

other U.S. security commitments.81 The Department 

of State worried that Maliki would not or could not 

control the Shiite militias.82 One of the enduring 

dilemmas of counterinsurgency support is that the 

greater the American commitment to a particular 

leader or regime, the less leverage Washington has. 

The State Department was searching for the “sweet 

spot” which would compel Maliki to rein in the Shiite 

extremists without making him believe that the United 

States was about to abandon him (which might have 

encouraged him to cut a deal with extremists, or 

conversely to attempt a crackdown on the Sunni Arab 

community). Secretary Rice was also concerned that 

focusing so much of America’s attention and resources 

on Iraq had adverse effects elsewhere in the world. She 

favored a broad shift in American strategy to make it 

less Iraq-centric. The State Department representative 

in the strategic assessment promoted this idea. Finally 

John Hannah, Vice President Cheney’s representative 

at the NSC review, was skeptical of Shiite-Sunni 

reconciliation and advocated clearly backing the 

Shiites.83 He did, however, support the idea of a troop 

increase. 

Ultimately President Bush rejected major shifts 

in the political component of his administration’s 

approach to Iraq and continued full support for the 

Maliki government, while encouraging it to reconcile 

with the Sunni Arab community and expand economic 

development. The heart of the strategic shift was a 

military decision based on two separate but linked 

components: troop levels and mission priorities. 

One position held that more U.S. forces were needed 

whether the mission was population security or 

training and advice. Another was that many Iraqis saw 

U.S. military forces as alien occupiers, and thus the 
36

fewer of them the better. In addition, U.S. forces were 

a crutch for the Iraqi government and security forces, 

allowing them to postpone or avoid difficult decisions 

and actions.84 Diminishing the size of the American 

presence, according to this argument, would compel 

the Iraqis to do what they needed to do.

These two components combined to form four 

discrete strategic options (see Figure 1):

Figure 1. The Four Strategic Options.

To some extent, the two elements of the decision were 

sequential: The administration first had to decide what 

it intended to do with American forces before it could 

assess the number needed to perform the mission.

Excluding those who favored immediate disengagement (primarily on the political left), blocks A 

and D had the most support. For instance, Abizaid 

and Casey favored block A: training and advice with 

a troop level that diminished as Iraqi capabilities 
37

increased.85 The Iraq Study Group also fell within 

block A, advocating an increase in the number of U.S. 

military advisers and trainers but an overall decrease 

in American troop numbers.86 A few commentators 

and military leaders favored block B. Nevertheless, 

President Bush opted for block D, concluding that it 

was feasible and optimized the chances for victory as 

he defined it.

ANALYSIS

Following President Bush’s announcement of 

the strategic shift, General Casey and Ambassador 

Khalilzad began preparation for the shift to include 

steps to ensure that Iraqi security forces would 

successfully fulfill their role in sustaining security 

in areas cleared by the American military. Full 

implementation of the revised strategy began just 

as General Petraeus replaced General Casey as the 

overall American military commander in Iraq. This 

transition in leadership of the Iraq effort had been 

planned for months (although its exact timing was 

left open) and was not itself part of the strategic 

shift, but did facilitate it. It was a new face for what 

was being portrayed and seen as a “new” strategy.87

Petraeus created a Joint Strategic Assessment Team 

and in July 2007 formally adopted a Joint Campaign 

Plan which assigned most of the newly arrived troops 

to population security.88 General Petraeus and U.S. 

Ambassador Ryan Crocker developed cease fires 

with key Iraqi individuals and organizations.89 The 

military component of the plan—made possible by 

the arrival of the five surge brigades—was combined 

with governance, development, and improved infra–

structure protection. Under then-Lieutenant General 
38

Raymond Odierno, commander of the Multi-National 

Corps-Iraq (MNC-I), U.S. forces secured the approaches to and “belts” around Baghdad, and estab–

lished a permanent presence in neighborhoods in 

conflict. 

Capitalizing on growing rifts within the insurgency, 

particularly between al Qaeda and Sunni Arab tribal 

leaders, mid-level American commanders had since 

2005 developed relationships with the Sunni Arab 

militias and eventually put 20,000 of their fighters 

on the U.S. payroll, using them to deter, control, or 

eradicate al Qaeda extremists.90 High value targeting 

programs implemented by U.S. special operations 

forces, regular military units, and the intelligence 

community became more effective, in part because 

of the increased intelligence gained by involvement 

with population security.91 By the end of the summer 

of 2007, overall violence, particularly sectarian attacks, 

was in decline. Security in Baghdad and other violent 

areas improved dramatically, and President Maliki 

did rise to the occasion and rein in support for sectarian 

violence from within his government and security 

forces. In contrast to the Baghdad security operations 

of 2006, the ISF proved more effective, and there was a 

political program to consolidate the gains.

The popular perception is that the troop surge 

snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.92 In reality 

the timing of the strategic shift was as crucial as its 

content. By the end of 2006, a “perfect storm” of trends 

and conditions had altered the trajectory of the conflict. 

It is certainly true that nearly all Iraqis were, by that 

point, tired of violence. This was vital. The American 

approach to counterinsurgency—as codified in military 

doctrine and interagency guidance—assumes that the 

population is hostile to the insurgents but tolerates 
39

them out of fear.93 Hence the solution is protecting 

the population from the insurgents, preferably using 

local security forces. In reality, populations sometimes 

prefer the insurgents over the government even 

though the government can provide more resources, 

at least in the short term. In Iraq, many or most Sunni 

Arabs initially supported the insurgents or at least 

were passively sympathetic to them. But they grew 

disillusioned. As West put it, “By November of 2006, 

the will of the people—that essential ingredient in 

defeating an insurgency—had turned the war in favor 

of the coalition. . . . The change in attitude of the Sunni 

[Arab] population and the momentum in a dozen cities 

had come from the bottom up, from the tribes and 

battalions.”94 Only with the shift in attitude did using 

U.S. troops for population security become feasible. 

The schism between Iraqi tribes and the extremists 

further fueled the loss of faith in the insurgency. 

The decision by Muqtada al-Sadr to order the forces 

loyal to him to avoid confrontation with American 

troops as the surge began, and later, his August 2007 

declaration of a truce were vital. While al Qaeda in 

Iraq—like Cold War communist insurgents—sought 

decisive victory and control of the state, Sadr’s Shiite 

militias (and some of the local Sunni Arab insurgent 

groups) were more akin to Hezbollah, using violence 

to force their way into the political system rather than 

attempting to replace it. By 2007, Sadr seemed to have 

recognized that with the increased size and effectiveness of the American military in Iraq, improvements 

in the Iraqi security forces, and the growing competence of the Maliki government, he had gotten as far 

as he could with violence. Maliki’s assertiveness, in 

turn, may have come from his reading of the American political situation. With the Democratic electoral 
40

victory in November 2006, and the leaking of Hadley’s 

memo, Maliki must have known that he had to control 

extremists in his government or risk losing American 

support.95 Luckily for him, global increases in oil prices 

left his government flush with money, allowing it to 

buy support or acquiescence from key organizations, 

groups, and constituencies.

One of the most important enablers of the strategic 

shift of 2007 was the tremendous improvement that 

the American military and intelligence community 

had undergone during the 4 years of the conflict. From 

enlisted Soldiers and Marines to general officers, there 

was deeper experience; better equipment and training; better cultural and situational awareness; better 

doctrine; and better tactics, techniques, and procedures. This meant that the force of 2007 was able to do 

things—like population security through permanent 

presence and effective high value targeting—that 

the force of 2003-05 could not. The strategic shift not 

only involved more troops, but also better ones. In all 

likelihood, the 2005 American force could not have 

implemented the 2007 strategy even if it had tried.

From 2004 to 2006, the Iraq conflict changed 

from a predominantly anti-American insurgency to 

one dominated by a sectarian war stoked by outside extremists. When the conflict was purely an 

anti-American insurgency, a strategy focused on 

strengthening Iraqi security forces and minimizing the 

American role was correct. But by 2006, the insurgents 

had seized the strategic initiative and changed the 

nature of the conflict. Thus the strategy of 2004-05 was 

no longer appropriate. Counterinsurgency support 

works best with the smallest possible footprint for 

foreign forces, and that was exactly what the United 

States attempted up to 2006. But peacekeeping—which 
41

is the appropriate response to a sectarian or ethnic 

civil war—demands a significant presence of outside 

forces to play the role of mediator. That was a crucial 

part of the strategic shift of 2007: the U.S. military 

changed from pure counterinsurgency support to 

counterinsurgency support plus peacekeeping. 

