President Bush has announced his plan for victory in Iraq, and I’ll say this about it: It sounds like a plan. Maybe the news sources I usually read have all been omitting this stuff from other reports, but this is the first thing I’ve heard about the war in Iraq since the initial invasion that sounds like actual military planning.
When I first started hearing about the 20,000-troop surge, the reports seemed to imply that this would be little more than a broad increase in troop levels—a few extra companies for every commander.
That wouldn’t be much help. In almost any war, you want to concentrate your forces in order to overwhelm the enemy at a particular location, and you want to choose the location that will do the most good.
The new plan seems to do that. Some of the troops are headed to Anbar Province to make sure it doesn’t fall to the heavy concentration of Al-Qaeda forces there. Nearly all the rest of the troops—probably about 15,000 I’m guessing—are headed for Baghdad.
I’m not saying this is a plan for victory, because I sure don’t know enough to tell, but at least it sounds like a plan. 20,000 more troops in all of Iraq won’t do much good. 15,000 more troops in Baghdad…that might make a big difference.
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