What a "Surge" of Forces Really Means in Iraq

William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security

Out of the November election, where the majority clearly expressed their displeasure with the Iraq war and the President, we have witnessed the creation of the "surge."

Dismissed initially as a fanciful quest by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a surge of as many as 30,000 troops to Iraq is now increasingly being viewed as the likely post-New Year's change of course to be offered by President George W. Bush and a potential war winner.

Is the surge now possible because the miserly Donald Rumsfeld is gone?

Or is it a Washington ploy to get to the inevitable withdrawal while also saving face: Sure there are a lot of loyalists and dreamers out there who still think American can "win," but mostly those in the military and their armchair brethren will be able to say 'well, we tried our best, even put in more soldiers for the final push.'

My sense is that we haven't already seen serious proposals for a surge because of fear of a public backlash, because of Rumsfeld, or because no one can actually describe how a surge would either turn the corner or change strategy.

The reason why a surge continues to be so agonizing is that it is also so difficult for the military.

So as we say goodbye to the Secretary of Defense, let's also be honest: Even in those areas where Donald Rumsfeld is supposed to have been a success in "transforming" the American military, he has been a failure.

"Much more agile and more expeditionary" is how outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described where U.S. military forces are today in his final television interview with Brit Hume on the Fox News Channel.

"This institution," the Department of Defense, the Secretary said on Friday, "was designed to fight big armies, big navies and big air forces, and that isn't what we're doing today.... We simply have to be able to deal with irregular warfare and the asymmetrical challenges that are so advantageous to the enemies."

Mr. Teflon was only too happy to pin all decisions regarding the number of troops in Iraq on retired Gen. Tommy Franks and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Though it is unseemly that Rumsfeld is unable to take any responsibility to the Iraq quagmire, in a way he is right. The uniformed military has always been split with regard to how many soldiers and Marines were needed in Iraq. Early in the war, there is no question that Rumsfeld and his big brains in the office of the Secretary of Defense rejected calls for heavier forces to defeat the Iraqi army and topple Saddam Hussein, but since "mission accomplished" as commanders on the ground -- particularly Army commanders -- have called for increases and surges, they have mostly been thwarted by their own.

Proposals for increases have been rejected at the Joint Chiefs level. Gen. John Abizaid, the Central Command theater commander or Gen. George Casey, the Iraq commander, have brought forth proposals for more in the "tank," the closed decision changer where Pentagon horse trading is done.

Here are the dynamics: Do you really need more? Where are you going to get the resources? How are the forces going to be sustained? What are they going to do that is different? What are you willing to cut? The dynamics of the interrogation and the questioning ultimately is more responsible for combat commanders "withdrawing" their request or seeing the light.

Word "comes down" that the political decision-makers aren't going to look favorably on an increase request. The Washington military elite -- the Chairman, the Vice, the director of the Joint Staff, the head of plans and policy -- lets it be known "offline" that the debate is closed, that "people" at higher levels are getting irritated, that there are bigger fish to fry. Field commanders return with their tails between their legs, they redouble their efforts, they change tack. But this is how the system works: No one actually is ever making a firm request for an increase and no one is taking a stand to say "no." In this way, Rumsfeld can claim that he has never turned down a combatant commander's request for more troops.

I'm sure we'll read in the histories of the Iraq War ten years down the road that there were all sorts of proposals and contingencies and nascent requests, but the record will be miraculously thin on how those requests just never seemed to go anywhere.

"There hasn't been a minute in the last six years when we have not had the number of troops that the combatant commanders have requested," Rumsfeld said Friday. Given the dynamics of decision-making, Rumsfeld is both lying and telling the truth.

The real question though should be, was there a time in the last six years when it would have made sense to have more.

The Rumsfeld answer: Oh gosh, it makes no sense to ask what could have been, to second guess those who where to uniform, golly me. In fact that's what he said: "There's no rule book," he told Hume. "There's no guidebook. There's no program that says when you get up in the morning it's this."

When Donald Rumsfeld says he has helped to transform the military into a more agile and expeditionary force, one would think that surges would be the natural byproduct: There is a problem somewhere, we send in forces quickly to stem the tide and then withdrawn them: expeditionary.

Of course this also isn't the way the military works. The only forces that are even vaguely expeditionary in nature are the special operations forces, and even here, the actual number of fighters able to be put on the ground is relatively small. Expeditionary Army and Marine Corps unit require enormous support systems; our military is just not capable of the quick in-and-out. Rumsfeld might walk away with the belief that he has organized the military into some fundamental shift in culture but in this he has failed. Maybe if he had spent less time fighting with the military, he might have worked more effectively over six years to actually build something new.

Of course, as I've said before in these pages, a lot of the blame falls on those in uniform as well. They go along to get along. Precious few are willing to jeopardize their careers or futures on what they believe.

When President Bush finally puts forth his proposal for the big surge, the saddest part will be that most of it will be constructed from even more compromises and horse-trading and deceptions. Some troops will be asked to stay longer, a demoralizing decision for already drained forces. Reservists and guardsmen will be pushed forward, many angry and disgruntled. "Fresh" troops will be sent in, but for what?

A decision to surge will be seen by most on the streets as at least an effort to honor our commitment and pull out a win at the eleventh hour. Few Americans will see that the surge will still leave our forces as hostage to Iraqi action and desire.

Agile? We lumber towards the inevitable absolutely powerless, in a political environment so polarized by ideology and contempt for the truth, we can already see what the outcome will be. Some transformation, Mr. Rumsfeld.

By William M. Arkin | December 18, 2006; 10:00 AM ET