Recognition of this was slow because the insurgency 

persisted even while the sectarian war exploded. The 

counterinsurgency mission was not replaced by a 

peacekeeping mission, but a peacekeeping mission 

joined the counterinsurgency mission. In reality, both 

the insurgency and sectarian conflict had been present 

in Iraq from the time Saddam Hussein was removed 

from power. What had changed by 2006 was the relative 

priority of the two as sectarian conflict became the more 

important. This created political problems for the Bush 

administration. Sustaining public and congressional 

support for counterinsurgency is inherently difficult, 

but at least the involvement of al Qaeda and the 

barbarism of insurgents like Zarqawi gave the administration some political ammunition. Selling the 

American public and Congress on peacekeeping or 

peace enforcement is even harder—witness the fragility 

of support for intervention in Somalia, Rwanda, 

Congo, or the Balkans during the 1990s. President 

Bush himself had expressed his opposition to using 

the U.S. military for peacekeeping during the 2000 

campaign. This meant the administration had to portray the strategic shift as a more effective method 

of counterinsurgency. It could not use the word 

“peacekeeping,” even though that was exactly what 

it was doing. Ultimately, it was a close call. Had the 

strategic shift not come at precisely the right time to 

generate quick results—if not for the “perfect storm” 

of conditions—the administration would not have 
42

been able to sustain adequate public and congressional 

support. Congress probably would have mandated 

disengagement in late 2007, or early 2008, even without 

a demonstrable decline in violence.

In any case, the evidence does not support the 

contention that the United States pursued an ineffective strategy until 2007, then suddenly discovered 

an effective one. The approach implemented in 2007 

would not have worked even a year earlier because all 

of the necessary conditions were not in place. And it 

probably would not have had the same results had it 

been undertaken a year later.96 In strategy, nations must 

not only do the right thing, but must do the right thing 

at the right time. This is certainly true of the strategic 

shift of 2007. It capitalized on a temporary and volatile 

combination of trends and conditions. It was the right 

approach at the right time. While experts argue over 

whether it is better to be good or lucky in strategy, the 

United States was both reasonably good and lucky in 

Iraq.

IMPLICATIONS

The strategic shift of 2007 offers important insight 

into the dynamics of American strategy formulation, 

particularly the dynamics of civil-military relations 

and the role of the uniformed military in strategy 

making. To be truly effective, strategy requires intimate presidential involvement. Yet nothing assures 

that the President will have expertise in national security or even a talent for it. If anything, an interest in 

foreign affairs is an electoral liability (at least since the 

end of the Cold War). Some Presidents grow into the 

role of strategist-in-chief, but nothing in the American 

political system assures this. Historically, a few Pres-
43

idents developed strategic talent and personally dominated strategy making. Lincoln during the Civil 

War and Franklin Roosevelt during World War II 

are examples. Others never developed great strategic 

skill but nonetheless insisted on dominating strategy 

formulation. Johnson, Carter, and Clinton fall into this 

category. A few Presidents subcontract strategy to a 

single adviser (Nixon and Ford with Kissinger). Others 

rely on multiple advisers in a collective strategy-making 

process. This would include Reagan, George H. W. 

Bush, and, until the summer of 2006 when Rumsfeld's 

and Cheney’s influence declined, George W. Bush. 

Like Lincoln or Roosevelt, George W. Bush assumed 

greater personal control of strategy making as the 

conflict he directed continued. In general, Presidents 

become more intimately involved in strategy making 

over the course of their administration. Obviously, 

two-term Presidents will have more time to assume 

this role than those who serve a single term. 

With rare exceptions, significant strategic shifts 

are only possible when a President has deferred to an 

adviser or coterie of advisers. This is because it is very 

difficult for a President to admit that his earlier positions were flawed. Doing so can be politically disastrous, as when Carter admitted he had been wrong 

about the Soviets following the 1979 invasion of 

Afghanistan. An open mea culpa would erode the 

effectiveness of even a President not facing reelection. 

But if a failed or ineffective strategy can be attributed 

to an adviser or group of advisers who are then 

replaced, the President can forge a new path with less 

political damage. That is exactly what happened in 

2006 when Cheney moved to the background and 

Rumsfeld resigned, allowing President Bush to adjust 

his strategy without having to admit that his 
44

previous one was misguided. Bush’s admirers talk 

disparagingly of the “Rumsfeld strategy” or the 

“Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey strategy” before 2007 rather 

than the Bush strategy. Bush’s problem, for the Bush 

admirers, was only that he trusted Rumsfeld and the 

military commanders too much, not that he failed to 

understand Iraq and its conflict. This is an alibi, not an 

explanation.

The strategic shift of 2007 suggested that military 

leaders often have a more expansive strategic and time 

perspective than Presidents. This can be a source of 

dissonance or tension. American Presidents think in 

4-year periods with an eye on their own legacy. Senior 

military leaders, most of whom have spent 30 years or 

more in an institution which cultivates and sustains 

intense loyalty, are more prone to consider how their 

actions will affect the nation, the military, and the 

long-term future of their Service. One simple indicator 

of this divergent perspective is the fact that the DoD 

and the Services have programs to assess the strategic 

environment and armed conflict years or decades 

into the future. No President devotes much time to 

American strategy 10 or 20 years hence. To put it in 

military jargon, Presidents are focused on the strategic 

“close battle” while the military simultaneously 

considers both the “close” and “deep” battles. Because 

military leaders see themselves as the embodiment of 

their Service and the military in general, rather than 

simply individuals, and because the Services existed 

before them and will exist after them, they are less 

consumed with leaving their personal mark on history 

than on being the steward of their Service. The result is 

a persistent asymmetry in risk tolerance. This was clear 

in American strategy toward Iraq: Bush and Rumsfeld 

were more risk tolerant than most of the senior military 

leaders.

The debates leading to the strategic shift of 2007 
45

demonstrated this. The outcome in Iraq was clearly and 

dominantly President Bush’s top priority. History will 

judge him by it. The military, particularly the Service 

chiefs, were certainly committed to the President’s 

objectives in Iraq but were also concerned with the longterm health of their organizations and the broader span 

of America’s global commitments. They sought success 

in Iraq but not at the expense of wrecking their Services. 

They were, in a sense, more tolerant of risk in Iraq, if 

accepting it lowered the long-term risk to the health 

of their Services. Presidents and defense secretaries 

recognize the competing pressures on Service chiefs 

and take this into account when receiving their advice. 

This is a major reason that the collective JCS had a 

minimal role in the initial decision to intervene in Iraq 

and in the strategic shift of 2007. Certainly President 

Bush considered them important stakeholders and, 

during the strategic review, expended great effort to 

gain their backing for the shift. But as is always the 

case when the uniformed military’s perspective differs 

from the President’s, the President wins. The JCS knew 

this and acceded to the strategic shift in Iraq once it 

became clear that President Bush was committed to it. 

In any case, military advice is only effective 

when the President and Secretary of Defense want 

it to be. If civilian leaders are confident that they can 

craft strategy with limited military input, they can 

easily do so. While President Bush was receptive to 

military advice on operational issues but not broad 

strategy, Secretary Rumsfeld was convinced that the 

uniformed military was too hidebound and uncreative 

to adopt the sort of bold approach he advocated.97

Even though the Goldwater-Nichols Reform Act of 

1986 gave the JCS, particularly the Chairman, a direct 

channel to the President, it did not guarantee that the 
46

Service chiefs would use it, or more importantly, that 

policymakers would take any advice they received. 

Secretary Rumsfeld—like most of America’s defense 

secretaries—would not have tolerated military leaders 

developing a direct and independent relationship with 

President Bush. He insisted, for instance, on seeing any 

briefing that General Casey intended to give President 

Bush beforehand.98 Based on available information, 

this limitation also applied to the Chairman—there is 

no indication of either General Myers or General Pace 

giving President Bush advice or counsel at variance 

with Secretary Rumsfeld’s.99 Some past presidents like 

Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton were known for 

developing direct contacts with military and civilian 

officials below the cabinet level. President Bush only 

did this in a limited way, primarily with Franks, Casey, 

Petraeus, and Bremer.100 Even then Rumsfeld, Cheney, 

and Rice or Hadley were normally present during the 

discussion. 

