Neocons regain voice as Bush rethinks Iraq

WASHINGTON — Ever since Iraq began spiraling toward chaos, the war's intellectual architects — the so-called neoconservatives — have found themselves under attack in Washington policy salons and, more important, within the Bush administration.

Paul Wolfowitz, who was the Defense Department's most senior neocon, was shipped off to the World Bank. His Pentagon colleague Douglas Feith departed for academia. John Bolton left the State Department for the United Nations.

But other neocons have moved back into the mainstream of steering Iraq policy. A key part of the new Iraq plan that President Bush is expected to announce this week — an increase in U.S. troops coupled with a more focused counterinsurgency effort — has been one of the chief recommendations of these neocons since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

This group — which includes William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, and Frederick Kagan, a military analyst at the American Enterprise Institute — was expressing concerns about the administration's blueprint for Iraq even before the invasion almost four years ago. In these neoconservatives' view, not enough troops were being set aside to stabilize the country. They also worried that the Pentagon had formulated a plan that concentrated too heavily on killing insurgents rather than securing law and order for Iraqi citizens.

They have long advocated a more classic counterinsurgency campaign: a manpower-heavy operation that would take U.S. soldiers out of their large bases dotted across the country and push them into small outposts in troubled towns and neighborhoods to interact with ordinary Iraqis.

Until now, it was an argument that had fallen on deaf ears.

"We have been pretty consistently in this direction from the outset," said Kagan, whose December study detailing his strategy is influencing the administration's current thinking.

"I started making this argument even before the war began, because I watched in dismay as we messed up Afghanistan and then heard with dismay the rumors that we would apply some sort of Afghan model to Iraq."

If Bush goes ahead with the troop-increase idea, along with a shift to a more aggressive counterinsurgency, it would in many ways represent a wholesale repudiation of the outgoing Pentagon leadership.

These leaders — particularly former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Army Gen. John Abizaid, the departing Middle East commander — strongly resisted more U.S. troops and a larger push into troubled neighborhoods out of fear it would prevent Iraqis from taking over the job themselves and exacerbate the image of the United States as an occupier.

The plan the administration appears to be moving toward envisions an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 troops, most of whom would be sent to Baghdad. The increase would be achieved by delaying the departure of Marine units already in Iraq and speeding the deployment of Army brigades due this spring.

The neoconservative group as a whole had been the driving force in Washington behind a move against Iraq, even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They saw Saddam as a lingering threat to world security — a view bolstered within the administration after the attacks. They argued that transforming Iraq into a democracy could serve as a model with potential to remake the Middle East's political dynamics.

The war effort's unraveling gradually undermined the clout they had wielded. But perhaps the more important hurdle — especially on military matters — was the White House's refusal to see its Iraq policy as not working.

That changed this summer, when the spike in sectarian violence and the failure of an offensive to secure Baghdad created what one Pentagon adviser called a "psychological break" within the administration. Until then, neoconservatives argue, the administration saw little proof that Abizaid's plan, backed by Army Gen. George Casey, the military commander in Iraq, was failing.

The main reason for the new ascendancy of the neocon recommendations, Kristol said, is that "the Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey theory was tried and was found wanting. ... Some of us challenged it very early on, but, of course, then we were just challenging it as a competing theory."

Although Kristol, Kagan and their intellectual allies have pushed for their policy for more than three years, they bristle at the notion that the idea of a larger troop presence in Iraq and a different approach to securing the country is wholly a neoconservative idea.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a leading presidential contender, has been pushing for more troops and a different security strategy for nearly as long as Kristol and Kagan. Recently, support for a revised counterinsurgency plan has gained support among military officers, active and retired. Perhaps most notable is retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army chief of staff who signed onto Kagan's plan last month.

The case for change has been bolstered by actions the military itself has taken, including a successful 2005 Army offensive in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, where midlevel officers used counterinsurgency tactics to suppress sectarian violence. The Pentagon released a new counterinsurgency field manual last month that largely echoed the neocons' thinking.

Not all neoconservatives embrace the troop-increase proposal. Wolfowitz, for instance, had ridiculed the notion that more troops would be needed to secure Iraq. Richard Perle, a former top adviser to the Pentagon who advocated smaller troop numbers at the time of the invasion, is known to be skeptical of a troop increase.

The plan's advocates acknowledge the split within the neocon movement.

"Before the war, I was arguing for a quarter of a million troops in expectations we'd be there five or 10 years," said Gary Schmitt, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute who has worked closely with Kristol and Kagan. "Richard Perle, obviously somebody else who's thought of as a neocon, thought we should go in" with far fewer U.S. forces.

The neocons calling for more troops in Iraq and different tactics have pressed their proposals in public writings and speeches and in private conversations within the administration.

Kenneth Adelman, a leading neoconservative thinker, recalled a meeting a year ago of the Defense Policy Board, a group of outside advisers to the Pentagon, during which he pressed Rumsfeld to implement more traditional counterinsurgency ideas, such as keeping soldiers longer in their deployed areas to get to know the local population better.

"What you need for counterinsurgency has been pretty clear for some time: You need to protect the population and get the population to fight the insurgents with you, or at least inform on them," Adelman said. "The fight is over the population, it's not over getting the enemy."

Much as they did when advocating the invasion, these neocons have promoted their military strategy even at times when it was seen as politically unpalatable.

"What you can say about Fred Kagan and Bill Kristol ... is they've been constant in sounding this theme," said Eliot A. Cohen, a military analyst at Johns Hopkins University's international-studies school in Washington who has advised the administration on Iraq policy. "You've had other people who have dropped in and out of this."