Trump Ponders Petraeus for Senior Job

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With huge sums of U.S. cash going to Sunni tribes in Anbar province, Al Qaeda in Iraq just pulled back and regrouped. Its top leaders came from the ranks of angry Sunnis who had been officers in Saddam Hussein's army and -- when the "surge" failed to achieve reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites -- the U.S. cash proved useful in expanding Sunni resistance to Baghdad's Shiite government. From the failed "surge" strategy emerged the rebranded "Al Qaeda in Iraq," the Islamic State.

So, despite Jeb Bush's attempted spin, the reality is that his brother's aggressive war in Iraq created both "Al Qaeda in Iraq" and its new incarnation, Islamic State.

The mess was made worse by subsequent U.S. strategy -- beginning under Bush and expanding under President Obama -- of supporting insurgents in Syria. By supplying money, guns and rockets to "moderate" Sunni rebels, that strategy has allowed the materiel to quickly fall into the hands of Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, Nusra Front, and its jihadist allies, Ahrar al-Sham.

In other words, U.S. strategy -- much of it guided by David Petraeus -- continues to strengthen Al Qaeda, which -- through its Nusra affiliate and its Islamic State spin-off -- now occupies large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Escaping a "Lost War"

All this is among the fateful consequences of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq 13 years ago -- made worse (not better) by the "surge" in 2007, which contributed significantly to this decade's Sunni-Shia violence. The real reason for Bush's "surge" seems to have been to buy time so that he and Vice President Dick Cheney could leave office without having a lost war on their re'sumes.

As author Steve Coll has put it, "The decision [to surge] at a minimum guaranteed that his [Bush's] presidency would not end with a defeat in history's eyes. By committing to the surge [the President] was certain to at least achieve a stalemate."

According to Bob Woodward, Bush told key Republicans in late 2005 that he would not withdraw from Iraq, "even if Laura and [first-dog] Barney are the only ones supporting me." Woodward made it clear that Bush was well aware in fall 2006 that the U.S. was losing.

Indeed, by fall 2006, it had become unavoidably clear that a new course had to be chosen and implemented in Iraq, and virtually every sober thinker seemed opposed to sending more troops.

The senior military, especially CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid and his man on the ground in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, emphasized that sending still more U.S. troops to Iraq would simply reassure leading Iraqi politicians that they could relax and continue to take forever to get their act together.

Here, for example, is Gen. Abizaid's answer at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Nov. 15, 2006, to Sen. John McCain, who had long been pressing vigorously for sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq:

"Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the corps commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, 'in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq?' And they all said no.

"And the reason is because we want the Iraqis to do more. It is easy for the Iraqis to rely upon us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future."

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, sent a classified cable to Washington warning that "proposals to send more U.S. forces to Iraq would not produce a long-term solution and would make our policy less, not more, sustainable," according to a New York Times retrospective on the "surge" published on Aug. 31, 2008. Khalilzad was arguing, unsuccessfully, for authority to negotiate a political solution with the Iraqis.

There was also the establishment-heavy Iraq Study Group, created by Congress and led by Republican stalwart James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton (with Robert Gates as a member although he quit before the review was competed). After months of policy review, the Iraq Study Group issued a final report on Dec. 6, 2006, that began with the ominous sentence "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating."

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