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2008年8月課題 - (2008/08/17 (日) 14:39:16) のソース
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Full Post</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008 5:21 PM</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><strong><span style="font-size:12pt;">McCain vs. Obama: Who’s Right on the
Surge?</span></strong></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Larry Kaplow</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">①The U.S. military says there were zero attacks in</span>
<span style="font-size:12pt;">Baghdad</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">on
Wednesday. A year ago, there were an average of 43 a day. The question of how
this happened has led to the latest tussle in</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">America</span><span style="font-size:12pt;">'s race for the
White House. Republican candidate and Iraq War supporter John McCain attributes
the improvement to George W. Bush’s troop surge. Democratic candidate and war
opponent Barack Obama disagrees. Who’s right? The answer is somewhere in
between, with an edge to McCain but with Obama raising important points. If you
think military force solves problems best, then you can attribute the success
to the troop increase and, probably, it largely is. But if you tend to think
politics and winning hearts and minds works best, you can point credibly to
other factors that also reduced the bloodshed.</span><span style="font-size:12pt;">」</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">②The timeline is rather simple. On Jan. 10, 2007, President
Bush ordered the troop increase, calling it the "surge" rather than by the more
traditional term, "reinforcements." Gen. David Petraeus, the main proponent of
the more than 28,000 additional troops, took command on Feb. 10. It then took
until June 15 for all the five surge brigades to position themselves. Between
February and June, the troops were amassing and already establishing many of
the neighborhood combat outposts that were key in reducing the sectarian
violence between Sunnis and Shiites.」</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">③Starting June 15, a 90-day surge plan kicked in with U.S.
troops retaking areas that had fallen to chaos or control by militias and Al
Qaeda. Violence rates, based on military graphics, dropped steeply from an
anarchic peak of more than 1,500 attacks Iraq-wide per week in June 2007.
McCain is right that the troop increase was important, perhaps the key when
combined with their new tactics, in turning the country
around.』ここまで</span></div>
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<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">But
Obama is correct that other things were happening at the same time--and even
before. There was a swing in attitudes among Iraqis against the violent
overreaching by Al Qaeda and, on the other side, Shiite death squads claiming
to fight for anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Sunni tribes in the Anbar province, many of which had been
fighting against</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">U.S.</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">forces, basically decided they hated Al Qaeda and its
sadistic fanaticism more than they despised the American occupation. That
happened in mid and late 2006.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">In
January of this year General Petraeus told NEWSWEEK about the genesis of the
Sunni sea change, encapsulated in the story of Anbar's Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu
Risha:</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">"Before I came back [to Iraq in February 2007] he had already
gone to the brigade commander there, Col. Sean MacFarland ... and asked him if
it would be OK to point his weapons at Al Qaeda instead of MacFarland's
soldiers. And MacFarland, being no fool, said that would be OK and then parked
two tanks outside his house. But it took them months to build some forces, to
just get going ... March was when we started clearing Ramadi and we had it
cleared by about mid-April and it was just a city in varying degrees of
ruins."</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">This week, McCain took his argument one step too far when he
noted that the surge began the tribal turn. He said: "Because of the surge, we
were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar
awakening." He also said he meant "surge" in a broad sense, more than just
troop increases but also a new American approach to counterinsurgency. But
there was never a public debate about helping Sunni tribes kill Al Qaeda. The
controversy around the surge was all about the troop increase, which came after
the Anbar revolution had started.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">McCain is right that the surge did make more forces available
to help the tribal fighters and "protect" the sheiks. But they had already
turned. Alas, Abu Risha was killed by a car bomb in September. The movement
lives on because the Anbar masses still want it to.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Another major turning point was Aug. 29, 2007, when Sadr
imposed a ceasefire on his Mahdi Army (JAM) militias. This was during the
height of the surge operations, many targeting Sadr's fighters, but appeared to
also be influenced heavily by an ugly street battle during a religious
pilgrimage between Sadrists forces and other Shiites. JAM was blamed, and
Sadr's image was sullied among fellow Shiites.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">And</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">U.S.</span>
<span style="font-size:12pt;">troops also employed canny manipulation and
cajoling in street-level contacts with Sadrist leaders, encouraging and
threatening them into setting aside violence. Petraeus might say this couldn't
have happened without the extra soldiers on the ground, but we don't know for
sure. (Petraeus deserves credit for allowing his commanders the leeway to
engage the enemy with their mobile phones as much as their rifles.) Along those
lines, there were other important doctrinal changes Petraeus brought with him.
He made security for Iraqis the No. 1 priority, saying that it would ultimately
also make</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">U.S.</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">troops safer--something long overdue. Soldiers came out from
the city-size fortresses and lived in Iraqi streets.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Obama has said his early-2007 plan for a careful troop
pullout could have also calmed</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Iraq</span><span style="font-size:12pt;">. Most Iraqis would
have said that a</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">U.S.</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">withdrawal then would have continued</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Iraq</span><span style="font-size:12pt;">'s horrible downward
spiral. Probably. But the promise of a withdrawal might have won over some
Iraqis. Combined with active diplomacy, it might have convinced neighboring
countries that don't want a black hole next door to stop fanning the flames. It
seems less than likely, but, as Obama says, it wasn't tried, still hasn't been
tried and can't be ruled out. He also says the surge took resources and
attention from more pressing battlefields in</span> <span style="font-size:12pt;">Afghanistan</span><span style="font-size:12pt;">.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;" align="left"><span style="font-size:12pt;">The
troop increase was crucial in calming the country, but the tribal war against
Al Qaeda and Sadr's--albeit wobbly--ceasefire were important, too. Many Iraqis,
by the way, would say they deserve credit for lowering the violence by standing
up against the gunmen and cooperating with American and Iraqi forces. All true
to different degrees, depending on how much you believe in force or people
power.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0mm 0mm 0pt;"> </div>
