Jim Haldeman forwards a recent e-mail from Colonel John Charlton, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division, describing the current situation in Ramadi, Iraq…
Colonel John Charlton: Security here in Ramadi continues to improve as the Iraqi police and army forces work daily to keep the population safe. When we arrived in February, we were averaging 30 – 35 attacks per day in our area of responsibility. Now our average is one attack per day or less. We had an entire week with no attacks in our area and have a total of over 65 days with no attacks. I attribute this success to our close relationship with the Iraqi security forces and the support those forces receive from the civilian population. The Iraqi police and army forces have uncovered hundreds of munitions caches and get intelligence tips from the local population every day.
Our biggest challenge with the Iraqi police is getting them fully equipped, paid, and consolidated in police stations. The support system that begins with the MOI [Ministry of the Interior], and extends through the provincial police chief, is still a work in progress. As a result, the Iraqi police still rely heavily on coalition logistics and support. We expect the equipment issue to improve soon, and we are working hard to get their logistics and command and control systems in place. One thing that is not lacking is the courage and the dedication of the Iraqi police in al Anbar. For them, this fight is personal. They know that al Qaeda is targeting them, their families and their tribes.
Some of our most recent successes have been in the areas of reconstruction and governance. The city government didn’t exist before April of this year, but has grown steadily over the past few months, and is now providing essential services to the population. In areas that were battlefields only a few months ago, city electrical employees are now repairing transformers and power lines. Sanitation workers are fixing sewer leaks caused by hundreds of buried IED’s [improvised explosive devices]. The Iraqis now have repaired the electrical grid in about 80 percent of the city and about 50 percent of the rubble has been removed. We expect to have all rubble removed in the next 90 – 120 days, which will allow for many parts of the city to start rebuilding
We now have our Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team (EPRT) and they are working hard to help build the municipal government in Ramadi. The EPRT is composed of personnel from the U.S. State Department, USAID, and other experts in various areas of government. We have partnered the EPRT with officials from the municipal government in much the same way that we partner Soldiers and Marines with Iraqi police. The EPRT works every day with the city government helping them with budgeting, planning, and delivering services to the public. The EPRT is a critical capability that we never had before, and I’m confident that it is going to make a big difference in building stability here in Ramadi.
We have been working closely with the chief judge of the province to rebuild the judicial system in Ramadi and throughout al Anbar province. Four months ago, there were no attorneys, judges, or investigators because of the threat from al Qaeda. Now that we have greatly increased security, these legal professionals are coming forward, and we are helping them reestablish the rule of law. Investigative judges are reviewing case files for prisoners in Iraqi jails. They have released many of these prisoners because of lack of evidence, but have also prepared over 100 files for prosecution. We established a detectives course in our police training center to help the Iraqi police do better investigations and evidence collection. We expect to have criminal courts beginning here in Ramadi in August—pretty good progress considering there was no rule of law here four months ago.
We are also making good progress on economic development by focusing on low-level economic stimulation. Once we had completed our large-scale offensive operations in February and March, we realized we needed to provide a massive and quick economic stimulus in order to stabilize the communities within the city. Because of the fighting in the city, the economy was in ruins, and it was clear that it would take some time to get businesses back in operation. We started day labor programs throughout the city to help clear trash and rubble, as well as provide an economic shot-in-the-arm to these devastated communities. These day-labor programs were all planned and executed by company commanders, and their effect was dramatic. We have funneled over $5 million in aid to these programs and have employed over 15,000 Iraqis. All this happened in about three months. This decentralized economic development program only used about 10 percent of my reconstruction funds, but has accounted for over 70 percent of new employment in Ramadi. These programs have cleaned neighborhoods, uncovered caches of munitions, and have restored hope and pride to the citizens of Ramadi.
We have joined efforts with organizations like the Iraqi/American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) to help revitalize small business in Ramadi. Company commanders went through every neighborhood and conducted assessments on all small businesses so we could help jump-start the small business grant program. We collected over 500 assessments, which helped the IACC begin its grant operations. This is the same technique we use with all non-military organizations—we use our presence in the city and access to the population to facilitate their operations. Revitalizing small businesses in Ramadi will lead to more stable communities, which helps us maintain overall security in the area.
We have a great relationship with another non-governmental organization called International Relief and Development (IRD). IRD focuses on programs for community stabilization just like we do, and it provides help in ways the military can’t. For example, IRD helped us fund a city-wide soccer league, providing equipment and uniforms to hundreds of young Iraqis. The organization has also helped us form women’s outreach groups that focus on adult literacy, health, and education issues. Forming relationships with NGOs like IRD is essential in a counterinsurgency campaign, and complements our efforts to improve security.
I’ve mentioned several times our focus on stabilizing communities, and I believe this is a fundamental aspect of a successful counterinsurgency campaign. Counterinsurgencies are fought neighborhood by neighborhood with the focus on protecting the population and improving conditions in the community. After clearing an area of terrorists (we do this by conducting large-scale offensive operations), our focus shifts to establishing a permanent security presence with coalition forces and ISF. That is the purpose of the Joint Security Station (JSS). The JSS helps secure and stabilize a community by proving an overt security presence, which establishes a perception of security in the minds of the population. Once they feel safe, they begin to provide intelligence to the police, and security improves steadily. This also helps insulate the community from terrorist attempts to move back into the neighborhood. We then shift our focus on non-lethal efforts to stabilize the community. This is done through day-labor programs, small business development, engagement with local sheikhs and Imams and information operations focused on the community.
Despite all the progress we have made with the Iraqis here in Ramadi, the area remains very dangerous. We recently received intelligence reports that terrorists were attempting to stage attacks from an area south of the city. We increased our offensive operations in that area and made contact with a large group of al Qaeda terrorists that were attempting to infiltrate into Ramadi. There were about 50 well-equipped and well-trained terrorists who were moving toward the city in two large trucks. They all had new equipment, weapons, and explosive belts. Their targets were the tribal leaders in Ramadi (we know this from propaganda videos taken off the terrorists). We attacked these terrorists using ground forces and attack helicopters, resulting in 40 enemy killed and three captured. If this force had made it into the city, it would have been a tremendous victory for al Qaeda. We successfully defeated their attack, but we know they will try again in the future. We continue to receive truck bomb attacks, but have been successful in keeping them out of the city and other populated areas. Al Qaeda has not given up on their desire to retake Ramadi and al Anbar, so we can’t let up in our efforts to stop them. The good news is that the people of al Anbar and Ramadi are united in their stand against al Qaeda.
Rock of the Marne!
John W. Charlton
COL, Infantry Commanding Camp
Ramadi, Iraq
A few quick follow-ups…
1. Since improving “logistics and command and control systems” seems to be the factor most under our control in helping to establish an effective Iraqi police force, I asked Colonel Haldeman what exactly that means given the context. Colonel Haldeman explained that logistics and command and control means, quite literally, giving Iraqi police commanders basic, reliable, and round-the-clock ability to communicate with their men in the field. He offered this example from his own tour in Fallujah…

