NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS NOVEMBER 2003 ARCHIVES
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"Samarra" (Posted November 30, 2003)
So why the large Baathist fedayeen force in Samarra? Since we were pushing a convoy of new Iraqi money through the town, the speculation is that the Baathists were on a bank hit. Possibly. And if so, are the Baathists running out of money? I mean, they took a lot but we found a lot, and some might have disappeared to Swiss bank accounts or something.
But what if it wasn't an attempted robbery. If not, what was the reason for uniformed fedayeen fighting so fiercely? In such numbers? Could Saddam have been nearby?
Just wondering.
“Lessons” (Posted
It has been said that Baathist and
jihadist attacks are discouraging our public and our
allies from winning in
This battle should discourage our enemies in
U.S. troops repelled simultaneous attacks
Sunday afternoon in the northern city of Samarra,
killing 46 Iraqis, wounding at least 18 and capturing eight, the
This is, as I understand it, just a big example of how we defeat direct attacks on our convoys on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, since we don’t advertise these victories, we don’t get the advantage of beating them regularly.
Capturing some will provide some good information, too.
I will give the Baathists some credit since they apparently wore uniforms. So this was a military operation and not a terrorist operation. They are still the enemy and awful ones at that, but it isn’t correct to call them terrorists.
It is disturbing that these two attacks were apparently carried out in large platoon strength. I haven’t seen attacks this large up until now.
But good news to beat back an ambush of this size.
One question, though. Will we be able to replicate such battles when we replace those "too heavy" Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles with "more mobile" Humvees?
“I’m From the Left,
and I’m Here to Help” (Posted
Friedman is clearly pro-war when it comes to
Basically, he thinks that
the conservative pro-war side doesn’t understand the complexities of
For
my money, the right liberal approach to
He rightly notes that the anti-war side is quite stark raving mad, ignoring the evils of our enemies in their rush to condemn Bush and Blair as new Nazis. Ah, the fruits of the complex mind.
Please.
From this failure to see the reality of his side’s analytical abilities, Friedman starts the train of errors. This is the heart of Friedman’s problem in finally jettisoning his leftist baggage in analyzing the war and supporting the President:
Believe
me, being a liberal on every issue other than this
war, I have great sympathy for where the left is coming from. And if I didn't,
my wife would remind me. It would be a lot easier for the left to engage in a
little postwar reconsideration if it saw even an ounce of reflection,
contrition or self-criticism coming from the conservatives, such as Dick Cheney
and Don Rumsfeld, who drove this war, yet so bungled
its aftermath and so misjudged the complexity of postwar
Let’s recall as prelude that the President said, on May 1 when announcing the end of major combat operations, that the post-war struggle would be long and difficult.
Let’s further recall the famous Rumsfeld memo which showed so much reflection and self-criticism that the anti-war side decided to assault the memo as proof that the administration thought we were losing the war.
As for contrition, I don’t want the administration to apologize for anything in deciding—against enlightened world opinion—to overthrow Saddam. It is an outrageous demand when you consider that the anti-war side still “supposes” that it is a good thing that Saddam is gone and fails to reflect when it sees mass graves, polls of happy Iraqis, torture chambers now unused, and the widespread preparations by Saddam, in violation of repeated UN resolutions, to create WMD once we were looking elsewhere.
Let’s recall all the horrible post-war problems that we anticipated and prevented.
Let us remember the change in post-war administration in
Let us keep in mind the progress we have made in rebuilding
Let us remember the change in plans to put security and governmental powers in the hands of Iraqis as the liberating country we are.
And as we work to repair a country in a complex environment,
let us recall the complexity of thought that leads the anti-war left to call
for immediate withdrawal of American troops and their silly faith in the UN as
the solution to all that ails us in
And though I don’t comment on domestic policies, since Friedman is tossing in Bush’s “partisan, ideological, nonhealing” style, let me just note that Bush is expanding non-defense spending at a tremendous rate with massive new health and education plans that would have been applauded by the left if Clinton had proposed them. President Bush is even expanding the Clinton AmeriCorps. Partisan and ideological, indeed. I won’t even pretend to understand what “nonhealing” means. I guess it is promoted by “Bush=Hitler” signs or photo-shopped pictures of Cheney in Nazi regalia.
And on top of all this, since Friedman complains about the left’s refusal to support the Iraq War under the following circumstances, how sophisticated is the left?
First,
even though the Bush team came to this theme late in the day, this war is the
most important liberal, revolutionary
The left can’t see this endeavor as democracy-building? They
see it as a Halliburton bailout, or empire-building, or whatever? Hey, at least
they no longer say that fighting an easy war against
But I digress.
If Friedman thinks Bush came to this view of promoting democracy late, what does it say about the previous administration or about the current crop of candidates challenging Bush who still don’t understand this theme, more than two years after 9-11?
And what about Friedman himself? Says
Friedman in explaining how the left needs to approach
Friedman needs to stop worrying about what his wife and
social circle think of him for supporting the Iraq War. It was the right thing
to do. And completing the mission is the right—and necessary—thing to do. Criticizing
and suggesting changes is fine, but it is blind for Friedman to comfort himself
with the idea that only his side can navigate the complexities of post-Saddam
Friedman needs to use his big, complex, liberal brain to understand that his ideological friends are incapable of putting away their bongos and puppets and getting down to the serious work of protecting our country from foreign enemies. Sometimes we have to punch the lights out of our real enemies and not just our domestic opponents. That’s part of the 9-11 phenomena.
It really is simple after all.
“Casualties” (Posted
November is the deadliest
month in
With November nearly over, the official death count yesterday stood at
79, surpassing March (65) and April (73), when the invasion was underway and
fighting was most intense and widespread.
Now, I’m not dismissing our dead as meaningless. It is important to reverse the surge and stamp out the attacks. The main goal, however, is to get Iraqi security forces on line so they carry out the bulk of the routine security missions. As we reduce our combat forces, we’ll need fewer convoys to supply them and so will suffer fewer ambushes. Our support troops are facing a higher proportion of losses than is normal since our combat troops are very effective and the Baathists know it. They avoid our combat troops when they can, preferring to hit vulnerable convoys run by supply clerks and the like. Even with MP or infantry escorts, these are easier targets. So our casualties will go down with fewer troops as long as Iraqi forces increase. I worry that focus on attacks per day will become the false metric of success. We don’t need to reduce it to zero to call our invasion a success. As long as Iraqi forces can take on the task, with our help, we can scale back. Like I’ve said before, allies of ours around the world fight insurgents or terrorists without 130,000 Americans on the ground helping them.
One other thing about the article bothers me. It is
deliberately misleading in part. It is just like the coverage noting we’ve had
more casualties in the long post-war phase than in the major combat operations
of the war. That is misleading because it misses the point that we had
remarkably few war casualties. Now, in this article, this reporter says that it
is significant that we’ve had more casualties in November (79) than in either
month of the invasion (65 and 73) when “fighting was most intense and
widespread.” This deliberately ignores the fact that we didn’t invade until
near the end of March and that
And since 39 of the November casualties are from helicopter
losses, we are still talking a little over one per day if we exclude what are
essentially anomalous deaths from the pattern of casualties from daily attacks.
If we regularly lost helicopters in
Just keep some perspective. Cheap headlines notwithstanding.
“Intelligence”
(Posted
One article in WP about the validity of our intelligence on WMD before the Iraq War. It defends the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. This convinces me but I needed none on this subject. I think the charge that evidence was hyped is absurd. I did not expect a nuclear weapon but feared we could have missed a nuclear program as we did before. I thought it was possible that there were weaponized bio weapons but probably not. I expected chemical weapons since this is the one WMD Iraq had and used often in the past. Bio raw materials and chemicals in the quantities we expected are easy to hide and we may yet dig them up.
Another WP article on the validity of the al Qaeda-Iraq links. This says that the reports of contacts overstate the situation and that the information in the leaked DOD memo to the Senate was routine stuff and not evidence of real cooperation. Still, dismissing the establishment of an al Qaeda base in nominally Kurdish areas in 1999 seems rash. That seems all too credible to me.
I’m no expert on intelligence but since I never felt that there was solid direct linkage, I certainly can’t rule this article’s point out. Nonetheless, the links deserve attention.
“The Price of Delay”
(Posted
Mark Steyn pegs my fears of the price of delay in the Iraq War. Before I started my blog, I thought we’d invade by September 2002, after the heat of summer and after we replenished our JDAMs. By the time I started my blog, I began to think by the end of the year or so. In the end we delayed until March. Said Steyn:
One or two readers may recall that a year and
a half ago I was arguing that the invasion of
The blowback of dragging out the pre-war for purely political reasons and not military reasons are still haunting us. Far from being “a rush to war” and before “all peaceful means were exhausted,” as the anti-war side still asserts, we delayed to our disadvantage.
As I’ve said, give an enemy time and they’re liable to use it.
The rest of the article is good, too.
“Sunni Triangle”
(Posted
On a related note, I once wrote that if the Iraqi Sunnis don’t take the opportunity we are giving them for a better life that we could split the country and leave central Iraq to their Baathist misery.
On reflection, I was gravely mistaken.
If we can’t pacify the Sunni area and withdraw, we will have given the Baathists a sanctuary to organize and plan in peace. Whatever is buried in there would come out for use against us. We would have some peace for a bit, but that would only be a “September 10” peace. After a while, the Baathists would come after the Shias and Kurds. And our forces helping them.
No, we must win in the Sunni triangle. To borrow a familiar slogan, it’s better to fight the Baathists in the Sunni triangle than to fight them in the Kurd and Shia regions.
“
Lost where I read this, but when I saw our troops blowing up
building used by Baathists for attacks, I cringed. Looked too “Israeli.” And sure enough, the report I saw said
we are consulting with Israelis on tactics they’ve used. While their urban
warfare techniques certainly worked, so did ours in the war. And since Israelis
are fighting people who will not ever like them, alienating the population
isn’t too much of a worry. We have good will among many in
If buildings are being used to attack us, plant sensors in the buildings to detect their presence and then attack the building to kill the attackers. Geez, if we know they’ll go back, take advantage of it!
I didn’t mind the use of aerial bombs for a bit to make a point, and in more remote areas against identified targets I’m not upset, but I’m glad this tactic seems to be dwindling if press impressions are a guide. Remember, this is a policing problem. It is not major combat operations. That’s why we accurately announced the end of them, remember?
“Taiwan Tension”
(Posted November 28, 2003)
One more from Jane’s, noting the worries that
ONCE again the
We do need to pull Chen back.
From Strategypage,
The cash crunch created by this expenditure will also limit options in
dealing with
Interesting. I disagree with the
idea that
It’s a tough road. We can’t let
“Bad
Trend Line in
Again from Jane’s, this
time on
THE
I think this is way too pessimistic. I respect Jane’s a lot but they may be infected with European pessimism too much. For example, I don’t recall the administration simply characterizing the resistance as made up of just “terrorists.” It seems like “former regime loyalists” is the main term used to describe the overwhelming majority, with a small number of definition-true “terrorists” in the form of foreign jihadists, too. Also, they clearly engage in terrorism. Still, I can hardly ignore this.
“WMD Patrol” (Posted
According to my email alert from Jane’s:
A COALITION, led by the USA, is about to challenge the right of
innocent passage by preparing to seize and search ships and aircraft on
suspicion of involvement in the illicit trade in weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). The coalition comprising
Multi-national talks on North Korean nukes. Pulling 2nd ID off the firing line. And this naval effort. Makes it look like we are going to
squeeze and contain
“The
The Chinese are psyching themselves up for the showdown
with us over
Pro-independence activists have campaigned for 10 years for
a referendum law. The movement has gained wide public support ahead of
presidential elections on
President Chen has enraged China by aggressively asserting
his island is a separate country -- making that and a referendum on a new
constitution the key pillars of his campaign for re-election on March 20, 2004.
The Strategic Studies Institute of the
I believe
One problem is that the Chinese don’t think we will fight
for
A related problem with our perceptions is that we try to
impress upon our enemies our power by letting them see our military up close in
training. The idea is that potential foes will come away with a “holy freaking
crap” moment and impress upon their countrymen that there is no way they can
beat
Perhaps most important, I don’t think we appreciate that
And the crisis in 1996 when
One problem we have with our assessments of what
As I’ve written repeatedly, the Chinese desire for
And remember, as McCready noted, “
Next time, a template for Chinese action?
