*CLAP CLAP*

I do believe in sudden democracy through military intervention in the Middle East! I do believe we were greeted as liberators! I do believe the insurgency is on it's last legs! I do believe there were WMDs!

*CLAP CLAP*

Clap HARDER, everyone! CONDI, KARL, DONNY, CLAP HARDER!!!

Posted August 7, 2006 5:57 PM by Josh Jasper

Well, now we know how much a Yale bachelor's in History is worth.

Posted August 7, 2006 6:11 PM by Jon H

[dazed, delusional, watching the FOX news zipper waiting for the terror alert level to go up]

You people always ignore the good things, like freshly painted schools and ordinary iraqis walking up to soldiers to proclaim "Me love America! Thank you for getting rid of Saddaam!" and women smiling at cameras and holding up their purple fingers.

And freshly diapered billy goats.

[/dazed, delusional, watching the FOX news zipper waiting for the terror alert level to go up]

Posted August 7, 2006 6:19 PM by Stefan Jones

Jon H: We know what a 'gentleman's C' is worth.

Posted August 7, 2006 6:37 PM by Fragano Ledgister

One question: What is George smoking?

Posted August 7, 2006 6:38 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Josh Jasper — and yet, I have a sinking feeling that not too far in the future, the "I believe" our leaders are intoning will be more along the lines of "I do believe in spooks! I do, I do, I DO believe in spooks!"

Only for "spooks", substitute "civil war".

Posted August 7, 2006 7:27 PM by Lexica

I heard that supporters of the war admit that it looks increasingly like their side may be losing, and that even sudden good news in Iraw is unlikely to stop it. The wish they could stop this horrible, undemocratic thing from happening. In Connecticut. But it looks like Leiberman is going to lose anyways.

Posted August 7, 2006 7:47 PM by Davd Manheim

It looks as if the US has decided to take a side in the Iraqi civil war that officially isn't happening.

Posted August 7, 2006 8:12 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Civil war in Iraq has three probable outcomes, none of them mutually exclusive in any particular place:

1. Hobbesian collapse


2. A successful strongman asserts authority


3. Iranian occupation
   

In none of these cases are you assured of getting your army back out of there. One and two have identical, extremely bloody, initial phases, roughly conforming to a comprehensive spontaneous insurrection (everything blows up at once, as distinct from starting some particular place and spreading aka localized spontaneous insurrection); three plausibly starts with a targetted shi'a uprising, leading to deliberate logistical strangulation of the American forces, rather than the incidental logistical strangulation (you can't move soft-skinned transport vehicles through miles and miles of firefight, burning urban landscape, etc.) of the first two.

I am completely unable to make up my mind whether the US national command authority is so staggeringly incompetent that it isn't worried about this, or if it wants an opportunity to replace the US Army with something else.

Posted August 7, 2006 8:30 PM by Graydon

When I first heard about an Iraqi civil war, my initial reaction was "don't both sides need to have armies?" Then I realized that I was using the US civil war as a model and that was probably a little out of date.

OK, things are a lot blurrier these days. How do you decide that there's a civil war rather than a distressing number of hate crimes in an otherwise stable society?

Graydon, I vote for incompetence, but I admit I'm guessing. What could they possibly have available to replace the US army with?

Posted August 7, 2006 9:20 PM by Nancy Lebovitz

OK, things are a lot blurrier these days. How do you decide that there's a civil war rather than a distressing number of hate crimes in an otherwise stable society?

When you have armed bands fighting each other, and targeting civilians affiliated in some way with their rivals.

A civil war is simply armed conflict within a society, and may take a variety of forms. In Iraq, we see armed militias, associated with political parties, fighting each other and attacking the civilian populace.

Posted August 7, 2006 9:29 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Nancy --

Well, going by current conduct, the replacement would be mercenaries.

As a way of getting around the American public's distaste for casualties, mercenary armies recruited from the poor of Mexico and Central America would be a plausible solution. (Also parts of Eastern Europe.) Mercenaries are much easier to give the kind of war-crime committing orders that the current National Command Authority wants to give, potentially less expensive -- also apparently a high priority -- and, presumably, an expendable asset on the old imperial models where surviving your thirty years of service is extremely unlikely.

The flip side is that such an army could be much more readily used against citizens of the United States, whether to quell dissent or maintain authority in the absence of the traditional forms of legitimacy.

Which is not to say that it isn't also incompetence; bad as such a plan would be, executed competently, executing it incompetently would be rather worse.

Posted August 7, 2006 9:33 PM by Graydon

Graydon, since this is the Gang that can't even find the fscking gun to shoot themselves in the foot (much less shoot anywhere straight), I'll hope your scenario will remain imaginary.

I would think if that scenario happened, our military men, when sent home, would rebel and pitch a fit if they tried to use mercenaries to maintain peace (supress opposition) here.

Posted August 7, 2006 9:53 PM by Paula Helm Murray

Graydon: That is one hell of a scary idea. It makes me think of condottiere in 15th century Italy, solving the problems of urban aristocracies (uppity workers and peasants) and then shoving said aristocracies aside and taking control themselves.

