yesterday bush announced that the u.s. was sending more troops into baghdad to pacify the city. there wouldn't be a change in the overall number of american forces in iraq. instead, the u.s. is going to transfer soldiers stationed in other parts of the country into the capital city. as the new york times explained:
The plan is to concentrate on specific neighborhoods rather than distribute the forces throughout the city, control movement in and out of sectors of the capital and try to sweep them of insurgents and violent militias.calling this part of the "ink blot strategy" only makes sense if it had never been tried before. in fact, a year and a half ago military authorities were describing the strategy in iraq as the "ink blot" or "oil blot" strategy. only in its previous incarnation the ink blot would start in baghdad and then ooze out to pacify the rest of iraq. that's what american forces tried in the past year. they deemed badghdad pacified and then spread out to other parts of the country to try to extend the pacification to those other parts. the decision to bring troops back into baghdad runs counter to last year's ink blog strategy; it's not part of it. to rebrand it as an all new shiny inkblot is ignoring that inky stain that's already on the map.
In effect, the scheme is a version of the “ink blot” counterinsurgency strategy of grabbing a piece of terrain, stabilizing it and gradually expanding it. Only this time the objective is not a far-flung Iraqi city or town, but the capital, the seat of the fledgling government and home to some seven million Iraqis.
put another way, it's not an ink blot unless it spreads. that's what the analogy is all about. what bush announced yesterday was not an example of the ink blot strategy. it wasn't about spreading forces outward, it was about consolidating them inward to reverse last year's ink blot strategy. the ink is moving backwards, not forwards. it's a retreat.
