The Army's Counterinsurgency Manual can be found here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf

It was authored By David Petraeus and James Amos both Lt. Generals at the time. The final version is dated Dec 2006. Petraeus has since been promoted to General and is of course currently the commanding General of MNF-I (Multi-National Forces in Iraq).

All quotes from this source unless otherwise noted.

Another common feature is that forces conducting COIN operations usually begin poorly. Western militaries too often neglect the study of insurgency. They falsely believe that armies trained to win large conventional wars are automatically prepared to win small, unconventional ones. In fact, some capabilities required for conventional success—for example, the ability to execute operational maneuver and employ massive firepower—may be of limited utility or even counterproductive in COIN operations. Nonetheless, conventional forces beginning COIN operations often try to use these capabilities to defeat insurgents; they almost always fail. The military forces that successfully defeat insurgencies are usually those able to overcome their institutional inclination to wage conventional war against insurgents.

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So a question is: are our forces overcoming their "instituitional inclination to wage conventional war against insurgents?" The answer is mixed but less than encouraging in either case. In support of the negative contention just a year ago the army moved some AC-130 gunships back into Iraq:

http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=2024

These are not counterinsurgency weapons but large scale suppression weapons. Using them against a foe who hides among civilians would be the very definition of an instituitional inclination to wage conventional war against insurgents.

On the other hand more recently we have news of the Army setting up small command posts police precinct like throughout Baghdad. This would be a nes tactic but unfortunately we already have morbid evidence that all it has accomplished is to give the insurgents a number of isolated soft targets to pick from:

Word of yesterday's deadly assault in eastern Diyala Province spread quickly among U.S. troops as far away as the western city of Tikrit, where soldiers with the 82nd Airborne kept a close watch on reports of their comrades sent to the Baqubah area to deal with rising violence there. The strike was what U.S. soldiers call a complex attack, one involving elaborate planning to maximize casualties. Initial assessments suggest that first a suicide car bomber rammed a vehicle into the gates of a small U.S. patrol base outside Baquba in the same area where single car bomber attacked a patrol base last month. A second suicide car bomber apparently followed the first in yesterday's attack, however. And at the same time insurgents fired small arms and rocket propelled grenades, according to soldiers from the 82nd Airborne. In the end, the patrol base was all or mostly destroyed, with several soldiers dead beneath the rubble.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1614091,00.html

Nine soldiers were killed, another 20 wounded.

COIN campaigns are often long and difficult. Progress can be hard to measure, and the enemy may appear to have many advantages. Effective insurgents rapidly adapt to changing circumstances. They cleverly use the tools of the global information revolution to magnify the effects of their actions. The often carry out barbaric acts and do not observe accepted norms of behavior. However, by focusing on efforts to secure the safety and support of the local populace, and through a concerted effort to truly function as learning organizations, the Army and Marine Corps can defeat their insurgent enemies.

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And what success have we had gaining the support of the Iraqi people?

The number of Iraqis who call it “acceptable” to attack U.S. and coalition forces, 17 percent in early 2004, has tripled to 51 percent now, led by near-unanimity among Sunni Arabs. And 78 percent of Iraqis now oppose the presence of U.S. forces on their soil, though far fewer favor an immediate pullout.

More than eight in 10 Shiites (as well as 97 percent of Sunni Arabs) oppose the presence of U.S. and other forces in their country. (Kurds, again, differ powerfully; 75 percent support the U.S. presence.) More than seven in 10 Shiites – and nearly all Sunni Arabs – think the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq is making security worse. Asked whom they blame most for the current violence in Iraq, far and away the most common answer – voiced by four in 10 Iraqis – is either U.S. and coalition forces (31 percent), or George W. Bush personally (nine percent). Al Qaeda and foreign jihadi fighters are cited by 18 percent (far more by Shiites and Kurds than by Sunnis).

Indeed, among the occurrences of local violence measured in this poll, the top mention is “unnecessary violence against citizens by U.S. or coalition forces.” Forty-four percent of Iraqis – including 60 percent of Sunni Arabs – report this as having occurred nearby.

Worsening views of U.S. and other forces in Iraq tracks the deterioration of conditions in the country. In the first ABC News poll in Iraq, in February 2004, 51 percent of Iraqis opposed the presence of U.S. forces on their soil. By November 2005 that jumped to 65 percent. Today, it’s 78 percent.

http://abcnews.go.com/images/US/1033aIraqpoll.pdf
ABC poll conducted 3/5/07

Now the Iraqis aren't exactly clear that they want the US troops gone (a contention held by 35% of the populous), but it's pretty clear that the US troops have not gained their support. A huge amount of headway would have to be made in order to claim the populations support with any real meaning.