Posted August 7, 2006 10:19 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Juan Cole wrote a column for Salon citing a threshold for "civil war":

"Sustained military combat, primarily internal, resulting in at least 1,000 battle-deaths per year, pitting central government forces against an insurgent force capable of effective resistance, determined by the latter's ability to inflict upon the government forces at least 5 percent of the fatalities that the insurgents sustain." (Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, "Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946-92," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 37, No. 3, May 2000.) '

By this measure, Iraq is already in civil war and has been for some time.

Posted August 7, 2006 10:31 PM by FungiFromYuggoth

There were two forms of dodge ball (or dodge 'em) that I remember playing in grade school. Neither was spontaneous; both were imposed by the gym teacher.

One version had two teams, each playing from one end of the gym. If you hit someone on the other side, he was out until someone on his side caught a ball that was thrown at him, and then the first one in line was back in the game.

The other form, which I only remember playing once, was a free-for-all. Everybody just threw at everybody else, and once you were out, you were out, until there was just one person left.

I'm guessing that this civil war will look more like the latter game.

Fckng Bush.

Posted August 7, 2006 10:37 PM by Kip W

Paula --

It's very, very clear that Rummy wants a different army; the re-organization of the mech brigades makes that very obvious, if nothing else -- such as purging the ranks of the general officers, or (mostly successfully) attempting to inculcate millennialist Christianity at the Air Force academy (presumably so they'll have pilots who will obey nuclear first strike against a non-nuclear power orders) -- has managed to do that.

To my mind, the question is whether or not Rummy's willing to expend the army he has deployed in Iraq to get the pretext he needs to run roughshod over the objections -- the generally very sensible objections -- of the professional military on the way to getting the army he wants.

Put in those terms, well, of course he is; such a plan would differ only in rate of expenditure of troops from what is being done now, so it's clear that SecDef Rumsfeld possesses no fundamental objections to achieving his ends by such means.

The current professional Army, in such a scenario, would mostly be dead; the forty percent or so gone when the army on the ground in Iraq was destroyed, and then the other forty percent of maneuver units gone in the counter-attack out of Kuwait or otherwise into Iran before the mercenary army could come in behind them. Much of the remainder would go when used as cadre for elements of the mercenary army, which will probably not be officially called that.

Note that the current mercenary forces are by no means themselves adequate in numbers to provide meaningful maneuver elements for a field army; they are, however, heavily drawn from former US army special forces personnel, and are heavy with people whose separation ranks were from the junior end of senior NCOs. They'd be entirely capable of training a mercenary army, should the recruits be provided to them. (Though they themselves are likely to be independently retained on grounds of greater reliability and whiteness.)

At that point, not less than two years in the future, you're dealing with scattered veterans of the professional army, not in formed units and not provided with heavy weapons, being the only remaining elements of the professional army available to oppose the use of a mercenary army to quash dissent.

Those veterans of the professional army would, in that scenario, lack a snowball's chance under any circumstances short of a committed general uprising.

I would judge a general uprising impossible in the United States; too much of the population is generally pro-authoritarian for that to occur.

It is also worth noting that the areas most likely to rise in defense of their traditional liberties are those areas being systematically stripped of military materiel and infrastructure by the current National Command Authority.

Posted August 7, 2006 10:44 PM by Graydon

Graydon - you may already know this, but between five to seven percent of the US military is already made up of noncitizens. I've heard about this as part of the ongoing problems with recruitment.

On a not unrelated note, part of the stalled immigration legislation is the DREAM act, which would grant US citizenship to children of illegal aliens who complete two years of college. Or two years of military service, whichever comes first.

If Max Boot has his way, an army of non-citizen mercenaries promised US citizenship in exchange for service would be called the "Freedom Legion".

Posted August 7, 2006 11:15 PM by FungiFromYuggoth

The current professional Army, in such a scenario, would mostly be dead; the forty percent or so gone when the army on the ground in Iraq was destroyed, and then the other forty percent of maneuver units gone in the counter-attack out of Kuwait or otherwise into Iran before the mercenary army could come in behind them. Much of the remainder would go when used as cadre for elements of the mercenary army, which will probably not be officially called that.

Graydon, you are fucking terrifying me. But I cannot believe that the American military would allow itself to be slaughtered in the numbers you are talking about to allow a mercenary army to take its place, and I don't believe the American people would stand for that level of casualties -- it would be their sons and daughters dying.

Nancy, with regard to your question -- How do you decide that there's a civil war rather than a distressing number of hate crimes in an otherwise stable society? -- where in Iraq do you see a stable society?

Posted August 7, 2006 11:40 PM by Lizzy L

Fungi, I think of mercenaries as soldiers who have no loyalty to the society which is paying them to fight. If they've signed up in order to get citizenship, they presumably have loyalty.

Lizzy, Iraq is obviously in very bad shape. This doesn't mean I know it's ready to tear itself apart.

Posted August 8, 2006 12:01 AM by Nancy Lebovitz

Well, you know what Rummy said: it's not a classic civil war.

Whatever "classic" is supposed to mean.

Does he mean a war in which a country is divided into two geographic parts, splitting over an issue of some sort, and one part of the nation try to secede from the nation as a whole, as in the American civil war?

Or is he referring to two groups of different religious persuasions, as in the English civil war?

Or perhaps a conflict of ideologies and the distribution of power, such as the French Revolution?

