A new Iraq “surge”?

Michael Crowley at Politico speculates on what a new Iraq “surge” would look like. He says that Republicans, like Graham, Perry, Walker and Pataki, are warming up to the idea of sending tens of thousand of US troops back into the country. Yeah, well they’ll do it without me;

And even though President Barack Obama has ruled out the idea of a ground combat force — which is also a nonstarter for congressional Democrats — polls show growing public support for the idea.

Leading voices for more U.S. troops say they’re not proposing combat units that would directly engage in firefights like those of the Iraq War. The Bush surge deployed 30,000 troops, many to the front lines. Advocates of a new surge speak mainly of more trainers and advisers embedded with Iraqi army units, spotters to guide precision airstrikes, and U.S. Special Forces to conduct night raids.

Such a strategy would dramatically amplify Obama’s policy to fight the Islamic State, which has drawn fresh criticism since militants captured Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, nearly two weeks ago.

I find it difficult to believe that there’s that much public support for sending ten or twenty thousand troops back to Iraq. More importantly, I don’t see the value of sending that many US troops into that mess as “trainers and advisers embedded with Iraqi army units”. Putting that many people into the country only guarantees that sooner or later they’ll end up in direct combat, either intentionally or accidentally.

Former Army vice chief of staff, Jack Keane, thinks that somehow putting that many US soldiers into Iraq would “speed” training of Iraqi units. I disagree. For one thing, you can’t do speedy training. You train to a standard, and it takes time. Secondly, with that many US troops on the ground, the Iraqi Army will have a crutch to lean on, insuring that we’ll never get out of that country.

Look, the only way to beat ISIS is to kill them all. There won’t be any strategic victory over maneuver elements – there will only be killing and blood shed on a scale not seen in the last few centuries. Let the Iranians and the Shi’ite militias do it. They don’t need training for that. Just turn them loose and give them some air cover. That’s all we can do. While they’re out there on the killing fields doing the dirty business in their own dirty way, we can train the Iraqi Army to manage the clean up and the relative peace that will follow when all of ISIS are dead.

Category: Terror War