A Military Tactician’s Political Strategy

A Military Tactician’s Political Strategy – Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post

As Gen. David H. Petraeus flew into Baghdad in February 2007, preparing to take command of U.S. forces in Iraq, Col. Peter R. Mansoor, his executive officer, knelt alongside his seat. “You know, sir,” he said, “the hardest thing for you, if it comes to it, will be to tell the American people and the president that this isn’t working.”

The general said nothing in response. “But he heard it,” Mansoor remembers. And he nodded.

Petraeus arrived for his third tour in Iraq to execute the “surge” strategy developed by Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno and outlined by President George W. Bush a few weeks earlier: 30,000 additional troops, new counterinsurgency tactics, and a mission to protect the population and bring security to a country verging on civil war, with the hope that political reconciliation would follow…

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