So I've had a few people as to post a few samples of my writing. So here are two. If, for whatever reason, you want to cite them for something, please just let me know and give me credit.
First... an article critique for your pleasure.
Article Critique
of “Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?”
In 2012, five years after its
completion, Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey Freidman, and Jacob Shapiro set out to
examine the reason behind the effectiveness of the surge strategy employed in
Operation Iraqi Freedom. In “Testing the
Surge: Why did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?”, the authors argue a synergy
thesis better explains the decline in violence in 2007 than a theory based on
one action, event or tactic alone.
Central to this argument is debunking that neither the troop increase
resulting from the surge nor the Awakening, in isolation, could have led to
successful decline in violence brought about as a result of their simultaneous
and complementary implementation. They
additionally set out to prove that the timing of the surge and the successful Awakening
and Sons of Iraq (SOI) movement could not be epiphenomenal, as the events were
necessarily and inextricably linked.
Biddle et al base their argument on
evidence from the unclassified significant activities (SIGACTs) database for
the timeframe from February 2004 – December 2008, and a collection of 70
interviews with US and Coalition officers who served in Iraq during the
2006-2008 surge campaign. The SIGACTs
database provides information on the location, date, time and nature of
violence for instances involving the use of force by Coalition forces or Iraqi
units that were reported to Multi-National Forces – Iraq (MNF-I) headquarters. The interviews focused on officers from the
districts with the highest percentage of SIGACTs events in 2006, and were
conducted both in person and via telephone.
The authors also used supplemental data on civilian and non-combat
sectarian violence provided by Iraqi Body Count (IBC) to complete the picture
provided by SIGACTs.
Methodologically, the authors use
process tracing of the data to test four possible explanations as to why violence
decreased in Iraq in 2007. Three
explanations – sectarian violence, the Awakening in isolation, and the surge in
isolation – are all dismissed as being inaccurate explanations of violence
reduction, and not supported by their evidence.
The fourth explanation, the Synergy Thesis, they argue best explains the
drop in violence based on the evidence they have collected. Boiled down to its basic definitions, the
synergy thesis argues that the surge and the Awakening needed one another for
success. In comparing the four possible
explanations, the authors ultimately assert that the synergy thesis is “the
stronger fit with what we do know.”
The policy implications of the
synergy thesis lead Biddle et al to warn practitioners to proceed with caution
when evaluating a surge-type strategy in other counterinsurgency
operations. Their warning is aimed
specifically at Afghanistan, where no movements analogous to the Awakening or
SOI exist. Similar warnings are attached
to proposed impacts on military doctrine (caveating their findings as
applicable primarily to ethnosectarian identity countries) and to the
scholarship community. Their findings on
the synergy thesis can therefore hardly be called generalizable, despite containing
valuable explanations for activities in a highly-politically and socially
contentious conflict.
Examining Biddle et al’s methodology
raises a few significant questions and concerns. The first and most glaring of these, the
limitations of the SIGACTs, the authors address themselves. The database is accurate and objective, yet
it limited to only those events involving coalition forces that have been
reported to MNF-I and subsequently processed.
While a good and objective system, the realities of war are that no
database recording system will ever be able to capture every kinetic event
perpetrated on the battlefield. The IBC
data helps to augment this, however, it too is limited in scope to only those
incidents reported to sources to which the organization has access.
A more glaring concern is raised
concerning the interviews. The authors
admit to the fact that any interview has the potential for unintended bias and
is only as accurate as the subject is honest.
However, the validity of the interviews is not the primary concern. The choice of subjects may have created
biased and incomplete evidence. All the
subjects were US or Coalition officers who served in Iraq during the period in
question. These interviews provide a
picture of the changes in coalition strategy, and the subsequent impact on
their tactics and situation on the ground.
What is greatly lacking from the information captured in the interview
is the Iraqi point of view. The synergy
thesis is based on the mutual necessity of the US-led surge tactics and the
Iraqi-led Awakening and SOI movement.
And while the interviews capture the opinions and observations of the
coalition leaders as to why the surge provided the necessary conditions for the
Awakening to take hold, there is no direct account from Iraqis as to why they
were able to successfully coalesce when they did. One of the primary lynchpins of the synergy
thesis is that the Awakening was successful due to fact that the increased
presence of Coalition troops allowed for the physical security necessary for
the Sunnis to organize into the Awakening and SOI. Yet their account is based on US-centric
reports. It ignores other potential
Iraqi particulars that may be unknown to coalition leaders. The typical Coalition officer serving in Iraq
between 2006-2008 spent on average 8 month (rarely exceeding one year) in
Iraq. Despite extensive training and a
keen tactical and cultural awareness, there are factors that, in 6 months to a
years time, cannot be fully understood, and may have been overlooked in the
interviewees accounts. Therefore, without
the Iraqi reports, there is no way to rule out all the factors other than the
surge that may have been primarily responsible for the success of the
Awakening.
There are two important factors that
that authors fail to address as possible contributors to the decrease in
violence in 2007. First, Biddle et al do
not address the potential impact of the increased capability of the Iraqi
forces working with the coalition. Since
2004, coalition troops had been working with newly trained Iraqi soldiers to
present a joint counterinsurgency effort.
By 2007, virtually all patrols and offensive operations conducted by US
and Coalition forces were done as a joint effort with the Iraqi Army. There is the possibility that the increased
competency and ability of the Iraqi Army forces had a significant effect on the
Iraqi confidence that the conditions were favorable for the Awakening and SOI
movement. The authors point to failed
attempts by Coalition forces to ally with Sunni leaders in 2004-2006 as proof
that the surge was pivotal in guaranteeing the protection from Al-Qaeda Iraq
(AQI) the Sunnis needed to ensure the Awakening succeeded. They do not, however, control for the
increase in Iraqi forces as contributing to the security of Sunnis. Seeing Iraqi troops, their countrymen,
protecting their home country, may have provided necessary motivation for
Sunnis to break with and stand up to AQI insurgents.
Secondly, the authors do not take
into account the effect that the increase of Joint Special Operations Command’s
(JSOC) night raids had on bleeding AQI insurgent groups of their “middle
management” operatives. Though it can be
argued that these operations were part of the surge strategy, their tactical
effect cannot be lumped in with the increase of troop numbers addressed by the
authors. Furthermore, JSOC operates
largely independently and on separate operational authority from conventional
military forces, thus their tactics must be considered separately. The authors do not address the possibility
that success of so-called “snatch and grab” operations of ridding insurgent
groups of their local tactical leaders contributed to the security situation
and confidence of the Awakening and SOI leaders.
Biddle et al provide a significant
contribution to the existing literature and theories on the reduction of
violence in Iraq 2007 in that they provide an account of the particularly Iraqi
conditions necessary for the synergy thesis to work. However, they leave out large and potentially
significant pieces of the puzzle when asserting the synergy thesis. Their article does offer an evidence-based
answer to the question “Why did Violence in Iraq Decline in 2007?”. However, possibilities for other explanations
still exist and must be controlled for to prove the complete accuracy and
explanatory value of the synergy thesis.