UPDATE: See Part II.
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“Huzzah!” (Posted
President Bush was just in Iraq to visit our troops and thank them for protecting us:
Air Force One landed in darkness
at
Bush was to spend only two hours on the ground, limiting
his visit to a dinner at the airport with
Bush's trip — on the large plane he most frequently uses —
was a well-guarded secret — announced only after he landed in
In a ruse staged in the name of security, the White House
had put out word that Bush would be spending Thanksgiving at his ranch in
Instead, Bush slipped away from his home without notice
Wednesday evening and flew to
Outfreakingstanding.
It shows our troops that he is behind them and that he
thinks their mission is important enough to risk his life. Yes, it was a brief
visit but he was an irresistible target had our enemies figured this out. He
landed in
It also showed confidence in our troops as they are on a recent offensive to turn back the small but still rising number of attacks.
And it is pretty good that Iraqis will know that President
Bush has been seen in
And after going to
Really good.
"Thanksgiving 2003" (Posted November 26, 2003)
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. On top of the usual things to be thankful for, my son, my family, & my work and friends, I must add my deepest thanks to those who are defending me. It is difficult to think of soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen in far away lands fighting and dying to protect all of us at home from vicious killers who pray for the chance to kill us. Every email from DOD that announces a death is hard to read. But I do. It is but a tiny gesture to make sure I never forget their sacrifice. And it is tougher because I was a soldier once. A reservist (for some reason I don't like "citizen-soldier" since the active duty troops are just as much citizens) as many who are going to Iraq are. Yet I never had to go overseas and risk my life. Came darn close, but close doesn't count--not by a long shot.
I have a lot to be thankful for. And many to thank for my life.
“Soviet Evils”
(Posted
One
of the
reasons I quit the American Historical Association a decade ago (from
Andrewullivan.com). Despite having the archives of the Soviet gulag-masters
opened, the left here sees nothing. They now insist that containment was a
bipartisan endeavor, neglecting the hard fight one side had in maintaining it
against the other side that resisted it as much as they could. They forget—or worse,
still believe-in the moral equivalence of the
Jamie, you look at
Soviet history and see the Gulag, the executions of the Terror, the pervasive
oppression, and the economic failure. Psychologically, the leftists you speak of
see little of that. They see a Communist state that articulated their vision of
the future and which sought to destroy the societies and institutions they
hated. They cannot see the horror that communism actually created. They look on
that horror and see something else because they cannot admit to themselves that
their vision is beyond human grasp. The German Communist playwright Bertolt Brecht, when challenged
that thousands of innocents had been sent to the Gulag by Stalin, replied,
"the more innocent they are, the more they
deserve to die." To you or I this remark is disgusting, but to the hard
left it reflects their eager willingness to kill any number of persons without
concern for innocence or guilt if it might assist in bringing about the
socialist future.
The idealized future that has not happened is
more real and more important to them than the past that really did happen.
Because the imagined future is more real and important to them, they seek to
remold history (human understanding of the real past) to the service of the
future. In his distopia 1984, George Orwell gives the
Ministry of Truth of his totalitarian state the task of rewriting history.
Orwell's point was that those who control the politics of the past (history)
also control the politics of the present and thereby the future. The academic
left, like the Orwell's Engsoc ideologists, believe
that history is malleable and can assist in legitimating current politics and
bringing about the utopian future.
You will get few mea culpas from hard left academics
because they feel no guilt. You think they should regret getting the facts of
history wrong. They care not at all about the facts of history, only about the
politics of the future. They feel they got the politics right and so no mea culpa is due.
The facts of history that they got wrong can
be, in their view, rationalized, redefined, minimized, or otherwise set aside
in service to the idealized future they seek. Many have learned no lessons from
the failure of communism; they will ardently pursue the same goals by the same
means, albeit under new names.
You note the incongruity of hearing
historians who are supposed to care about the past dismiss new information from
Soviet archives as useless concern for "old ghosts" and
"engaging in necrophilia." But those who say such thinks are not
really historians, they are propagandists for the
future left utopia who camouflage themselves as historians. They are interested
in the past only when it can be put to the service of the future they seek. The
flood of information out of Communist archives does not serve their goals, thus
they define those matters as, as you noted, "ancient"
and of no interest.
As “they” say, read the whole thing.
Oh, and one little tidbit of mass murder against Americans I never heard of:
Or, take a case that we discuss in our
book-the murder of at least a thousand American Finns in Soviet
Bastards. And no, I’m not sure who
I’m talking about here.
“Making Them Worry About Us” (Posted
Going after the opposition, primarily the Baathists, is cutting down on their attacks on us:
[U. S. General] Abizaid said that
the number of daily attacks on coalition forces were down by about half over
the last two weeks. He gave no figures but
"In the past two weeks, these attacks have gone down,
attacks against coalition forces, but unfortunately we find that attacks
against Iraqis have increased," Abizaid said. He
said the attacks had increased not only in number but in severity.
Keeping the initiative against the Baathists is good.
That the Baathists are striking civilians instead of our soldiers also shows that the Baathists don’t think it is a winning strategy to keep going after our troops and/or can’t go after us at the same pace. They lose too many men and we haven’t cut and run as they expected.
It is also good that we see the face of the resistance. That vile Ted Rall may think the Baathists are brave nationalists resisting occupation but this shift to striking civilians demonstrates what they are. They killed and raped and tortured to stay in power; and they are willing to terrorize people so that they will welcome Baathist rule again. This is their bargain: we’ll stop bombing, disrupting your lives, if we can quietly disappear people in the middle of the night while you pretend to have a life.
Drive on. Victory is our exit strategy.
“Lads for Steadying”
(Posted
The Pentagon is considering how to reorganize our forces to better cope with post-war stabilization missions in the absence of willing allies:
A September study by the Pentagon's Office of Stability Operations
outlined how a brigade-size force of about 5,000 troops could be organized.
Another study, sponsored by Cebrowski and completed
earlier this month by a
I’ve long said that our Army should focus on warfighting and not divert forces to peacekeeping priorities. We have too few troops to create pseudo-soldiers. Indeed, we need to make sure our combat support and combat service support troops have local defense capabilities.
But we have
And the focus in the article undermines the contention in the article that the Army is resistant to focus on stability operations because it does not want to divert scarce combat troops:
The idea is to forge deployable brigades or whole divisions out of
units of engineers, military police, civil affairs officers and other
specialists critical to postwar operations.
I’ve long said I want more MPs for security and policing. When you add the other CS and CSS units envisioned, the plan does not divert forces from a warfighting focus. Near the end of the article, we get the key piece on this:
That
122-page study argued that the proposed two new divisions could be created
without adding to the total size of the Army or siphoning troops from the
Army's existing 10 active-duty combat divisions. Many of the soldiers called
for in the plan, including those expert in engineering, policing, civil
affairs, psychological operations and medical care, can be found in reserve
units and are attached to Corps headquarters or other commands above the
division level, the study concluded.
"Most
of the necessary capabilities already exist," said Binnendijk,
who during the
This seems a prudent course of action for now. We are reconfiguring existing troops for a need we face right now.
I do, however, take exception to the following segment:
No longer do
The invasion of
As for swift victory, sure, it’s nice work if you can get it. But what if we face troops with tougher mettle than the Iraqis?
Plus, I still say that in the Iraq War we had 60 US combat battalions plus 12 British line battalions—the equivalent of seven strong divisions. We lacked the support troops of 1991 because technology and coordination allowed us to have fewer supporting forces. The force was smaller than in 1991 but our enemy was reduced considerably, too. I just don’t want people to think a tiny force of American super-troopers can take on any enemy no matter how large and no matter how resolute.
But two stabilization divisions could be useful without harming our combat power under this idea.
“Unsteady Lads”
(Posted
Listening to the men and women who are seeking the presidency comment on foreign policy in the debate Monday night is frightening.
They have no clue. Their foreign policy is to retreat and wish for the best. They have no decency. They repeat the lies and distortions that they have used for two years.
They are just awful. It is truly disheartening to me.
Not one is a leader. I do not trust any one of them to defend us.
“Steady, Lads”
(Posted
This infuriates me:
Assailants killed two
But we must keep perspective.
Our enemies would love it if we looked at this incident and concluded that every damn Iraqi can go to Hell.
Don’t go there. The Iraqis want us there. They are grateful we overthrew Saddam. The Baathists and jihadists are the ones who want us to leave.
Steady, lads. Focus on the objective.
“Truly Dumb
Arguments” (Posted
One argument that the anti-war side continues to use regarding the Iraq War is the idea that we are creating more enemies that would not have existed had we just stayed home.
Really?
I guess that waging a war against the British was an error
in 1775. How many Americans died in that
And let’s not even talk about the War of 1812. So what if
American sailors were being kidnapped by the Royal Navy? So what if the British
were attacking our trade and harming our economy? Good God, how much stronger
were the British that we should start a war?! What did we get?
The Civil War was truly folly. A people wanted to just live
their own lives apart from us. So what if they had slaves? Were our soldiers
any less racist? How well were our immigrants treated? Really, we should have
cleaned up our act before telling Southerners to stay in the
And can you believe the Spanish-American War? So what if
Cubans were dying in concentration camps. A splendid little
war, indeed. Sure, the war was over in three months. Sure, we suffered
remarkably few casualties to win. But then we faced a three-year insurgency in
the
And what were we thinking intervening in the Great War? Why
should we care if a militarist
The biggest folly by far was World War II. How many
Americans were being killed by Nazis and Japanese before
And even as we struggled without a plan in
Clearly, fighting was a mistake in these cases, eh?
Let’s get real, here. Is there any doubt that our enemies would commit a 9-11 atrocity again and again? With VX? With Anthrax? With dirty bombs? With nukes?
Can those arguing that we are making enemies by waging war against terrorists and their state sponsors not understand that we were under attack before 9-11 and that our decision to join the battle automatically means that our casualties mount as the battle is joined?
In all these examples from 1775 to 2001, we could have just accepted the actions of our enemies and surrendered. Or we could have let events go on until we could no longer avert our eyes from our losses. Until our enemies were in our faces with nobody left to fight but us.
I thought our enemies got in our faces on 9-11. I thought
this reality check happened, but it did not. Some here manage to close their
eyes with the still smoldering ruins of the
Do they really?
Our enemies, who were fighting us all along, are still
fighting us. There are two differences. One, we are stretching
our power around the globe and killing them now, too, going after them
seriously and persistently. Two, we are showing the wider Islamic world
that we are serious about defeating the terrorists and ending the dictatorships
that have spawned the fanatics. The first will destroy our enemies and put them
off balance until we kill them. Our biggest successes were in tearing into al Qaeda and destroying two terrorist states with remarkably
low casualties. The second will dry up the recruiting pool.
I guess those arguing we are making more enemies are too caught up in the logic of their foolish slogan that it “takes two to make war.” In reality, it only takes one side as we could see throughout the 1990s. Fighting back is better. Even when the victory is not perfect.
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“Are They Stupid or
What?” (Posted
Critics of the Patriot Act hyperventilate over imagined civil rights abuses and create worry when the act is needed to prevent another 9-11. But the government has a duty to use the act prudently or Congress will restrict it to the detriment of prevention. What am I to make of this short-sighted and stupid move?
FBI agents investigating two strip club
owners in Las Vegas on bribery charges bypassed a grand jury and instead used
the Patriot Act to subpoena the financial records of the bar owners as well as
several prominent city and county officials.
This just adds a factoid to the ravings of those who don’t even think we are at war. The government should slap down this silly use of a law designed to nab terrorists. I am torn between wondering whether the agents are just stupid or are against the Patriot Act and working to undermine it by using it inappropriately.
In time, the act must be pulled back and eventually even repealed. We’re not there yet.
“SAM Hit” (Posted
A civilian transport plane was
hit in
Military
officials said there had been at least 12 other attempted attacks on the few
civilian flights that operate in Iraq, and this first successful hit of a
civilian aircraft might further delay opening the airport to civilian traffic
and thus postpone one major marker for stability in Iraq.
As I’ve noted, those little hand-held missiles aren’t usually that dangerous to large aircraft. The very tiny warheads just don’t pack a lot of punch. Disturbing, true, and it puts off the day when civilian planes can use the airport. But using them against helicopters would be far more dangerous.