This is a recurring issue in American strategy 

making. In describing policymaking during the war in 

Vietnam, H. R. McMaster wrote:

While they slowly deepened American military 

involvement in Vietnam, Johnson and McNamara 

pushed the Chiefs further away from the 

decisionmaking process. There was no meaningful 

structure through which the Chiefs could voice 

their views—even the Chairman was not a reliable 

conduit....Rather than advice, McNamara and 

Johnson extracted from the JCS acquiescence and 

silent support for decisions already made. Even as 

they relegated the Chiefs to a peripheral position 

in the policy-making process, they were careful to 

preserve the facade of consultation to prevent the JCS 

from opposing the administration’s policies either 

openly or behind the scenes.101
47

If “Iraq” is substituted for “Vietnam,” and “Bush and 

Rumsfeld” for “Johnson and McNamara,” this still 

rings true. The common variable was the personality 

of the Secretary of Defense: both Rumsfeld and 

McNamara were brilliant, aggressive, confident 

leaders who saw little need for strategic advice from 

the uniformed military. Senior military leaders were 

implementers, not strategy makers. There may be a 

future defense secretary who follows this pattern, 

again limiting the uniformed military to the realm of 

operations rather than national strategy. The regional 

and field commanders in Iraq did have regular access 

to the President, but even had they been inclined to 

diverge from Secretary Rumsfeld on broader questions 

of national strategy, they were proscribed by a sense 

of their own role and duty from doing so. It was at 

this broader level where the most important problems 

resided, not with the military operations. 

The limited role of the uniformed military in 

framing broad national strategy was not peculiar to 

Iraq and will persist in the future. Neither the Joint 

Chiefs nor regional combatant commanders are 

appointed on the basis of strategic prowess. Some, 

perhaps most of them, are in fact astute strategists, 

but the system does not select for that quality and 

hence does not assure it.102 Of course the President 

and Secretary of Defense are not necessarily selected 

for strategic prowess either, but they get to shape it 

nonetheless. The American political system assumes 

that astute strategists will emerge when needed. Often 

they do, but that is a shaky foundation for a great 

power. Further discussion and debate are needed to 

consider how to select both senior military leaders and 

civilian policymakers for strategic expertise. Given the 
48

complex nature of strategic expertise and talent, this 

would be extraordinarily difficult, but that is not a 

reason to avoid trying.

If the members of the JCS or combatant commanders 

do not have a firm grasp of strategy, it becomes even 

easier for a President or Secretary of Defense disinclined to take military advice seriously to disregard it. 

Even so, military advice on national strategy would be 

more effective if it harnessed both the Service chiefs 

and the combatant commanders. President Bush and 

Secretary Rumsfeld considered the combatant commanders more independent of institutional Service 

interests than the Joint Chiefs, and thus were more 

amenable to their strategic advice. This is likely to 

persist in future presidential administrations. Hence 

Congress should consider creating a permanent 

strategic council—led by the Chairman—which integrates the views of both the combatant commanders 

and the Service chiefs. If designed to deal with only 

broad strategy, this would not have to meet more than 

a few times a year (the Secretary of Defense normally 

convenes such a council of combatant commanders 

and Service chiefs several times a year, but this is an 

informal process). Any legislation which created such 

a council should also specify methods to assure that 

its advice at least reaches the President. The United 

States is not best served when a senior military leader’s 

career requires parroting the Secretary of Defense.

The military’s involvement in strategy making is 

not limited to advice from senior leaders to policymakers. The military has a multitude of talented strategists and subject matter experts who work throughout the DoD and, to a lesser extent, other government 

agencies. Their role, though, varies according to the 

preferences of the presidential administration. Some 
49

administrations and some civilian policymakers place 

great stock in professional expertise and rely on it 

during decisionmaking. Others value commitment to 

the administration’s objectives, priorities, assumptions, 

and perceptions more than professional expertise. This 

is a result of the overlap between strategy and policy, or 

more accurately, strategy and politics. There is general 

agreement that the uniformed military should play a 

role in strategy formulation, but that it should be less 

involved or uninvolved in making policy. The problem 

is that each presidential administration distinguishes 

strategy and policy differently. The military’s influence 

is not determined solely by the talent and expertise that 

it brings to the table, but by the way an administration 

defines strategy and policy.

As with all large organizations, creativity and a 

spirit of innovation in the military is maximized at 

what might be called the “upper middle” level, and 

diminishes at the most senior levels. In particular, 

the greatest creativity in the military tends to be at 

the senior field grade ranks: lieutenant colonels/

commanders and colonels/captains. Below that, 

officers do not have the experience and expertise to 

adequately refine creative ideas or the rank to make 

their voices heard. Above that, competing pressures 

combine to compel leaders toward more risk averse 

decisions. That the Service chiefs jettisoned all of the 

options developed by the JCS “Council of Colonels”—

except the one calling for continuity—supports this 

argument. The clear implication is that innovative 

thinkers at the upper middle level must have venues 

for communicating their ideas in a way that will not 

damage their career prospects.103

The strategic shift of 2007 in Iraq demonstrated 

that even if the military is the secondary or supporting 
50

element of American strategy—and the core problems in 

Iraq were political—the military dimension will attract 

the most scrutiny and be the most controversial. The 

intentions and competence of the Maliki government 

were much more important than American force levels 

in determining the outcome in Iraq. But military force 

levels received significantly more media coverage and 

discussion within the United States. This is unfortunate 

but unavoidable. American military leaders must be 

aware that, like Hollywood celebrities, their every 

action and statement will be parsed, debated, and 

critiqued. Involvement in counterinsurgency—a type 

of protracted conflict imbued with ambiguity which 

does not reflect the American strategic culture—

exacerbates the problem. For example, Americans are 

impatient by nature. Without regular progress in an 

overseas endeavor, support wavers, and can crumble. 

But in counterinsurgency, months or years often pass 

with little discernible progress. Because insurgency 

and counterinsurgency are primarily psychological, it 

is often hard to measure progress (or regression). This 

places U.S. military leaders, who will normally be the 

face of the American effort, in an extraordinarily difficult position as they attempt to provide a realistic 

portrayal of events while sustaining public and congressional support. At times it may be impossible. 

Presidents may then find that replacing the military 

commander is the least painful way of demonstrating 

initiative in the face of crumbling public and 

congressional support. Phrased differently, senior U.S. 

military commanders in counterinsurgency campaigns 

may be removed for political and psychological 

reasons even when their performance is as good as 

possible under the circumstances. As President Bush 

told journalist Bob Woodward when discussing the 
51

strategic shift of 2007, “new people to implement the 

new strategy is an exclamation point on new strategy.”104

Replacing military commanders when the public 

and Congress grow restive with what they consider 

inadequate progress is an American tradition—

witness McClellan, Hooker, Burnside, MacArthur, 

and McKiernan. The political and psychological intensity of counterinsurgency means that commanders 

will be given even less leeway than those involved in 

conventional warfighting. There is nothing the military 

can do about this: it is an occupational hazard.

Most often, though, this will only apply to the 

most senior commander in the field. One of the 

conundrums the United States faces when engaged 

in large scale counterinsurgency is that the American 

military prefers to rotate commanders fairly quickly, 

but counterinsurgency is most successful when 

commanders (and troops) have extensive experience 

in their operating area. Long tours—perhaps even 

for the duration of the conflict—would maximize 

effectiveness, but could damage the quality of the 

military and limit the promotion potential of officers 

who need command time. In Iraq, the DoD settled on 

a compromise: brigade and battalion commanders 

rotated after a year but the senior commanders, such 

as General Casey, stayed for longer periods of time.105

This meant that senior commanders became the face 

of the American effort, and thus were susceptible to 

blame as frustration mounted within the American 

public and Congress. Again, this is likely to persist 

so long as the United States undertakes protracted 

irregular campaigns, whether counterinsurgency or 

something else.

A commander faces immense challenges in 

counterinsurgency, in part because it is a quin-
52

tessentially psychological form of conflict. His skill 

as a communicator is as or more important than his 

skill as a commander. Take, for instance, the complex 

messages that the U.S. commander in Iraq needed to 

transmit:

• To the U.S. public and Congress:

— The stakes in Iraq are extensive: the effort is 

worthwhile;

— The United States and the Iraqi government 

are making significant progress in the security, economic, and political realms;

— There is an identifiable end state after which 

American involvement will be minimal;

— Every effort is being made to limit U.S. 

casualties.