We are talking the very, very basics of communication. The main police headquarters was blown up twice, had no computer, and no modes of communication. I was giving the Fallujah Chief of Police, General Salah, money out of my pocket to go to a store and get phone minutes for his cell phone. Citizens were calling me, (I gave out my cell phone number) then I would go through the wire at night, sneak over to Genral Salah’s HQ and tell him what was going on in the city. Police recruits were coming from everywhere throughout Iraq to join the force. They were going through the school, graduating, and going to work in the same clothes that they had with them the first day they joined up. No weapons. The ministry of Interior in Baghdad wasn’t set up yet to pay them, so the young policemen would stay for a few weeks, get frustrated about no pay and never come back. The turnover was brutal and exhausting for General Salah.

The lack EPRT’s was the single most frustrating element of our trying to streamline events in Fallujah. And seeing that there are now PRTs should make your ears perk up very quickly as it did mine when I first read the article. First of all NGOs (Non Governement Officials) and state department reps were not coming over because it was just too dangerous. Period. We had ‘ONE’!!!!!! Department of State rep who worked and operated in the al-Aanbar province. Disgusting…. But credit that one for having the cojones to be that one rep. His name is Kael Westin.
But there’s the catch for all the ney sayers who think we are failing over there. They now have NGOs and DOS and EPRTs!!!!!. That tells you that it has become safe enough for non-military people to come to place like Fallujah and Ramadi. BINGO!!!!!

Some fruits of the surge:

The sewage-filled streets of Doura, a Sunni Arab enclave in south Baghdad, provide an ugly setting for what US commanders say is al-Qaeda’s last stronghold in the city. The secretive group, however, appears to be losing its grip as a “surge” of US troops in the neighbourhood — part of the latest effort by President Bush to end the chaos in Iraq — has resulted in scores of fighters being killed, captured or forced to flee.
“Al-Qaeda’s days are numbered and right now he is scrambling,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Michael, who commands a battalion of 700 troops in Doura. …
Progress with making contacts and gathering actionable information is slow because al-Qaeda has persuasive methods of keeping people quiet. This month it beheaded two men in the street and pinned a note on to their corpses giving warning that anyone who cooperated with US troops would meet the same fate.
The increased presence of US forces in Doura, however, is encouraging insiders to overcome their fear and divulge what they know. Convoys of US soldiers are working the rubble-strewn streets day and night, knocking on doors, speaking to locals and following up leads on possible insurgent hideouts.