“Al Qaeda Still Out There Plotting” (Posted
Our terrorist enemies in bin Laden’s thugdom are still plotting against us. We’ve done great so far to thwart them. While we go after them ruthlessly with our allies, we force the terrorists to spend more effort avoiding us.
One day we’ll miss. That is inevitable.
This is a long war and I just don’t get those in our country who believe the war is some type of Karl Rove reelection plot.
“Our Smaller
Brigades” (Posted
I already noted our plans to reduce most of our brigades to two line battalions instead of three as they are now and increasing the number of brigades. I had argued for basing our force on more divisions that would have two brigades instead of three. I argued we could round out with National Guard brigades if we faced a tougher opponent.
I wonder if we will use our enhanced separate brigades to
fill out our new, smaller brigades in case of a tougher opponent. I speculate
since we have discovered that even though our National Guard is probably equal
to most active component armies around the world, it is inferior to our
excellent active Army. We know that it takes a year or more to get a Guard
division up to par and months to get even our enhanced brigades up to speed.
However, we had excellent results from mobilizing our enhanced separate brigade
subordinate battalions (15 out of 45) and apparently using them in combat in
One advantage of this method is that it keeps supporting arms at a higher level by supporting three smaller brigades in a division instead of two larger brigades. Usually, supporting artillery is based on one battalion per brigade so a two-brigade division with the same number of troops as a three-brigade division would have 67% of the firepower in the artillery arm. This is one reason why German three-regiment infantry divisions (with two battalions each) were more effective than Luftwaffe infantry divisions that had two regiments with three battalions each.
If we do something like this, it will ease my worries about creating smaller brigades should we face a resilient and smart opponent who doesn’t go along with our hyper war concepts. National Guard battalions can plug in and provide the depth to slug it out and win.
“President’s Trip to
It looks like the President’s trip to
His Three Pillars speech has also further cemented our global offensive to replace dictatorial Moslem states with democratic Moslem states. Victory is our “exit strategy.”
And at home, the reassurance of our primary ally standing with us will undercut those here who argued that the President had undermined our most important alliance.
One thing that mystifies me about the socialist and
communist relics who paraded in
And if we don’t, can we please stop excusing the brutality
of the
“Nice Work if You Can
Get It” (Posted
I don’t know how I missed this article the first time.
The lead paragraph says we are planning potential wars based on the assumptions that we can win them more quickly and that we’ll need fewer American troops. Precision, jointness, communications, and Special Forces are the new factors that have led to this new look. I’m hoping that we aren’t assuming that all our future enemies will fight as stupidly as the Iraqis have in our last two wars. This is not a constant. As one officer in the Persian Gulf War noted, after seeing a bunker complex abandoned by the Iraqis, “Thank God they weren’t North Vietnamese.”
General Pace noted that we won the Iraq War with 160,000 troops rather than the 500,000 initially planned. I’m worried this will be misinterpreted.
Note that the example given is that in case
What were lacking, I think, were all the logistics people and the extra artillery brigades we’d usually have with an invading force. I bet lots of air defense stuff was missing, too. Also, with satellites, we can reach back with a lot of support functions normally brought to the theater. With precision, we didn’t need tons of ammo brought in. I think the stats I saw showed that we used about the same number of precision weapons this time than in 1991 (and the current crop is more accurate). The difference was that we used lots of dumb bombs in 1991 and relatively few in 2003. Air power (also in smaller numbers), with regulars and special forces able to coordinate this tremendous firepower in combat, was able to substitute for extra artillery in the war.
So, we had the line units up front in the strength anticipated, but behind it we had a more hollow army, thinned out to factor in our total air superiority, much smaller logistics needs since we won quickly, and effective air support with good weather to exploit it.
Much of this thinking is accurate in the context of an Iraq-like opponent. It is also useful since we may have to fight anywhere on the globe and not just the Gulf and Korean peninsula.
But what if we need to fight a tough enemy? One that doesn’t break early on? That has an air force it is willing to use even if it is destroyed in the process? In rough terrain where the enemy can hide better? In bad weather that degrades our air power? What if our enemy can attack our satellites or break our links to them?
Then, we’ll need artillery and lots of ammo. We’ll need more supplies and air defenses. We’ll need to replace line units that suffer attrition or just need a rest. Reach-back won’t be reliable. In short, that hollow rear will need to fill out. Oh sure, not nearly as much as the old ways, but despite all the complaints of our large logistical “tail,” it is this support that allows our frontline “teeth” to be so effective. We minimized it against an enemy that had no freaking idea how to fight us—despite having been pasted by us once. It is often said that the side that loses often learns more than the side that won. Not this time. Saddam learned little from 1991, and what little he did learn was wrong. I’m not sure we learned from 1991, but we certainly changed and fought differently than we did in 1991. And it worked spectacularly. No doubt.
Our desire and willingness to change in order to leap ahead of our enemies is admirable. Much of what we are doing is great. I just fear we are learning based on a dangerously misguided template. One day we’ll fight a tough enemy. Will the solutions we are crafting based on fighting the Iraqis work on somebody else?
"Friendly Shias"
(Posted
I never bought the idea that
The realization that Shias in
"Reality Check" (Posted November 20, 2003)
Peters article
articulates some of the things I've been writing.
First, it is silly to assert
that Saddam planned to get his ass waxed in conventional war in order to fight
an irregular campaign today. We should be so lucky that Saddam planned to have
his military destroyed, his country occupied, and a US-friendly government
established. Would that all our enemies were so brilliant. For those peddling this line, it really is a
symptom of their total inability to live in the real world and their absolute unsuitability
to direct our foreign policy.
Second, the only reason our
casualties seem high in the post-war stabilization mission is because we rolled
over Saddam's military in a cakewalk during the major combat operations of the
invasion. We should be relieved that the pre-war predictions of disasters were
not realized. Would it really be better if we were several thousand dead
American soldiers shy of being able to write that post-war casualties have
exceeded the war losses? Face it, if the administration had written that eight
months after our forces crossed the border into
Third, we are wise not to
announce body counts of the enemy even if it makes it look like only we are
losing troops. Body counts are not the measure of success and if we start
releasing them, body counts will become the measure we judge success by—to our
detriment. His best point on this? "If the body counts are high, we're
murderers. If the body counts are low, we're losing."
We are winning. Have
patience.
“If They Keep Pushing
Us Away, Eventually We’ll Go” (Posted
I do have faith that the Brits will stay with us. Still, the
sentiment that the protesters in
Do the Europpeasers really want to go it alone? It’s an ugly, dangerous world out there.
“Well That’s a Bloody Give-Away” (Posted
The Chinese have been charming neighbors lately.
Then the Taiwanese had the nerve to be all prosperous and stuff. The ingrates don’t want to be ruled by a brutal, bloodthirsty, soul-crushing Communist dictatorship. Imagine!
So the Chinese in
"If the Taiwan authorities collude with all splittist forces to openly engage in pro-independence
activities and challenge the mainland and the one-China principle, the use of
force may become unavoidable," said Wang, vice minister of the Chinese
Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office.
Like I’ve said, take their words seriously.
The Chinese know that in time,
“A Stinging Setback
for a Sense of Reality” (Posted
So, you’re a European diplomat charged with crafting an appropriate response. Do you, A, carpet bomb them; B, ignore them and hope they go away; C, warn them—again—of serious consequences if they don’t stop; or D, reward them?
Collect your prize if you said D:
In a stinging setback for
Oh thank you for admitting your secret nuclear ambitions!! We are not worthy of your candor! Please, Gunter, bring me my purse!
It must sound more sophisticated in French.
"Sanctuary" (Posted
From Strategypage:
While
Good news indeed, quietly
being carried out.
"Not Clear Who They Work For" (Posted
Why do we not hear of Iraqi protests against the Baathist and jihadist terrorism
in
::Huge
anti-terrorism demonstrations were held in Nassiriyah
yesterday by students association condemning the attacks on the Italian force
carrying signs such as 'No to terrorism. Yes to freedom and peace', and 'This
cowardly act will unify us'. I have to add that there were similar
demonstrations in
I mean, anytime some Baathist wants to spout off they get their mug on TV. Could
it be because the Western press still uses "former" Baathist translators:
At the Palestine Hotel, where I was
taunted in the last weeks of Mr. Hussein's terror by officials of his
information ministry as "the most dangerous man in Iraq" because of
my articles about the regime's brutality, some
of the same Iraqis, who now work as interpreters for Western news bureaus,
caution me against staying in the 16th-floor room I used to inhabit. [emphasis added]
Surely, it can't be that they
want us to fail?
The whole Burns
article is good.
"CALL" (Posted
The Center for Army Lessons
Learned is now CALL—But
Not Taught.
Damn shame it is shut down
from the public and even many soldiers. Just because idiot journalists scoured
it for "gotcha" failures to write about shouldn't mean the whole damn
thing is cut off from the users and the public. Heck,
just shut down NYT on the Web if that
is the reasoning.
Bring back CALL.
“Somebody is Forgetting What Happened in Kosovo” (Posted
Via NRO, this
article by Fred Kaplan on Slate is mostly about
This article relates lessons of a Kosovo War that I don’t
recognize.
The author dismisses Boyer’s contention that
going to war in Kosovo and
In fact, the two
wars—both their beginnings and their conduct—were extremely dissimilar. True, when
He later notes that some called NATO’s war-by-committee a lesson in how not to wage a war. In defense the author writes:
Maybe. But is there much doubt
today that
I can’t let this stand.
First of all, I thought the UN was the only international body capable of legitimizing force. This is what the anti-war’s argument says. So what if NATO approved? When only one body can authorize a war, what does it matter if some alliance approves? I don’t happen to agree with that sentiment, but if you do, why is NATO authorization superior to Congressional authorization?
And NATO was strengthened? Get real. Kosovo had to be won,
it was said at the time, or NATO would collapse. How strong was the alliance in
1999 if a third-rate state could undermine it? NATO has a role and Kosovo was
irrelevant. Or does Kaplan think NATO would not have dispatched AWACS to help
us after 9-11 or sent troops to
Oh, and this is good.
The junk in the second paragraph I quote is amazing. First of all, who on Earth ever said that deposing Milosevic was immoral or a bad idea? Or that the Kosovars are better off under Serb rule and oppression? Nobody. Such foolishness is reserved for the anti-war side today which can’t seem to concede that overthrowing Saddam was definitely a good thing.
Kaplan takes a cheap shot that Milosevic surrendered and is now on trial unlike Saddam. Can Kaplan not admit we got lucky? The Serbs themselves dumped Milosevic after the war was over. There was no NATO unit standing outside Milosevic’s palace demanding his surrender. And Milosevic is unpunished more than four years after the war. I wouldn’t bet that Saddam won’t go meet his 92 raisins or whatever he gets when our troops ice his sorry ass as he tries to sneak through Coalition lines dressed in a burqua. We got freaking lucky.
And why do I say this? Because
NATO’s victory was not as Kaplan described it, “total, unchallenged, and internationally
imposed.” Our 2-1/2 months of air strikes barely dented the Serb military in
Kosovo and it marched out in good order. Oh sure, Milosevic probably feared he
would get pasted once we gathered ourselves for a ground invasion, but fear of
future crushing defeat is not the same as actual total defeat. And I believe
the Russians did rather challenge our victory with their sprint to the Kosovo
airport in order to physically place themselves as the Serb’s protectors. And
since the war was not sanctioned by the UN, how could it possible have been
internationally sanctioned? Heck, even the UN approved our occupation of
Kaplan’s cheap shot that we have suffered few casualties after
the Kosovo War is silly. First of all, the numbers may be small but way more
have died post-war than in that war. I’ll have to look it up but we may not
have lost anybody or at most a few in combat. I dare say that if we occupied
the “Serb triangle” by going all the way to
Honest to God, Kaplan’s description and analysis of the Kosovo War is so bad it is hard to believe it got published. It’s hard to believe we witnessed the same war.
Oh, and there is one more difference. In Kosovo, when Europeans begged us to help them with a European problem, we came--as we always have--to help. When we asked Europe for help in Iraq, the called us baby killers--as they always have. Thank God for the strong NATO alliance.
"On the Saddam-Osama
Connection" (Posted
From Instapundit
(who got it elsewhere), a United States Information Agency release:
Bin
Laden's "al Qaeda"
organization functioned both on its own and through other terrorist
organizations, including the Al Jihad group based in Egypt, the Islamic Group
also known as el Gamaa Islamia
led at one time by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and a number of other jihad groups in countries such
as Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia.
