Center for a New American Security

It's is officially Friday, AMT (Abu Muqawama Time), which means Charlie defends her doctoral dissertation today. Wish her luck, readers! Go get 'em, Charlie!

Counterinsurgency practitioners and theorists lucky enough to know the more charming and intelligent half of your friendly blogging team will gather in Washington, DC tonight to wish a very happy birthday to Charlie's alter ego. She'll be dead to the world by ten o'clock tonight, Abu Muqawama is guessing, but leave your birthday notes in the comments section and she'll read them tomorrow as she's nursing her inevitable hangover.

First it was seven Army sergeants. Now it's twelve Army captains.

Today marks five years since the authorization of military force in Iraq, setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion. Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles.

As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we've seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it's like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it's time to get out.

At first, Charlie thought this shot across the bow was the most startling statement in this op-ed today. But then she saw:

U.S. forces, responsible for too many objectives and too much "battle space," are vulnerable targets. The sad inevitability of a protracted draw-down is further escalation of attacks -- on U.S. troops, civilian leaders and advisory teams. They would also no doubt get caught in the crossfire of the imminent Iraqi civil war.

So what they're saying is our exit strategy (such as it is) will only make things worse for Americans on the ground (to say nothing of that imminent civil war)? Why didn't they say anything while they were still in uniform?

This is Operation Iraqi Freedom and the reality we experienced. This is what we tried to communicate up the chain of command. This is either what did not get passed on to our civilian leadership or what our civilian leaders chose to ignore. While our generals pursue a strategy dependent on peace breaking out, the Iraqis prepare for their war -- and our servicemen and women, and their families, continue to suffer.

Oh, snap! They did! (We'll leave for another day the question of if and how this information was willfully disregarded.) Well, are there any options left on the table?

There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.

America, it has been five years. It's time to make a choice.

To many this will seem simplistic. And it is. (Charlie, for one, is reluctant to fetishize the tactical observations of boots on the ground) . But that doesn't mean it's wrong. Fellow traveler Phil Carter has been beating the draft drum for some time. And Steve Biddle has highlighted similar problems with a Goldilocks-like desire to chart a middle course of advisors and phased draw-down. We can either fight a proper counter-insurgency campaign, or we can come home.

Any chance we could get 17 generals to agree?

Charlie hopes that the proposal to move Marine units out of Anbar province and re-orient the Corps to Afghanistan sparks some serious debate. It's both controversial and potentially a very good idea.

Abu Muqawama is justly nervous about the Army getting stuck with the sinking ship that is Iraq (even if things are getting better at the tactical and operational level, we're so far from a political solution not even the Hubble telescope could help us see it). But there are advantages to having the Marines operating in Afghanistan, especially with regard to airpower. Now both Charlie and Abu Muqawama are self-identified airpower skeptics, in so far as that involves warheads on foreheads. But there's much more to airpower than just bomb dropping (persistent ISR, transport, etc.), and that's where the Marine Air Ground Task Force comes in.

Marines train to fight in what is called a Marine Air-Ground Task Force. That term refers to a Marine deployment that arrives in a combat zone complete with its own headquarters, infantry combat troops, armored and transport vehicles and attack jets for close-air support, as well as logistics and support personnel.

“This is not about trading one ground war for another,” said one Pentagon official briefed on the Marine concept. “It is about the nature of the fight in Afghanistan, and figuring out whether the Afghan mission lends itself more readily to the integrated MAGTF deployment than even Iraq.”

See, the Marines are the only service that coming ground forces with rotary and fixed winged aircraft (the Army can't have planes; the Air Force can't have helos; and the Navy's ground force is called the Marines). This unique force structure generally allows for better integration of the air and ground elements. In particular, the Marine air community is used to playing a supporting role. Charlie hasn't come across many Marine F-18 or Cobra pilots who think that airpower alone can win wars. They're used to being team players, and they're damn good at it.

That doesn't mean there won't be some second and third order effects from the proposed mission shift. (Never underestimate the Army's resentment of the Marine Corps' perfectly oiled propaganda machine.) But color Charlie optimistic at the idea of more Marines in Afghanistan.

Update: Charlie has been told that one hitch in this plan is the potential difficulty of some Marine helicopters operating at altitude in Afghanistan (often above 10000 ft). We may still get a joint fight if the Marines come to rely on Army Blackhawks for air assault support.

Update II: Charlie puts her finger on a real problem. But it will be twin-rotored Chinooks they rely upon, not Blackhawks. --Abu Muqawama