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Friday, December 17, 2004

...In which Jason gets fisked!!! 
A few days ago, I issued a challenge: If more troops were the answer, then where would they have come from? How would those force levels be sustained? And what is the evidence that higher troop levels in 2003 would significantly reduce troop levels now?

A reader takes the time to fisk me. I'll leave it to you guys to decide whether his points hold water, in the comments section. Play nice!!!

A challenge...

Me: to Andrew Sullivan, who's criticizing General Tommy Franks for saying we had enough troops for the mission, and to the small army of armchair generals who are kvetching at Rumsfeld and Franks for not deploying enough troops:

Where in the world do you think those troops would have come from?

Reader:
How about, for starters, NATO? The Russians? Latin America? The Middle East? Asia? And we’re talking substantial amounts here. Not 200 or so Salvadorians and 100 or so Estonians et al and calling that a friggin alliance. How about the Persian Gulf War model? (Ok, here comes, on your part, the ubiquitous snicker about French soldiers and so forth). It may be, as you imply, (with, I might add justifiable ‘plausible deniability’ built in) that you are a “land warfare expert’ but you are clearly not a strategic thinker who understands the strategic power of diplomatic alliances. But Bush could not go to the allies because he was more concerned feeding his domestic political base which thrives on dissing the world. None of that excuses the ‘allies’ for their own short-sighted refusal to see their own national security interests were served by seeing the Iraq invasion successful (success defined successful occupation) But Bush 2 made this impossible. The old man understood it the pre-requisite to victory. In the end all the excuses in the world won’t change that.



Or, if that failed, or you just don’t like it period….here’s a really unique idea; How about a draft? Shazam….how about on 12, Sept 2001, we called for a draft? Or, if you don’t like that, how about when the decision was made to invade Iraq (what do ya say, somewhere around May 2002?), WHEN OUR LEADERSHIP KNEW we could be facing manpower shortages, that we called for a draft? How’s that Mr. Splash Out? Fight a war the old fashion way! Stand the fuck up and be counted. How fucking unique in this day and age. Or do we take this proposal as another straight line for Rumsfeld to denigrate draftees? You know damn well why they could NOT have instituted a draft. You fucking know it. You fucking know it. And so do I…and that’s where we really separate the men from the boys.


Me: From where? Who? How long could we have sustained it? What other commitments would we have had to shortchange? What's the evidence that more troops in 2003 would mean the necessity of a smaller force in 2005?

Reader:
Chaos and a vacuum of security, inevitably lead to trouble on the ground. The “evidence”? See past 18 months. Why would that conclusion follow? Logic, which, especially in war time, I grant you, is no slam dunk, pardon the pun….but what the fuck else do you want to go with over logic? Me? I’ll stick with logic and a sound knowledge (all things relative of course) history


Me: Who are these idiots who think resources grow on trees?

Reader:
Evidently the ones that did not bring the necessary resources to Iraq. Or, anything even closely resembling them. And before you start lecturing me about the realities of war, and the realities of the ‘fog of war” please understand yours is not the first generation to go war. Some of us even went to wars where losing a 1000+ men in a MONTH would not have been unknown. So, I understand, I know from hard experience, that things don’t always go as planned. That said…this was, and is, a monumental fuck up.


Me: I sure don't see many land warfare experts among them.

Reader:
Well, you have a point there. But you do not always have to be accident reconstruction specialist to spot a 40 car pile up on the freeway and to offer the commentary that “this fucking looks bad”. So here you have a lot of assholes opining on what they know little about. So what else is new? But even a blind blog finds a truffle now and then.


Me: If having more boots on the ground in 2003 was the answer, who was the President who cut entire corps sized elements out of the Army that liberated Kuwait?

Reader:
This is silly and irrelevant, and irresponsible. At SOME point, the people IN power NOW have to take responsibility for their decisions. Do you start asking who created the deficit in the 1980’s that necessitated the budget cuts that hit the military in the 1990’s? Why stop there? Who caused the fucked up economy that forced (some would say) Reagan to run a deficit to get the country back on its feet? Carter? Who handed Carter a shitty economy? Nixon? Well, Nixon got the shit end of the stick because LBJ refused to pay for a war we were fighting. Hmmmm, seems things are coming full circle. Screw all that man……let someone stand up NOW and take some god damn responsibility for what the hell has gone wrong, and what is going wrong. But what do we see? Today they get Presidential medals.


I think the reader fails to consider, though, that hinging our decision to go to war on the decision of Russia and France to participate (when we knew since long before the war that they were on the hook to Iraq's oil revenues and stood to lose billions from a reasonable application of odious debt doctrine - even before the UNSCAM story broke) would have been tantamount to an abdication of U.S. sovreignty to the United Nations. The U.S. does not require a permission slip from Moscow to defend its interests. Bill Clinton didn't seek one when he intervened in Bosnia, Kosovo, or attacked Iraq in 1993 and again in 1998.