Bin
Laden, White charged, engaged in business transactions on behalf of Al Qaeda, including purchasing warehouses for storage of
explosives, transporting weapons, and establishing a series of companies in
Sudan to provide income to al Qaeda and as a cover
for the procurement of explosives, weapons, and chemicals, and for the travel
of operatives.
Of course, that was 1998.
Back then it wasn't a terrible "misconception" of the pro-war side to
believe this.
"On Fighting Modern War" (Posted
V. D. Hanson comes through
again with a
good piece. Including this gem:
Thus it is critical for our military to find ways in
the chaotic climate of
"The French Come Through Again" (Posted
French Foreign Minisworm De Villepin thinks
our plan to transfer initial sovereignty over to Iraqis by June 2004 is too
long. He wants the end of 2003 to be the deadline.
Thank God for the French!
No, really.
Much like they helped us by
convincing Saddam that France could indeed save Saddam's hide by stopping our
invasion short of his presidential palace, the French bitching about our
timetable helps us not look like we are turning tail.
And in truth, we are not.
Unfortunately, our continuing convoy ambushes make it seem so. Our continuing
casualties are a worry and a tragedy, but don't make the mistake of thinking we
must crush all opposition to call this war a success. This is a political and
economic problem—not a military problem. The military can only provide a shield
for the real metrics of success. This war has always been about creating an
Remember the objective.
“And it Works Both
Ways” (Posted
This article
notes rightly that the American public will accept casualties if it thinks we
will win. I think this is correct but incomplete. The public also needs to
believe the cause is worth the loss of life. Certainly, the public will support
a brief incursion if it is victorious even if prior to the fight the public
never heard of it (like
But remember the article’s main argument that support for
fighting requires confidence in winning. As I’ve noted before, our enemies will
gladly sacrifice themselves and flock to jihad when they think they will win. When
they think
This calculation one reason why our
enemies picked up their activities after initial decisive victories in both
So one of our problems in the war on
terror is the pauses in fighting the major sponsors of terror. Our
enemies think they survived our worst and then they come out, dust themselves
off, and look to hit us again. We have to find ways of keeping the pressure on
our enemies without exhausting ourselves in the process. Likewise, staying
involved in the war in a high profile way ensures that our public doesn’t
forget that we are at war. Remember in World War II that we invaded
Vichy-controlled
I know I said that our military needs to rest and our public
needs to regain its composure after two wars in two years, but we must create
the image of forward progress in a very public way. Quiet advances against
terrorists aren’t enough. Quietly squeezing
We don’t want a mission that breaks our already stressed military, of course, but we need to do something visible that advances our final victory. This will strengthen our public’s resolve and demoralize our enemies. It is not enough to be winning, we must project the image that we are winning.
Since I think
“I’m Not Sure What Defense is Denying” (Posted
DOD issued a statement on the purported leaked memo. Seems like it is authentic since DOD confirms the memo, but DOD seems to be denying—sort of—that it confirms links. The statement says no analysis has confirmed links, yet it confirms the specifics although noting they are raw or other organizations’ reports:
The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or
products of the CIA, the NSA, or, in one case, the DIA.
Be interesting to see the news on Sunday.
“Our Wounded” (Posted
One thing that we need to attend to is our ability to help our wounded soldiers who survive with grievous injuries. In past wars, they would have died. Now we owe it to them to rebuild their lives as much as possible and allow them to create their own life.
Perhaps we need to work harder to keep even wounded soldiers
in service in desk jobs here at home if they want to serve still. With the Department
of Defense working to divert manpower to combat and away from a lot of the
support jobs, this seems like a win-win to stay within personnel caps and help
our wounded.
“Strategic
Competitor” (Posted
Though many in
Our move to alter our military posture in the Western
Pacific is clearly a timely change. We need forces flexible enough to react to
threats from a region stretching from
And unless Taiwan decides it wants to unite with China on the mainland’s terms (or if Taiwan thinks we will abandon them to their fate and so surrender on terms), I imagine that Chinese dreams of ruling Taiwan will eventually manifest themselves and give a reality check to the Far Eastern states who now see China with some respect.
And remember, though we work to cooperate, China is a dictatorship:
Perhaps the Bush administration believes that other interests are
served by subordinating democracy to concerns such as cooperation on
Or who knows, maybe economic success will make
“Case Closed” (Posted
Weekly Standard is up. Read it closely:
According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered
points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and
continued through mid-March 2003, days before the
Interestingly enough, Feith, who
wrote the memo in question, said this in response to a question of why
First of all, on the issues of Saddam's
intentions. We knew that he
had these programs - these weapons of mass destruction, we knew that he had
used it. We knew that he had relationships with various terrorist
organizations and supported them in various ways, including by the way, in some
cases in connection with training and exercising regarding chemical weapons, we
had information about that in exchanges between the Saddam Hussein regime and
terrorist organizations in that area. But our information is, as
everybody knows, never complete about a subject like that - never perfect, and
the idea that we didn't have, you know specific proof that he was planning to
give a biological agent to a terrorist group doesn't really lead you to
anything because you wouldn't expect to have that information even if it were
true. I mean our intelligence is just not – it’s just not at the point where if
Saddam had that intention that we would necessarily know it. What we knew were
the things I said from which one could infer he had these connections, he
supported the terrorist groups, the danger was there.
So I think it was, as I said, reasonable to take that threat seriously.
Statements disparaging Iraq-al Qaeda
links by some administration critics who should know better is shameful. Unless
this turns out to be a fake leak, I think we can end the accusations being
thrown about on this front. Indeed, the linkage is far greater than I imagined
it might be. Indeed, I may need to rethink my reluctance to call
And make no mistake, our terrorist enemies dream of using chemical and bugs:
The al-Qaida terror
network is determined to use chemical and biological weapons and is restrained
only by the technical difficulties of doing so, a U.N. expert panel said in a
confidential report.
I assume they are not averse to killing us with dirty bombs, and nukes. Or just large conventional bombings.
And the question of whether Saddam managed to get some WMD out of the country before we invaded is an urgent question to answer.
This war is far from over.
“Will Wonders Never
Cease?” (Posted
NRO mentioned this last night and today I read about it on Instapundit. From the NY Post:
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein gave terror lord Osama
bin Laden's thugs financial and logistical support,
offering al Qaeda money, training and haven for more
than a decade, it was reported yesterday.
The Weekly Standard website, which had the memo (a 16-page memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee) describing the links, has been down since last night.
If true, important arguments made by the
anti-war side fall away.
Of course, they deny that we are at war against terrorism and their supporters, so I never understood how these arguments squared with the basic position, but that is another point altogether.
This also answers the question of some as to why
“Reason for Optimism”
(Posted
This is one of the reasons (thanks to Instapundit) our change of course on Iraqi governance worries me:
Kudos to Chris Matthews and Bob Arnot.
Matthews sometimes makes me uneasy with his populism and attitude. Sometimes he
is good, too. Here, his willingness to be the contrarian helps with reporting. Arnot has been consistently good at telling about what is
going right even as he acknowledges the problems.
This report is exactly why I am uneasy at our change of direction regarding setting up a national Iraqi government. I think most of the metrics are going well. Even the military trends, though bad right now, cannot defeat our military and are still militarily insignificant in the big picture. We need to counter this trend and gain the initiative to defeat the Baathists and Islamists, but this doesn’t mean the political front needs to change.
So why are we changing? Is
intelligence on
Or are we apparently taking a risk
in order to make sure this President can take care of the Axis of Evil by the
end of his second term? I do worry that whoever takes over in 2009 will not be
as committed to winning this war (until another 9-11 that is). If President
Bush wants to finish the hard tasks before he leaves office, it makes sense
that we take action against
I concede that I don’t know a lot about what is going on. My judgment is thus based on incomplete information. But who knows, maybe this move is actually based on optimistic intelligence about what will happen in the next ten months or so.
Last minute addition: the
timetable for Iraqi
self-governance doesn’t look so bad from this article. Perhaps much like
the reporting on the situation in
“Mid-Course
Adjustment?” (Posted
The plans to put power into the hands of a national
provisional government early next year in
Of course, the willingness to change when confronted with difficulties is needed to win; but a panicky change that undermines our progress when resolute commitment to the existing plan would work is wrong.
I just don’t know what our change of plans means.
I am worried that the crawl-walk-run sequence of Iraqi governance is being undermined. Local governments are working. Why rush straight to national elections? Step up to provincial government and constitution-writing first. The French and Germans won’t be sending any troops whether we stand up a national government next year or the year after.
And our shortened timetable for getting Iraqis on the line is a bit worrisome, but this has also been misconstrued to make it seem more hasty than it is. As I understand it, part of the acceleration is made by emphasizing infrastructure security troops who need little training over priority training of Iraqi army forces, which need extensive training. And these men we are recruiting do have army experience. Some complain that we can’t properly screen for Baathists with these short training periods, but is this really inferior to simply taking old Iraqi army units into service as some have called for? And this is leaving aside the fact that the old army disbanded itself during our invasion so we couldn’t do this even if wise to do so.
And I’m wary of bringing in air power. We can demolish
buildings from the ground. We already control the ground, remember? Why air
strikes? We don’t want to give the impression that we are facing tougher
opposition than we are. Sure, we want
But I’m uncomfortable with these changes. They don’t sit right for some reason. We’ll see.
"Noncompliance" (Posted
What to
do about
One would think
"Things could very easily get out of control,"
Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Reuters, adding that "it could lead to
unpredictable consequences."
Hmm. The Iranians deny any
intent to build nuclear bombs, yet declare that any move to punish them for
violations could get "out of control" and lead to "unpredictable
consequences."
Like reversing their
long-held aversion to nukes and building them just to get even?
Let's get serious here,
people.
Rule number two in
international relations: Mullahs with nuclear weapons is a bad thing.
“Counter-insurgency
Numbers” (Posted
A recent press briefing had some useful numbers for looking at counter-insurgency. I earlier posted about an article that discussed counter-insurgency in terms of numbers of security personnel per 1,000 population, and this briefing provided them by region.
It showed 101st AB in the Kurdish areas, The Polish and British divisions in the Shia areas, and 82nd AB, 4th ID, and 1st AD in the Sunni center. With 130,000 American troops in fifteen brigades, lets round it down and call it 8,000 troops per brigade “Slice.” This slide breaks down the Iraqi security forces by area.
There is overlap of course in the population, so it isn’t quite accurate to do this, but its close enough for blogging. Let’s say 5,000,000 people in the Kurdish areas, 5,000,000 Sunnis in the center, and 15,000,000 Shias in the south.
In the south, call it 22,000 British- and Polish-led allied forces. Add in 39,000 Iraqi security forces. The 15,000,000 Shias in the south thus have about 4.1 security personnel per 1,000 people.
In the Kurdish areas call it 24,000 Americans plus 24,000 Iraqi security forces. The 5,000,000 Kurds have 9.6 security personnel per 1,000 people.
In the critical Sunni triangle, we have 96,000
The Shia ratio looks good, just
above normal
The crucial center has well over the 20 per 1,000 ratio that existed in
I don’t think we need more foreign troops, US or allied. Getting more Iraqis and deploying existing forces to guard ammo dumps until they can be destroyed are necessary, but the numbers look good for defeating the insurgents. It just takes time, though. Remember, we have to do it with minimum firepower as we fight among civilians. Our firepower and high tech advantages are minimized in police operations and we just can’t replicate our conventional speed of operations.
Patience. My amateur number crunching looks good.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFANOV2003ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA13NOV03A
“The Enemy” (Posted
Numbers no more than 5,000
in
Our military operations, as important as they are, can only buy time for the real metrics of success. General Abizaid understands this:
"It is very important that as we progress militarily,
we also progress politically and economically, so as to get these angry young
men off the streets," Abizaid said.
Cut off the money. Cut off the arms. Cut off the foreign jihadists. Isolate the battlefield and emphasize special forces on offensive missions. And kill Saddam.
“Ted Rall is a Vile Piece of Living Garbage” (Posted
In his mind, Iraqis only genuinely display patriotism by supporting Saddam. Helping us is by definition treason to Rall’s mind. The anti-war side is welcome to have this Baathist wannabe. (“Thanks” to Andrew Sullivan for this heads up. Like Krugman, Rall is someone I avoid reading just to keep my blood pressure down)
I’m amazed, saddened, and disgusted.