Here’s a thought: why don’t we begin withdrawing our troops and post our time line for exit (read “retreat”) on every street corner? No doubt that will encourage informants to come forward at an even greater rate. Best we keep declaring that the situation on the ground is “deteriorating.”

Mark Steyn’s comments on the Iran hostage non-crisis are, as always, worth reading:

How do you feel about the American hostages in Iran?
No, not the guys back in the Seventies, the ones being held right now.
What? You haven’t heard about them?
Odd that, isn’t it? But they’re there. For example, for two months now, Haleh Esfandiari has been detained in Evin prison in Tehran. Esfandiari is a U.S. citizen and had traveled to Iran to visit her sick mother. She is the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, which is the kind of gig that would impress your fellow guests at a Washington dinner party. Unfortunately, the mullahs say it’s an obvious cover for a Bush spy.
Among the other Zionist-neocon agents currently held in Iranian jails are an American journalist, an American sociologist for a George Soros-funded leftie group, and an American peace activist from Irvine, Ali Shakeri, whose capture became known shortly after the United States and Iran held their first direct talks since the original hostage crisis. …
It would be nice to think the press has ignored these hostages out of concerns that they might inflame the situation. (To date, only National Review, Bill Bennett on his radio show and various doughty Internet wallahs have made any fuss.) Or maybe the media figure that showing American prisoners on TV will only drive Bush’s ratings back up from the grave to the rude health of intensive care. Or maybe they just don’t care about U.S. hostages, not compared to real news like Senate sleepovers to block unblocking a motion to vote for voting against a cloture motion on the best way to surrender in Iraq.

I can’t help but wonder whether these hostages, should they be fortunate enough to survive in a more corporeal fashion than as online snuff videos, will prove to have been “mugged” (in the sense of that old line about liberals and conservatives). But whatever the state of their conversions upon return, it would be awfully nice if the American people were given the opportunity to pray — even to agitate — for that event.

Having a respectful and patriotic opposition can be valuable during wartime as much as during peacetime, helping to ensure that ineffective policies are changed and that excesses are not allowed. Still, the constant signals of a willingness to abandon Iraq prematurely — which factions in the United States have been sending around the world for years now — have made victory more difficult, first, by undermining, rather than honing, wartime policies and, second, by giving our enemies a concrete goal that is much easier to achieve than military success and giving our allies a reason not to risk putting all of their wagons in our caravan.
As Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman wrote in rebuke to Hillary Clinton:

“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia,” Edelman wrote.
He added that “such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.”

It is hardly fanciful to see increasing zeal for some sort of forced withdrawal plans beginning in the fall as being related to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s promise of a “hot summer.” Perhaps one can give anti-war forces in the government the benefit of the doubt that they are only being cynical, rather than traitorous, in their posturing, as John Podhoretz writes:

Even more cynically, [Harry Reid] was able to stage the all-night session precisely because he knew Republicans wouldn’t let the proposal come to a vote. The 120-day proposal isn’t a serious effort to end the war: It’s just a feel-good, symbolic gesture. Democrats don’t have to take any responsibility for it because it will never get beyond the gesture stage.

Podhoretz’s thought on responsibility is in some respects an answer Jeff Jacoby’s observation that, “for all the clamor to quit Iraq, there is little serious discussion of just what quitting will mean.” If political leaders don’t believe that their feints will actually be permitted to make contact, they needn’t worry about the results of “success” as they manipulate the nostalgic hysteria and romantic ignorance of what Jacoby terms “the surrender lobby”:

