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Gen. David Petraeus talks with Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, USA, Ret., AUSA president, before the former Multinational Force - Iraq commander spoke at the Annual Meeting. |
Gen. David Petraeus, just three weeks after leaving Iraq and stepping down as commander of Multinational Force
– Iraq, told attendees at the Association of the United States Annual Meeting that Iraq has made substantial progress toward peace in the last two years, and although that progress is fragile and reversible, it is becoming stronger every day.
The nadir of violence in Iraq was in the winter of 2006 and 2007, Petraeus said at the Oct. 7 event, and the various elements of strategy that made up the "surge" have dramatically reduced the violence. Petraeus described the surge as having four prongs: the increase in U.S. forces, the increase in Iraqi forces (namely the "Sons of Iraq" Sunni militia groups), employment of counterinsurgency concepts, and the strong signal given by the U.S. that it was committed to Iraq.
Petraeus shared what he felt were many of the "big ideas" of successful counterinsurgency strategy. The most important, he said, was to secure the population. When he took command in February 2007, 55 Iraqis were being killed every day in sectarian violence alone. "The situation was horrific in many neighborhoods," he said.
Other important principles included integrating with the population as much as possible – not being isolated in distant bases – holding cleared areas, separating reconcilables from irreconcilables, taking a comprehensive approach and generating a unity of effort between the military and political elements of strategy. Petraeus said he almost never had an important meeting that wasn't also attended by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
Petraeus said his media strategy was to "be first with the truth, not to put lipstick on pigs, not to spin. I had people come to me in the spring of 2007, [saying] that we had a messaging problem, that our strategic communications weren't working. And I said, 'With all due respect sir, we have a results problem. And until we turn around the situation on the ground, this isn't about strategic communications, this is about reality. We are going to report reality correctly' – and reality at that time was 180 attacks a day. Thankfully, it began to come down."
He showed a series of slides that graphically indicated how, under his command, violence in various forms dramatically declined.
The number of sectarian killings, more than 2000 a month in the winter of 2006/2007, is now down to nearly zero, and the number of violent deaths generally and improvised explosive attacks are down significantly. "For the last four months or more, we've seen the lowest levels of violence in Iraq since March of 2004," he said.
Petraeus said he was concerned that the level of high-profile attacks, such as car bombs and suicide bombings, has declined but is still troubling, at about one per day. "This is an area where we still need to work," he said.
The number of weapons caches that are discovered and cleared has spiked this year, and has even started to decline in recent weeks as U.S. soldiers run out of such caches to uncover.
There remain, however, a number of what Petraeus called "storm clouds," or issues that have the potential to undo the progress that has been made. They include how the largely Sunni Sons of Iraq become integrated into the Shia-dominated government, the Iraqi government's ability to meet the basic needs of its population, the diplomatic wrangling between Baghdad and Washington over a Status of Forces Agreement, the return of displaced families, the status of the divided and oil-rich city of Kirkuk, among other issues.
"There is a possibility of fragility and a reversal of some of this progress," he said.
But he closed on a positive note, citing some of the ways in which the army has improved through the experience of fighting in Iraq. The military is "vastly better" at conducting full-spectrum operations and has successfully fostered "pentathlete" leaders and leaders who understand counterinsurgency principles – those who, Petraeus said, "get it."
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Click Here for the Transcript of Gen. David Petraeus' Special Presentation at the 2008 AUSA Annual Meeting