Military Analysts Debate Proposed Shifts in Iraq Strategy

JEFFREY BROWN:

Among its many recommendations, the Baker-Hamilton study group proposes a major shift in the U.S. military role in Iraq, calling for significantly increasing the number of U.S. military personnel embedded in and supporting Iraqi units.

With this shift, the report says, "By the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq."

To look at those ideas, we turn to retired Army Colonel Paul Hughes. He served in Iraq in 2003 and directed the military and security section for the Iraq Study Group. He's a program officer at the U.S. Institute for Peace. And Phillip Carter, who served as an Army captain and police adviser in Iraq last year, he's written widely on national security issues and is a lawyer in Los Angeles.

Welcome to both of you.

COL. PAUL HUGHES, Security Secretariat, Iraq Study Group:

Thank you.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Colonel Hughes, starting with you, the section in the report on military strategy begins with a rather blunt statement: "There is no action the American military can take that, by itself, can bring about success in Iraq."

Now, let me put it to you bluntly: Is the report saying that a change in military strategy is required because the war is no longer winnable militarily?

COL. PAUL HUGHES:

No, the war is winnable, but you cannot win it just through military actions. Insurgencies are the most political form of war that take into account a wide variety of societal activities, whether they're economic or civil society activities, things of that nature. To think that you can win it militarily is only one part of the solution.

JEFFREY BROWN:

OK, Phillip Carter, you wrote in an article in Slate magazine yesterday the ISG — that's the study group — "failed to study the war at its most critical level, that of the grunts." Now, what did you mean by that? And what errors do you think that led the group to?

PHILLIP CARTER, Former Police Adviser in Iraq: Well, Jeff, you know, like politics, all counterinsurgencies are local. This is really a street-level fight. It's a city-level fight. And I think the group failed to study the realities outside of the Green Zone well enough to really judge this question of whether the war is still winnable, either militarily or holistically, as Colonel Hughes says.

My conclusions are somewhat different. As someone who was on the ground at that level, I don't really see things the way the panel saw them.

JEFFREY BROWN:

In what way? Why don't you give us an example?

PHILLIP CARTER:

Well, I think there's a lot of bad blood in Iraq that we can't simply paper over or work over. You know, if we pulled every play out of the counterinsurgency playbook, if we delivered security, and water, and electricity, and the rule of law, I still don't think that will be enough not to win hearts and minds and not to create the kind of stability that we need for victory there.