"In Libya we went after [Muammar Gaddafi’s] centers of gravity… it was by attacking these centers that we managed to topple Gaddafi, not by firing at 150 pick-up trucks a day. Otherwise we would still be there," Mercier told journalists.
"It is exactly the same problem in Iraq today. We are shooting at the frontline but behind that we need to concentrate on the centers of gravity."
His views on the US strategy failure in Iraq were echoed Thursday by Emma Sky, former Political Advisor to the Commanding General of US Forces Iraq General Raymond T. Odierno in Baghdad and author of 'The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq'.
Bombing Alone Is Not the Answer
She opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, but went on to work there after the war to help rebuild the nation. She went on to become Political Adviser to the US Security Co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Governorate Co-ordinator of Kirkuk for the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Emma Sky on her experiences in Iraq after the surge: http://t.co/sXW5mvI4EO pic.twitter.com/Wa8m0Kc05Y
— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) June 8, 2015
She, told the BBC Today program in London that the US departure from Iraq following the invasion in 2003 has left the country rudderless. "What’s happened since 2003 and the way the US departed changed the balance of power in the region in Iran’s favor.
"This has triggered all this regional competition for power, between Iran on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia on the other, which has led them to support these extreme sectarian actors turning local grievances over poor governance into regional proxy wars," she said.
Sky said the US policy of training the Iraq army while also selectively bombing in both Iraq and Syria is not working on its own.
"All the efforts we’ve put in to the Iraqi army have not led to much. All that training, all that equipment. And yet, how can you build a national army when the politics of Iraq is so disputed?
"The US needs to do more to get Iran, Turkey sand Saudi Arabia together to agree how to defeat ISIL and what a post-ISIL Iraq would actually look like."
The decision by the US to send a further 450 military advisers into Iraq was only part of the answer, Sky said.
"Too often, we revert to looking at military means as an end in itself, rather than military means as bringing about a political solution."