And this was Teddy’s Veterans Day column.
“Iron Hammer” (Posted
We are ramping
up the force used against the jihadists and Baathists in
American forces carried out two ferocious airstrikes
Wednesday evening against suspected loyalists of Saddam Hussein's regime,
signaling a new and more aggressive strategy to regain the initiative in the
guerrilla war now raging across the country's Sunni
Muslim heartland.
This is good if it is precisely used. If we get proper intelligence and show restraint along with force, we can hurt the resistance:
Wednesday evening, Captain Gercken suggested
that that was changing. American commanders, he said, had been deluged in
recent days by Iraqis coming forward with information about the insurgents.
A stability operation like this is not a traditional
military operation but more like a police problem. We can’t afford to strike
hard and kill innocent civilians in the process. In our own country, remember
the Philadelphia MOVE incident many years ago. Whackos
looked like they were preparing for war and the
Keep this in mind when we fight in
“Preparing for the
Future” (Posted
We are transforming our
global deployment to end the Cold War traditional deployment and create a
force agile enough for the war on terrorists and their sponsors and for
preempting nuclear threats. Right now the focus is
The changes will be part of a worldwide adjustment of U.S.
forces to reflect Rumsfeld's view that the static
defensive positions adopted by the United States and its traditional allies
during the Cold War are not well suited to meet the evolving security threats
of the 21st century.
We may also deploy a carrier battle group to
“Iraqi Government”
(Posted
We are trying to move
authority to Iraqis. Since different departments and agencies in the
Still, as I’ve repeatedly said, we don’t need to turn over a
Vermont-like
Eventually, we will base troops in
We’d do a lot getting Saddam, too. Unfortunately, failure to get him leads many Iraqis to worry that the constant noise of “bring the troops” home over here will lead us to cut and run, paving the way for Saddam to return. According to the unacknowledged CIA report on these worries:
"It
says that this is an insurgency, and that it is gaining strength because Iraqis
have no confidence that there is anyone on the horizon who is going to stick
around in Iraq as a real alternative to the former regime," one American
official said.
I’ve worried from the beginning that to run down the Saddamites, Iraqis must believe we’ve put a stake through
the heart of the monster Saddam. His shadow is too large and his rule too
brutal for Iraqis to assume we are there to win. Sadly, since the anti-war side
here and abroad gives the impression that they’d be just fine with leaving
I wonder what new excuse the Europeans will come up with to
avoid shouldering responsibilities once an Iraqi government is in place?
“Kill Saddam—But Get
a Grip on Reality, Too” (Posted
It sounds like Saddam really is central to inspiring and maybe organizing the resistance. After being shocked and awed, the Baathists learned that American troops are human rather than the superhuman killing machines they were in the war. But this is the lead paragraph of the story:
The
recent string of high-profile attacks on
I think the idea that he planned to get pasted to fight us
now is highly silly. It is a symptom of the ability of some to assume any
development must mean we are being out-fought or out-thought. We waxed Saddam’s
regime and we are succeeding in creating a free
Also note that what the American general said is different
from the lead: “I believe Saddam Hussein always intended to fight an insurgency
should
“Then It’s Just Us
Then” (Posted
Our allies are rethinking
plans to send troops to
Is this the kind of resolve we want in
But after we tried mightily to gain the help of our allies,
they walked away from us. So we had to do the job.
But we already see that the silly notion that allied forces would not be attacked as Americans are is false. Now we can see what would have happened if we had pulled out and turned over policing duties to allies—they’d lose their nerve and look for a way out.
According to news report on TV, we face perhaps a couple thousand dead-enders. We may also face a couple hundred jihadists. With more and more Iraqis standing up to fight for their new Iraq, it looks like it will be up to Americans and Iraqis to beat the murdering, rapist bastards who destroyed Iraq these last three decades. We’ll see how long the Brits stand with us. And we must temporarily turn two of our heavy divisions into medium motorized infantry outfits.
Drive on. Kill the SOBs. Kill or capture Saddam.
And reorient our Army to fight largely alone. For too long
we’ve assumed allied help. When
As I believe V. D. Hanson noted, we need to redefine a number of traditional allies into friends or competitors. New alliances for a new world are in order.
And the next crisis in the Balkans?
None of our business, eh?
“Funny Tolerance”
(Posted
The Brits (and if many Brits are feeling this way, it is worse on the continent) are displaying some anti-Americanism, blaming it on Bush:
"People repeatedly say it isn't Americans we don't
like, it is just Bush. He pushes hot buttons. Bush has so much to do with this
rather stupendous fall-off in American popularity. It is quite amazing to think
where we were the day after September 11 and how much of that goodwill has been
squandered."
It is amazing that a continent that shows stupid tolerance
of unassimilated Moslems who like their honor killings and violence so much
that they can’t bear to part with them when living in
If gaining their sympathy means being a perpetual victim, then tough.
I am disappointed in the British. I don’t know how much of this is the press wanting to see anti-Bushism and how much it is real, but it is still disappointing.
"International Resolve" (
The international community
failed to unite to impress upon Saddam the need to comply with UN resolutions
and verifiably disarm his WMD and WMD programs. Then complained bitterly and
obstructed us when we decided not to trust the intentions of Saddam.
Now, we have
"The report is a stunning revelation of how far a
country can get in making The Bomb, while pretending to comply with
international inspections," said Gary Milhollin
of the
"Iran has secretly enriched uranium, made plutonium,
and hidden the evidence of it from the world," he told Reuters.
"There's only one reason why anybody would do that -- because they want to
make the bomb."
Hans Blix is of course unconcerned, the IAEA is unwilling to
admit that a secret peaceful nuclear program is highly unlikely to say the
least, and the Europeans are unwilling to confront
When it comes to reporting Iran to the Security Council for
sanctions, Washington has few allies on the IAEA board, diplomats said, with
most members supporting France, Germany and Britain, who would rather encourage
cooperation with the U.N. watchdog than punish past failures.
The Europeans encourage the
Iranians alright. The same way they encouraged Saddam to believe he could get
away with keeping as much of his WMD programs as he could until the Europeans
could get us to leave him alone.
Will the Europeans never
learn that talking with madmen determined to have atomic bombs is folly?
"I gave Lynch a Bum Rap" (Posted
It is a relief to report that Lynch did not badmouth
the Army, as I thought:
CNN’s Paula Zahn attempted and failed to put anti-Pentagon
talking points in former POW Jessica Lynch’s mouth. During the Monday night
edition of Paula Zahn Now, she proposed to Time magazine’s Nancy Gibbs, who was
on to discuss her interview with Lynch featured in the November 17 issue of the
magazine: “She feels quite used by the U.S. government, does she not?"
When Gibbs rejected the characterization, Zahn remained undeterred and issued
another claim which Gibbs undermined. Zahn maintained that Lynch “has also made
it quite clear she's resentful” of how imagery of her rescue was used “to
support the war effort."
"Troop Strength Debate" (Posted
I have not been too receptive
to the idea that we need more troops for
Force per 1,000 population may be a better guide:
Force ratios above ten per thousand have
been mounted in stability operations. In 1952 the British forces in the Malayan
Emergency deployed close to 40,000 regular troops from Britain and the
Commonwealth as well as the regulars of the Malay Regiment itself.[10] At the
same time, the police force had 29,800 regular police together with 41,300
special constables,[11] for a total full-time security force of more than
111,000. With a population at the time of 5,506,000, the British generated a
force ratio of about 20 per thousand of population. If the Home Guard force of
210,000 (1953 strength, not all of whom were either armed or active at any
given time) were added to the previous figure, the force ratio would be even
higher.
In Northern Ireland the British government
deployed for more than 25 years a security force of around 32,000 (including
both British military forces and the Royal Ulster Constabulary) to secure a
total population of just over 1.6 million, giving a force ratio of about 20 per
thousand. The British have recently reduced their military forces as part of an
ongoing peace process.
Looking at
Also note that British or
Commonwealth troops in
In addition, when calculating
the ratio, the base of 25,000,000 is most assuredly too high. Why should we
treat
If we assume the Shias and Kurds will call for a ratio of 3 per thousand in
a protective mode, the 20,000,000 Shias and Kurds
will need 60,000 security personnel for protection. This leaves 190,000 security personnel for
the 5,000,000 Sunnis. This puts us at 38 security personnel per one thousand.
The ample supplies of money
and weapons make the resisting Baathists in the Sunni
areas a potent threat, but under this analysis, we still don't need more
troops.
Still, this is based on one
article and I shall keep on the lookout for more information on this subject.
Wouldn't want to dangerously disregard the facts, God forbid.
Even worse would be pouring
American troops into
"Somebody Thinks
It's hard not to argue
against a
hard line on
Regime
change must be our goal, because nothing else will work. The Syrian Baathists will do what their Iraqi brethren did. Stall,
talk, whine to the U.N., and continue their business of supporting terrorism.
Before we decide to remove Assad militarily, we
should yank the diplomatic levers with all the force we can muster. Just
because Foggy Bottom doesn't think we have any way to change
We have had the patience of a
corpse as we've waited for the Syrian government to mend its ways. When
Now, we are on the frontline.
With the future of
I've said it before, I'd
settle for
"The Armor of Internationalism" (Posted
It is with deep regret that I
note that our allies the Italians have suffered terribly in a terror
bombing in
Among the dead, a spokesman for the Carabinieri (police) force in
As
with the bombings of the UN and Red Cross, I simply ask why
"internationalizing" the occupation force makes it somehow less awful
to the Baathists and jihadists
who still kill in
It
was and is a silly complaint. Whether the troops are US or foreign, those who
do not want a free and democratic
In
time, we will have Iraqis in larger numbers fighting the thugs. When routine
presence patrols are carried out by Iraqis, we will be in better shape to carry
out purely offensive operations.
“I’m Shocked There Is
Gambling
Going On Upstairs” (Posted
Iran manufactured small amounts of enriched uranium and plutonium as
part of a nuclear program that operated in secret for 18 years, according to a
confidential report by a U.N. agency. The report harshly criticizes
“Fine—Stay In
If this guy thinks that our looking closely at somebody entering our country who has a travel record like his is “ugly” then I don’t trust the kind of Christian-Muslim “understanding” he was coming here to set up.
It’s all about understanding the Islamofascists, isn’t it? One would think a scholar could understand why we guard our borders just a tad more closely in the last two years.
You’d think.
“Keep Them Broken Up”
(Posted
We continue to mount
operations against Taliban and their allies in
Our small numbers of highly trained combat troops are good as a fire brigade to toss in whenever the Taliban clump too much. Yet we have a footprint small enough to avoid looking like an occupation.
“Give Them Credit”
(Posted
They are bombed—again. Amazingly, they aren’t whining about why al Qaeda hates them. No denunciation of their own foreign policy for provoking the attacks. No calls for UN intervention and international justice. Just this:
“507
Maintenance” (Posted
The actions attributed to Lynch by the press were probably true—just accomplished by an American soldier who was killed in the ambush. As the initial reports gave way to complaints and then study, it looks like the unit as a whole did ok to get some troops out of the ambush. Individual soldiers fought bravely and hard with what they had; yet the unit as whole was not prepared to defend itself. Weapons should not jam. Everybody should know what to do. From Strategypage again:
The article cited unnamed
For 60 to 90 minutes on the morning of
As reticent as Lynch is now, there were
true heroes in that column. 1SG Robert Dowdy was doing a damned good job
pulling the pieces of his company out of the ambush, right up until he was
killed in a Humvee wreck. PFC Patrick Miller slowed
his own vehicle enough to rescue stranded comrades and when finally dismounted,
tried to steal a dump truck to get them moving again. Miller took out an Iraqi
mortar crew, one by one with a rifle that'd only fire single shots and when his
M-16 finally jammed, picked up other's weapon to try to keep fighting and when
captured, sang just to annoy the piss out of his captors.
