The First Fifteen Days," a comprehensive strategy document for a counterinsurgency campaign, the U.S. Army had recommended that American commanders: • Secure the "human terrain." • Build a coalition by demonstrating and enforcing the U.S. commitment to the region. • Demonstrate an ability to react with speed to protect the Iraqi population. • Take control of the local economy by providing relief for Iraqis in need and paying workers in return for their productive work. • Create jobs by constructing critical infrastructure for the future. • Educate the Iraqi people and win their confidence through information operations. • Protect the local population by improving communications. • Assess local needs and take steps to improve services, including water, sanitation, and medical care. • Improve local governance to build capacity for the future. Despite such guidelines, the Pentagon failed to implement these basic strategies. On January 31, 2008, Brigadier General Mark P. Hertling, the commanding general of the First Cavalry Division, made a dramatic plea on Iraqi television. "We're outnumbered," he said. "We've got a whole country to defend, but we have no hope to defend without your help." Hertling spoke from the former palace of Saddam Hussein, the seat of power for the Ba'athist party that was ousted by American forces at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. By February 20, 2008, some thirty thousand United States troops had been killed in Iraq. When a reporter asked what it was like to be an American general with all those deaths, Hertling answered, "It's not like that." General James Mattis was the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq. "A couple of things are interesting," Mattis said in late January 2008. "One is, the enemy is not motivated; they don't care who kills us. The enemy doesn't want to kill Americans; they want to be left alone, right? The United States wants to provide a level of security for its people. I think that's a pretty straightforward concept." The Pentagon, the U.S. military, and the administration had failed to build a strong Iraqi army to protect the people or prepare them for self-rule. In October 2007, U.S. Marines had begun the process of training Iraqi troops at Camp Fallujah, near Fallujah. The Iraqi army was poorly led and lacked officers willing to take orders from Sunnis. By late 2007, there were about 5,000 regular Iraqi soldiers in southern Iraq. When the American force was attacked in April 2007, the Iraqi army was more or less helpless. The Bush administration had not tried to win the hearts and minds of the Sunni population by providing basic services or even protecting them from attacks by sectarian militias. The Bush administration had not built up the Iraqi government's local capacity to provide these services or security. Instead, the Pentagon had built its strategy on its ability to put up a big military force that could stand off against American military strength. It had placed little hope in winning over the local population to its cause and little willingness to build a democratic Iraqi government that could do what Bush had promised. Instead, the administration had pursued an exit strategy from Iraq by giving a majority of the oil wealth in the country to the Kurds and Shi'a. At the same time, the Bush administration had not provided sufficient troops to protect or secure Iraq. The Pentagon did not understand the threat, and neither President Bush nor Vice President Cheney had given it the leadership necessary to solve it. As the top American commander in Iraq, General George Casey, saw it, "This is a political decision. There is no military solution to this problem. There's no military way we can get to where we need to go, without the political will in Washington." General David Petraeus, the chief of the U.S. Central Command, had commanded a coalition in Iraq before and knew the importance of winning the local population. He argued that General Casey was correct about Iraq. "We were in an open-ended commitment, and we're still in one. But we need to focus on the mission." Iraqis didn't trust the United States. They felt they had lost their freedom and that the Americans were occupiers rather than liberators. The local population resented the Americans for their heavy-handed tactics. They resented outsiders coming into their country and trying to help them to fight their own battles. Many Iraqis also believed that the U.S. government was attempting to force a Shi'a-dominated government on them. The president of Iraq told a reporter in February 2008 that the Iraqis had been used by the United States. "The policy of the United States is a policy of occupation," said President Jalal Talabani. "And that's a reality. They are occupiers. Not because we asked them to be, but they entered and are occupying us." General Casey, who took over as commander of U.S. forces in Iraq on September 2, 2007, was willing to admit he was in over his head. He declared, "I don't profess to know everything I need to know about Iraq to be able to give you a good day by day assessment or plan of how we're going to get out of Iraq." As Petraeus wrote, the United States had "overestimated its ability to solve Iraq's problems on the cheap." American arrogance and the Bush administration's unwillingness to hear the American generals on the ground had led them into a trap. "Our leaders, as of March 2007, had still not learned this simple fact: 'Don't come, don't send, don't help.' A lot of people came." * * * * * * THE NEW ELECTIONS The Iraqi elections of January 30, 2005, were held after months of bitter, bloody violence. With its sectarian conflicts, Iraq's civil war has many of the characteristics of other wars in the region. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and other Sunni insurgent groups have targeted Shi'a in retaliation for acts of brutality committed by Shi'a militias. The Sunni have been angry and bitter at the fact that they have been deprived of power and authority in their own country. Sunni and Shi'a have both used violence to defend themselves against the attacks of insurgents. In June 2006, in the northern city of Tal Afar, Iraqi government soldiers, led by Sunni army officers, stopped two members of a militia from the Mahdi Army, the pro-Iranian militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, from entering the city. The two men had come to the city's hospital to threaten the hospital director, a prominent Shi'a politician, with death if he did not stop working with the government. The men were killed. The government troops then attacked the houses of militia members in the city. Gunmen fired at the police, who called in U.S. Army helicopters for support. The helicopters were flying out of Mosul to the north, and by the time they reached the scene of the fighting, they had fired on the Iraqi police. The Iraqi police had fired back, killing at least four U.S. soldiers, and by the end of the day five Americans were dead and five more were wounded. On August 10, 2006, insurgents fired on a U.S. convoy in Anbar province. A U.S. gunship strafed the area where they fired from, killing sixteen civilians, including eleven children. In retaliation for this massacre, the Shi'a militia of Muqtada al-Sadr attacked American troops in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad. Iraqis from different backgrounds were willing to put their differences aside in the months before the elections in January 2005. Sunnis and Shi'a were willing to allow American or even British officials to oversee their elections. Iraqi women were even more eager to reach out to one another. Women had been disempowered during the era of Saddam Hussein. In the elections, they had been willing to let men vote for them, as they did not dare to go into polling places themselves. The violence of the previous months and the lack of electricity in some of the polling places had prevented a voter turnout of more than half of the eligible voters. The problem that followed was that once the violence was over, a new problem arose. The new Shi'a-dominated government, led by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was not willing to cooperate with America's policy of encouraging democratic elections and strengthening local governance. The government, formed under the interim Iraqi constitution of March 21, 2005, was not able to provide the basic services that Iraqis desired. The Sunni community saw that the new government had no respect for them. The new government had taken control of the oil wealth in their area, and they felt they had been disenfranchised. The election result was a blow to Iraqi nationalism. In March 2005, the Sunni had become more concerned than ever about the ability of the United States to win the war in Iraq. Their fears were increased by the murder of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, by U.S. forces on June 7, 2006. At the same time, there was evidence that Iran had increased its role in Iraq in an attempt to counter American influence in the country. Sadrists, whose power base was in the holy city of Najaf, rose up in February 2006 against the Shi'