Thursday - October 26, 2006
We Need to Ask for More Troops
One of the baffling things to me that came to
mind in writing about why we're losing the war, is why military commanders have
been so loathe to ask for more troops. It's been obvious since about May of
2003 that we're in for an insurgent war across the entire nation, not only
because we were seeing it, but because we learned from captured documents that
the Iraqis had planned on waging an insurgent war from the beginning.
As I noted in my last rant, our Marine
Corps is still 10% smaller than it was until 1992-1993 when they started a major
reduction in force. Yet before that time, the Marines were the backwater of the
military, struggling hard to not be forgotten in the budget fights, and without
a very significant role in the war plans against the soviet bloc.
Now the Marines are in the forefront
of the war, with a large portion of the mission. We have battalions spread
extremely thin, at times major transportation corridors ignored and entire
cities have been left to themselves, quickly becoming victim of enemy
presence.
Everyone knew, from lance
corporals and up, that there was no way to be effective when you can barely keep
your own camp secure, let alone project power. So why did no one ask for more
people?
It's a good question, with lots
of answers, but none of them are very good.
First, there's the military tendency to not
complain to superiors. This is basic human nature, made more effective by the
spartan discipline of the military. No one wants to say they can't do their
job.
Second, technically the job can
get done because the job gets defined down to a level that the command can
accomplish. That is, my battalion was responsible for several small and large
cities spread mostly across 100 miles of the Euphrates River, and one of our
line companies was detached to another command and another line company was
frequently sent off to operations at the Syrian border. At half strength we
could not control the people in our
area.
But that wasn't our job. Our job
was mostly to maintain route security. We didn't have to keep the area safe and
secure, we just had to protect convoys as they traversed the area. So if our
commander were so inclined to complain that we didn't have enough people (and it
wasn't my place to know if he did or not), the response would be that we had
enough to do what we were asked to
do.
Of course, the obvious point is
that what we were asked to do was not enough to be effective in winning a war,
it was only enough to wait until later when we could win the war. At the time,
the theory was that someday the Iraqi Army would be coming and help us fight the
war. The theory was flawed but is it a battalion commander's place to question
the entire war plan of the commander in chief? No.
So the same was true of the Regimental
commander. His job was to slowly squeeze insurgents out of an area the size of
South Carolina with just his regiment. It's a virtually impossible task, but he
was formally tasked with only incrementally doing the job. If there were three
or four regiments there would have been a much more effective effort, but at
what cost? No commander ever has as many troops as he wants, and no commander
wants to be seen as whining that he needs
more.
Well, not "no commander." The
greats are exceptions to that rule. They are the ones that have big impacts on
the conduct of war, the ones that suck up troops into their control and take
aggressive actions with them. They are generally only at the highest
levels.
So who is at that level in this
war? The guys with three or more stars, starting with General Casey. I don't
know the man, I don't know what he's doing every day, but I do know that he is
ignoring basics of war fighting and allowing his army to be used to not win a
war. He is not screaming for more people, which every commander should be doing
in every war. He should ask for more until he is told no, then he should scream
for more until he is told no. Then he should demand more again. There are
never enough people to fight a war, but no war should ever be fought that
doesn't have an impact on our society. He should ask for more until the
American people start saying, "Enough!" He hasn't asked for more at any time I
am aware of.
What is the consequence of
this supine failure to want to fight and win the war he is charged with
fighting? We're losing the war. But he gets to keep his job, and do whatever
else four star generals like to do instead of retire. He is acting as a tool of
politicians instead of fighting for America.
Our president, who gets his
spinelessness honestly from his father, has announced on innumerable occasions
that our generals don't ask for more people. I have no respect for someone who
hears public statements like that, analyzes the war in Iraq, and doesn't come
back and demand at least a doubling of the number of his troops and see what
happens. If the answer is that we can't afford it, then at least we're going to
have an honest debate about how badly we want to fight a war. As it is, we're
floating through the war as though it will somehow end itself and everyone will
hold hands and smile at each other.
Our
commander in chief has adopted a failed strategy from Rumsfeld and Cheney, and
our generals have not objected to this failed strategy.
I'm wondering what the hell good we're
getting out of the Army War College that our generals are so strategically
inept.
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