Is it not classic because the two sides didn't put on blue or gray uniforms, fire cannons and muskets, and shout, "Fix bayonets! Charge!" as they pelted across fields at one another?

Please, Rummy, do tell us what a "classic" civil war consists of.

Posted August 8, 2006 12:03 AM by Writerious

A take on the Iraq situation for the US Army.

Posted August 8, 2006 1:10 AM by Keir

Good link, Keir.

This is something I have been worried about since before the offensive started in 2003. Nothing exceptionally technical about it, all you have to do is be able to read a map. When we deployed our forces into Iraq, we deployed then through a metaphorical keyhole, Kuwait. We were not able to get all the troops we wanted in place in time, and we had problems supplying them once they entered combat. Almost all the supplies for our units there feed in through a small number of roads connecting central Iraq to Kuwait, mostly through one or two main border crossings. It is those same limited and very obvious routes that we and the British would have to use for an evacuation.

There are only so many ways in and out of Iraq, and most of those ways were closed to us in 2003, and remain closed to us now. We can't expect transit through Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or, of course, Iran. And Turkey remains a concern, especially the border between Iraq and Turkey is mountainous and Turkey remains jittery over our relationship with the Iraqi Kurds. We could very easily face a Shia revolt in the south, right across our only road home with no alternative other than load everybody on planes and leave all the materiel behind. Sort of like Saigon in 1975 without the Seventh Fleet handy close by. And none of this should be a surprise at all.

I wonder, is the Anabasis required reading these days at the War College?

Posted August 8, 2006 1:52 AM by Claude Muncey

Mosby and Quantrill fought a civil war, as did numerous other irregular forces in the Border States during the American Civil War. Imagine their forces instead as fighters loyal to Shia and Sunni clerics and you've got a civil war, near as I can tell.

Posted August 8, 2006 2:09 AM by Linkmeister

The Irish Civil War in the early 20s (post-independence, between the anti-treaty and pro-treaty forces) is a good model of how a civil war need not involve standing armies. Only about three thousand people were killed, but it scarred the nation for years. It was a matter of guerrilla bands and assassinations - much like Iraq today.

Posted August 8, 2006 2:09 AM by James

Cole Younger, in his autobiography, counts the American Civil War as beginning in 1857. From his point of view, living in Missouri, it probably did.

Posted August 8, 2006 2:44 AM by James D. Macdonald

The other plausible outcome of civil war is partition. Again, this is not mutually exclusive with any of Graydon's three options.

I auppose that if I were to guess, I would suspect that the most likely scenario for Iraq a few years from now would be: an independent or semi-independent Kurdistan (relatively stable except for border skirmishes with Turkey), an Iranian occupied zone, a small zone ruled by force surrounding the permanent US military bases, and elsewhere a Hobbsian war of all against all. I could imagine a situation like that lasting for many years.

Posted August 8, 2006 2:56 AM by Matt Austern

Am I imagining things, or there an assumption here that a civil will in Iraq will remain confined to Iraq? What with the situation in the region, that doesn't seem likely to me.

Posted August 8, 2006 7:43 AM by Steven Brust

Lizzy --

But I cannot believe that the American military would allow itself to be slaughtered in the numbers you are talking about to allow a mercenary army to take its place, and I don't believe the American people would stand for that level of casualties -- it would be their sons and daughters dying.

The US military is subject to civilian authority, and this is a deeply ingrained principle in the entire military, from top to bottom. (a vital one, if one wishes to avoid military coups from time to time.) They don't get to tell the SecDef that his orders are too stupid to obey.

Rummy has been systematically purging any general officer -- he's well past half of those who held flag rank when he took office as SecDef -- who gives him any back talk for any reason whatsoever. He started doing this as soon as he took office as SecDef, an office he has held for substantially longer than any other man in the history of the Republic.

The first 40% of the Army go when Iraq goes; that's not any more "allowed" than they already are with that terrible logistical situation on the ground.

If you think there was a lot of panic when 9/11 happened, wait until there's a major strategic defeat along with the loss of a field army more or less entire.

Since that loss will significantly be, and will certainly be able to be spun as being, at the hands of Iran, and since the majority of the troops in the maneuver units are already candidates for treatment for thousand yard stare, there isn't going to be much difficulty involved in whipping up a national frenzy for revenge that includes enough of the Army, and certainly enough of the Army's junior and field-grade leadership. (Presumably a form of revenge involving nuking Iran and then occupying the wreckage. Remember that Cheney's objective is the Iranian oil and gas fields, and that from his point of view denying them to China and India is almost as good as having them himself.)

Posted August 8, 2006 7:47 AM by Graydon

If you think there was a lot of panic when 9/11 happened, wait until there's a major strategic defeat along with the loss of a field army more or less entire.

Another possible outcome: that's when George (or Jeb, if it's after 2008) Bush gets impeached.

Posted August 8, 2006 8:05 AM by James D. Macdonald

James --

I would of course greatly prefer that outcome, but don't consider it to be a likely scenario so far as neocon planning goes.

Hopefully it's a whole lot more likely than they think it is, and doesn't take quite that scale of disaster to enact.

