I bought the working paper written by Jim Crider on the Surge through Amazon. It is a small glossy pamphlet that contains Crider's essay on his experiences in Iraq during the Surge. One of the most interesting aspects of Iraq and the US Military is how so many commanders around the same time recognized that what they were doing was not working and started to adopt mechanisms of counter-insurgency in order to stabilize the region and remove ideological insurgents from the battlefield - which in Iraq's case was the urban environment.

After the first few weeks of operating in Doura neighbourhood Crider's Regiment questioned all their assumption and procedures which were not working. The divided the insurgents into two categories. The ideological insurgent and the accidental one (following Kilcullen's thesis). Crider writes:

The first is the insurgent motivated by ideology. This is the most dangerous group because no amount of goodwill or aggressive action will cause him to alter his way of thinking. We found this group to be rather small in our area of operations.

The second category of insurgent is made up of those who found themselves caught up in the insurgency but lacked the a true philosophical tie to the violent ideologues.

Some were often local thugs who decided to take advantage of the chaos to seize power. Others were motivated to participate due to lack of economic opportunity.

Crider continues:

Therefore, many insurgents were simply people with a legitimate grievance caught up in a chaotic situation, not hardcore members of Al Queda.

Part of the strategy of the surge was to remove the conditions that led to the accidental guerrillas. This meant the military acting more like a police force than a blitzkrieg force. Crider set up permanent bases in the neighbourhood and conducted a census. Both led to increased intelligence and the ideological insurgents were either isolated, hamstrung, or caught. The regiment also began to act in the mechanism of a state and provide positive public benefits such as business grants, supplying propane gas - as opposed to the black market - and enabled the local government's trash collection to run.

The Gamble documents that the military downgraded the definition of success in Iraq from the Bush Administration's pie in the sky hopes of Jeffersonian Democracy to one of 'sustainable stability'. Ricks writes:

This was key: The grandiose goals of the past three years, of turning Iraq into a beacon of democracy that would transform the Middle East, or even into turning Iraq into a dependable ally of the United States, were quietly put on hold. Bush Administration rhetoric didn't always reflect this shift. But on the ground in Iraq, the new goal was simply to getting to a more or less peaceful Iraq that didn't explode into regional war or implode into a civil war.

I think one of the reasons that the surge was not taken seriously politically was that it seemed like another attempt by the Bush Administration to achieve the goal of a democratic Iraq, one which had been written off by the voting public as a facetious argument. Even in 2006 it was wrapped up in the political trappings of those against it are traitors to America.

The book notes that Patreaus tried to talk Bush into down-grading his administration's rhetoric, but there was little gain in that area, especially with Bush, Cheney and other neo-cons continuing to espouse idealistic goals that had no bearing on the reality, or the political fatigue, suspicion and cynicism in which they were held by the voting public.

While Iraq was a failure of political and military strategy, it is also a large failure of politics. The military tends to see things through a nationalistic eye - being a highly nationalistic body and institution. Anything done without the full national backing and as a national project can have heavy ramifications on military morale; let alone a series of failed strategies both military and political.

The Bush Administration used the Iraq war to divide and polarise a country for short-term political gain. They did not even have the decency to be competent in that goal. They are now in a powerless minority due to their incompetence in government and politics. The Iraq War carries all the worst follies, failures and mess-ups of the Bush Administration; from the 'game-changer' ideology of Bush, to the 'show of force' mentality of Cheney, the myopic idealism of the neo-conservatives and the 'your numbers and our numbers' reality making of Rovian politics.

I suspect that if the voting public had not of turned off to the Bush Administration and the Iraq War, and Patreaus been allowed to speak more on his and Odierno's strategy, they may have been given a better chance. The surge to the voting layman, as another political wedge, appeared like throwing more good troops at a bad situation with no hope of achieving anything positive.

Gary Sauer-Thompson discusses the complexity of issues to do with Afghanistan, Iraq and the Australian relationship with the United States. It is a curious nexus of politics, morality and foreign policy doctrines in navigating a path of least dissatisfaction through through the three areas.

Democratically and militarily Australia cannot completely rebuff the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. Australia is too reliant on America for the continuance of Australian military power. Democratically there is a strong conservative media that idealizes the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine who have to be placated, not to mention a significant enough constituency that concurs on the policy.

There is the politics as well. As Hugh White writes Rudd wants to disengage from Iraq while maintaining the relationship with the US. White writes:

Hence Rudd's dilemma. He wants to do the Bush administration some favours, but he is reluctant to send more troops to Iraq. The compromise seems to be that he and his colleagues will urge the Europeans to do more without promising that Australia will do more itself.

White argues that strategically Afghanistan is of no interest to Australia, and he is correct. As he noted extremists are operating in Pakistan now, and the likelihood of Afghanistan transitioning to a secular free-market democracy are slim.

The main difference is morality. Afghanistan is easier to swallow from a moral point of view than Iraq is. We went into Afghanistan to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice for his crimes against humanity. For that reason alone it is more morally palatable than Iraq is, the latter which was predicated on fraud, propaganda and incompetence. I think this is why the Rudd Government will choose to focus on Afghanistan in their policy.

