Counterinsurgency Strategy Quotes

The situation in Iraq was dire at the end of 2006, when President George W. Bush decided to implement the surge and selected me to command it. Indeed, when I returned to Baghdad in early February 2007, I found the conditions there to be even worse than I had expected.

I don't know how you defeat an insurgency unless you have some handle on the number of people that you are facing.

Faced with the collapse of Iraq into something like Lebanon - or worse, Somalia - the Bush administration opted for a new counterinsurgency strategy. Violence was reduced because, for the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Iraqis felt that there was a force capable of dominating the situation and ensuring basic order.

Some of the generals are saying, 'We're making progress. We are clearing an area.' But you really don't defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

In the early 2009, a campaign plan developed by Petraeus and General McChrystal to defeat the Taliban, they required a minimum force of 40,000. President Obama rejected that recommendation and provided 25 percent less. He also decided he would pull the force out in 12 to 15 months.

Whether we kept a certain number of troops there or pulled out completely, if we can't get the Maliki government to include a large segment of its population in its security forces and protection, then the small amount of forces that we would have left there might have slowed this day, but they wouldn't have prevented it altogether.

We remember the surge and we remember the Awakening -- when the abyss of chaos turned toward the promise of reconciliation. By battling and building block by block in Baghdad, by bringing tribes into the fold and partnering with the Iraqi army and police, you helped turn the tide toward peace.

To me, what success looks like is not to believe that Afghanistan can become a unified, Western-style democracy with a developed-country economy just yet. I think success in the American interest is some level of assurance that it's not going to be a place that again leads to an attack on the American homeland.

The solution to Iraq - an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself - is more than a military mission. Precisely the reason why I sent more troops into Baghdad.

A troop surge in Baghdad would put more American troops at risk to address a problem that is not a military problem.

There is some schedule showing what you (need) to do to get Iraqis standing up and defending themselves which is now suddenly beginning to happen, so there are some signs of progress.

I think indeed our response on counterinsurgency needs to be finely tuned to the needs of Afghanistan. This is not Iraq. We don't have a Sons of Iraq here. We don't have the same divisions here that we had between Sunni and Shia.