But one of those dead 507th soldiers may
have actually performed the deeds attributed to PFC Lynch, to the point where
he had the Iraqis talking about him. Donald Walters was a cook with the 507th
Maintenance Company, had fought in Operation Desert Storm, before retiring from
the Army in 1992. He served in an Army Reserve unit in
That morning, SGT Walters and PVT Brandon
Sloan were in a five-ton tractor-trailer that became disabled. Miller, riding
in the 5-ton wrecker behind, picked up Sloan on the fly but no one is sure what
happened to Walters. Walters' mother told one reporter that a 507th member who
was there that if she should "read a report about a female solder, it was
referring to Don". The source said that in translating from the Arabic to
the English, genders can get mixed up. Walters noted that both her son and
Lynch had blond hair and were very thin, but that the Iraqis may not have
noticed that her son was about a foot taller than Lynch.
The Army had provided Water's widow with
an autopsy report, which showed that he had been stabbed twice in the stomach
and shot in the leg and twice in the back. Both bullets in the back had
punctured Water's heart.
Does any of this sound familiar? Like the
stab wounds and gunshots that Lynch supposedly suffered?
The Army's report suggests SGT Donald
Walters might have been left alone to fight against hostile Iraqi troops, but
states "the circumstances of his death cannot be conclusively determined
by available information." There's no one left alive who can tell what
happened, save for the Iraqis who participated in the attack and it's unlikely
they'll ever be willingly found. - Adam Geibel
SGT Donald Walters wrote a children's
story about his first fishing trip with his father. His family and an independent
illustrator are trying to get the story published.
Visit the SGT Walters Book Project: http://www.swbp.4T.com/
On Veterans Day, thank you Sergeant Walters. Thank you
Private First Class Miller. Thank you to all of the 507th and the
1-2 Marine battalion of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. And
thank you Private First Class Lynch. You endured rather than serve as a poster
girl for women in combat, but you endured nonetheless. I would, however,
appreciate it if you did not belittle the Army for the events since your
rescue.
“The Stick In Action” (Posted
From Strategypage.com, which you really should read every day:
Since the "war" ended on April 30th, and the
"pacification" began on
We want to help our friends in
"We Tried the Carrot" (Posted
Now we will try
the stick in Fallujah and Ramadi:
FALLUJAH, Iraq - America's top general in the Middle East
has warned community leaders the U.S. military will use stern measures unless
they curb attacks against coalition forces, an Iraqi who attended the meeting
said Monday.
After
working hard to get electricity and other utilities going, to create law and
order, and to create democracy, the Sunnis have decided they'd still rather be
in charge. Time to reimpose the wisdom that came from the fear of being on the
receiving end of shock, awe, and 3rd ID's Abrams tanks.
Carrots and sticks, where appropriate.
More
broadly speaking, I wonder if Islamofascists
generally are mistaking our strategic pause for weakness. Perhaps we can't
embark on major military missions yet and the
With
news that al Qaeda has used
Somalia as a training and staging ground—in particluar
the 1998 embassy bombings—perhaps Somalia (with the cooperation of some Somalis
in the area attacked) should get some attention from Special Forces soldiers
and AC-130 gunships in a very sharp reminder that we
have teeth.
It
would also help erase the image of the Battle of Mogadishu as a
“Saudi Arabian
Bombing” (Posted
So what does this latest al Qaeda bombing tell us?
One, of course, they are scum who target the innocent. If they can’t get to us, they’ll attack who they can reach.
More important, by striking a country that has and still
does fund them and support them ideologically, al Qaeda
shows that we cannot placate them. Just what American policy is to be changed
to appease al Qaeda terrorists who strike Saudis when
in the past the Saudis only insisted that the terrorists not strike
Keep in mind, the Saudis had telethons for suicide bombers and preach extremist Islamism, and generally pose as more Muslim than thou. Still they are attacked by al Qaeda. Clearly, the only way to stop al Qaeda is to kill them.
It should also tell us that all the talk about
Even the Saudis will know that they must fight harder. Their 9-11 was in May and they just got hit again. I think this shows that it would have been a mistake to directly attack the Saudis because of their links to al Qaeda and Islamofascism. Though some argued that purity of purpose required it, the Saudi royal family was never uniformly Islamist. They supported al Qaeda to try and ride the Tiger and direct Islamist wrath elsewhere. Had we directly attacked the Saudi royal family, the royals would have made common cause with the Islamists. I always believed that direct action to overthrow the Saudis was a last resort given the complications that would have resulted (yes, oil). We had other more pressing targets anyway, and gaining Saudi cooperation quietly was the best policy. Now we see the Islamists targeting the Saudi government and people, and other Arabs and Moslems.
Maybe I’m an optimist, but will we see more Saudi telethons for suicide bombers? When the bombers see Saudis and Arabs as targets, too?
The goal is to end terrorism and kill the terrorists, not necessarily punish immediately all who sympathized with the terrorists.
“OIF-2” (Posted
The Weekly Standard
is pressing for more
troops for
The problem is, the article is just wrong about some things.
In noting that 1st CAV and 1st ID are
going to
The authors complaints about the Stryker brigade and the Stryker vehicles are hit and miss. Yes it is light. It will be as vulnerable as armored Humvees. The vehicle does not have the 25mm chain gun of the Marine LAV, but the LAV is intended as a recon vehicle. Though the Stryker is superficially similar, the Stryker is intended to be a taxi and not a fighting vehicle. Stryker brigade infantry is to fight on foot with the Stryker simply providing a safe transport vehicle that protects against small arms and shrapnel. Thus, the complaints are right but do not address the different missions. Heck, the LAV is certainly more vulnerable to enemy fire than the heavier Stryker.
The author complains that 82nd AB troops are being replaced by 25th Light troops. He notes that the 25th won’t have the 82nd’s helicopters. I dare say 25th ID (Light) will, since 82nd AB is a parachute unit and those helicopters it is using aren’t organic. 101st AB is a helicopter unit so the loss of this unit loses a major mobility advantage, but I dare say we can scrape up some helicopters for any replacement unit.
Also complained about is the Marine 6-month deployment. Actually it will be 7 months but since Marines usually deploy for 6-7 month tours, this will actually help the Marines maintain their force rotations schedule where they train and then deploy and then recover. If Marine forces need to be used long term, then we can look at reworking Marine scheduling.
The author wants to complain about using reservists but ends
up grudgingly complimenting the use of reservists in contrast to
The author complains about the rotation saying lots of
troops will be moving and vulnerable. He also complains that experience will be
lost with departing units. I say bull. Troops get tired under long stress. It
is good to replace tired men. And we are doing it smart, as entire units so
unit cohesion is maximized rather than allowing individuals to rotate in and
out as in
The author wants more troops sent to
Saying that this is
“UN Shows Its Mettle”
(Posted
By pulling
out non-Iraqis temporarily, the UN shows why it should not have primary
responsibility for rebuilding
“Casualties” (Posted
We’ve lost 34 soldiers in
combat in 8 days of fighting in
Remember, we don’t need to make
“Medium Divisions”
(Posted
I wrote that two divisions of our heavy stuff should be made into medium divisions. According to a press briefing:
As Norty [Lt. Gen. Schwartz] talked about,
the divisions going in for OIF 2 are, in name only, tank divisions and
mechanized infantry divisions. They're actually going in as motorized
infantry divisions, as well as the enhanced separate brigades.
These divisions, 1st Cavalry (a tank division)
and 1st Infantry (a mechanized infantry division), will go in as
“medium” infantry divisions. Armored Humvees
and more infantry. I assume at least some heavy armor will go with them
just in case. A battalion of each, maybe? I’m
guessing. Otherwise it also makes sense that the support units that are focused
on high-intensity warfare will be stripped and instead more infantry or
military police will be attached. I bet these units will have more boots on the
streets than the heavy divisions in
“Cultural
Imperialism” (Posted
On the way home tonight, somebody on the radio mentioned
that President Bush’s pledge to promote democracy in the Middle East was just
another form of Western cultural imperialism that the people of the region
should presumably resist. I’ve heard this line several times quite recently.
I’ve lived in
It isn’t new, I guess, as a quick search found this reference about the
post-September 11 reaction of the
Besides, what right did the West have to make judgments about the Arab
world? Efforts to promote democracy represented "a world hegemonic
discourse of Western cultural imperialism," as another prominent professor
of
Efforts to promote democracy are imperialism.
They adopt our technology to fight us. But that isn’t the result of imperialism.
They adopt fascism to organize political parties. But that isn’t the result of imperialism.
They adopt socialism for their economies. But that isn’t the result of imperialism.
Some adopted communism. But that isn’t the result of imperialism.
They adopt Nazi anti-Semitism. But that isn’t the result of imperialism.
Funny how the mutliculturalistas think that all these foreign, Western imports are just fine and representative of the locals but democracy is not appropriate for them. Gotta govern the unruly wogs with a heavy hand, eh?
More and more, I shudder at what these charlatans “care” about.
Kudos to the President for standing
for democracy for the Moslem Arab world.
“International
Justice” (Posted
Example number 538 for why we cannot trust international “justice.”
The
And how did the court get jurisdiction?
Despite
I would have thought the Embassy seizure and the holding of American hostages for a year and a half kind of negated the “friendship” stuff. That wasn't a "fundamental breach" of the treaty. Now I feel silly. Who knew we were friends all these years? But international justice is wiser than mere facts, I guess.
"Somebody Did Pick This Up" (Posted
I wondered who would run with
the silly notion that the obscure efforts on the eve of war by some guy who says
that Saddam wanted a deal represents some "gotcha" moment in the
rush-to-war school.
The NYT
in an editorial did not let me down, though I concede I expected Chirac to be
first out of the blocks (to be fair, maybe translations take time):
With American forces massed and ready to
invade, the Iraqis suddenly expressed interest in meeting their obligations.
Yet the article also shows that the administration seems not to have been
serious about the idea of a coerced but peaceful solution at the very moment it
may have been a realistic possibility.
A
"realistic possibility."
This is why the anti-war
side's constant refrain that military force must be a last resort rings so
false to me. When you believe that any path, no matter how unlikely to bear
fruit, keeps you from that "last" resort, then military force is
practically speaking never an option.
"Just What Do They Want?" (Posted November 7, 2003)
To sum up, the North Koreans say they want a treaty or some sort of guarantee by the United States that we won't attack them. Yet the Noth Koreans also boast that they have nuclear weapons to deter us from attacking them.
So why do they need the guarantee? I mean, if they can deter us, what use is a guarantee? I suppose some will say that if they get the guarantee they will stop their nuke programs, but since we obviously have no plan to invade them (and haven't over the last 50 years during those dark ages when North Korea had no nukes to deter us) and they still think we want to invade, will a guarantee by us really convince them they are safe?
Of course, the real puzzler is if we have totally misconstrued what North Korea thinks of the concept of "deterrence." If they don't think that our nukes deter their threats and if they don't think their nukes deter our threats, what exactly are we trying to discuss?
Any regime that puzzling should go on principle.
"Well Just Darn It All" (Posted
Saddam may have sent out peace feelers
on the eve of war.
Well, gosh, if only Saddam
had known he had to verifiably disarm at the end of Desert Storm in 1991. If
only the international community had passed a single resolution letting Saddam
know what we wanted. If only we had placed sanctions on his regime to express
our seriousness. If only the world had paid attention to him so he didn't have
to go through some convoluted back channel to somehow contact somebody in the
White House or UN.
As the saying goes, for want
of a nail, I guess.
Of course, since the French
and Russians assured Saddam they could avoid war and Tariq
Aziz said Saddam did not believe we were serious, was
this really a genuine offer? Please. It was another effort to stall action
against him to wait for resolve to deal with him to dissipate—as it has every
time before. At best, Saddam sincerely wanted a quiet deal so he could emerge
from the crisis as he had after his pounding in 1991—portraying his survival as
yet another victory over the powerful
If this story has legs, it will
be because some view Saddam as more trustworthy than our administration. Wonder
who buys it? Is that Chirac I hear?
"The Right Question" (Posted
You know, in all the smoke
generated by the question of whether the media is portraying
Remember when so many said
(and still do) that we needed the approval of
The war was always right
regardless of the Security Council's actions based on the threat of Saddam to
his neighbors and us via conventional arms and terrorism; his brutality; and
the threat he posed should he get nuclear weapons.
Today's fixation on the news
out of
Or do we reinstitute oil for
food so the Baathists can order more plastic
shredders?
"The Right Army for
I suppose people are at least
vaguely aware of the quote from some Army officer in
Not quite. In the Cold War
era Vietnam War, destroying the ability of the Army to fight and win a
conventional clash in
I have been stalwart in my
belief that the Army's main function is to fight and win our nation's wars. I
strongly opposed peace operations that lessened the ability of the Army to
fight.
