Back when he was a brigade commander in Ramadi in 2006, Brig. Gen. Sean MacFarland had the bright idea to help the local Sunni Iraqis, many of them insurgents themselves, as they turned against al-Qaeda’s local franchise. I suspect most of my readers know all about MacFarland, but just in case you don’t, here’s a good place to turn.

Here’s another: Tom Ricks recounts a talk MacFarland recently gave about his time in Ramadi. A lot of his takeaway will seem common-sensical — in a good way! — particularly if you’ve been attuned to either the Iraq war or the counterinsurgency debate. This is the most interesting aspect of the talk, from my perspective:

One fix creates another problem. If you succeed, your problems are hardly over. “As the threat receded, old rivalries began to re-emerge.”

Now, I’m fairly sure there isn’t a combat brigade/regimental commander in or near Ramadi right now, particularly now that the Marines are out of Anbar. (I could be wrong.) So it’s not as if MacFarland’s successor can pick up on the point. And that’s a very, very good thing. But I would be interested in going back to Iraq — and for the first time to Ramadi* — to see the 2010-era implications of what he’s describing.

*OK, a bit of venting. I first heard about MacFarland from my then-colleague Lawrence Kaplan in 2006, who embedded with MacFarland’s brigade and got to meet the late Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha. By October, I was seeing some pretty serious indications that the Sunnis were fed up with AQI. So I told what was then MNF-I that I wanted to embed with units in Anbar to see this cleavage first-hand, as I was convinced that a Sunni Iraqi-vs-AQI split would be what guaranteed the U.S.’s ability to leave Iraq without it being a monumental clusterfuck. The embed process is what it is, and I didn’t get to Iraq until March 2007. I spent some time with an MP company in Baghdad (it belonged to the brigade commanded by Mike Galloucis, who’s profiled in The Gamble, FYI; we talked about the upcoming baseball season as he’s a serious New Englander) before being told there was no way they could get me to Anbar. I went to Mosul instead, hung out with a PRT up there and stumbled into a grueling early-morning workout with David Petraeus. Came very close to writing what would have been a stupid-as-hell thinkpiece asking if Mosul’s “tenuous calm” at the time could be a model for Iraqi stability. Luckily I got frustrated and gave up.