The Making of the Surge

A groundbreaking account of how counterinsurgency doctrine transformed the American war in Iraq—and how the foundations of that transformation were laid long before the surge.

In early 2007, four years after the US invasion of Iraq, the American war effort appeared to be collapsing. Sectarian violence had engulfed the country, Baghdad was being torn apart by ethnic cleansing, and public support for the war had evaporated. Yet at the very moment many expected withdrawal, President George W. Bush chose a different path: he announced the Iraq “surge” and placed General David Petraeus in command. More than a troop increase, the surge was built around counterinsurgency doctrine and promised a fundamentally new approach to the war.

In The Making of the Surge, Marjorie Galelli challenges one of the most enduring narratives of the Iraq conflict: that counterinsurgency emerged only after years of failed strategy as a mid-course correction that rescued the American mission. Instead, Galelli argues that counterinsurgency shaped the conduct of the war from its earliest stages. The book places General George Casey, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, at the center of the story, showing how his decisions helped lay the groundwork for the eventual adoption of General David Petraeus’s large-scale counterinsurgency strategy during the 2007 surge. Galelli also reveals how the successful promotion of counterinsurgency—led by Petraeus, the Bush administration, and their allies—created the political and intellectual space to build support for the surge among civilian leaders, military officers, members of Congress, journalists, policy experts, and an American public that was increasingly losing confidence in the war.

Drawing on oral history interviews, internal documents, and contemporary reporting, The Making of the Surge offers the most comprehensive account to date of how counterinsurgency came to define Operation Iraqi Freedom.