Second, the reason we didn't institute a draft in September 2001 was because a draft would have been a stupid idea. I mean, even Democrats who WRITE BILLS calling for a draft won't even vote for their own bills!

Third, I think my correspondent fails to draw a connection between theoretical increased troop levels in the spring of 2003 and the prospect of reduced troop levels now.

The other points-especially on economic causality, are well taken. Bush, after all, went to war with the forces he had. The vastly reduced army was a fact of life in 2003, and Bush made the decision to go to war knowing that. If it turns out that the Army is too small to accomplish its mission, then the buck stops with the Bush office.

I think the attitude that this hinges on the American army is short-sighted, though. It is not the American army which will win or lose this war. It is Iraqis.

And given proper support, I do not consider the issue in much doubt.

Splash, out

Jason

Comments:
You call this a "fisking"? Excuse me while I laugh my ass off.

Troops from NATO? We can't even get them to fulfill their committment to train Iraqi policemen, for god's sake!

Troops from Russia? My god, man. Read a little. You've obviously never heard of the UN's Oil For Food scam.

Troops from Latin America? The same place that almost allowed an assassination attempt on President Bush recently? Where they could muster maybe 10,000 troops from the entire continent?

Don't make me laugh.

Afghanistan has a democratically elected President for the first time in its history. Iraqis will vote in free elections for the first time in many decades.

This is a "car wreck"? A "40 car pileup"? The only thing that's obvious here is your reader doesn't read. He knows nothing about UNSCAM. He knows nothing about the accomplishments of our troops in Iraq. He ignores the astounding success in Afghanistan, the amazing speed with which Sadaam was deposed, the incredible victory in Fallujah, the thousands of terrorists who have been killed, the lack of any attacks on American soil since 9/11, the unbelieveable polls that show over 80% of Iraqis plan to vote in just over one month.

In short, your reader is a liberal.
 
Hi Jason,

I think Rumsfeld is doing the best he can with the American troop rotation.

The most plausible scenario I've heard for more boots on the ground was not immediately disbanding the regular Iraqi Army.
 
Regarding the French,

From what I hear, and maybe Jason can correct me, the French are vicious 'occupiers'. They'll kill who they need to kill and blow up what they need to blow up to lay down the law, and Geneva Conventions be damned.
 
May all your fiskings be this gentle and ineffective. The German troops in Afghanistan had to be airlifted with U.S. assets. The EU military units, so long threatened/promised, have still not been fielded. Troops sent from other countries who cannot hope to support them (even the Poles suffer from this, I believe) would be dependent on us for logistics, straining the system even more. With all of the disparate units, command structure would be of vital importance. Anyone want to wager on France or Germany putting their troops under U.S. command? Anyone want to even fancifully entertain the idea of putting U.S. troops under anyone's command?

The level of training for soldiers abroad is woefully inadequate. Look at the Beslan atrocity to see how elite Russian troops handle an emergency situation. How would soldiers from European countries that spend a significant amount of their military budget on retirement be useful to us? Some of the Scandanavian countries have 9 to 5 militaries. How do you integrate these troops into our tactical needs? Why would you do so?

Putting aside the FACT that our ertwhile allies on the Security Council were in Saddam's pocket, no country that is not already participating in the coalition supported the idea of the war from the beginning. Why would they provide troops to a conflict they were against the whole time? Would we?

Given that the original operation suffered from "catastrophic success" (which was predicted by Franks as a possibility), why doesn't this reader comment on how our tactics have changed in response to the insurgency? Does he even read your blog? Is he aware of the assumptions that were made prior to the invasion that have been proven false, and is he aware that the administration and the military know this and are working on reconfiguring our tactics to reflect a new set of assumptions?
 
This 'Fisking' is obviously heartfelt, but the inadequacy of his experience with people is painful to observe. The comments to date deal with many of the particulars of the 'Fisking'.

--Politically, most people put off hardship or even hard answers for as long as possible. Then they are not prepared to properly address the problem until 'the chickens have come home to roost'. Also, a lot messier to clean up, particularly if they roost so long that it dries.

--Most people will try to accomplish a task with less than what they truly believe will be required. We all take a chance on the lottery. AND WE EXPECT OUR LEADERS TO DO THE SAME. We don't want our taxes raised and we don't want too much inconvenience. But we sure know who to blame during and afterwards.
 
The hard fact is that France, Germany and Russia would not have contributed significant resources to the Iraq war even if Franklin frigging Roosevelt had requested them, never mind Bush or even Kerry. The sooner this fantasy can be discarded, the better.