• To the Iraqi government and security forces:

— The U.S. commitment is steadfast but conditional on continued progress and reform;

— The United States has no desire to dominate 

or exploit Iraq, or preserve a long-term 

military presence.

• To the Iraqi people:

— The Iraqi government and security forces 

seek their best interests;

— The Iraqi government and security forces 

are improving and soon will no longer need 

extensive American support;

— The insurgents are the source of violence and 

instability, and an obstacle to development 

and prosperity;

— None of Iraq’s communities will control the 

country through violence;

— The United States respects the Iraqi people 

and does not seek dominance, exploitation, 
53

or a long-term military presence;

— The United States does not favor one of 

Iraq’s communities over the other but 

seeks to protect all of them and assure their 

participation in the political process;

— Supporting the Iraqi government and the 

Americans helps stabilize the country 

and entails rewards while supporting the 

insurgents entails costs and risks.

• To the insurgents and their supporters:

— Violence will not work;

— Abandoning the insurgency will bring 

personal and community rewards.

• To regional states:

— Supporting the insurgents will entail political, 

economic and, potentially, military costs.

• To the global audience:

— The Iraqi government is legitimate;

— The insurgents are illegitimate—there are 

legitimate methods for the political inclusion 

and protection of the communities the 

insurgents claim to represent;

— Every possible step is being taken to limit 

civilian casualties and sustain the rule of law;

— The United States has no interest in 

dominating or exploiting Iraq, or sustaining 

a long-term military presence;

— The conflict in Iraq is part of the global 

struggle against terrorism and extremism.

The military commander in-country had primary 

responsibility for communicating some of these 

messages, and played a supporting role in others. This 

will continue: strategic communications will always be 

a vital part of command during counterinsurgency.
54

RECOMMENDATIONS

U.S. military leaders cannot alter the basic dynamics of the American system for developing 

strategy, or of the overarching strategic culture which 

shapes the system. They must simply work within 

them, remembering that military input into national 

policy or grand strategy will always be valued or 

ignored according to the proclivities of the President 

and Secretary of Defense. If these political leaders want 

to shut the military out, they will. Programs to increase 

the number or the quality of strategic thinkers within 

the Army—while they may be valuable—might not 

affect the degree to which military advice influences 

national policy and grand strategy. The limits on the 

military role in crafting America’s policy toward Iraq 

during the Bush administration had little to do with 

the quality of military advice and much to do with 

the preferences and prejudices of President Bush and 

Secretary Rumsfeld.

That said, the strategic shift of 2007 does suggest 

a number of steps that the Army should undertake so 

that it is prepared to play the most constructive role 

and offer the best advice possible should the United 

States once again consider or undertake involvement 

in a large scale counterinsurgency campaign. 

Be skeptical of basing force development and 

military strategy on the 2007-08 experience in Iraq. 

After the end of the Cold War, Operation DESERT 

STORM became the paradigmatic conflict for force 

development and planning. Whether labeled “major 

theater war” (MTW) or “major combat operations” 

(MCO), the thinking was that future wars would 

look much like the one of 1990-91. Today Operation 
55

IRAQI FREEDOM is becoming paradigmatic. Much 

of the force development and other change underway 

in the Army is driven by the desire to perform Iraqlike operations more effectively. This may be a classic 

case of the old problem of preparing to fight the last

war. Most importantly, the strategic shift of 2007—

particularly the surge in forces—is being used as a 

model for the very different conflict in Afghanistan.106

For instance, during a September 2008 interview 

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin 

said, “a surge in Afghanistan also will lead us to 

victory there as it has proven to have done in Iraq.”107

This myth is not limited to the former Alaska governor. 

At the operational level, commanders in Afghanistan 

have attempted to replicate the deployment of small 

American units into remote locations with the mission 

of population security. This worked in Iraq because the 

insurgents had already lost much of their local support, 

the population was weary of the conflict, and because 

support or reinforcement was close by. Afghanistan is 

different—none of these conditions apply. 

To avoid this, the Army must recognize that the 

Iraq conflict in general, and the “perfect storm” of 

conditions contributing to the success of the strategic 

shift of 2007, will not be replicated. The two conflicts 

that the United States is using as models or paradigms—Iraq and Afghanistan—are actually outliers in 

the broader sweep of global conflict.108 Both resulted 

from American intervention to remove hostile regimes. 

Iraq and Afghanistan were destroyed states, not failed

states. In Iraq, the United States created the conditions 

for the insurgency. Hopefully this will not happen 

again. The Army should continue to mine Operation 

IRAQI FREEDOM and the strategic shift of 2007 for 

insights, but must be very wary when deriving general 

lessons from them or using them as the basis for force 
56

or strategy development.109

Use Army intellectual resources to lead a basic 

reconceptualization of the way that the joint 

community, the DoD, the other agencies of the 

U.S. Government, and American political leaders 

think about insurgency and counterinsurgency. 

The strategic shift of 2007 was necessary because in 

2003, the Bush administration misunderstood the 

nature of the Iraqi political and economic system and 

destroyed that nation’s parasitic state without a ready 

replacement, mistakenly believing that an effective 

and stable replacement would quickly emerge from 

the political rubble.110 But the strategic shift was 

also necessary because once insurgency emerged in 

Iraq, the United States approached it with a flawed 

conceptualization. The Army had little control over the 

first misunderstanding. It could not have steered the 

administration from its chosen path of regime removal. 

But it could have helped the United States mitigate 

or avoid the second one with a more nuanced and 

sophisticated understanding of insurgency. To avoid 

a repetition of the disaster that Iraq had become by 

2006, the Army should lead the joint community, the 

DoD, the other agencies of the U.S. Government, and 

American political leaders in a reconceptualization of 

insurgency and counterinsurgency.111

Since first embracing counterinsurgency during 

the Kennedy administration, the United States has 

considered it a form of war. That means that the goal 

is “victory” defined as the defeat of the enemy and 

decisive success. In the American view, insurgency 

emerges because of capability shortfalls by a 

government, be they political, economic, or security. 

Insurgents and the government then compete for 

the support of the population; the side that wins this 
57

competition will normally win the war. The American 

role is to augment the capability and legitimacy of the 

national government and help it directly defeat the 

insurgents and protect the population. This was never 

fully accurate. It reflected American perceptions and 

values as much as reality in the parts of the world 

where insurgency takes root. 

As Iraq descended into sectarian violence and 

near chaos, the problem was not simply capability 

shortfalls. Government officials themselves were 

fueling sectarian violence. The Maliki regime was both 

part of the solution and part of the problem. Like most 

governments in the world (and nearly all of the ones 

vulnerable to insurgency), it operated by patronage 

and force. Like many of the states which seek American 

assistance, the Maliki regime made just enough reforms 

and controlled corruption and repression just enough 

to keep the aid flowing but rejected advice from 

Washington which might have challenged its hold on 

power. This was typical rather than abnormal. And 

Iraq did not reflect the American assumption that the 

people can be enticed into supporting the government 

rather than the insurgents by the provision of “goods,” 

especially security, infrastructure improvements, 

political representation, and economic opportunity. 

As in most parts of the world, ties of affinity—religion, 

sect, ethnicity, tribe, clan, race, and so forth—mattered 

as much or more than which side in the conflict was 

likely to provide the most goods. Outside Baghdad, 

Iraq’s Sunni Arabs did not shift their allegiance from 

insurgents to the government because of American 

efforts. The insurgency split and those insurgents who 

changed sides brought their supporters with them. 

So the American image of insurgency clashed 

mightily with reality. Eventually, the military and 
58

the U.S. embassy adjusted to reality and crafted 

a strategy that only partly reflected the American 

conceptualization of insurgency (and doctrine, which is 

its codification). This worked both because of the talent 

of the U.S. military and civilian leaders, and because 

the lucky confluence of trends provided a window 

of opportunity. The next time America may not be so 

lucky. This suggests that we need a more accurate 

and nuanced conceptualization of insurgency based 

on the reality of identity, affinity, and governance 

in those regions of the world where insurgency 

occurs. It must recognize that in some instances, the 

people simply cannot be convinced to support the 

government. Population-centric counterinsurgency, 

as Gian Gentile argues, is an operational method 

which may apply in some settings, but is not a strategy 

independent of culture and policy objectives.112 A new 

conceptualization of insurgency must recognize that 

corrupt governments which lack control of much of 

their own territory are the norm in much of the world. It 

must also recognize that subnational organizations are 

more politically, economically, and militarily important 

than the national government in much of the world. The 

Army, with its massive analytical, intellectual, and wargaming capability, is the organization best equipped 

to lead this reconceptualization. The Training and 

Doctrine Command (TRADOC), in close conjunction 

with the Joint Forces Command, must be the primary 

driver of this process.