COIN thus involves the application of national power in the political, military, economic, social, information, and infrastructure fields and disciplines. Political and military leaders and planners should never underestimate its scale and complexity; moreover, they should recognize that the Armed Forces cannot succeed in COIN alone.

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Are we currently trying to win through armed force alone?

Under the original plans, electricity - upgrading power stations, transmission and distribution - was to take the largest slice of reconstruction funds: US$5.56 billion. That has been cut to US$4.24 billion. Oil and gas projects were cut from US$1.89 billion to US$1.72 billion, transport from US$870 million to US$800 million.

Projects to provide drinking water and improve sewerage systems suffered the biggest loss - almost half the US$4.33 billion earmarked. The lost funds were reallocated largely to security, which saw its budget increase from US$4.56 billion to US$6.31 billion. Healthcare increased from US$793m to US$820m. After all the reallocation, security took 34 per cent of funds, while electricity was below a quarter, water 12 per cent and oil 9 per cent.

As a result, Sigir found that by the beginning of this year, Iraq was producing 2.17 million barrels of oil and 4260MW of electricity: both below pre-war levels.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431226

The actions of the COalition Provisional Authority have so far lead to 5 arrests, twenty some current trials and another 70 some ongoing investigations. If armed force alone is not expected to win it atleast is being expected to carry the vast majority of the weight in this fight. The commitment to, and execution of, reconstruction has be distinctly underwhelming.

The government normally has an initial advantage in resources; however, that edge is counterbalanced by the requirement to maintain order and protect the population and critical resources. Insurgents succeed by sowing chaos and disorder anywhere; the government fails unless it maintains a degree of order everywhere.

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Given the recent suicide bombing in the heavily militarized and supposedly secure "Green Zone" hopefully I need not spend time demonstrating that the Iraqi govenrment has clearly not been able to maintain a degree of order everywhere.

For the reasons just mentioned, maintaining security in an unstable environment requires vast resources, whether host nation, U.S., or multinational. In contrast, a small number of highly motivated insurgents with simple weapons, good operations security, and even limited mobility can undermine security
over a large area. Thus, successful COIN operations often require a high ratio of security forces to the protected population. (See paragraph1-67.) For that reason, protracted COIN operations are hard to sustain. The effort requires a firm political will and substantial patience by the government, its people, and
the countries providing support.

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We'll return to this, but it is good to emphasize now.

Insurgents have an additional advantage in shaping the information environment. Counterinsurgents seeking to preserve legitimacy must stick to the truth and make sure that words are backed up by deeds; insurgents, on the other hand, can make exorbitant promises and point out government shortcomings, many caused or aggravated by the insurgency.

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Has our military preserved legitimacy by sticking to the truth? Well just this week we've had congressional hearing on the fraudulent stories told by the military about Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch. This is hardly the only case of not "sticking to the truth." During the Fallujah seige there were accusations of the US Army using White Phosphorus as a weapon (side note, WP is not considered a chemical weapon in the sense of it being outlawed by any treaties we've signed so the complaint was somewhat silly). The Army first denied that it had used WP as anything other than an illumination source and then later admitted it had in fact used it as a weapon:

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2005/11/16/phosphorus-fallujah051116.html

There are plenty more cases, but that'll do.

Before most COIN operations begin, insurgents have seized and exploited the initiative, to some degree at the least. Therefore, counterinsurgents undertake offensive and defensive operations to regain
the initiative and create a secure environment. However, killing insurgents—while necessary, especially with respect to extremists—by itself cannot defeat an insurgency. Gaining and retaining the initiative requires counterinsurgents to address the insurgency’s causes through stability operations as well. This initially involves securing and controlling the local populace and providing for essential services.

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Emphasis added. As before we've established that the stability operations and operations meant to provide essential services have been utterly inadequate and there appears to be no sign that that will change. The surge does not involve putting 20,000 army corp of engineers in country. Nor has the increase in troops (to levels last seen in Dec 2006) done anything to reduce the casualty rates of civilians, troops, or police.

Weapons are especially important. In some parts of the world, lack of access to weapons may forestall insurgencies. Unfortunately, there is widespread availability of weapons in many areas, with especially large surpluses in the most violent regions of the world. Explosive hazards, such as mines and improvised
explosive devices, are likely to be common weapons in insurgencies. (See FMI 3-34.119/MCIP 3-17.01 for more information on improvised explosive devices.)

Insurgents can obtain weapons through legal or illegal purchases or from foreign sources. A common tactic is to capture them from government forces. Skillful counterinsurgents cut off the flow of arms into the AO and eliminate their sources.

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Iraq is already flooded with weapons, and our forces are far too small to try and patrol its long borders.

