Overwhelming Force for Iraq

I'm a bit surprised that this tactic is being proposed. McCain and Graham seem to be posturing this way, but don't appear to be really stating it.

Everybody is talking about Iraq, but nobody knows what to do about it. The White House, Congress and the military say all possible ideas are being considered and that "everything is on the table."

I beg to differ. Not everything is on the table. Every idea mentioned is a slight variation of what we're already doing. It's nipping and tucking around the edges while hoping for dramatically better results. I don't think that's going to work. We need to consider something really different if we want to stop the downward spiral.

Maybe it's time to bypass the lame Iraqi military and the lamer Iraqi government and do the damn job ourselves. Let's go in with massive force - 100,000 extra troops - and flatten the resistance and sectarian killers once and for all. Let's crush the bastards and be done with it.

Okay, accuse me of channeling the late Gen. Curtis LeMay, the gruff Vietnam commander best known for saying we should "bomb Vietnam back into the Stone Age." LeMay denied he ever said that, and I'm not looking to unleash a firestorm on Iraq.

I'm afraid that it is far too late for this proposal. You may have had a chance when the military was rolling in during the original destruction of Saddam's armies, but I don't think this will work in the present environment. Historically, the use of huge force against an insurgency has been a complete waste of time. Well, unless you do as the Germans did during WWII and just kill everybody.

The problem with this tactic is that the sectarian fighting goes to ground and then they start fighting you in an insurgency. The present insurgency is fairly limited to primarily the Sunni (non-Kurdish) areas. Rolling in the armor to crush the Shia militias will cause them to form their own insurgencies. Then we will have provided a dearth of targets for them to kill and done little to actually stabilize the country.

I also find it very improbable that an additional 100,000 troops would be sufficient to cover the sheer area that is under insurgent influence. The Sunni triangle is still a very large area and about all you'd get is control of the cities. That is the norm for insurgencies. In fact, it helps the insurgencies by pinning troops into these areas where they have limited mobility and plenty of collateral assets to worry about. The citizens of those areas end up being targets and any deaths are blamed on the coalition forces.

I'm simply saying that if a stable Iraq is as important as President Bush says it is, and it is, and if the Iraqi government is as hopeless as it seems, and it is, then we may have no other choice if we want any semblance of victory. I'm not advocating overwhelming force. I'm saying it needs to be considered.

The problem with all the other options is that nobody in Washington has real confidence they're going to work. That was clear from the gloomy Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week. Gen. John Abizaid, our military boss for the region, was like the piñata at a child's party as senators from both parties took turns whacking him.

Confidence in political circles is a joke on many levels. This is indeed further proof that there is a huge lack of understanding about fighting in complex environments. One thing that is easily learned from historical data from insurgencies is that they all vary hugely depending on the environment. Vietnam was nothing like Algeria, which had little similarity to Cyprus. How the fight is instigated or completed will change on the environment and that in itself will change with the actions taken.

I watched a great deal of Abizaid's testimony and have to say that he wasn't just providing a rosy picture, especially as he was answering the politicized questions from both parties, one of which is trying to recover and the other is flexing its new found muscle. There was almost no discussion of actual tactics in any specific region. Just lots of talk about troop levels and letting the insurgents choose the battle ground.

You could say he deserved it, and not just because he sometimes engaged in "happy talk." Reading his testimony of September 2003 illustrates that Abizaid was telling fibs or was clueless. His claim then that "the preponderance of the country, including Baghdad, has achieved a very high degree of security and stability" can charitably be called "fact-free."

And he isn't knocking any socks off with his latest approach. Asked about troop reductions, he said it was a bad idea. Asked about more troops, he said it was a bad idea. I thought Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was going to throttle Abizaid, but settled for a seething comment that "I regret deeply that you seem to think that the status quo and the rate of progress we're making is acceptable. I think most Americans do not."

Abizaid said he was not defending the status quo and insisted a new emphasis on training was a "major change." I think McCain got it right, because here's the "major change" Abizaid wants: "There will also be American military transition teams embedded with Iraqi units, and it's our opinion that those military transition teams need to be substantially increased and given the capacity to operate more robustly with the Iraqis."

That's such an obvious idea that it would be malpractice if we haven't already done it. And if we're adding more of our troops to Iraqi units, where are they coming from?

This bit seems also to miss one of the big issues of the "why" they are proposing more troops. The important factor in most insurgencies is related to policing. In fact the police forces in the present conflict have shown themselves to be exceedingly corrupt. Collusion with the insurgents and the militias has been rampant and completely fails to control anything.

One other key that is missing is the control of the militias. The Iraqi government seems unwilling to force this to a conclusion. Too many of the militias are free ranging and have turned into retaliatory death squads. In part this is due to the insurgency attacking and inciting sectarian conflicts. That benefits them by keeping those trying to stabilize busy and keeps the death tolls in the MSM high. This ensures the public in the US sees the conflict in its worst for the longest period possible. If the Iraqi government could enforce control of the militias, then the US military could focus on insurgents and rogue militias to greater effect. Until this happens it is unlikely that stabilization will occur.

Again, this is only a partial solution. The requirement for economic incentives and political solutions needs to be ironed out. These topics were testified to during the Armed Services Committee hearing by David Satterfield who is the State Department coordinator in Iraq. And it should be noted that the press has minimized reporting on what he stated. There was discussion of creating a system like the TVA to provide jobs for large numbers of people in public works. This would give them something to do as well as money to live on. But, no need for that to be reported. Any positive activity in Iraq should be ignored by the MSM since it's off their editorial topic.