Increase attention to strategic communication 

skills in leader selection and development programs. 

Declining public and congressional support for 

American engagement in Iraq forced the Bush 

administration to accept increased operational risk 

lest its mandate to remain engaged crumble before 
59

the Iraqi security forces were self-sustaining. In this 

case, the United States did not pay a strategic price 

for this, but might in the future. Hence sustaining 

public and congressional support for engagement in 

protracted counterinsurgency, stability operations, 

or peacekeeping is vital. Clearly the President and 

other top civilian policymakers will bear the brunt 

of the responsibility for this but because the U.S. 

military commander will be seen as the face of the 

American effort, he too must contribute to the effort. 

Phrased differently, “strategic communications” will 

be a particularly vital skill for the commander of a 

counterinsurgency campaign. The commander of 

a large scale counterinsurgency campaign without 

the requisite personal skill set will be vulnerable to 

failure and replacement. So if counterinsurgency is to 

remain a central element of American strategy—and it 

currently appears that it will—the Army should refine 

and improve its existing procedures for helping future 

commanders with strategic communications.113 The 

promotion system should reflect the importance of this 

skill.

Develop a rapidly deployable surge capacity 

for creating, training, and equipping local security 

forces. Training and advising local allies will remain 

the key to counterinsurgency support, but it is crucial 

for the United States to be able to do this quickly 

in failed or destroyed states before an insurgency 

can coalesce. History suggests that insurgencies 

always need a breathing space to organize and begin 

operations. The government may be unaware of them 

or simply lack the capability to quash them before they 

evolve from proto-insurgencies to full blown ones.114

As David Gompert and John Gordon noted, “Protoinsurgents may be barely noticeable, not seen as having 
60

the potential to inspire insurgency, or dismissed as 

criminals or inconsequential crack-pots.”115 Until a 

government recognizes the existence and extent of an 

insurgency, it cannot act.

Stopping an insurgency from developing involves 

both recognition and action. In Iraq, recognition took 

several months. Insurgency only takes root when a 

government or ruling authority has failed in major 

ways. In Iraq the Bush administration, particularly 

Secretary Rumsfeld, were loath to admit the shortcomings of the Coalition Provisional Authority and 

denied that an insurgency existed long after it was 

perfectly clear. Even as late as 2005, Rumsfeld claimed 

there was no organized insurgency and instructed the 

DoD to avoid using that word.116 As Bradley Graham 

explained,

For Rumsfeld to have concurred that an insurgency 

had taken root in Iraq would have led him to 

acknowledge the enemy as an organized and durable 

force. That, in turn, would have pointed to a much 

longer struggle ahead for U.S. forces, since historically 

insurgencies were not quickly defeated.117

With recognition delayed, it took several years for 

the United States to develop an effective organization 

and system for training and advising the ISF. Had 

this been done in the summer and autumn of 2003, 

there is a good chance the insurgency would never 

have taken root. While the Army will never be able 

to force policymakers to recognize the emergence of 

an insurgency and commit the United States to action 

against it, Army leaders can be prepared to act quickly 

once a decision is made. To do this, the U.S. military 

should be able to deploy a major training and advisory 

effort on short notice, seizing the “golden moment” 

before the insurgency matures. The first U.S. trainers 
61

and advisers in a security force assistance surge should 

be deployed within weeks of warning, with a contingent 

on the ground as soon as possible.118 Having a major 

training and advisory capability ready to deploy in 

weeks or months rather than developing it over several 

years would require major changes in the Army and 

significant ones in the other services. In all likelihood, 

it would require a refocusing of a significant portion of 

the Reserve Component on this mission, the creation 

of at least a small standing advisory corps within the 

active Army, and the development of methods to hire 

and deploy contractors much more rapidly than was 

possible during the early years of the Iraq conflict. It 

might also be possible for the combatant commands to 

create regional stability support centers and hold large 

scale multinational exercises to make it easier to surge 

a multinational training and advisory force to forestall 

an insurgency in a failed or destroyed state. 

Maintain the Army’s wartime adaptation speed. 

The strategic surge of 2007 was possible because the 

U.S. military had developed the ability to adapt rapidly 

as insurgent tactics and operational methods shifted. 

The lessons learned process had become very powerful 

not only in its ability to collect relevant information, 

but also its ability to integrate that information into 

training and education, disseminate it within the 

services, and use it for doctrine development and the 

fielding of new equipment and technology. Informal 

learning, much of it based on information technology, 

supported the process. Speeding the adaptation 

process during war is normal. By the end of the world 

wars, for instance, changes in methods, organization, 

technology, and equipment—which would have taken 

years or decades during peacetime—were unfolding 

in weeks or months. It is important that the Army not 
62

allow this speed of adaptation to devolve back into a 

normal peacetime pace once the conflict in Iraq (and 

Afghanistan) ends. Army leaders must institutionalize 

it lest it again take several years to recreate it during 

future conflicts. Finding the best method of this will 

require significant analysis and experimentation—

something that should begin immediately.

Lead an effort within the joint community to 

develop and institutionalize procedures for reseizing 

the strategic initiative. In 2003, the United States had 

the strategic initiative in Iraq. By 2006, it was lost. The 

insurgents controlled the evolution of the conflict. This 

should have been expected, since what is called the 

“paradoxical logic of strategy” explains, every strategy 

eventually loses effectiveness if not altered.119 But in 

2007, the United States was able to reseize the strategic 

initiative by the top down initiative of the surge and 

the bottom up initiative of collaborating with Sunni 

Arab militias. The effort, imagination, and talent 

of many military and civilian leaders and national 

security experts allowed this. It was not something 

they were educated to do. For decades, American 

military leaders had studied and wargamed conflicts in 

which the enemy initially seized the strategic initiative 

through aggression. But once the United States struck 

back, it held the strategic initiative until the end of 

the conflict. This was the way a war with the Soviet 

bloc was conceptualized, and the way that Operation 

DESERT STORM unfolded. So American leaders had 

not thought through the complexities of a protracted 

conflict in which the enemy had been able to wrest the 

strategic initiative from the United States. 

Luckily, American leaders were able to figure out 

how to regain the strategic initiative. But we should 

not leave our future to luck. We should abandon the 
63

assumption that in all conflicts, once the United States 

gains the strategic initiative it will hold it to the end 

of the conflict. The U.S. military should use historical 

research and wargames to understand the mechanics of 

reseizing the strategic initiative in a conflict, seeking to 

find what works and what does not. The military may 

hope for short conflicts where the strategic initiative 

does not change hands but should not assume them. 

Once a body of theory and concepts on this topic are 

developed, the military should integrate them into its 

professional educational system and articulate them to 

civilian policymakers who, in nearly all cases, will not 

have learned strategy in a formal setting such as the 

war colleges.

CONCLUSION

The strategic shift of 2007 in Iraq shows both the 

strengths of the American strategy making system and 

the U.S. military, and some of their enduring problems, 

particularly in protracted counterinsurgency support. 

It demonstrates that the process for integrating 

professional military advice into strategy making is 

imperfect, and that solutions are difficult and largely 

beyond the control of the military itself. To the 

extent that military advice was ineffective during the 

reassessment of American strategy that took place in 

the second half of 2006, it was not because of a lack 

of talent or expertise. Rather it was the nature of the 

American system that muted the military’s input. 

Counterinsurgency, which is protracted, ambiguous, 

and quintessentially psychological, compounded the 

problems. 

The events also demonstrated that the process of 

institutionalizing a strategic decision—of convincing 
64

key stakeholders, the Congress, and the public—is as 

important as actually arriving at a decision. Most of 

what became the strategic shift of 2007 was developed 

by a small group of people in the White House and 

NSC between September 2006 and early December of 

that year. But only when President Bush, assisted by 

the AEI’s study and other factors, was able to convince 

key stakeholders in the DoD, the Congress, and the 

public was the decision implementable or real.

