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Plan FUBARTime for Plan G in Iraq?

By Phillip CarterPosted Wednesday, April 18, 2007, at 3:20 PM ET

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Fred Kaplan argued that the glacial pace of military culture shifts will doom the surge, and he questioned Bush's understanding of the war. He also criticized one "strategy for victory" in 2005. According to John Dickerson, Bush hasn't learned from his mistakes. In 2006, Phillip Carter proposed his recommendations for a strategic overhaul in Iraq.

The bombing of the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra in February 2006 interrupted Plan D's progress. But instead of shifting strategy to lessen the sectarian violence, Gen. Casey pushed even harder to develop the Iraqi forces and nurture the Iraqi government. This move accelerated the sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis, as well as the intra-Sunni and intra-Shiite jockeying for power, by training and equipping the partisans in those fights. In mid-2006, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched Plan E: Operation Together Forward I and II. These joint pushes to secure Baghdad followed a "clear, hold, and build" strategy lifted straight from the counterinsurgency playbook. But Plan E lacked the troops to get the job done, because Casey had too few American troops and because the Iraqi forces failed to muster enough troops or secure the areas they were assigned. When Plan E failed, it generated such discontent on the home front that the Republicans lost Congress and Rumsfeld lost his job.

Plan F—the surge—grew out of the recognition that Plans C, D, and E had created today's overlapping conflicts in Iraq, and that our best hope for Iraq was to establish some sense of security, which would enable the Maliki government to stabilize itself. The Pentagon sent Gen. Petraeus, its celebrity warrior-intellectual, to Baghdad with a brain trust of counterinsurgency experts and gave him an additional 21,000 troops, with promises of more should he need them. Once on the ground, Petraeus pushed troops out into Baghdad to live and work on smaller combat outposts. The Marines scored a stunning turnaround in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province by brokering a deal with Sunni tribes that effectively marginalized al-Qaida, and in Baghdad, the deployment of U.S. forces into the city appeared to slow the cycle of sectarian violence, although spectacular acts of violence have continued, and violence has worsened elsewhere in Iraq.

To sum up, it's more than a bit disingenuous to cast today's debate as one of Plan A versus Plan B. In fact, we've seen at least five major strategies implemented in Iraq, and all have failed, creating a legacy of bad blood that undermines our continuing efforts. Much of this failure owes to the naive belief that we can impose our will on the Iraqi people through our strategies, or win their support with a combination of security and reconstruction.

Gen. Petraeus and his brain trust have devised the best possible Plan F, given the resources available to the Pentagon and declining patience for the war at home. But the Achilles heel of this latest effort is the Maliki government. It is becoming increasingly clear to all in Baghdad that its interests—seeking power and treasure for its Shiite backers—diverge sharply from those of the U.S.-led coalition. Even if Gen. Petraeus' plan succeeds on the streets of the city, it will fail in the gilded palaces of the Green Zone. Maliki and his supporters desire no rapprochement with the Sunnis and no meaningful power-sharing arrangement with the Sunnis and the Kurds. Indeed, Maliki can barely hold his own governing coalition together, as evidenced by the Sadr bloc's resignation from the government this week and the fighting in Basra over oil and power.

Plan F will fail if (or when) the Maliki government fails, even if it improves security. At that point, we will have run out of options, having tried every conceivable strategy for Iraq. It will then be time for Plan G: Get out.