If US troops leave prematurely, the Iraqi government is likely to collapse, which could trigger violence on a far deadlier scale than Iraq is experiencing now. Iran’s malignant influence will intensify, and with it the likelihood of intensified Sunni-Shiite conflict, and even a nuclear arms race, across the Middle East. Anti-American terrorists and fanatics worldwide will be emboldened. Iraq would emerge, in Senator John McCain’s words, “as a Wild West for terrorists, similar to Afghanistan before 9/11.” Once again — as in Vietnam, in Lebanon, in Somalia — the United States would have proven the weaker horse, unwilling to see a fight through to the finish.
Yet none of this seems to trouble the surrender lobby, which either doesn’t think about the consequences of abandoning Iraq, or is convinced a US departure will actually make things better. “If everyone knows we’re leaving, it will put the fear of God into them,” Voinovich declares. Sure it will. Nothing scares Al Qaeda like seeing Americans in retreat.
Three decades ago, similar arguments were made in support of abandoning Southeast Asia to the communists. To President Ford’s warning in March 1975 that “the horror and the tragedy that we see on television” would only grow worse if the United States cut off aid to the beleaguered government in Cambodia, then-Representative Christopher Dodd of Connecticut retorted: “The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now.” So Washington ended military aid, and Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, which proceeded to exterminate nearly 2 million Cambodians in one of the ghastliest genocides of modern times.

When it comes to blame, Podhoretz may prove incorrect if the Democrats have brought their jabs too perilously close to the precipice at which they will plummet, missiles with their own momentum. As the political theater riles its audience, in turn requiring ever greater histrionics on the part of the players, eventually, the violence will spill out into the streets, as it were. The buffoon who goads the mob into action cannot avoid responsibility, because he has no excuse for ignoring those horrific outcomes that are, at the very least, sufficiently plausible to merit consideration.
And as the blogger at Ace of Spades argues, those horrific outcomes will not be limited to a cleansing domestic genocide or two in Iraq:

Who wins in a genocide? Who wins in an all-against-all civil war?
Well, who, exactly, has been trying to push the country towards exactly that? Al Qaeda and the Sadrist jihadi militias, and their Iranian backers. Once the country descends into civil war, the entire population will be forced to support the only armies capable of protecting them. Which, absent the US military, is only Al Qaeda (and the Sunni insurgent groups which will be compelled by circumstances to rejoin with them) and the Iranian-backed Sadrist militias. …
The likely winner in an Al Qaeda vs. Iran/Sadr battle will be both. Not Al Qaeda, not Iran and their toady Sadr. Both. Just like Hitler and Stalin could agree to take half of Poland each, Al Qaeda and Sadr will be more than willing to take over half of Iraq each. It gets them what they want — power, and a base from which to attack America. There will be a few flare-ups as Sadr ethnically cleanses the Sunnis from Baghdad and other Shiite-controlled areas, but once that easily-achieved ethnic cleansing/genocide is over, the two joint rulers of Iraq can put aside their differences and focus on the real enemy — America.

If the anti-war movement succeeds in forcing a premature withdrawal, America (and the rest of the West along with it) will certainly face bolder attacks by terrorists, as well as established national entities. Moreover, the United States will have no choice but to conduct future defensive wars in a more vicious fashion in order to convince the enemy of the day that we’re serious. The bloodshed will be all around and compounding. Genocide in Iraq. Terrorism in the West. And ultimately, World War II–degree military actions in multiple directions.
As Charles Krauthammer explores in an NRO piece, however, the possibility of sectarian balance can be a component in a script of American victory, as well as defeat:

[Shiite lawmaker and close Maliki adviser Hassan al-Suneid’s] coalition would not or could not disarm the militias. So [General] Petraeus has taken on the two extremes: (a) the Shiite militias and their Iranian Revolutionary Guard enablers, and (b) al Qaeda, with the help of local Sunnis.
For an interminable 18 months we waited for the 80 percent solution — for Maliki’s Shiite-Kurdish coalition to reach out to the Sunnis. The Petraeus-Crocker plan is the 20 percent solution: peel the Sunnis away from the insurgency by giving them the security and weaponry to fight the new common enemy — al Qaeda in Iraq.
Maliki & Co. are afraid we are arming Sunnis for the civil war to come. On the other hand, we might be creating a rough balance of forces that would act as a deterrent to all-out civil war and encourage a relatively peaceful accommodation.
In either case, that will be Iraq’s problem after we leave. For now, our problem is al Qaeda on the Sunni side and the extremist militias on the Shiite side. And we are making enough headway to worry people like Suneid. The Democrats might listen to him to understand how profoundly the situation is changing on the ground — and think twice before they pull the plug on this complicated, ruthless, hopeful “purely American vision.”

Forcing and guiding the creation of such strategy shifts for victory is how political opposition ought to work. It may be, however, that too many Americans (let alone Westerners) are too infatuated with the promise of political and cultural victory against their own domestic enemies to tolerate, much less promote, innovative and persistent attempts to secure a victor’s peace.