TIME: Surge Architect Fred Kagan: More Time Needed

[DeepModem Mom]

Surge Architect: More Time Needed
Monday, Jun. 18, 2007
By MICHAEL DUFFY


Iraqi military police, along with soldiers of 1st Squad, 4th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, warily climb stairs in an abandoned house during a search June 17, 2007 in the tense Dora neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq.
(Chris Hondros / Getty)

Fred Kagan, the man widely seen as the "architect" of the military surge in Iraq, sees signs of progress but warns that September is too early to make a final decision about how well it has achieved its goals. Instead, in an interview with TIME.com, Kagan recommended waiting until the end of the year before judging the operation's success. Even then, he added, it might be some months before Iraqis make the political compromises necessary to bring lasting stability to the country.

Kagan, the American Enterprise Institute and former West Point professor, was not the lone architect of the surge. Military planners took Kagan's idea for a more muscular counterinsurgency effort by U.S. forces in Baghdad, which he originally laid out last fall in an article in the Weekly Standard,and crafted something that in some ways is more ambitious than what he envisioned. But he certainly laid the conceptual foundation for the surge, and with that in mind, TIME.com spoke with him last week to get a progress report.

Like a lot of Administration supporters, Kagan sees both promise and peril in the coming months. He does not expect much clarity in the military situation by September, the date members of both parties increasingly cite as a make-or-break moment of the Administration in Iraq. Last week, hoping to quell expectations, White House officials sought to play down the significance of the September checkpoint, and Kagan echoed those cautionary words.

When Kagan first proposed the enhanced U.S. operation last fall, he envisioned a larger number of troops, ferreting out al-Qaeda and troublesome militias inside the capital city in order to create what he called the space to permit the struggling factions inside Iraq to work out their differences politically. Kagan is a little alarmed now that some people expect the political issues to be resolved while the fighting continues. "The political stuff comes later," he said, perhaps not until next year, after the violence has abated....

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1634256,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner

[MikeNearMcChord]

1. I would love to see this F%$#! In a room with troops back from

Iraq or ready to go back to their third or more tours and have him explain the surge.:grr: :nuke: :mad:

[NI4NI]

2. After Wolfowitz, Feith, and Rumsfield failed

the plan of another unelected warmonger like Kagen is now permitted to be used to further escalate the war.
America isn't going down the toilet, this country is already in a cesspool and neck high deep in shit.

[The Magistrate]

3. The Man Is An Idiot, Ma'am: The Violence Is The Politics

Violnce is how the political factions are working out their differences. When one group gains the upper hand decisively, then 'the political stuff' will resolve....

[DeepModem Mom]

4. "The violence IS the politics." That's it, Sir. nt