Robbing Peter to pay Petraeus in Iraq

So, not only is the surge failing to achieve significant results, but its implementation has seriously degraded the efforts to train the Iraqi forces.

American commanders said Friday that the effort to train Iraqi Army and police units had slowed in recent months and would need to be expanded to enable any large-scale reduction in American force levels.

The problem has arisen, several senior officers said Friday, in large part because preparing Iraqi units to operate without American backing had become a secondary goal under the current war strategy, which has emphasized protecting Iraqis and the heavy use of American combat power.

Let's remember that the "surge" strategy is still some version of clear, hold, retain with the Iraqis staying in the "joint security stations" to retain the ground US soldiers died for.

Later: Here's some very ugly math. A battalion is between 500-700 men.

Moreover, the Pentagon on Friday conceded that the Iraqi army has become more reliant on the U.S. military. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, said the number of Iraqi battalions able to operate on their own without U.S. support has dropped in recent months from 10 to six, though he said the fall was in part due to attrition from stepped-up offensives.

So, that would mean that somewhere between 3,000 and 4,200 Iraqi soldiers are ready to go.

I would wager that 4,200 "prepared" Iraqi forces don't match one US brigade of 3,500. "The surge" is 5 brigades, and there are a total of 21 US combat brigades currently stationed in Iraq.

There are some definitional questions about "able to operate on their own," but this really says alot about the poor management of the war.

The US's recent efforts to enlist tribal forces in Anbar, and now elsewhere, indicate the longer term direction of the effort. The US has, for the time, practically given up on the idea of an Iraqi government force in the short term, and is now attempting to strike deals with local tribal leaders and militias.

This might allow a boost in short term security, but you're also organizing and elevating these local armed groups. When the political divisions often framed as sectarianism once again exacerbate, local and regional leaders will go back to using these militias as politics by other means.

Any realistic assessment of Iraq in the midterm would see that the militias (definitionally including Sunni tribal groups) will be the strongest and most effective fighting forces in the country, so an effort to try and work with these groups does make short term operational sense. However, in the longer term, these elements will become the military arm in the civil war.

We hear alot of rhetoric that Al Qaeda and Iran are the main agitators in Iraq, and this local strategy may be somewhat effective at dislodging those groups temporarily, however, by abandoning the larger effort to train a "nonsectarian" Iraqi government force, the US is largely ignoring the longer term civil war.

Even assuming this current effort to expunge Al Qaeda and Iran is temporarily successful, support from Al Qaeda and Iran will be inevitably invited back in because because they offer skills, training, money, and supplies that the US will not.

This entire "surge" strategy is built upon the precept that the Iraqis will make political reconciliations within the "breathing space" the US is creating, but that's not happening. Instead, the Iraqis are positioning for the collapse of the Maliki government, and the US is in the process of organizing their military arms.

The Iraqi Parliament will be taking the month of August off.

Later: One more thought. The deals with the tribes in Anbar are being branded as "bottom up reconciliation" but that is hugely (and intentionally) misleading. Those Sunnis in Anbar have not entered into a political reconciliation with the Iraqi government, they have entered into a joint cause with the US.

There is no evidence that they have any intention of reconciling with the Shia led Iraqi government.

And, Maliki says his country can manage without the US. That's true. Once the pretense of a non-sectarian military is dropped, the combination of Iraqi police and militias can likely manage quite well in the civil war.