Andrew Sullivan claims in the Sunday Times that Bush is after Syria, not Iran. He asserts the Bush Adminstration is planning on maintaining 120,000 Troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future, and We do not have the resources for military adventures against Iran. It is a particular reason why the Army wants five more Combat brigades, as commented in a previous Post. It was also reported that the Military was encountering great difficulty in acquiring the additional Troops.
Some relevant facts about the military investment (Occupation) of Iraq. Nothing can stop the Insurgents/Guerillas except the Iraqi people themselves. Their failure to stop the Insurgency means American troops will have to fight the Insurgents. Here exists the first great problem: 120,000 troops is a dangerously low number of forces for patrolling a area of counterinsugentcy the size of even the Sunni triangle, let alone all of Iraq; a proper response force should be 480,000 Troops (equiped), but could safely perform with 100,000 less. It is all debateable, a question of ground saturation; but American troops risk insufficient Force response capability, and being locked within the old Firebases of the Vietnam era. Casualties will result from either of the latter events.
Donald Rumsfeld admonishes Americans to remember there are currently more than 130,000 Iraqis in uniform. Senator Joseph Biden warns such numbers are Foolscrap:
in testimony Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, senior administration officials couldn't say how many Iraqi forces can operate independently against the insurgency. That's why I believe the number of Iraqis prepared to take on the insurgency is somewhere between 4,000 and 18,000.
Senator Biden makes his own mistakes in assessment of the situation:
New recruits get eight weeks in the classroom, compared with 16 to 24 weeks in most developed countries. Many arrive at the academy with minimal vetting and lack basic skills in reading and driving. After their classroom time, new recruits were to receive a 24-week field training course, working with U.S. and international trainers, but that was never implemented because of security concerns and a shortage of field trainers.
The administration must build on this counterinsurgency foundation. It should embed U.S. officers with Iraqi units to develop their operational skills. Other countries should be pressed to support and open training academies outside Iraq. We also must accelerate the effort to train police to provide basic law and order in the parts of Iraq that are not under siege by insurgents but that are plagued by violence.
Embedding American officers with Iraqi units will vastly increase the level of American Casualties, or turn all of Iraq into a Free Fire zone blowing apart the Country, rather than providing law and order. Using various training procedures will not unify Iraqi defense forces, and splinter Operational integration.
Nothing is really going to help the Troop insufficiency, which will provide a great danger. The American military has long substitued Firepower for Manpower. Such a Policy works fantastically well on the battlefield, and is absolutely absurd in patrolling Civilian population centers. Ralph Peters highlighted the problem in his defense of Lt. Gen Jim Mattis who has said:
"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil . . . it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."
Peters made these comments:
Had Gen. Mattis collapsed in tears and begged for pity for the torments war inflicted on him, the media would have adored him. Instead, he spoke as Marines and soldiers do in the headquarters tent or the barracks, on the battlefield or among comrades. And young journalists who never faced anything more dangerous than a drunken night in Tijuana tried to create a scandal.
Troops under Fire, especially repetitious Fire over time, adopt a 'Us against Them' attitude, with 'Them' consisting of everything not in the Unit. First comes Saturation Fire response, then comes Interdiction Fire, and finally; it turns into 'For the Hell of It' Fire. The trouble comes in this Fire being basically directed towards Native populations who never wanted the Occupation in the first place. lgl
No comments:
Post a Comment