LUCK AND PLANNING IN ANBAR

Anthony Cordesman said that the Surge wouldn't have been at all successful if the Anbar tribes had not decided to fight against Al Qaeda. I've already pointed out that this change occurred about a year ago and now the WH spin is that the Surge was planned with this in mind. From a 9/3/2007 press briefing by Gates, Hadley and Lute:

SECRETARY GATES: Let me start and then Steve follow up, and Doug if he wants to say something. I think that what has happened in Anbar is not just fortuitous. The strategy out here to try and enlist the help of the sheikhs, for the tribal leaders to come together began, for all practical purposes, almost a year ago. We have seen, the fruit of that effort has really become more apparent in the last few months, but it has been underway for quite some time with a lot of courageous leadership by the Anbaris themselves.

But they were very explicit in their comments to the president today that it was the additional, the presence of the additional U.S. forces, the Marines that came in, that helped cement the gains they felt they had made but were at risk and made the situation in their view one that is pretty stable as far as they’re concerned. General Lute.

GEN. LUTE: Yeah, I’d just add that the president last January announced an addition of 4,000 Marines to al Anbar, and they’ve been here serving since then. But the Anbaris themselves have added 20,000 Anbaris to the rolls of the Iraqi Security Forces. So you get a sense of order of magnitude here. Four thousand additional Americans perhaps served as a catalyst for something that actually started before they arrived, and helped us promote the addition of about 20,000 Anbaris to Iraqi Security Forces.

MR. HADLEY: This is not serendipity. If you remember the president’s speech January of last year, he focused on two things. Reinforcements into Baghdad to deal with sectarian violence, and reinforcements to Anbar to take advantage of the opportunities that he saw emerging and that had been worked on. So this was part of the plan, and an essential part of the plan that he outlined in January of last year.