We are fighting a low
intensity war in
Nor is reorienting portions
of the Army to fight in
Losing a war can harm the
Army just as much as focusing it on the wrong enemy.
And even though some of these
fixes cannot be completed until after the Baathist
War is won, I wouldn't assume this is the last time we'll need to do this.
"Somebody Is Properly Fed Up" (Posted
Mac Owens
starts out extremely well:
I am officially sick of the constant
claims of reporters and politicians that
And then he gets better.
He has a good point that the
combat service support troops we have in
“Counter-Insurgency”
(Posted
A good article
on 1st Armored Division’s efforts. It is good both as a
description of how troops cultivate local information sources and as an example
of how troops untrained for their work do their work. That is, tankers leave
their Abrams tanks in the motor pool and head out on patrol. You may recall the
stories a little while back where troops complained they were not trained for
the jobs they are doing in
“
I’m telling you, I really get the feeling that
Defectors believe it is possible that
there may be a spontaneous uprising, quite possibly from the lower ranks of the
army. The last few years worth of conscripts grew up
hungry, and are not happy with the way things are. Moreover, more news of the
outside world is reaching to north, adding to the unrest. Since 1995, some
eight million tons of food has been donated to
Economists, and credit rating agencies,
are also worried about the impact of collapse in the north on the south. South
Korea would have to pay most of the bill for rehabilitating the north, and saving its population from starvation. The cost
is now estimated at some three times
If our ability to take out
Squeeze the North Koreans—gently—but don’t save them.
“
I’ve written before that perhaps
This
article makes it clear why it may not be possible for Khaddafi and why I hold
my nose even as I continue to hold the general argument as true.
“Fallujah’s
Fate” (Posted
Ralph Peters has a good article (via NRO) on Sunni resistance. I earlier noted that Fallujah was probably lost to us in the short run. Peters calls for the stick since the carrot won’t work:
First, we need to stop pandering to the
Sunni-Arab minority that spawns terror and revels in atrocity. Aspects of our
occupation policy have been naively one-sided - all carrot, no stick.
We need to have the guts to give at least one
terrorist haven a stern lesson as an example to the others. Fallujah
is the obvious choice.
If the populace continues to harbor our
enemies and the enemies of a healthy Iraqi state, we need to impose strict martial law. Instead of
lavishing more development funds on the city - bribes that aren't working - we
need to cut back on electricity, ration water, restrict access to the city and
organize food distribution through a ration card system. And we need to occupy
the city so thickly that the inhabitants can't step out of their front doors
without bumping into an American soldier.
Don't worry about alienating the already
alienated. Make an example of them. Then see how the other cities respond. Such
an experiment would be expensive. But strategic victories don't come cheap.
Hear, hear. The residents of Fallujah like Saddam? Fine. Bring out any we think our friends. Then seal off the city. Surround it with Turks. (I know Peters doesn’t like Turks but neither do the Sunnis) Build a road around it. Implement oil for food and let them live in blissful Saddamite Hell. Keep recon and Predators and gunships over the city and kill any armed Iraqi we see. Make them an example even as we continue the carrots elsewhere. The Fallujah Baathists want to win. Show them we will win.
Seriously, do we think we can win their black hearts and twisted minds?
In the end, if the Sunnis don’t give up support for Saddam,
we can always partition
Peters also notes what I’ve said earlier, that destroying
Saddam was a success even without making
We're overdue to take a lesson from the
Romans and the British before us and recognize the value of punitive
expeditions. Should the Iraqis fail themselves in the end, our current endeavor
may prove to have been simply a very expensive - but still worthwhile -
punitive expedition. Such an outcome wouldn't mean that we failed, but that the Iraqis had failed themselves.
One key lesson we should draw about
expeditionary warfare in the Age of Terror is that we need not feel obliged to
rebuild every government we are forced to destroy. Sometimes the wise approach
will be to employ our military power to topple a regime, then to withdraw
promptly and let the local population sort themselves out. We should always
seek to be as humane as possible - but the key word is "possible."
It isn’t pretty, but there it is. Not every failed state is
a threat to us.
“The Fruits of Our
Telegraphed War” (Posted
Before the Iraq War, I worried that we were giving our enemies time to thwart us.
In the end, our long march to war did not provide Saddam
with the time to halt or defeat our invasion. No chemical weapons deployed. No
mines. No blown bridges or dams. No burning oil fields. No effective deployment
of his military. Nothing that stopped us from winning a war that still will be
the defining image of “cake walk” that we will likely ever see. Nor did the
time give external actors a chance to derail our invasion.
But all that time gave Saddam a chance to import jihadists who fought us fiercely (if ineffectively) on the
road to
“Fears Part II”
(Posted
After I wrote the post below a bit, a saw Andrew Sullivan regarding the despicable Democratic Underground web site:
I Hope the Bloodshed Continues in
Well, that should bring the bats out of the attic with fangs dripping.
I won't be hypocritcal. It is politically correct,
particularly in any Dem discussion to hope and pray and feel for our troops and
scream "bring them back now". I'm fighting something bigger.
I'm a 58 year old broad and I can tell you that what is going on in our
country isn't the usual ebb and flow of politics where one party is in power
and then another; where the economy goes through ups and downs.......yawn,
yawn--just wait a bit and things will turn out peachy keen. That stupid la-la
land is over.
I realize that not every GI Joe was 100peeercent behind Prseeedent Booosh going into this
war; but I do know that that is what an overwhelming number of them and their famlies screamed in the face of protesters who were trying
to protect these kids. Well, there is more than one way to be "dead"
for your country. They are not only not accompishing
squat in
The only way to get rid of this slime bag WASP-Mafia, oil barron ridden cartel of a government, this assault on
Americans and anything one could laughingly call "a democracy",
relies heavily on what a shit hole Iraq turns into. They need to die so that we
can be free. Soldiers usually did that directly--i.e., fight those invading and
harming a country. This time they need to die in defense of a lie from a lying adminstration to show these ignorant, dumb Americans that
Bush is incompetent. They need to die so that Americans get rid of this deadly
scum. It is obscene, Barbie Bush, how other sons (of much nobler blood) have to
die to save us from your Rosemary's Baby spawn and his ungodly cohorts.
Posters who want American soldiers to die in order to beat Bush.
Do all the readers feel this way? Certainly not.
Do the posters feel comfortable posting this way? They apparently do.
The readers of DU sure don’t seem offended by such posts and threads. They may not agree strictly speaking with the views, but the views are clearly well within their comfort zone.
And it sadly recalls the outrage of some that al Qaeda on 9-11 targeted New Yorkers, people who didn’t vote
for Bush, instead of Bush backers.
“The Central Front”
(Posted
I while back I wrote that I was uncomfortable with the idea
that
Apparently, the public does
not feel
I don’t think that this means the public doesn’t want us to
win in
Crushing Saddam’s regime helped in the war on terror by
eliminating one state sponsor of terror who could have passed (and may have)
chemical and biological weapons or knowledge to terrorists. In the long run,
establishing a democratic, friendly
Maybe I’m engaged in semantic extremism by rejecting the
“central front” label but it sure doesn’t undermine my support for winning in
Still, rejecting the central front notion may get us to look
beyond securing
If
we persist in narrowing our vision and our actions to
Keep rolling.
“The Mythical Iraqi
Army” (Posted
A good article
on the silly notion that our disbanding of the Iraqi army after
All this does not mean we should spurn the many individual Iraqi
veterans willing to serve the new
Repeat after me, the Iraqi army dissolved and no amount of fake complaining about an administration “error” erases this. The question of whether it would have been wise to do so is moot. Prior to the war, I thought it would have been possible to take the services of separate Iraqi light infantry battalions if they defected and if they were led by our special forces people. Anything larger would have called into question the loyalty of the officers. The higher you go, the more likely the officers would be Saddamite stooges.
Please, bring on the next “mistake.” This one is tiring me
out.
“This Is What I Have
Feared” (Posted
The anti-war side has continuously engaged in their right to dissent; even as they argue that there is no debate and that they are being suppressed from speaking their views.
<hugegoresigh>
Dissent is certainly not treason.
</hugegoresigh>
But this memo
(thanks to Instapundit) is what I’m talking about
when I write that anti-war critiques of the war effort and the post-war
stabilization mission in
The anti-war side fundamentally does not think we are at
war. Since they do not think we are at war, they can earnestly believe that
talk of “war” is just a means for the White House to win reelection. The
anti-war side views foreign affairs as just talking points in their quest to
regain the White House. Are we doing well? That’s bad. Are we doing poorly or
can it be portrayed as poor? Good to go. The concept of victory is meaningless
to them outside of
Maybe I’m asking the wrong question. Just what question does the anti-war side want to debate, anyway?
One question comes to mind: how is it progressive to wish for failure on the majority of Iraqis who want a free, democratic, non-Baathists, and non-Islamist country?
"Outrageous" (Posted November 4, 2003)
In a US News & World Report article about Chinese espionage in the US (focused on one temptress triple? agent), is this photo caption: "Chinese police stand guard outside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. China refuses to allow U.S. marines to protect the outside of the compound, as they do at other U.S. embassies."
Excuse me?
The Chinese don't have the decency to let us use Marines as external guards in exchange for the intelligence windfall of having a U.S. embassy there?
Screw 'em, I say. Let the Swiss host our interest section until the Chinese let our Marines guard our embassy grounds. Or insist that our Marines guard their embassy in DC until they comply.
We are their main enemy. We should not forget that.
“Cannon Fodder”
(Posted
Secretary Rumsfeld confirmed
that in
Snow: Within Iraq, what is the situation in terms of terrorists?
Are we taking out or imprisoning more of them than they are killing of our
people?
Rumsfeld: Oh, my goodness, yes. We are capturing or killed vastly
more than are being killed of ours.
Snow: It's an
interesting thing, because I get e-mails all the time, and people say we hear
about our death counts; we never hear about theirs. Why?
Rumsfeld: Well, we
don't do body counts on other people, and we have certain rules on people we
capture in terms of exposing them to the public --
Yet since attacks against us are up in the last month, killing and capturing the guys doing the attacks is not the key to stamping out the resistance. Reports are that the Baathists pay people to attack us. So we need to get the paymasters and their cash; and we need to get the country moving forward enough that the ones taking the money think their chances are better in the legitimate civilian economy. Congressional action to pass the supplemental spending bill (while some who vote for it cover their political backside by bitterly attacking the administration thus undermining the entire goal of the money) will help.
Truly, in the face of so many who say we must increase US
forces in Iraq, it is frustrating to have to remind
the anti-war left that resistance such as we are facing is not primarily a
military problem. They once knew this. Indeed, they accuse the President of
being too reliant on military force even as they call for more troops in Iraq
and amazingly enough say that diversion of military resource to Iraq detracts
from the decidedly non-military problem of defeating al Qaeda!
Our military can only buy time to implement political and economic measures
that undermine the base of Sunni support for the resistance. We seek to make
this a police problem for Iraqi security forces and an Iraqi court system.
But the impression that our troops are just sitting ducks, taking it on the chin on a daily basis without getting any of the enemy is false. Somehow the administration needs to convey this without doing daily enemy body counts.
[Been sick lately. Amazing how much
one can blog when one is
sitting at home recuperating…]
“I Believe I
Predicted This One” (Posted
I recent email to me:
Sir,
I am Major Frank S. Williams, a senior security officer under Charles
Taylor, former Liberian President.
Having got great affection and absolute appreciation for your human and
personality, I wish to contact you for absolute help to safeguard and bank this
sum of $157m (One Hundred and Fifty Seven Million Dollars) into your account
for me, preferably we can split the sum into three bank accounts if your
account will not accommodate all the sum. Presently this
money is in the Barclays bank Vault. I am a senior security officer in
charge of arms and ammunition of Charles Taylor troops. I and two officers were
assigned to purchase arms and ammunition in France, on getting to Ghana, we
heard a news that U.S.A. government had giving an ultimatum for our president
Charles Taylor to leave the country to Nigeria for a political asylum with
immediate effect. Perhaps, we saw this as a golden
opportunities to divert the funds $500m for our personal usage, then the
funds were shared among us $157m each.
The arrangement of sharing this money with my groups is as a result of
helping ourselves and family since our president has been sent out by U.S
government on political asylum in
Note: I don't want the leadership of President Charles Taylor to have
idea of where I am and the fund. When this fund is cleared and banked in your
nominated account, my confident will meet with you to establish an investment
with your assistance on my family behalf, until I am out of my travail.