The Army learned much in Iraq and has taken great 

strides to integrate the lessons. Much work, though, 

remains to be done. Finally, enduring solutions can 

only come about if Congress and the President un–

derstand what went wrong in Iraq between 2003 and 

2007, and realize that something like it could happen 

again. The United States was fortunate in Iraq. To some 

extent, America must always depend on luck. But it 

can, through preparation, lessen this dependence.

ENDNOTES 

1. Condoleezza Rice, interview with Al-Arabiya Television 

Network, December 2, 2006.

2. This section draws heavily from Steven Metz, Iraq and the 

Evolution of American Strategy, Washington, DC: Potomac, 2008; 

and idem, Learning From Iraq: Counterinsurgency and American 

Strategy, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. 

Army War College, 2006.

3. There are conflicting accounts of who fired first. See Ian 

Fisher, “U.S. Force Said To Kill 15 Iraqis During an Anti-American 

Rally,” New York Times, April 30, 2003.

4. Donald H. Rumsfeld, Prepared Testimony for the Senate 

Armed Services Committee, Washington, DC, July 9, 2003.

5. “DoD News Briefing—Mr. Di Rita and General Abizaid,” 

U.S. Department of Defense news transcript, July 16, 2003. See 
65

also Vernon Loeb, “‘Guerrilla’ War Acknowledged,” Washington 

Post, July 17, 2003; and David Cloud and Greg Jaffe, The Fourth 

Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle For the Future of the United 

States Army, New York: Crown, 2009, pp. 127-128.

6. A government facing an insurgency undertakes 

counterinsurgency. Outsiders like the United States provide 

counterinsurgency support.

7. Linda Robinson, Tell Me How This Ends: General David 

Petraeus and the Search For a Way Out of Iraq, New York: Public 

Affairs, 2008, p. 14.

8. Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq: Report to Congress in 

Accordance With the Department of Defense Appropriations Act 2007, 

November 2006, p. 17.

9. Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq: Report to Congress in 

Accordance With the Department of Defense Appropriations Act 2007, 

March 2009, p. 19.

10. “Victory in Iraq,” New York Sun, July 18, 2008. Other 

examples of the same idea are Jeff Jacoby, “Bush’s ‘Folly’ Is Ending 

in Victory,” Boston Globe, March 25, 2009; and, “Quiet Victory in 

Iraq,” National Review, February 2, 2009. The online edition of the 

Weekly Standard, which was always at the forefront of advocacy for 

American involvement in Iraq, stated that “Obama has inherited 

victory in Iraq” (available from weeklystandard.com, posting by 

Michael Goldfarb, January 20, 2009). Rush Limbaugh referred 

to “the surge that led to victory in Iraq” (e.g., transcript of July 

1, 2009 broadcast.) Speaking on Fox News on February 15, 2009, 

commentator Oliver North opined, “Today, the campaign against 

radical Islam in Iraq is won.” 

11. This stress on the symbolic content of security issues is 

a characteristic of dominant powers. All of history’s great states 

and empires recognized that other nations drew cues from the 

way they interacted with enemies and allies. Lesser powers, 

which play a smaller role in determining the rules of behavior for 

regional or global security systems, are less concerned with the 

symbolism of their actions and more with the tangible outcomes.
66

12. National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, Washington, DC: 

National Security Council, 2005, p. 1. 

13. “Press Conference by the President,” Washington, DC, 

August 21, 2006.

14. This reflected an intellectual tradition that can be traced 

back to the philosophy of history developed by Georg Wilhelm 

Friedrich Hegel and codified in Ronald Reagan’s thinking. In 

Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy, I argue that President 

Bush was driven by a desire to emulate Reagan. This made him 

receptive to the Reaganesque portrayal of history as a great 

struggle between freedom and its enemies, and the United States 

as the champion of freedom.

15. “President’s Address to the Nation,” Washington, DC, 

September 11, 2006. This assertion was never seriously questioned, 

demonstrating the degree to which the 9/11 attacks had skewed 

American thinking about security and made any assertion about 

terrorism credible.

16. Peter D. Feaver, “Anatomy of the Surge,” Commentary, 

April 2008, p. 25.

17. Letter to President Bush signed by Harry Reid, Nancy 

Pelosi, Dick Durbin, Steny Hoyer, Carl Levin, Ike Skelton, Joe 

Biden, Tom Lantos, Jay Rockefeller, Jane Harmon, Daniel Inouye, 

and John Murtha, July 31, 2006.

18. Robin Toner and Jim Rutenberg, “Partisan Divide on Iraq 

Exceeds Split on Vietnam,” New York Times, July 30, 2006, p. 1.

19. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Bush Quarterly Average Establishes 

New Low: 29%,” Gallup Report, July 17, 2008.

20. Adam Nagourney, Jim Rutenberg, and Jeff Zeleny, 

“Democrats Turned War Into an Ally,” New York Times, November 

9, 2006, p. A1.

21. Quoted in Michael Grunwald, “Opposition to War Buoys 

Democrats,” Washington Post, November 8, 2006, p. A31.
67

22. David S. Cloud, “Senator Says U.S. Should Rethink Iraq 

Strategy,” New York Times, October 6, 2006, p. A12.

23. Chuck Hagel, “Leaving Iraq, Honorably,” Washington 

Post, November 26, 2006, p. B7.

24. “Rumsfeld’s Memo of Options for Iraq War,” reprinted in 

the New York Times, December 3, 2006.

25. Robin Wright, “Bush Initiates Iraq Policy Review Separate 

From Baker Group’s,” Washington Post, November 15, 2006, p. 

A16.

26. See Steven Metz, “America’s Defense Transformation: 

A Conceptual and Political History,” Defence Studies, Vol. 6, No. 

1, March 2006, pp. 1-25; and Frederick W. Kagan, Finding the 

Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy, New York: 

Encounter, 2006.

27. An Analysis of the U.S. Military’s Ability to Sustain an 

Occupation of Iraq, Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, 

September 3, 2003.

28. The most comprehensive treatment of this was Thomas 

Donnelly and Frederic W. Kagan, Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. 

Land Power, Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 2008.

29. Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution and 

Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute have been 

among the most persistent in calling for an increase in the size 

of the Army. See, for instance, O’Hanlon’s “Breaking the Army,” 

Washington Post, July 3, 2003; “The Need to Increase the Size of the 

Deployable Army,” Parameters, Vol. 34, No. 3, Autumn 2004, pp. 

4-17; and Defense Policy for the Post-Saddam Era, Washington, DC: 

Brookings Institution, 2005; and Kagan’s “The Army We Have: 

It’s Too Small,” Weekly Standard, December 27, 2004; “Army Needs 

More Strength in Numbers,” New York Daily News, August 24, 

2006; and “The U.S. Military’s Manpower Crisis,” Foreign Affairs, 

Vol. 85, No. 4, July/August 2006, pp. 97-110. Other organizations 

and individuals took a similar line. In January 2005, for instance, 

the Project for the New American Century sent a letter to leading 

members of Congress. The letter included a call for increasing the 
68

number of U.S. ground forces. The signatories included defense 

experts from both ends of the political spectrum, retired senior 

military leaders, and former officials of the Clinton and George H. 

W. Bush administrations.

30. Mark Sappenfield, “Dueling Views on Army Size: 

Congress vs. Rumsfeld,” Christian Science Monitor, May 17, 2005. 

In early 2004, a bipartisan group of 128 members of the House, led 

by Heather Wilson (R-NM), called on President Bush to increase 

the Army’s overall size—called end strength—and to reduce the 

time reservists must spend on active duty. In October 2004, the FY 

2005 Defense Authorization Act increased Army end strength by 

20,000 and Marine Corps end strength by 3,000 with additional 

increases authorized in future years. For background, see Edward 

F. Bruner, Military Forces: What Is the Appropriate Size for the United 

States? Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, May 

28, 2004. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 

2006 (Public Law 109-163) authorized an active duty end strength 

for the Army at 512,400 and 179,000 for the Marine Corps. 

Additional authority also was provided in section 403 of that Act 

to increase the active duty end strength for the Army by up to 

20,000 and Marine Corps active duty end strength by 5,000 during 

fiscal years 2007 through 2009. 

31. Donald H. Rumsfeld, “New Model Army,” Wall Street 

Journal, February 3, 2004.

32. Esther Schrader, “Army Says It Has Enough Troops For 

Three More Years,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2004.