A better force requirement gauge is troop density, the ratio of security forces (including the host nation’s military and police forces as well as foreign counterinsurgents) to inhabitants. Most density recommendations fall within a range of 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1000 residents in an AO. Twenty counterinsurgents per 1000 residents is often considered the minimum troop density required for effective COIN operations; however as with any fixed ratio, such calculations remain very dependent upon the situation.

This is the money quote you may have heard previously. Twenty counterinsurgents per thousand population. Now in Iraq the military and police forces have turned out to be completely ineffectual if not down right counterproductive, so we're left with the MNF-I as the only real COIN troops.

Iraq has 26.7 million people, 2% of that would be 534,000 counterinsurgency troops (rather similar to General Shinseki's original estimate, huh?). Baghdad alone (pop. 6 mil) would require 120,000 troops to meet the rule of thumb minimum force. If we go for 25/1000 then it'd need 150,000 troops. In otherwords to do this right, according to the Army Counterinsurgency Manual, we'd need our entire in country force just for Baghdad. We'd need another 350,000 or so troops for the rest of Iraq as well.

Clearly the surge is inadequate to provide the troops that Gen. Petraeus believes would be needed. Now he does comment that the rule of thumb will vary according to the particulars, and that's fair, but does anyone believe that the particulars in this case are on our side? or so heavily on our side that rather than a 20/1000 ratio we can get by with a <6/1000 ratio?

I didn't think so.

Cultural knowledge is essential to waging a successful counterinsurgency. American ideas of what is “normal” or “rational” are not universal. To the contrary, members of other societies often have different notions of rationality, appropriate behavior, level of religious devotion, and norms concerning gender. Thus, what may appear abnormal or strange to an external observer may appear as self-evidently normal to a group member. For this reason, counterinsurgents—especially commanders, planners, and small-unit leaders—should strive to avoid imposing their ideals of normalcy on a foreign cultural problem.

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Army difficulty in acquiring or keeping arabic translators has been widely publicized. How can any force hope to really understand a culture when they can't even speak the language?

Insurgent movements do not control the geographic borders of a country. In fact, insurgencies often rely heavily on freedom of movement across porous borders. Insurgencies usually cannot sustain themselves without substantial external support. An important feature of many transnational terrorist groups is the international nature of their basing. Terrorists may train in one country and fight or conduct other types of operations in another country. The movement of fighters and their support is vulnerable to intervention or attack.

page 1-18

Unfortunately in this case Iraq is surrounded by countries that are generally hostile to us, or that we will not engage politically because of historical hostilities. Even Saudi Arabia and Turkey, two usually close allies of ours, have been angered by the events in Iraq. Saudi Arabia has viewed our actions, with merit, as siding with the Shia against the Sunni. They have issued some very unusual rebukes to the US and threatened to openly back the Sunni insurgency with money and arms. Turkey meanwhile is threatened by the power of the Jurds in northern Iraq and has threatened to militarily invade to prevent Kurdish Iraq providing safe haven to the PKK, a kurdish terrorist group in turkey (ah, the irony).

Syria and Iran are of course fairly hostile towards us and we refuse to hold any meaningful negotiation with them at the same time as we lack the military ability to prevent them acting as safe havens or suppiers to insurgent or militia elements.

All insurgencies require funding to some extent. Criminal organizations are possible funding sources; however, these groups may be unreliable. Such cooperation may attract undue attention from HN authorities and create vulnerabilities to counterinsurgent intelligence operations. In addition, cooperating with criminals may not be ideologically consistent with the movement’s core beliefs, although it often does not prevent such cooperation. Funding from outside donors may come with a political price that affects the overall aim of an insurgency and weakens its popular appeal.

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As above the CPA use of money was criminal (literally) and examples abound of graft. It would be rather starry eyed to assume none of those hundreds of millions of dollars of missing funds wound up in the hands of insurgents. In addition kidnapping has apparently been a source of money for them. Whether they have gotten involved in the inevitable drug trade I couldn't say, although it's a reasonable guess.

All in all I would guess that this collection of insurgents is probablydoing quite well in terms of cash.

Counterinsurgents remain alert for signs of divisions within an insurgent movement. A series of successes by counterinsurgents or errors by insurgent leaders can cause some insurgents to question their cause or challenge their leaders. In addition, relations within an insurgency do not remain harmonious when factions form to vie for power. Rifts between insurgent leaders, if identified, can be exploited. Offering amnesty or a seemingly generous compromise can also cause divisions within an insurgency and present opportunities to split or weaken it.

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Again there is little comfort to be had here. While there certainly are divisions between the various insurgency elements we really can't exploit them effectively. Indeed in one manner there is too much division: the shia-sunni division has created a low intensity civil war which only promotes exactly the kind of chaos that insurgencies thrive on.