For your reward and expected services, 25% will be for you, while 75%
will
be for my family investment.
For now, communicate with me through my email addresses;
[Email address deleted]
May happy days & a fair future awaits you
as you deserve.
Thanks
Major Frank S. Williams
Do people really fall for this stuff? Though after that
whole 61% evil website crisis, an affirmation of my “human and personality” is
certainly uplifting. Thanks Major.
“Good” (Posted
Putin won’t
send troops to “help” us in
Good.
The Russians did so well to win the hearts and minds of
Moslems in
“Victory Is Ours To Lose” (Posted
This AP article by Pauline Jelinek is outstanding. I can’t recommend it enough. Some excerpts:
Military commanders have said for months, and still
maintain after Sunday's worst one-day combat toll since March, that the attacks
now skyrocketing to some three dozen daily are militarily insignificant, noted
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jim Cassella.
That means they have not stopped the U.S.-led occupation
force from continuing its work toward stabilizing the country, rebuilding the
economy, creating a new government.
As I’ve note with the 10:1 counter-insurgency ratio needed to win:
It's hard to find anyone inside or outside the Defense
Department who thinks several thousand poorly organized Saddam loyalists and
several hundred foreign fighters can militarily defeat the almost
250,000-member coalition and Iraqi forces now under arms in
The key part:
If recent attacks and other failings cause Iraqis and
Americans to lose faith in the campaign, "The bad guys will win,"
said James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations.
This article hits on a number of points that I think are critical to remembering.
I do take exception to the idea that the administration is
painting a rosy picture of
One of the problems is that the anti-war side has the belief
in the power of being committed to a cause. Remember in the spring prior to the
war how the press portrayed confused protesters who couldn’t believe that the
administration would ignore 100,000 committed anti-war protesters and their
10,000 hand puppets and bongos? Even when the protesters had to know that
public opinion polls showed support for invading
It is shameful but true that only we can beat ourselves.
“Jihadists”
(Posted
This article
says that Syrians are no longer heading to
Yarmouk, on the outskirts
of Damascus, was the source of an estimated 300 Arab volunteers who went to
Iraq to fight during the war, in the spring.
Now, residents say it's been months since they've heard of
volunteers going to fight, bodies returning home or memorials held for slain
men.
"Nobody has gone to
Faisal Younes said no more
fighters had gone to
Here, certainly, is an indication that the crushing American victory discouraged jihadist recruitment.
As I’ve noted, volunteers will head out in sizable numbers
when they have hope for victory. Sure, some will always be willing to die for a
losing cause, but for the vast majority, the hope of winning counts for a lot.
If jihadists are coming to
Those in this country who opposed the invasion must be
careful how they oppose the President. Yes, dissent is not treason. But dissent
that simply seeks to score points on a single-minded drive to regain the White
House rather than to foster a debate on how to win does leave the impression
with foreigners that they can break our will.
“You Think?” (Posted
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's
biggest ambition is to rule over a unified, Communist
I can’t say I spilled my coffee in
shock when I
read this.
“This is
Disturbing” (Posted
Simple
commonsense and an elementary concern for American lives would dictate that we
actively support the Iranian people in their desperate struggle for freedom,
but instead, the next round of schmoozing with the mullahs has already been
set, in Geneva, within the next couple of weeks. This sort of activity chills
the blood of the Iranian democrats, and plays right into the hands of the
turbaned tyrants of
Rein in State. They apparently
don’t understand “Axis of Evil” at all.
Could I be wrong that Iran is the target for 2005?
“I’ve Been Waiting For This” (Posted
From the WaPo:
The CIA has seized an extensive cache of files from the former Iraqi
Intelligence Service that is spurring
In addition to the information we will get on WMD and missile programs, I look forward to the results of this line of inquiry:
The recipients of the Iraqi funds were described by
It will be interesting to see who defended Saddam’s vile
regime based on money and who defended Saddam out of so-called idealism. The
latter are worse in my opinion.
“The French and
Saddam” (Posted
I may not have been writing about the French lately doesn’t mean I’ve gone all warm and fuzzy on them.
In the run-up to the war, I speculated that the French were actually doing us a favor—unintentionally, of course—by convincing Saddam that they could help him avoid or ride out a US attack, thus preventing Saddam from making some meaningless concession that would be touted as a victory and thus keep Saddam in power. I was still worried that the French and Russians could stall the invasion long enough by getting just a few more months of inspections and that eventually we’d lose our nerve or some external event would make it impossible to invade. Tariq Aziz reports:
Aziz has told interrogators that French and Russian intermediaries
repeatedly assured Hussein during late 2002 and early this year that they would
block a U.S.-led war through delays and vetoes at the U.N. Security Council.
Later, according to Aziz, Hussein concluded after
private talks with French and Russian contacts that the
The article also suggests that preserving the base to reconstitute his chemical arms as I’ve suggested was on the money. Why risk discovery when he could quickly ramp up production once sanctions were lifted?
The
substantial evidence of Iraq's secret long-range missile programs, combined
with more fragmentary testimony in which Hussein reportedly asked scientists
how long it might take to reconstitute chemical arms, has led some
investigators to conclude that Hussein saw missiles as his most difficult
challenge. In this hypothesis, Hussein wanted to build or buy long-range missiles
before he took on the risks of secretly restarting banned programs to make
weapons of mass destruction.
"The
pattern I think we're seeing is, they were working on the long pole in the
tent," the missile program, said the senior
The article also explains the incompetence that recently led
me to write that I hope Saddam is directing Iraqi resistance and which also
addresses my immense confusion over the failure of the Iraqis to embark on
Military 101 steps to defend
In discussing Hussein's failure to use chemical weapons in the defense
of
I was convinced we were going to see American heavy armor in
This should refute the idea of some opposed to the war that
we could have maintained our troops around
This state of mind brings us back to the main point, that
Saddam thought his friends in
Regime change in
And remember what Saddam wanted at the end of the day. I repeatedly said prior to the war that regime change was the only way to keep Saddam from getting nukes and the rest of the WMD wish list he had. How much clearer can this get?
“Gut Check” (Posted
Somebody shot
down one of our Chinook helicopters, killing 15. I’ve been dreading such a
day. One day, I knew, the enemy would score big. There are lots of our troops
there and we have to be successful 24/7 to stop an attack such as this. Given
that a couple years ago, the Israelis lost a chopper carrying a lot of troops
into
I’d hoped that by the time such an incident happened, we’d be far enough advanced that it would be a blip. The American people would take it in stride.
I don’t know if we are advanced far enough. Attacks are up the last month so that is bad. But reconstruction and turning over security to Iraqis is going well.
Our reaction is crucial. We can’t pull back and hunker down
in fortified enclaves. If we do that, we leave the countryside to the enemy. We
can’t pull out of
We should not, however, flood the area with our troops or even allied troops. We’d just have more support troops that could be targets. We don’t need more foreign troops. The idea that non-US foreign troops will make the Baathists and jihadists attack us less is absurd. Red Cross? UN headquarters? Basically, when you add up Americans, allies, and allied-Iraqi security forces, we have plenty of troops to guard the country and go on the offensive against the dead-enders and jihadists.
Militarily we must ensure that our intel must get better. Part of that will come from having more Iraqis on patrol. We must guard those ammo dumps that provide weapons and explosives, seal the borders to stop jihadists from coming in, and deprive the Baathists of the money they use to buy attacks against us. And keep going after the enemy resistance. The more worried they are about what we will do to them, the less time they will have to attack us.
Mourn our losses. Look to the objective. And don’t flail about reacting to each attack. Certainly, learn from this tragedy, but stay focused on what we are doing to the enemy. The President has been mocked for observing that the recent spate of suicide bombings show that the enemy is desperate. This is true. This doesn’t mean that an increase in attacks on US forces means the enemy is desperate. This increase must be stopped. We must grind them down. But the attacks on softer targets is an indication that the attackers see them as a threat that must be destroyed and driven out.
I suspect that our public will not panic at a single attack.
They didn’t after Tet and they didn’t after
A tragedy such as this helicopter downing was inevitable. Our reaction is as yet unknown. We know what our enemies want. We know the price we will pay if we give them what they want.
Drive on.
Pay attention to the right metrics of success. Rebuilding
“So That’s When They
Started” (Posted
US News has an article (not online) that strongly implies that Iran only recently started its nuclear bomb program and that the darned simplistic Bush administration pushed them that way with the Axis of Evil address.
Dimwits.
Are the staff of US News really saying that a nuclear program was started in the last year and a half? Are we really supposed to think that under the charming multilateralism of the Euro-friendly, lip-biting, apologypalooza Clinton administration that Iran’s mullahs were nice and safe and therefore felt no need to press forward in the nuclear field or long-range missile field?
Are the US News people freaking serious?
“Army Focus” (Posted
The article says we are focusing the Army too much on warfighting and not enough on stability operations:
IN
one corner, the
Last
week, the guerrillas seemed to be the force on the offensive.
|
|
|
Attacks
on
The
American military is trained to obliterate its enemy with overwhelming
firepower. But it is not a police force, trained to track down dangerous groups
or individuals in heavily populated areas. And so, in the eyes of many Iraqis
here, the American soldiers often seem impotent, unable to provide security for
them or their families.
For
at least a decade, the Army has worked to make itself more lethal, even though
— or, perhaps, because — it has repeatedly been used in peacekeeping
operations, defense analysts say. Even within the military, that strategy has
caused some controversy.
Col.
Stephen Kidder, director of war-fighting studies at the
Colonel
Kidder said he did not disagree with that strategy. But Col. John R. Martin,
deputy director of strategic studies at the
We don’t spend enough time on peacekeeping? Good.
Even this article has some silly stuff. The enemy shot down a helicopter and knocked out a tank? Wow. Who told that reporter that our helicopters and tanks are invulnerable? Yes, they can be knocked out.
And what of our peacekeeping? We’ve done pretty well in the
Balkans and I don’t believe we messed up Haiti or Panama.
But step back and look at the war so far. We lost what, 114 KIA in the major combat operations phase to overthrow Saddam’s regime and in the six months since then, we’ve lost a few more than that. What are the critics saying? They say that we need to focus on the post-war and slight the war phase. This advice is basically saying that American victory is a given.
That is hubris. That is a symptom of the “victory disease.” At best, this is a plan for losing more troops. What if we make our Army better at post-war at the expense of war? Assuming we still win, what if that plan makes us lose twice as many troops in the war phase while letting us lose half as many in post-war? We’re losing more troops at that rate. These are admittedly arbitrary number but that is the general tradeoff.
Our Army is small enough without designing it to be less effective. Would a less effective Army had stood and fought—and won—at Objectives Larry, Curly, and Moe in the drive into Baghdad? Do we want to put a less effective Army up against the North Koreans? The Chinese? The Iranians?
The Army is working to put more Military Police units into the field. I think this is the best solution. The next least bad move is to train combat units for peace operations and then retrain them for combat after that is over. We will simply never have enough troops to dedicate some as combat and some as stabilization forces. The best option is to turn over peacekeeping to allies. Our allies have let us down and so instead we are turning guard duties over to Iraqis, with the help of some allies.
But train our units to be less effective to begin with? I’m horrified that is even discussed. The reason enemies try to use asymmetric means to fight us isn’t a function of their cunning, but their weakness. If we weaken our Army, one day somebody will judge they can beat us on the battlefield with force on force. That will result in more casualties and maybe defeat.
The Army’s main job is to fight and win our wars. Victory is not our birthright.
“Math Problem”
(Posted
This article
says that since late summer, untrained proto-jihadists are flocking to
Wherever those amateur jihadists are going, they aren’t entering the fight. Are they quietly being killed trying to cross the border or being captured? Certainly, the suicide bombers are being imported unless they were brought in before the war.
I don’t know what this means, but the facts don’t add up to the amateurs affecting the fight.
One thing it means is that as hard as we try, our enemies
try to make this a religious war. Saddam is bad but since
But
outside [a Berlin mosque], a
21-year-old man who identified himself as Akmed said
that while Saddam Hussein was unpopular, now "there are people who are
angry about the American occupation." He and others said that inside the
mosque, collections usually requested for Muslims in
It never occurred to these devout fools that they could have
gone to