Second, if we had kept Saddam's Iraq Army intact, we would now be looking at significant problems with stripping the forces of Baathist saboteurs and probably having army forces fighting on the other side as often as not. Even now, keeping "ringers" from joining the Iraq security forces on all levels is an issue. In other words, starting from scratch was probably no more difficult than "filtering" the Baathists out of the existing forces would have been. And I figure it's a lot easier to filter an applicant than an already-armed soldier.
 
Do we understand why Abraham Lincoln didn't just start the American Civil War with the army he ended it with?
 
First, that was not a frisking. That was a barely controlled rant if that at all.

The questions you asked originally are thoughtful...yet do grasp the realities that there are no troops to send.

1. Draft? Of course not. You have to pay people and equipt them. That takes money. Beyond that, we lack the simple training ability to draft, mobilize, and train such a large number of troops in the first place. There is no way that could happen. No more than the "every citizen" serves non-sense. Sure on paper it looks great, but the reality is that we can't afford that.

2. Allies? What allies? We have none. We have alieniated everyone but Great Brittain...and they aren't so great anymore. The ground numbers don't lie...even our fair weather friends are barely helping us. They provide CSS troops, or trainers, and even that is a stretch for them. And they have the intestinal fortitude of a little dog...running at the first sign of trouble.

We can no more expect troops from our political enemies than we can from our Allies. It would have been nice if our media had explained why France, Germany, and Russia were opposed to this in the first place. But then again we really don't care if their GNPs are hurt because of our little war, so at that point it would not matter. Except of course if the shoe was on the other foot...

3. Money? We spend more on defense than almost all countries combined, so if we can't afford this...what makes us think our "allies" can too. It is no surprise that we had that we had to provide transpo support for Germain units in Afganistan...they don't have the forces we do. But then again, we are so broke and stretched thin we didn't even bring our light artillery to Afganistan because we couldn't find the space for it...trying to go in so damn light as an Army.

But basically all the arm-chair Generalizing is moot. We should have never went in the first place. We made mistakes from the get go because we (as a nation) believed the NeoCon dribble. This is not Rummy's war...this is Wolfawitz war. His "we need to finish Desert Strom. Funny how the real "experts" said there were no credible WMD. That there was no credible ties to al Qeda. That Saddam was a nut who was barely hanging on.

To that end...the mistakes were many. Gen. Zinni warned them...so did many others. But they were "wrong". They were heretics. And in the end they didn't even us the plan that Zinni's Centcom Land component commander at the time (your valuted Franks) had made up. They used a bastardized version of Rummy and Col. MacGregors (ret) light plan.

The sad thing is that the original Centcom plan designed by Franks and the rest of Zinni's people at Centcom in 2000ish, called for 3x the troops than they used. It called for and made concessions for change of government, looting, border security, urban warfare, and even insurgents. But sadly we didn't use that.

Talk about not having expertise in land warfare...Rummy and the Admin failed this because they are amatures. Since then the Army has done the best they could with what they had. Because in the end...the mission goes on. Suck it up and drive on right?

As I was only an enlisted man I make no claims at any "expertise"...but I do know this:

1. No WMD were there...or have been found.
2. We haven't had an "terrorist" attack on US soil for two reasons: a) It's only been 3 years...they routinely have taken a few years between attacks and we have been better at interdicting them. b) We gave them the Christmas presents of all time by invading Afganistan and Iraq...why should they attack us at home, they have over 150k good targets right there.
3. The true "experts" warned the administration and they were shot down. That is why Powell is out of a job, and guys like Gen. Zinni are now considered crack pots.
4. And this is the most important one...when you change your story mid-war from WMD to bringing Freedom to the Iraqi people, you should your true lack of knowledge. Because freedom has to be earned. And until the Iraqi people want it...no one can give it to them.

With that I will leave you with this...if we beieve the NeoCon mantra that the only way to defeat global terrorism and religeous fanaticism is to spread secular democracy, then we must be prepared for a simple truth...that is the exact reason we are fighting this war. Because we don't know how to keep our hands and culture to ourselves. KFC does not belong across from the Sphinx in Eqypt. And McDonalds does not belong in downtown Fallujah. That is why we are being attacked. That is why we are fighting this. We are in a spiral...what this administration and the NeoCons think will kill this...is what is fuelling it. Just like bringing gas to an out of control bonfire.

You want to make peace in the Middle East...get out. Pull all the troops home. And stay out of it. There are some simple facts to live by:

1. There have been only two succesful defenses against an insurgent threat.
2. And you never get involved in a domestric dispute...because in the end...both parties hate you.
 
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