33. Quoted in Ann Scott Tyson, “Two Years Later, Iraq War 

Drains Military,” Washington Post, March 19, 2005.

34. For instance, see James Fallows, “The Hollow Army,” 

Atlantic, March 2004, pp. 29-31.

35. Ann Scott Tyson, “General Says Army Will Need to 

Grow,” Washington Post, December 15, 2006, p. A1.

36. Thom Shanker, “Joint Chiefs Chairman Looks Beyond 

Current Wars,” New York Times, October 22, 2007.

37. See Bob Woodward, State of Denial, New York: Simon and 
69

Schuster, 2006, pp. 440-491; Kimberly Kagan, The Surge: A Military 

History, New York: Encounter, 2009, pp. 3-26; and Bing West, The 

Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq, New York: 

Random House, 2008, pp. 64-172.

38. Bob Woodward, The War Within: A Secret White House 

History 2006-2008, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008, p. 7.

39. West, p. 198.

40. Cloud and Jaffe, p. 169.

41. West, pp. 164-165; Kagan, The Surge, pp. 11-15; and, 

Catherine Dale, Operation Iraqi Freedom: Strategies, Approaches, 

Results, and Issues for Congress, Washington, DC: Congressional 

Research Service, 2009, pp. 69-70. Then-Major General James 

Thurman, commander of the Multi-National Division-Baghdad, 

described Operation TOGETHER FORWARD as “an Iraqi-led 

operation . . . to reduce the sectarian violence in focused areas 

identified by the Iraqi government” and with a strategy of three 

parts: clear, hold, and build. (DoD News Briefing with Major 

General Thurman from Iraq, September 22, 2006).

42. Information technology and the profusion of media have 

exacerbated this since the public now sees American troops as 

individuals rather than simply statistics.

43. Kagan, The Surge, p. 32.

44. Hadley’s pessimistic memo was quickly leaked and 

reprinted in several media sources.

45. Bob Woodward, “CIA Said Instability Seemed 

‘Irreversible’,” Washington Post, July 12, 2007. A CIA spokesman 

later disputed Woodward’s account but other sources confirmed 

it. The testimony itself was never made public.

46. West, p. 198.

47. Woodward, The War Within, p. 22; Bradley Graham, By His 
70

Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald 

Rumsfeld, New York: PublicAffairs, 2009, pp. 624-625.

48. West, p. 160.

49. Woodward, The War Within, p. 170.

50. West, pp. 217-218.

51. Robinson, p. 36.

52. President’s Address to the Nation, January 10, 2007.

53. Kalev I. Sepp, “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency,” 

Military Review, Vol. 85, No. 3, May-June 2005, pp. 8-12. From 2007 

to 2009, Sepp served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as a 

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Operations Capabilities.

54. Bruce Hoffman, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 

Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2004.

55. John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: 

Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press, 2005; and David Kilcullen, 

“Counterinsurgency Redux,” Survival, Vol. 48, No. 4, Winter 

2006-07, pp. 111-130. Both Nagl and Kilcullen were also Ph.D.s.

56. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., “How to Win in Iraq,” Foreign 

Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 5, September-October 2005, pp. 87-91.

57. See Report of the National Defense Panel, Arlington, VA: 

National Defense Panel, 1997.

58. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam, 

Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

59. Krepinevich, “How to Win in Iraq,” pp. 88-89 .

60. Steven N. Simon, After the Surge: The Case for U.S. 

Disengagement From Iraq, New York: Council on Foreign 

Relations, February 2007; idem, “America and Iraq: The Case for 

Disengagement,” Survival, Vol. 49, No. 1, Spring 2007, pp. 61-84; 
71

and Lawrence J. Korb and Max A. Bergmann, “How to Withdraw 

Quickly and Safely,” Boston Globe, September 9, 2007. Also 

see Rosa Brooks, “Abandon Iraq to Save It,” Los Angeles Times, 

December 1, 2006, p. A35 .

61. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “It Is Time to Plan for an American 

Withdrawal From Iraq,” Financial Times, April 19, 2006, p. 15; and 

William E. Odom, “Cut and Run? You Bet,” Foreign Policy, Vol. 

154, May/June 2006, pp. 60-61.

62. The Iraq Study Group was chaired by James Baker, 

George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of State; and former Democratic 

Congressman Lee Hamilton. Its members included former 

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, former Secretary 

of State Lawrence Eagleburger, former Attorney General Edwin 

Meese III, former Republican Senator Alan K. Simpson, business 

executive Vernon Jordan, Jr., former White House Chief of Staff 

(and current CIA Director) Leon E. Panetta, former Secretary of 

Defense William J. Perry, and former Democratic governor and 

Senator Charles S. Robb.

63. See The Iraq Study Group Report, December 2, 2006, pp. 32-

62.

64. Robinson, p. 32; Woodward, The War Within, pp. 131-132; 

and Graham, pp. 636-640.

65. West, p. 218; Robinson, p. 33.

66. Frederick W. Kagan, Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success 

in Iraq, Phase I Report of the American Enterprise Institute Iraq 

Planning Group, n.d., p. 5. The AEI Group included Frederick W. 

Kagan, Jack Keane, David Barno, Danielle Pletka, Rend al-Rahim, 

Joel Armstrong, Daniel Dwyer, Larry Crandall, Larry Sampler, 

Michael Eisenstadt, Kimberly Kagan, Michael Rubin, Reuel Marc 

Gerecht, Thomas Donnelly, Gary Schmitt, Mauro De Lorenzo, 

and Vance Serchuk.

67. Field Manual (FM) 3-24/Marine Corps Warfighting 

Publication (MCWP) 3-33.5, Counterinsurgency, Washington, DC: 

Headquarters, Department of the Army, December 2006, p. 1-23.

68. See, for instance, David S. Cloud, “Senator Says U.S. 
72

Should Rethink Iraq Strategy,” New York Times, October 6, 2006, 

p. A12; and Chuck Hagel, “Leaving Iraq, Honorably,” Washington 

Post, November 26, 2006, p. B7.

69. See Metz, Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy, pp. 

101-138; and Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, 

New York: Penguin, 2008, pp. 131-253.

70. Gellman contends that Cheney’s influence was waning by 

2006.

71. Woodward, The War Within, p. 20.

72. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “Iraq and U.S. 

Policy,” testimony to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 

October 19, 2005.

73. Woodward, The War Within, pp. 31-33. While Woodward 

had extensive access to key administration officials, no other 

source to date has independently verified his depiction of this 

process.

74. Title 10 U.S. Code, Chap. 5, § 151 states:

(b) Function as Military Advisers.—

(1) The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the principal military adviser to the President, the National Security 

Council, the Homeland Security Council, and the Secretary of 

Defense. 

(2) The other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are military 

advisers to the President, the National Security Council, the 

Homeland Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense as 

specified in subsections (d) and (e). 

(c) Consultation by Chairman.— 

(1) In carrying out his functions, duties, and responsibilities, 

the Chairman shall, as he considers appropriate, consult with and 

seek the advice of— 

(A) the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and 

(B) the commanders of the unified and specified 

combatant commands. 
73

(2) Subject to subsection (d), in presenting advice with respect 

to any matter to the President, the National Security Council, 

the Homeland Security Council, or the Secretary of Defense, the 

Chairman shall, as he considers appropriate, inform the President, 

the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, 

or the Secretary of Defense, as the case may be, of the range of 

military advice and opinion with respect to that matter. 

(d) Advice and Opinions of Members Other Than Chairman.— 

(1) A member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (other than the 

Chairman) may submit to the Chairman advice or an opinion in 

disagreement with, or advice or an opinion in addition to, the 

advice presented by the Chairman to the President, the National 

Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, or the Secretary 

of Defense. If a member submits such advice or opinion, the 

Chairman shall present the advice or opinion of such member at 

the same time he presents his own advice to the President, the 

National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, or the 

Secretary of Defense, as the case may be. 

(2) The Chairman shall establish procedures to ensure that 

the presentation of his own advice to the President, the National 

Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, or the Secretary 

of Defense is not unduly delayed by reason of the submission of 

the individual advice or opinion of another member of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff. 

(e) Advice on Request.— The members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

individually or collectively, in their capacity as military advisers, 

shall provide advice to the President, the National Security 

Council, the Homeland Security Council, or the Secretary of 

Defense on a particular matter when the President, the National 

Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, or the Secretary 

requests such advice. 

