The strategy for Iraq is still: "We'll stand down, when they stand up!"
Why can't they stand up?
For starters, we dismantled their army, their police, and their government. Government here refers to more than Sadam and his cronies. It means the entire administrative apparatus that runs a country. It never occurred to anyone in this administration that countries need to be run. But that's another matter.
Then, when the looting began, the American occupation force stood by and let it happen. Indeed, many members of Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority thought it was a good thing. Sweep out the old, then when the fresh rain of democracy came, a whole new country would spring up, like mushrooms. That didn't happen.
Eventually, the administration thought we better create a new army and a police force. Arm them, train them, give them uniforms. Then they'll stand up, and we can stand down.
They put an American general in charge, David Petraeus.
Petraeus trained the new Iraqi army. And – for whatever reasons – he failed. He utterly failed. They don't show up. They don't fight. They work part time for the army and part time for the militias they're supposedly fighting. Not to take anything away from General Petraeus. Everyone says he's brilliant and dedicated and competitive. It's just that, he failed. Completely.
When it became evident so evident that the Iraqis were not standing up that even the administration and the media noticed, the Bush administration came up with a plan. The surge. More soldiers, to stay there longer, so that the Iraqis would have time to stand up.
Who did they call forth to take command?
General Petraeus. The man whose failure created the condition, according to which we have to stay there.
It's even more bizarre than that. The Senate voted to confirm him 81-0. Not a single one of our learned statesman, saw sufficient contradiction in the facts to vote against him.
It's even more bizarre than that.
After Petraeus failed in training up the Iraqi military, he got sent back to America. There he wrote the army's new counter-insurgency manual.
The manual calls for a force ratio of 25 for every 1,000 in the population.
Let's do the numbers.
The population of Baghdad is just short of 6,000,000. The population of Iraq is 26,780,000. Therefore, according to Petraeus, according to what is now official army doctrine, it would take 150,000 troops to control Baghdad alone. It would take 669,500 to control Iraq.
