Tom Ricks's Inbox
Tom Ricks's Inbox

Sunday, June 8, 2008

In recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales Jr., a former commandant of the Army War College, explored a fundamental contradiction in the U.S. stance in Iraq. We finally have the right strategy, he argued, but time is running out -- and so are our options. He wound up comparing today's constraints to those the Union faced during the Civil War:

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The counterinsurgency strategy implemented by [Army Gen. David H.] Petraeus is the right one and cannot be substantially altered. The crucible of patience among the American people is emptying at a prodigious rate and very little short of a complete shift in conditions on the ground is likely to refill it.

The military balance of power cannot be changed very much throughout the remainder of the surge. Al Qaeda has been pushed into a northern corner of Iraq, and constant harassment by the US military, supported by the Sons of Iraq [locally recruited, largely Sunni security forces supported by the United States], effectively limits how much mischief they can cause. But their numbers, though small, have remained fairly constant. The United States has run out of military options as well. The Army went into this war with too few ground troops. In a strange twist of irony, for the first time since the summer of 1863, the number of ground soldiers available is determining American policy rather than policy determining how many troops we need.

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Tom Ricks is The Post's military correspondent. This feature aims to give readers a snapshot of the conversations about Iraq, Afghanistan and other matters that play out in Ricks's e-mail inbox. Have an interesting document? Send it to TheInbox@washpost.com.