1115.org

We seem to have a bold new strategy for vanquishing al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI, who aren’t really blood relatives of the real al Qaeda; not even related by marriage, actually, if you want to get technical. But they are on talking terms, which surely counts for something?).

A bold new strategy, and about time too, right?

This time I really think we have a real shot at victory. Real victory, that is.

But, first, our previous strategy. The bold old strategy, as it were. We decided to launch a major onslaught on AQI forces in Baqouba. So “top U.S. commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus” — the general formerly known as wunderkind — first made public announcements of our impending assault. As Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, has astutely deduced, this alerted the leaders of AQI. For some reason, they decided to arrange to be elsewhere.

Of course, this has happened before. But that was in another place (Fallujah), in a totally another time (2004), and we had a totally another general effing up things beyond belief back then. One charming by-product of replacing generals in time of war — which becomes necessary whenever they stop advising the President what he wants to be advised — is that the new general reserves the right to make the same old mistakes again himself instead of simply learning from the mistakes of those who went before him.

Gen. Odierno — who obviously went to General school and all — has astutely analyzed what went wrong at Baqouba. And he has vowed that next time will be different. Very different. We obviously can’t change how we do things. We’ll still plan assaults. We’ll still advertise them in advance. So what we have to focus on is changing what AQI does in response, when they learn that we are planning to assault place X at time t.

Everyone knows that Arab males are easily manipulated by casting aspersions on their manhood. All we have to do is act on that knowledge and exploit it, bend it to our use, as it were. Gen. Odierno’s strategy is elegantly simple: we play “Chicken Bak-bak-bak-bak-bak” with AQI:

Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters that leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq had been alerted to the Baqouba offensive by widespread public discussion of the American plan to clear the city before the attack began. He portrayed Al Qaeda leaders’ escape as cowardice, saying that “when the fight comes, they leave,” abandoning “midlevel” Al Qaeda leaders and fighters to face the might of American troops — just, he said, as they did in Fallujah.

Gen. Odierno didn’t stop there. He also went on to make it perfectly clear that really no one was to blame for alerting AQI to the pending assault, certainly not his boss, Gen. David Petraeus:

Some American officers in Baqouba have blamed Al Qaeda leaders’ flight on public remarks about the offensive in the days before it began by top U.S. commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, the overall commander in Iraq. But Odierno cast the issue in broader terms, saying that Al Qaeda leaders were bound to know an attack was coming in light of President Bush’s decision to pour nearly 30,000 additional troops into the fight in his so-called surge.

If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s President Bush’s. For ordering the surge. But once Gen. Odierno builds up a head of steam, there’s no stopping him:

“Frankly, I think they knew an operation was coming in Baqouba,” Odierno said in a teleconference with Pentagon reporters from the American military headquarters in Baghdad. “They watched the news. They understood we had a surge. They understood Baqouba was designated as a problem area. So they knew we were going to come, sooner or later.”

At some point, it may dawn on Gen. Odierno that knowing we will come to place X doesn’t help AQI a whole lot unless we also tell them that we’re coming at time t. But I wouldn’t count on it happening any time soon. He is, after all, the general the Bush administration has chosen to make the second-in-command in Iraq. And if there’s one thing the Bush administration has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt in Iraq, it is this: they sure know how to pick them!

Finally, I’ve always been a numbers gal, and these are the numbers that caught my eye:

Before the Baqouba operation, American commanders had said that one difference from previous offensives that had failed to net top Al Qaeda leaders would be the use of “blocking maneuvers” around the city to close off escape routes.

Although that appears to have failed, American commanders in Baqouba said Friday that several hundred Al Qaeda fighters — about 80 percent of the recruits who were there when the offensive began Tuesday — remained in the western half of the city.

The 10,000-man force of American and Iraqi troops committed to the battle is one of the largest assembled for any operation outside Baghdad since the recapture of Fallujah, and the campaign resembles that offensive in November 2004.

We sent in 10,000 soldiers. After maybe a thousand ADI fighters? (If “several hundred” constitutes 80%, that seems to be a generous estimate of the number of AQI fighters.) And despite out best blocking maneuvers, 80% of the chiefs escaped with 20% of the Indians? And our 10,000 soldiers are having real trouble vanquishing the “several hundred Al Qaeda fighters” that remain.

Let’s not lose heart, though. Any army can have a bad decade. Maybe even a bad century. But just wait till the year 2100. We’ll totally kick ass then.