With the Bush Administration coming to a close what are we to make of foreign policy during that period? It is commonly supposed that a cabal of neo-conservatives hijacked the normal state policy apparatus and enforced radical policies on America. Certainly PNAC and neo-conservatism were discovered after the rush to invade Iraq was pushed through the mass media. But both those groups based their policy around American global hegemony and the maintenance of the hegemon. That is not really that radical, it is how super-powers have acted since the beginning of time.

White House from photogeneric's photostream.

Probably the best idea we have of neo-conservative foreign policy is from an article by Irving Kristol. Where he almost bmusedly discusses the neo-conservative approach to foreign policy. Again, it is not really that radical. It is based upon national patriotism, distaste for world government (UN etc), the friend-enemy distinction in international relations and finally that American interests are global, not national;

Finally, for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation. A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode.

A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns.

This can be construed as an idealogical justification for the defence of democratic Israel from the monarchies, oligarchies and dictatorships of the Middle East. In conjunction with the friend-enemy distinction it can possibly be seen to aim at Saddam Hussein as well.

But what of American interests being global? Neo-conservatism, like conservatives from the 19thC see the collapse of the nation that ensures the freedom of the seas - formerly Britain, now America - as an essential role in the global order .

Consequently the maintenance of American hegemony becomes an altruistic and necessary policy. Currently the US maintains it position at the top of the international pile through its industry and culture which are massive consumers of finite energy resources. In addition, a one party state in China is now challenging the US for these resources.

The Carter Doctrine has been around since the 1970s and states that the US will go to war to ensure the security of its energy supplies. This is not a new thing and it is possible many decades of US policy makers have become used to the idea of some kind of US military intervention in the Middle East would happen.

After the attacks on New York on September 11th a US national security document included the doctrine of pre-emption, which can be called the Bush Doctrine. This enabled the US to strike another country based on the assumption of terror threats:

We will disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations by: ... defending the United States, the American people, and our interests at home and abroad by identifying and destroying the threat before it reaches our borders.While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country;

By 2002 there were the doctrines in place to strike into the heart of the Middle East with US military power. The political sell of it was a different matter. The Bush Administration went quickly from freedom and democracy, to nuclear weapons, to mushroom clouds, and so forth. In the end they settled on the Schmittian policy of vilifying their political opponents.

So how radical was the Bush foreign policy? The main incident the Bush Administration will be remembered for will be the invasion of Iraq. Here the cassus belli was tenuous at best and an outright fabrication at worst. The complete schmozzle of policies after the invasion immediately discredited what good will remained for America.

Where did the policy for the invasion of Iraq come from? The Bush Doctrine allows for the pre-emptive strike against nations based on terror threats, but Iraq did not satisfy this. Neo-conservative foriegn policy allows for the friend-enemy distinction which Hussein obviously fell on the wrong side of. But not enough to invade a country and place American military power at risk.

Bush often talks in speeches of freedom and democracy and how America is bringing it to Iraq. There was also the hope that it could shake up the region and democracy could flower across the Middle East. The opposite has happened with Iran becoming more powerful for having an American neighbour in Iraq. The freedom and democracy reason is weak as it was one of the constantly shifting political sells during the run up to the war. I don't doubt Bush and others hope for it, but it is not enough to justify an invasion policy and its consequent cost.

The only other alternative was that it was strategic in an attempt to secure American energy supply with the establishment of a geographical stake in the Middle East along with a political, economic and militaristic one. In this area the Bush Administration was not radical as it followed on from a doctrine that dated back to the 1970s. It can also be construed that this process was to ensure American pre-eminence economically and in global affairs.

It appears that General Petreaus has pacified Iraq enough that it is dropping of the US political radar. There are other political pressures in America largely related to poor governance, inflation and wages not rising since the 1970s. America has survived bad Presidents before, it will again this time, but some of the external pressures are going to be harder to treat politically.

Global markets have meant that China and India, specifically, but numerous other nations too, are rising out of poverty and have increasing per capita wealth. This has had to be balanced by the loss of sharing in the global wealth by western middle classes. This is not a new process. Since the 1970s wages have been flat and families have adjusted by becoming two income, and more recently cashing out on the equity of their houses to make up for that loss in wage/salary increases.

There is an anxiety as to what the future will bring domestically. Internationally the US is not leaving Iraq anytime soon. Despite Bush's protestations of freedom and democracy the Iraqi Government is a colonial one. The power in Iraq is with the US military. There is not much in the way of national sovereignty there which was not the intent anyway. The US now sits on top of one of the largest oil reserves and in amongst all the other oil pumping countries of the Middle East. It now has a geographic as well as economic and political stake in Middle Eastern oil.

Via lm: Lessons in Forced Democracy. Vedantam argues that the Philippines is a better analogy for Iraq and consequently offers more insight. The numbers inthe article for the probability of success for forced democracy are low with only 41 cases of democracy being implemented by force successfully over the last two hundred years. The recidivism rates are high too; a third of democracies imposed by force fail within ten years. Of the weak democracies which survive the first ten years, seventy-five percent fail within twenty to thirty years. While ninety percent fail within sixty years. (more)

What is a superpower and holder of the moral high ground to do when no matter what they do, they are criticised? (more)