75. National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, Washington, DC: 

National Security Council, 2005, p. 1.

76. West, p. 217.

77. Ibid., p. 204.
74

78. General Casey also believed Maliki could be an effective 

national leader. See Cloud and Jaffe, p. 253.

79. Woodward, The War Within, pp. 190-92.

80. West, p. 202.

81. For instance, General Abizaid continued to warn that the 

American military was stretched too thin to sustain a long-term 

troop increase in Iraq. See Michael R. Gordon and Mark Mazzetti, 

“General Warns of Risks in Iraq if G.I.’s are Cut,” New York Times, 

November 16, 2006, p. A1.

82. Woodward, The War Within, pp. 232-233.

83. Ibid., p. 238.

84. This is a persistent problem in counterinsurgency support. 

It was also evident in Vietnam and today has reappeared in 

Afghanistan.

85. See, for instance, General Abizaid’s testimony to the 

Senate Armed Services Committee, November 15, 2006.

86. The Iraq Study Group Report, p. 48.

87. It was actually more a refinement of the existing strategy 

than a new one.

88. David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small 

Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Oxford, UK: Oxford University 

Press, 2009, pp. 133-135.

89. Cloud and Jaffe, pp. 264-265.

90. See Austin Long, “The Anbar Awakening,” Survival, Vol. 

50, No. 2, April-May 2008, pp. 67-94.

91. Robinson, p. 106. Of course, the full story of the high 

value targeting campaign will not be publicly available for many 

years. For conceptual treatments of high value targeting and 

counterinsurgency/counterterrorism, see George A. Crawford, 
75

Manhunting: Reversing the Polarity of Warfare, Baltimore, MD: 

PublishAmerica, 2008; idem, Manhunting: Counter-Network 

Organization for Irregular Warfare, Hurlburt Field, FL: Joint Special 

Operations University Press, 2009; and Steven Metz, “Strategic 

Decapitation: The Dynamics of High Value Targeting in 

Counterinsurgency,” paper prepared for the RAND Corporation 

Insurgency Board, July 2008.

92. The notion of victory pushed by some on the political 

right may be premature, the possibility of renewed civil war 

and disintegration remain as the American role—and ability to 

influence events—diminishes. See, for instance, Ernest Londono 

and Greg Jaffe, “Iraq Carnage Shows Sectarian War Goes On,” 

Washington Post, August 20, 2009. Iraq may eventually face what 

might be called a “resurgency”—an insurgency that appears 

defeated or goes into hibernation and later reappears if the root 

causes are not addressed.

93. See FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, December 2006; and U.S. 

Government Counterinsurgency Guide, Washington, DC: U.S. 

Department of State Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, 2009.

94. West, p. 223.

95. Cloud and Jaffe recount Maliki’s congratulations to 

General Petraeus after his September 2007 congressional 

testimony, suggesting that the Iraqi leader was well aware of the 

importance of support for his regime in Washington. See Cloud 

and Jaffe, p. 277.

96. British Lieutenant General (Ret.) Graeme Lamb makes this 

same point in Dexter Filkins, “Stanley McChrystal’s Long War,” 

New York Times Magazine, October 18, 2009.

97. See James Kitfield, War and Destiny: How the Bush 

Revolution in Foreign and Military Affairs Redefined American Power, 

Washington, DC: Potomac, 2005; Dale R. Herspring, Rumsfeld’s 

Wars: The Arrogance of Power, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 

2008; and Charles A. Stevenson, SECDEF: The Nearly Impossible 

Job of Secretary of Defense, Washington, DC: Potomac, 2006, pp. 

159-180. Bradley Graham cites former Undersecretary of Defense 

for Policy Eric Edelman as indicating that Rumsfeld tended to be 
76

more deferential to the regional combatant commanders than the 

Service chiefs or Joint Staff. See pp. 641-642.

98. Cloud and Jaffe, p. 171.

99. For instance, Myers’s memoirs make no mention of direct, 

private conversations with the President. See Richard B. Myers, 

Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security, 

New York: Threshold, 2009. In State of Denial and The War Within, 

Bob Woodward describes a few meetings between General Pace 

and President Bush but does not suggest that these were decisive 

or even important in shaping the administration’s Iraq policy.

100. Vice President Cheney, though, did reach down into 

the bureaucracy and deal directly with second tier officials. See 

Gellman, p. 196.

101. H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert 

McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam, 

New York: HarperCollins, 1997, pp. 328-329. Like John Nagl’s 

Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam and Andrew 

Krepinevich’s The Army and Vietnam, McMaster’s book began as a 

Ph.D. dissertation while he was serving on the faculty of the U.S. 

Military Academy.

102. In describing the role of CENTCOM commander General 

Tommy Franks during the planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, 

Thomas Ricks entitled a section of his book Fiasco, “Franks Flunks 

Strategy.” This was not an isolated phenomenon. 

103. Another example of important innovation emerging from 

the “upper middle” level is the role that Douglas Macgregor’s 

Breaking the Phalanx: A New Design for Landpower in the 21st 

Century, New York: Praeger, 1997, played in helping the Army 

move to a brigade-based organization.

104. Quoted in Woodward, The War Within, p. 197.

105. General Casey’s tour in Iraq was extended three times to 

allow this. See Cloud and Jaffe, p. 193.
77

106. See, for instance, Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberley 

Kagan, “In Afghanistan, Real Leverage Starts With More Troops,” 

Washington Post, November 27, 2009. Following President Obama’s 

December 1, 2009, speech on Afghanistan at the U.S. Military 

Academy, Senator Joe Lieberman said he was encouraged by the 

announcement of a troop increase because, “It’s the strategy that 

worked in Iraq.” Quoted in Susan Page and Kathy Kiely, “Dems 

Balk at Deployment Plan,” USA Today, December 2, 2009. For an 

assessment of using Iraq as a model for Afghanistan, see Charles 

D. Allen, “The Danger of Déjà Vu: Why the Iraq Surge Is Not a 

Lesson for Afghanistan,” Armed Forces Journal, December 2009/

January 2010, pp. 30-41.

107. Sarah Palin, interviewed by Katie Couric on CBS News, 

September 24, 2008. 

108. This observation was inspired by comments by Mary 

Kaldor of the London School of Economics at a September 2009 

conference at the U.S. Naval War College.

109. It might be possible to use the Iraq conflict as a model for 

leader development since this is less context-dependent than force 

or strategy development.

110. See Jeffrey Record, Wanting War: Why the Bush 

Administration Invaded Iraq, Washington, DC: Potomac, 2009.

111. This section builds on Steven Metz, Rethinking Insurgency, 

Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 

2007.

112. Gian P. Gentile, “A Strategy of Tactics: Population-centric 

COIN and the Army,” Parameters, Vol. 39, No. 3, Autumn 2009, 

pp. 5-17.

113. While dealing with combatant commanders rather than 

commanders of counterinsurgency efforts specifically, there 

is excellent analysis in Jeffrey B. Jones, Daniel T. Kuehl, Daniel 

Burgess, and Russell Rochte, “Strategic Communication and 

the Combatant Commander,” Joint Force Quarterly, Vol 55, 4th 

Quarter, 2009, pp. 104-108.
78

114. On this concept, see Daniel Byman, Understanding ProtoInsurgencies, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007.

115. David C. Gompert and John Gordon IV, War by 

Other Means: Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for 

Counterinsurgency, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2008, 

p. 36.

116. Dana Milbank, “Rumsfeld’s War on ‘Insurgents’,” 

Washington Post, November 30, 2005. General (Ret.) Jack Keane 

told Washington Post reporter Bradley Graham that when he 

sensed the beginning of an insurgency in the summer of 2003, 

General Myers advised him to avoid such talk with Rumsfeld. 

See Graham, p. 424.

117. Graham, p. 427.

118. Gompert and Gordon suggest “early,” “medium,” “late,” 

and “never” capabilities that U.S. advisers and trainers should 

impart to partner states fighting an insurgency (War by Other 

Means, pp. 209-210). Whether their particular construct is the 

correct one, clearly some capabilities must take priority.

119. See Edward Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, 

Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1987.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Robert M. Williams

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II

Author

Dr. Steven Metz

Executive Editor

Colonel John R. Martin, U.S. Army (Retired)

Director of Publications

Dr. James G. Pierce

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Mrs. Jennifer E. Nevil