I finished Tom Ricks book The Gamble a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been going back and re-reading certain sections to make sure I understand exactly what he was trying to say. Here is my take on the book.
1) At first I was truly worried that Ricks had drunk the Petreaus kool-aid and allowed himself to be swallowed up by the myth that Petreaus can do no wrong-that he single handedy saved the nation of Iraq. It seemed that way to me at first-until I realized that he was pointing out that the decision to surge had many fathers.
2) I think he missed the boat on the disagreements about the surge between the other military leaders and the guys like Petreaus who, in my opinion, went native-worrying not about the cost to the US, but how to make Iraq work. The book makes the rest of the military leadership-particularly Fox Fallon out to be simple minded. I think that misses the point. The question that Fallon was trying to get across before he was squelched-and that Gen Casey and others were voicing in their opposition to he surge-was, “ at what cost does this come?”. Ricks never did an objective analysis of the opportunity cost the US paid in terms of: a) damage to overall military capability, b) decreased freedom of action in other, more important areas and c) whether it was really in our interests to be tied down for a people that still have not demonstrated an ability to take care of themselves.
3) His conclusions about the end arounds required to convince the government to move ahead with the surge are disturbing. If Jack Keane was so hell bent to drive American policy in a particular direction-than he should have taken the Army Chief of Staff’s position when it was offered. Submarining his peers in retirement is unseemly at best, a terrible precedent at worst. Try to imagine this nightmare in a Taiwan scenario: Sestak and Obama-going around Naval Leadership. Its a bad road to go down and we will regret it someday.
I’m also kind of dissapointed that Ricks did not give much play to two other factors that played in the “success” of the surge: the ethnic cleasing of Baghdad was completed-and the Iraqi sheiks themselves had started turning long before troop levels went up. Ricks also says nothing about the fact that Pertreaus was a part of the problem before he became the solution-including passing out Kalsihnikovs like they were candy and paying lots and lots of bribe money for deals that are now starting to come apart.
All in all it is a great book and in his commentaries since, Ricks has pointed out again: just because we try to rectify a mistake after it has been made-does not mean we were somehow right to have made that mistake in the first place. Ricks states emphatically that Iraq will rank as the greatest foreign policy mistake the US has made in 50 years.
Probably the saddest thing is that Ricks is right in his ultimate conclusion-that by executing the surge, without having the Iraqis accomplish the political change necessary, and was the ultimate rationale for the surge- we may have condemned ourselves to never being able to leave.
Which gets back to the question he never really answered-at what cost does that conclusion become too much pay?