Author of RAGE COMPANY

I just got done reading an excellent blog post by Andrew Exum, titled: Just Admit It: The Surge Worked

Obviously this is a highly debated subject. Yet, it is also a subject that the Marines I served with in “Rage Company,” and I, experienced first hand.

While I agree with Mr. Exum that the Surge did work, I have to say that I don’t see there being different “factors” that caused the turnaround in Iraq. Much of combat is like sports, it requires momentum. In late 2006 there were a few Sunni sheikhs willing to side with the coalition in the city of Ramadi. The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit was “surged” into Anbar at this time to contest Anbar’s three chokepoints: Rutbah, Haditha and Ramadi. Al Qaeda responded by rallying the tribes they controlled against friendly Sunni Sheikhs. By attacking the tribes the terrorists brutality isolated their voice with the populace, it also forced the tribes they attacked to come to us for help. In March 2007, I witnessed open revolt against al Qaeda in Ramadi.

The uprising that occurred in Ramadi, a piece of what is commonly referred to as the Awakening, did not end in Ramadi. Instead, it spread like wildfire, scorching the al Qaeda network both east and west along the Euphrates River Valley. When it reached Baghdad, many critics thought it would falter, but it only grew more intense. Moving south to the Sunni Triangle and north into Diyala Province, countless Sunni Sheikhs forcibly removed or killed al Qaeda’s foreign leadership and reconciled their young men back into society.

Part of the reason for this momentum was the surge. All across Iraq, American troops were entering cities, villages, and neighborhoods that historically had never had an American presence. By sending these additional troops into the same regions where the populace was dissatisfied with the brutal, local al Qaeda government, America placed itself, for the first time, in a position to succeed in Iraq.

But what about the Shia?

In August 2007, Moqtada al Sadr called for his fighters to observe a six-month truce with U.S. and Iraqi forces. This call for a truce came after the success of the Anbar Awakening and was a politically calculated move. It was not the first time Sadr declared a cease-fire to regroup (June, 2004). The cleric understood that with cooperation between the Iraqi government and Sunni tribes, the focus of U.S. and Iraqi forces would shift to his militia. He was right.

From the fall of 07 to March 08 there was a lull in the fighting. However, politically the combat was heating up. Maliki was removing Sadr’s control over the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Health. As Maliki gained the political ground, Sadr declared an extension to the cease-fire. It was too late. End of March, Iraqi troops attempted to assert control over Basra but failed. However, images of Mahdi fighters dancing on burning Iraqi vehicles caused Sadr, like al Qaeda, to lose the support of the people. Maliki, became the hero, he personally went to Basra, brokered a cease-fire and within days had the Iraqi Army in control of most of Basra.

A few months later, supported by U.S. surge troops, the coalition fought and wrested control of Sadr city in Baghdad from al Sadr. For years before the Surge America never even attempted to control Sadr city. Without a base of operations for al Qaeda or Sadr, the civil war was effectively over.

You can only isolate one of these events and say that it was the root cause of this outcome: the surge. The Sunnis in Anbar needed the Marines of the 15th MEU and follow on surge troops to empower them. Literally, two days after my infantry company entered the uncontested villages between Ramadi and Habbaniyah, twenty-five ex-Saddamists showed up at our COP offering their assistance. If we didn’t go to their neighborhood would they have helped us?

If the Sunnis did not rise up against al Qaeda would Maliki have taken on al Sadr?

If you want to secure and gain the “buy-in” of the people, step one is showing up. The Surge was America showing up.