Posted August 8, 2006 8:32 AM by Graydon

Sorry, the "we'll lose 40% of the army" comments are just so much hoo-hah to me. If the supply lines begin getting opposition and harassment, then the 101st and Marine units will begin escorting the convoys, just like they did during the initial offensive to Baghdad.

Back then there were actual bypassed, intact Iraqi army units attempting to break those supply lines, and they failed to do so. Throw in dedicated helicopter escort units for the convoys, and there's simply no way the Iraqis have enough force to threaten a complete cut of the supply lines.

Yes, that means the units now protecting convoys are no longer patrolling parts of Iraq. Yes, the roads might not be completely controlled, but the convoys would be secure and supplies would get through. Yes, the troops might actually have to subsist on MRE's instead of dining in air conditioned mess halls and fast food restaurants purpose-built for their use. You know what? Troops have been doing this for years. It's only lately that US troops have begun bringing their culture with them in the form of stores, restaurants, and the other amenities of home in their logistic calculations.

You're making these Iraqi irregulars to sound as if they are as good as the Soviet army units that isolated the Germans at Stalingrad. They aren't, even with direct Iranian assistance. The best they could do is force a modification of the US mission in Iraq, but lose 40% of the army?

No way in hell.

Posted August 8, 2006 9:22 AM by John

I too am dubious about the Army suffering a significant slaughter at the hands of an Iraqi uprising. The link Keir posted a bit upthread makes a strong argument to that effect.

However the green zone isn't all that big geographically. What about a nuke?*

I'm thinking something along the lines of "small but well-financed faction leader manages to purchase, say, a 10 kiloton device on the black market. Knowing it's political suicide to nuke your own country, he tricks his dumb cousin Bob into actually doing the deed. The green zone is devastated with significant loss of life. American public opinion turns to a degree that it is no longer possible to effectively prosecute the war. U.S. pulls out.

Bob the dumb cousin is tried and executed for his horrific crime against his own people & lands. The smart, well-financed cousin who set the whole mess in motion steps into fill the power vacuum left by the US departure, (or tries to anyway.)

Here's why I think it's at least semi-plausible.

Just a thought.

Posted August 8, 2006 9:58 AM by Scott H

Graydon, while the military is subservient to the civilian government, it doesn't mean it will follow any order it's given. I would google magic a few articles about what the Delta Force did after the screw-up of the Mullah Omar summer palace invasion. They went to the then CentCom commander Tommy Franks and told him in no uncertain terms they would never be used so stupidly again. It is also not only the right, but the duty of any soldier to actively resist (ain’t that a lovely term) any illegal order given them (that is, an order in contradiction to the Constitution, laws and treaties). We could have a discussion about the breakdown of that concept on a brigade level during this current conflict, but overall it’s still entrenched.

John, I think you missed the chance that it would be a popular uprising, catching the army where it’s deployed. Or a successful Tet Offensive, if you like.

Posted August 8, 2006 10:41 AM by Steve Buchheit

John --

The supply lines have opposition and harassment now, quite a lot of it. There has, as yet, been no comprehensive general uprising nor widespread targeted effort on the logistical tail.

In Iraq, in the summer, it is entirely possible to light long stretches of tarmacadam highway on fire. Secondary roads travel through built-up areas; getting fuel bowsers through built-up areas while subject to IEDs and RPG fire is not going to happen quickly if it happens at all.

Logistics is intensely rate-limited. There have already been periods -- there were periods during the initial advance -- when units outran supplies of fuel and water; there isn't any too much slack in the system as it stands.

A comprehensive general uprising would cut off essentially the entirety of the American force in Iraq, and they do not have substantial reserves in place of any of fuel, water, or ammo.

Once they're out of fuel and water, they're dead. Three days with no water is all it takes even in the absence of other hostile action, and the ability to purify water is a function of having the fuel.

Posted August 8, 2006 10:49 AM by Graydon

It's being said lately that the Israelis have effectively destroyed all land routes into or out of Lebanon. Couldn't someone do the same in Iraq, or is the terrain too different? If it could happen, that brings on the "evacuate by plane and leave everything else behind" scenario.

Posted August 8, 2006 11:25 AM by Faren Miller

A general uprising doesn't mean that every Iraqi citizen suddenly turns into a trained fighting soldier, though. A large amount of those supply roads south of Baghdad run through...nothing.

No villages, no towns, just desert. Heavily escorted convoys would still get through. If they had to cut the supply down to basics (food, water, ammo, fuel), they would. Water and food would not be the first items in the convoys either; both can be gained from the land that is occupied (two rivers run through Baghdad).

You're still giving this theoretical Iraqi general uprising abilities beyond that of either the Confederate army during the Atlanta Campaign (when Sherman operated at the end of a VERY long and tenuous supply line) or the Soviets in 1942. I don't buy it.

Like I said, the US mission in Iraq would change, probably to one of self defense and resupply, which would be equivalent to being defeated. But this idea of them losing that large a force is nowhere close to reality. At worse they'd end up in a fortified position in or near Baghdad (the airport would be my choice) with a pullout coming shortly afterwards.

Posted August 8, 2006 11:31 AM by John

This is nonsense. The only way for the US military to suffer a 40% dead casualty rate is if someone on the other side suddenly produces those phantom WMD's and does it in a single strike.

