The fall of the city of Ramadi and doubts about the Iraqi army’s will to fight the Islamic State have a growing number of Republicans and military strategists proposing the once unthinkable: sending tens of thousands of American troops back to Iraq.

Call it another “surge.” But advocates say it shouldn’t look like the last one.


Sen. Lindsey Graham, a 2016 candidate for president, recently called for sending 10,000 troops to Iraq. Fellow GOP presidential hopefuls Rick Perry, Scott Walker and George Pataki say they’re open to the idea. Last week, two key architects of George W. Bush’s 2007 troop surge told the Senate that up to 20,000 additional U.S. troops are needed to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. They’ve found an ally in Sen. John McCain, a longtime Republican hawk.

And even though President Barack Obama has ruled out the idea of a ground combat force — which is also a nonstarter for congressional Democrats — polls show growing public support for the idea.

Leading voices for more U.S. troops say they’re not proposing combat units that would directly engage in firefights like those of the Iraq War. The Bush surge deployed 30,000 troops, many to the front lines. Advocates of a new surge speak mainly of more trainers and advisers embedded with Iraqi army units, spotters to guide precision airstrikes, and U.S. Special Forces to conduct night raids.

Such a strategy would dramatically amplify Obama’s policy to fight the Islamic State, which has drawn fresh criticism since militants captured Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, nearly two weeks ago.

After withdrawing the last U.S. roops from Iraq at the end of 2011, Obama has sent 3,000 back to the country since last summer. Many of those troops are training Iraqi soldiers far from the front lines or advise Iraqi commanders in joint-operations centers. Others guard the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. None are in combat roles or embedded with Iraqi forces in the field.

Supporters of a new surge say even if the additional American troops sent are mainly advisers and coordinators who rarely fire their weapons, they would still need to be near the front lines and very much in harm’s way.

“It will take accepting risk. It will take accepting casualties,” retired Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. Keane helped persuade Bush to order his surge of 20,000 troops against the opposition of military commanders who insisted their Iraq strategy was working; Obama opposed that surge but later admitted that it “succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

In an interview with POLITICO, Keane said he supports sending between 10,000 and 20,000 troops to Iraq, primarily to speed up the training of Iraqi forces and tribal fighters in Sunni areas where ISIS is especially strong. His view is backed by another Bush surge architect, Fred Kagan, a military strategist at the American Enterprise Institute, who also discussed the proposal with POLITICO.

“I’m not advocating that we put ground combat troops in there,” Keane said. “When people hear that guys like Keane or Kagan want more troops, they think ‘Well, they want another long protracted war in Iraq.’” He insisted that’s not the case, adding that if more U.S. troops failed to make a difference he would support the creation of a large Arab army to take on ISIS.

A spokeswoman for Graham said that discussions with Keane, along with former Central Command chief Anthony Zinni, formed the basis for the South Carolina senator’s 10,000-troop proposal, but did not provide more details.

Until recently, critiques of Obama’s Iraq policy have mainly focused on the possible role of joint terminal attack controllers — U.S. troops who operate near the front lines of combat and call in precise coordinates for airstrikes that might otherwise be withheld for fear of hitting friendly forces or civilians.

Many Pentagon leaders support sending so-called spotters to Iraq, but Obama has declined to place them within Iraqi units. “That means air support will always be late and always far from the close fight,” says retired Lt. General James Dubik, who oversaw the training of Iraqi forces from 2007 to 2008. “The utility of our air support is diminished.”

The more recent discussions have moved beyond the spotters, however. Kagan, a former professor of military history at West Point, backs placing more American troops within Iraqi military units that might encounter combat, but not just because they can offer advice. Such troops also could help with intelligence gathering, including the installation of electronic surveillance equipment — a task the U.S. can’t outsource to the Iraqis given its sensitive nature.

Although many of the new U.S. troops would be “in a defensive mode” — offering logistical support, transportation and protection for their fellow Americans — some could play a more traditional combat role. They could employ precise artillery, Kagan said, compensating for a pause in airstrikes during sandstorms or bad weather.

He further recommended sending the personnel and equipment to conduct Special Forces night raids against militant hideouts, such as the one the U.S. conducted in Syria earlier this month that killed a senior ISIS operative and captured his wife.

Kagan acknowledged that his proposal would likely involve some casualties. “I mean in the tens, and I would be surprised if you get quickly toward 100,” he said.

When it comes to ISIS, the risk also includes barbaric treatment of any Americans unlucky enough to be captured. In February, ISIS burned a downed Jordanian pilot alive in a cage. “I would tell the president there’s a likelihood that will happen,” Kagan said. “They will try to do that. We will try hard to prevent it.”

Beyond the risk of casualties, a more aggressive U.S. role would bring other complications, said Richard Fontaine, president of the Center for a New American Security.

“You have to Medevac people out if they get hurt,” Fontaine said. “People have to eat, they have to be resupplied.” Helicopters would need to be on standby “so that if Americans find themselves in a firefight they don’t find themselves solely reliant on Iraqis to get out of the jam.”

Special Forces raids often involve taking prisoners, he added, raising questions about where those detainees will be held and how they will be interrogated. “Do you create a detention facility? Who runs it? And you need lawyers,” Fontaine said.

Some strategists question the premise that a modest increase in American troops would make much difference.

“In general, my view tends to be that small-footprint postures produce small payoffs,” said Steven Biddle, adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s very hard to add a handful of Americans and transform an outcome.”

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American troops can’t solve deep systemic problems within the Iraqi military, Biddle said, the body that ultimately will have to secure the country. “The central problem in the Iraqi military is combat motivation,” he said. “It’s not technical proficiency.”

If Iraqi soldiers seem to lack a “will to fight,” as Defense Secretary Ash Carter recently put it, Biddle said that’s because “they don’t want to give their lives for a government they think is just lining its pockets.”

For its part, the White House is holding firm on the question of ground troops. “The president has clearly ruled out the use of U.S. military personnel in a ground combat role in Iraq,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in a May 22 briefing.

Keane said he understood the political reality, adding that his like-minded allies in the U.S. military are resigned to the idea that Obama isn’t likely to budge from his position.

“I just talked to a four-star [general] today, and he said the guys have pretty much given up trying to make any changes,” Keane said. “They know the president’s not going to do it regardless.”