There is good news in divisions opening between the Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters. but we neither cause these divisions nor can we really do anything to profit by them other than letting them play out. And we could let them play out just as well from back here.

Controlling the pace and timing of operations is vital to the success of any insurgency. Insurgents control when the conflict begins and have some measure of control over subsequent activity. However, many insurgencies have failed to capitalize on their initial opportunities. Others have allowed counterinsurgents to dictate the pace of events and scope of activities. If insurgents lose momentum, counterinsurgents can regain the strategic initiative.

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There are no indications that the insurgents have lost any momentum with the onset of the surge. Troop fatalities are up. Civilian fatalities are up. Police fatalities are up. March 07 was the third worst of the last 16 months at http://icasualties.org/oif/ for "Iraqi Security Forces and Civilian Deaths," only Aug and Sep 06 were worse. April is already worse than 7 of those 16 months and it still has almost a week left to go.

MNF-I casualties Jan to April have been 86, 84, 82, 99. And again April has days left to go. In fact April is already the 7th worst month since the war started, fifth worst if you go by average deaths per day rather than total deaths (to make up for the fact the month isn't finished yet and for the varying length of months).

The number of US wounded is down a bit, but coupled to an increase in deaths it's hard to spin that as a plus.

Momentum does not seem to be a problem for them, nor do 20,000 additional troops seem to be making a dent in it.

(stats from http://icasualties.org/oif/ )

Nothing is more demoralizing to insurgents than realizing that people inside their movement or trusted supporters among the public are deserting or providing information to government authorities. Counterinsurgents may attract deserters or informants by arousing fear of prosecution or by offering rewards.
However, informers must be confident that the government can protect them and their families against retribution.

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Emphasis added. Again, given the suicidie bombing in the very heart of the green zone it seems unlikely any informant would trust the government to protect them from reprisal.

Ultimate success in COIN is gained by protecting the populace, not the COIN force. If military forces remain in their compounds, they lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared, and cede the initiative to the insurgents. Aggressive saturation patrolling, ambushes, and listening post operations
must be conducted, risk shared with the populace, and contact maintained. The effectiveness of establishing patrol bases and operational support bases should be weighed against the effectiveness of using larger unit bases. (FM 90-8 discusses saturation patrolling and operational support bases.) These practices ensure
access to the intelligence needed to drive operations. Following them reinforces the connections with the populace that help establish real legitimacy.

page 1-27

Clearly the precinct style small bases scattered throughout Baghdad is an attempt to put this idea into practice. What's not clear though is whether the insurgency has enough power at this point to simply swamp these smaller bases at their leisure causing drastic casualties as with the attack on monday.

This may be a case of the right idea conducted too late to do any good. Given the totally inadequate troop levels that seems likely.

As important as they are in achieving security, military actions by themselves cannot achieve success in COIN. Insurgents that never defeat counterinsurgents in combat still may achieve their strategic objectives. Tactical actions thus must be linked not only to strategic and operational military objectives but also to the host nation’s essential political goals. Without those connections, lives and resources may be wasted for no real gain.

...

Successful COIN operations require competence and judgment by Soldiers and Marines at all levels. Indeed, young leaders—so-called “strategic corporals”—often make decisions at the tactical level that have strategic consequences. Senior leaders set the proper direction and climate with thorough training and clear guidance; then they trust their subordinates to do the right thing. Preparation for tactical-level leaders requires more than just mastering Service doctrine; they must also be trained and educated to adapt to their local situations, understand the legal and ethical implications of their actions, and exercise initiative and sound judgment in accordance with their senior commanders’ intent.

The first part just needs to be re-emphasized. You do not win a counterinsurgency with firepower. Period. The firepower is only there to support the other tactics (creation of infrastructure/order). Since we are making no real attempts to do anything besides apply firepower to the problem we will lose. It's that simple.

The second part of the quote is really a shame because based on his writing Petraeus is a smart man who understands counterinsurgency. But clearly the Army as a whole does not. They didn't even have a counterinsurgency doctrine until several years into a war that was primarily a counterinsurgency operation. And it shows.

Virtually everything Petraeus says we shouldn't do we are doing. Virtually everything he says must be done we can't do. We are literally in a no win situation. We are going to lose Iraq, in fact we already have. The surge is inconsequential. Why the author of this tract which so ably shows all the ways the surge will make no difference is also the same man who is now supproting the surge I couldn't say. My guess would be that Petraeus is an old school soldeir and when the president said jump he high hurdled. Maybe I'm wrong.

But, whatever his motivations, The general's already given us a damn good reason to believe he's put himself in a no win position.