Every other option has a large, unexpected attack, with a lot of causualties that still amounts to a small percent of the total force, and the US population drops all support for the war and calls for a pull out. (See Marine barracks in Beruit some years back.) In the meantime, the military evacuates the cities, camps out in the desert where you can't sneak up on anything, circles the M-1's, and waits for the order to withdraw.

At that point, the only way to inflict significant causualties is a direct fight, and Khe Sahn showed that if you've got enough space that you can completely bomb the land around you, then whoever is on the ground will get 24-hour bombimg support against anyone stupid enough to come out in the open.

If we lose 40%, it'll be because we allow our military to slowly bleed to death one IED at a time.

Posted August 8, 2006 11:50 AM by Greg London

Steve --

Yes, the Army gets to complain, and yes, flag officers get to resign rather than carry out stupid orders, but fundamentally, they're still in an untenable position and they got that way by following the National Command Authority's orders.

The Army appears to have hit every political lever it can reach with really minimal effect, too.

Posted August 8, 2006 11:51 AM by Graydon

John and Greg London, there are currently several armies in the general population. Two Shi’ite clerics run armies, the disbanded Iraqi army units, the former Sunni Fetayeen, the Kurdish Self Defense Force (actually 3 forces rolled into one), Al-Qaeda sponsored foreign fighters (Zarkawi’s troops), and several militia factions made up of parts of all the above. This is nothing to say of the Iraqi police and army we’ve been training which have already had defections on the squad level (as in whole squads defecting and then attacking US “interests”). Not one of these could stand up to a frontal assault from the US. Neither could the Viet Cong. And they wouldn’t have to. They wouldn’t even have to have close cooperation to deliver a sustained devastating campaign against the US Forces.

Rolling into the desert and setting up a perimeter is a sure course to defeat, even if you can “see where they are.”

Greg, even though we bombed the heck out of the North Vietnam and parts of Cambodia, we still lost the damn war. We had technically superior forces, we had air support, we won every engagement we fought, and we still lost the war. This is a lesson we should never forget.

Graydon, all those officers still have an affect within the active troops. Hell, even Stormin’ Norman still has pull. There has been open grumbling about his silence during this war.

Posted August 8, 2006 12:14 PM by Steve Buchheit

Relevant link, via the Whiskey Bar, by an ex-Army int officer:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0721/p09s01-coop.html
Summary: air transport could only lift 25% of total requirements, and the insurgents could cut the roads.

An Army division (circa 10,000 soldiers) in WW2 needed 6-700 tons (fuel, ammo, food, etc) per day. Nowadays it's closer to 1000 tons per day, though the divisions are larger - and that figure's for mobile operations, not occupation duty. Think how many troops there are in Iraq - the total logistics burden must be in the region of 10,000 tons a day. Not possible with airlift - not at all. Not even possible into airstrips that aren't under attack.

On the bright side, it's unlikely that the insurgents will wipe them out - or that the US troops will fight to the last man. In the event, there would more probably be a negotiated surrender and withdrawal - thus saving the lives of most if not all the besieged troops. I can see Iran getting involved as the honest broker.

And, you know, that might not be a bad thing. After the last similar humiliation (and the RVN defeat in 1975 was far, far less humiliating than the surrender of an entire US corps would be) the US kept its neck wound in for almost a decade, give or take Desert One, before starting on the whole invading-people business again in Grenada. Assuming the administration didn't get started on a REVENGE! kick, that is.

"Once all the Germans were warlike and mean
But that couldn't happen again;
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then..."

Posted August 8, 2006 12:23 PM by ajay

Steve, I know we lost the war. That wasn't the point. The point that these hypothetical situation where we lose 40% of our military is not reality based. Worse case, we get a massive attack against us, like the marine barracks in Beruit, and we pull out of Iraq. But we won't lose 40% of our troops.

Posted August 8, 2006 12:37 PM by Greg London

an army, in the middle of teh desert, with the wagons in a circle, and a 10 mile flat-desert perimeter around it, doesn't need fuel or ammo airlifted to it. They would need three MRE's and 8 quarts of water per person, per day. The only other thing they'd need is batteries for the radios to call in B52 airstrikes to dig a moat around them.

Posted August 8, 2006 12:48 PM by Greg London

Greg --

You've got about 40% of your army deployed in Iraq.

They are extensively forward deployed well away from their base of supply; their lines of supply are not secure and can't be made secure with the troops available. Those troops are, for the most part, pre-surrounded.

They're also operating out of a degree of local supply that's good for, maybe, a week of normal operations; there have been press reports since the conflict started of US forces being forced to reduce their operational tempo due to being in poor supply. Since the operational tempo has been ramping up, not down, and the supply security situation has not substantially improved, the likelyhood of local reserves of supply having been established is very low.

Warfare went from discrete battles to a continuous front with the Great War; in Hitler's War mechanization produced a continuous front that moves.

Fourth generation warfare involves a contested volume; there is no front, and there generally isn't a stable or predictable volume of contact.

The potential volume of contact is a whole lot larger than the US troops on the ground can manage. (If they could manage it, the place wouldn't be melting down into civil war.)

Just because the line units can reliably beat the pluperfect holy helya out of whoever happens to be in front of them doesn't mean there are enough of them to get to all the places that someone could get in front of them, and if they can't do that, they can't secure their lines of supply.

If they can't secure their lines of supply, they can be destroyed.

A negotiated surrender requires someone in overall control of the opposition; there is no such person.

Posted August 8, 2006 12:50 PM by Graydon

I'm with Greg on this. The majority of the US divisions in Iraq did not bring their heavy weaponry or vehicles with them; they were tasked for foot patrols and sent in as infantry, with a force of heavy armor (Bradleys and M1's) as backup. Most of the fuel requirements is for Humvees, trucks, helicopters and resupply.

The divisions aren't maneuvering; that 1000 tons/day is for mobile combat, not patrolling towns or taking a defensive stand. A lot of that tonnage is also what would have been considered "luxuries" back as recently as 1991. I know; an 82nd Airborne soldier worked with me during the 90's and even after they were in garrison he said it was Spartan living quarters. Now they've got email, air conditioning, Quonset huts (or their equivalent), fresh fruit and vegetables, internet access, PX's, Pizza Hut, Dominos, McDonalds, etc, etc.

I suspect that 1000 tons/day could get pared down quite a bit if necessary.

And given that the Republican Guard couldn't stop the supplies from travelling on those roads despite their best efforts, I somehow doubt that militia would be able to do it to any effective level either. Not enough to force a wholesale surrender of the forces at the end of that supply line in any event.

Posted August 8, 2006 12:53 PM by John

John and Greg --

You are overlooking something. While the US *may* be able to kick Iraqi butt, it isn't just the Iraqis they'll be fighting. (Mr. Brust, I think you and I may have reached the following conclusion.)

If the current situation in the Middle East goes pear-shaped the entire region goes up in smoke. At the very least, Iran and Syria will join the game, and not on the US/UK side.

Last time I looked, all of the countries in that region have armies. Any one of them is able to cut our supply lines and/or prevent any evacuation of troops.

Claude Muncy, if the Anabasis is the text I know as "The Retreat Up-country," I believe you will find it in the library of all of the US military colleges. Whether it is still being actively taught, I do not know. (If it isn't, it should be.)

Posted August 8, 2006 12:58 PM by Lori Coulson

And imagine the mess all those American weapons could do to the Middle East if Saudi Arabia decides to get involved?

Iraq has been in a civil war since November 2004. It's been small, but growing. Iraqi elections mostly haven't mattered. The focus of the insurgency for the first year and a half or so was against the Americans, but it's more against other Iraqis these days.

It's sick and our govenment continues to be in complete denial over how bleak the situation in Iraq really is.

I think Iraq will wind up partitioned. The areas the Kurds control have been pretty quiet over the last year or so. That implies local government/security is working in those areas. So as the rest of Iraq is torn asunder, the Kurds will wind up with what they've wanted for years - their own homeland.

Posted August 8, 2006 1:24 PM by Laurie Mann

an army, in the middle of teh desert, with the wagons in a circle, and a 10 mile flat-desert perimeter around it, doesn't need fuel or ammo airlifted to it. They would need three MRE's and 8 quarts of water per person, per day. The only other thing they'd need is batteries for the radios to call in B52 airstrikes to dig a moat around them.

Greg, that's not tactics, that's military fantasy. Not even particularly good military fantasy. Besides being infeasible in terms of both ground logistics (you need a lot more than batteries, bottled water and MRE's to maintain multi-brigade force in being, especially in a hasty position) and in terms of the overall availability and allowable optempo of BUFFs these days (we only base one to two dozen in Diego these days -- you would need a lot more than that), it means you aren't thinking more than 8 hours ahead in an environment where a commander has to think months and years out.

OK, you have your 17-18 brigades (that's US only of course -- or do you include the British and other coalition forces spread all over the country?) in a hasty position in the desert, and you have bombed the crap out of some surrounding territory. Now what are you going to do? You have committed one of the truly classic errors in this kind of a conflict, you have put all your forces in one easily observable spot, and granted you opponents complete freedom of action everywhere else. You should start taking low level casualties from a variety of small attacks within 24 hours. At best you have 2-3 days of water, MRE's and POL when it will take longer than that to get everybody out of the country from a location like Baghdad if you try to move out. And if you don't, you will run dry quickly in place. Unlike the earlier example of Sherman, mechanized forces can't live off the land, especially this land.

Greg, I suggest coming up with a better idea, perhaps something that sounds less like a recipie for Dienbienphu on the Euphrates.

Posted August 8, 2006 1:35 PM by Claude Muncey

The problem is not whether the Anabasis is still being taught to officer cadets and to serving officers who are students at the Command and Staff colleges. The problem is that the civilian authorities responsible for coming up with the objectives and grand strategy these officers must make plans to achieve are blind and deaf to these issues. Their appreciation of military history may be described as Gingrichian at best. If they think about Xenophon and the Ten Thousand at all, it is in terms of the civilized Greeks' triumph over the treacherous Persian wogs, without considering that these were mercemary soldiers signed on for into Cyrus the Younger's wild goose chase purely for personal gain--the same mindset that makes Dunkirk look to some like a military triumph rather than a desperate, disorganized evacuation that was so unanticipated that voluntary civilian assistance was needed to pull it off.

Much of the training that produces military planners revolves around the question "What if?"--because "What ifs" can ruin you. Rumsfeld and the neocons have read the exciting, quotable bits of writers like Clausewitz--not the dull parts where the old Prussian explains what forced marches do to your troops in terms of fighting effectiveness, and all the other grim details about actual management of armed forces so that they are fighting forces. Their school of military thinking seems to me to be the Jiminy Cricket school, with the theme song "When You Wish Upon a Star".

Greg, John, please consider the military term "defeat in detail". I'm not saying Graydon is right, but his scenario is a picture that must be considered--if only to make sure that it can't happen. Which is part of what responsible leaders (have we got any?) must do.

Posted August 8, 2006 1:36 PM by fidelio

Those troops are, for the most part, pre-surrounded.

The only way that will make a dent in the US military force in Iraq is if there's some sort of coordinated nationwide Iraqi militia uprising where everyone stocks up and plans to strike at dawn, everywhere, at once. And even then, that will get the guys patroling the streets at that moment, not the guys sleeping back at base, waiting to go on night patrol. And the idea of such a buildup occurring without anyone noticing seems a bit far fetched.

This is Pearl Harbor (or 9-11) surprise attack paranoia.

If they can't secure their lines of supply, they can be destroyed.

No. You can't destroy something if you cannot get close enough to attack it. You could be completely unarmed but have guardian angels flying B52's and spooky gunships and remain un-destroyed, assuming you have a bombable perimeter around you.

Assuming that somehow your surprise attack went off without a hitch, you still have a massive US military presence back at the base, and to take that on, you've got to switch from guerrilla warfare to a standup fight. And once you switch to third gen war, call in the spooky gunships and the B52s and mow down everything near the bases that moves.

Posted August 8, 2006 1:39 PM by Greg London

John, those quarters you’re discussing with all the amenities are in very few places, Camp Disney/Halliburton/Victory for instance. Most deployment in Iraq is in country with very Spartan conditions (including places with no running water or toilets). If things get as bad as they could with a general uprising that crystallizes the opposition, the army is going to get very mobile, very fast and it will chew through that 1000 tons/day quickly. Cut supply, and mobilization will end just as quickly (Patton, WWII). The RP at the beginning of the war was demoralized and had been stripped of their command during Saddam's purges after Gulf 1. Most of the attacks were from the Fetayeen, which hadn't coalesced yet. We still have to run security patrols around the trucks to keep them from suffering form too high a loss. As for most of the troops being deployed without their heavy equipment, that’s because we cut costs by leaving unit equipment in place and reassigning it to incoming troops.

Posted August 8, 2006 1:43 PM by Steve Buchheit

I think this post I made some time ago here is relevant:

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006442.html

Posted August 8, 2006 1:48 PM by James D. Macdonald

Sherman didn't live off the land in his Atlanta Campaign. He couldn't; moving 100,000 men through northern Georgia's rugged terrain, where there was little farmland and less food, required he stay near the railroad running between Chattanooga and Atlanta. He didn't try to live off the land until he left Atlanta and struck out for Savannah, and he did that with a lot less than the 100,000 men he advanced on Atlanta with.

Johnston's Confederate cavalry and guerillas tried repeatedly to break that supply line, but Sherman kept peeling units off his main force to guard the line, especially at vulnerable bridges and tunnels. The rest of the line could be repaired very rapidly by trained engineers with stockpiles of timbers and rails.

I don't fear Syria doing anything to mess with the US in Iraq; their army is in the wrong place to interfere and isn't very strong either; there's a large and empty desert between them and Baghdad. Iran doesn't exactly have a large border with Iraq, and the British are between them and the supply lines.

If the entire Iraqi population erupted in revolt (doubtful since the Kurds wouldn't IMO) and began torching and blowing up everything in site, the US forces would probably conduct a withdrawal southward back towards Kuwait. The supply lines and firebases would rely heavily on massive airstrikes and helicopter patrols to keep them clear, but the combat equipment and troops would get out. All the junk that the military seems to currently think is necessary, though, would be abandoned at the start.

Posted August 8, 2006 1:52 PM by John

perhaps something that sounds less like a recipie for Dienbienphu on the Euphrates.

ohfergawdssake. Dienbienphu happened in 1954. Airpower has changed the battlefield since then. Also, at Dienbienphu, the Vietnamese were able to pull artillery through the jungle and set them up on mountain peeks overlooking the french position. And the french couldn't do anything about it. That significantly changed the battle.

You can't sneek artillery through the desert the same way, and if you did get a couple salvos off, the f-16's and A-10's would have you chewed up into little pieces of iron before you could swab your breech a third time. Vietnamese artillery operated unmolested because of a lack of airpower to neutralize it. It completely changed the battlefield. The french and vietnamese ended up fighting trench warfare because of it. That won't happen in Iraq.

It wouldn't be Diembienphu, it would be Khe Sahn. 6,000 americans held off 20,000 vietnamese for three solid months. 200 americans killed. 9000 vietnamese killed.

There is no militia in Iraq that can operate long range artillary for any length of time. The only option would be if they got rockets like Hezbollah has been shooting at Israel. And the likelyhood of several thousand of these rockets suddenly appearing in Iraq without some warning is pretty slim.

If there is any warning of these types of rockets coming into Iraq, you'll likely see US military bases changing their configurations to deal with it. If they can't move, they'd likely push their perimeter's further back, and set up some phalanx gun systems and patriot missile systems.

Posted August 8, 2006 1:58 PM by Greg London

John, I suggest you check that map again. One, the Kurds are very upset about some towns that control the oil flow that the US hasn’t kicked the Sunni out (Saddam took these towns when he pushed the main Kurdish population into the mountains). There have been many incidents, none as big as Baghdad, so they haven’t been reported widely. Comparatively it is as settled as things get, just like Basra is “settled.” Syria is too interested in gaining power from the Israel and Hezbollah conflict, trying to be the party of negotiation. That would change if Iran would take a direct and open part in the Iraq civil war. That would also draw in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, then game over and we’ve got a Congo in the Middle East with the US Forces playing sucker in the middle.

Iran and Iraq has large enough border to have had several wars over it. Also, Iran could come across the Gulf and take Kuwait in a flanking maneuver, cutting of our southern routes. Again, SA would have to come in on our side, which would inflame their own populace throwing that country into open rebellion. And that big desert between Syria and Baghdad, that’s where the oil is. It isn’t as empty as you might think.

And conducting a withdraw to the south means taking the bulk of our force through very narrow channels and in hostile country. That’s Shia dominated land, and they don’t like us very much. If Iran is involved, that’s where they’ll be, BTW. Actually withdrawing North through Turkey would be better, although the political cost would be high, and we would leave a lot of equipment on the ground. Not a good idea.

Posted August 8, 2006 2:10 PM by Steve Buchheit

That would change if Iran would take a direct and open part in the Iraq civil war. That would also draw in Jordan and Saudi Arabia,

what planet do you live on?

The US military is getting slowly bled by guerrilla war because we seem to be clueless as to how to fight 4th gen war. But if you bring in an outside nation, you're talking 3rd gen war, and we're really, really, really good at that. When we pushed the Iraqi military out of kuwait, they were something like the third biggest army on the friggen planet. Russia was wondering if we had lost our mind, that's how big they were.

Guerrilla war won't kill 40% of our military in one strike because it is by definition diffuse, it is ill defined, gaseous, with no solid borders to attack. That's why it works so well. See Sun Tzu. When the enemy outnumbers you 10 to 1, harry them and dissappear.

Other countries won't get involved because state warfare between them and us is their loss will little chance to win and little to gain. Iran might go after Iraq if we pulled out, but they aren't going after us while we're there. Iran might start funneling rockets to Iraqi militia to launch against us, but I highly doubt they'd want us to find Iranian shrapnel in a US base. We'd bomb hell out of wahtever their nuclear power/weapon plant would be and flatten any hardware that's out in teh open. And if we didn't, we'd call Israel and have them do it for us, and give them the bombs and fuel and planes to do it with.

We're fighting against a guerilla opponent for a reason. because if we were fighting a state, we'd bulldoze them.

Posted August 8, 2006 2:27 PM by Greg London

Greg --

You're effectively taking the position that the US cannot be militarily defeated.

Rather than criticize the details of your position -- which should not be understood as being unable to do so -- I'm going to point out to you that the attitude you're espousing is one every military authority from Sun Tzu onward describes in unkind terms.

There is, presumably, a reason for that.

Posted August 8, 2006 2:28 PM by Graydon

If one quarter of the US trained and equipped Iraqi army mutinied in one third of the country, we would face hard times, and a massive propaganda defeat.

The battlefield isn't the only place you can lose a war.

Posted August 8, 2006 2:53 PM by James D. Macdonald

Greg, in Gulf One the Iraqi forces were bugging out for almost 5 days before we entered Kuwait and the Iraqi Desert. No casualties until we flanked the Republican Guard. We mostly rolled over their positions, but they started to respond in force just as we called off the war. Saddam felt it was better to have his forces intact and ordered them to continue to withdraw without engaging. We (for the most part) let them pass into Iraq.

Iran has already supplied al Sahdir and Iranian scrapnel and ordinance has already been found in the Green Zone (last year I believe). Iran could enter the fray in force and still only present a moving target, not a solid front line. We would have their assets in Iran to bomb. However Iran has already started into the war by releasing one of Osama's sons from "home arrest." Much of the list of Al Qaeda our President likes to promoted about being "captured or killed" are in house arrest in eastern Iran. They could do a great deal of damage just by letting them all go.

Iran entering Iraq openly has been a concern since the beginning so I think I'm on pretty solid ground by thinking that they might actually do it at the behest of their Shia friends in the south, who, BTW, also are the majority of the elected government in Iraq. They are also being picked off by the Sunni/Al Qaeda and are fed up by our inability to stop it.

And I don't think that 40% lost was ever stated as being a "one strike" deal. It would take weeks or months. But it could happen. Our military is already over-stretched and exhausted (personnel and equipment). We are still constantly harassed. Three years into this battle and we haven't won the ground, yet.

Posted August 8, 2006 2:58 PM by Steve Buchheit

Greg, good military planning means that one has considered the possibilities, no matter how unlikely, unattractive, unappealing,or unflattering--or even unthinkable, and given some thought to the question of "What if this happens?"

One reason we are in the spot we are in now is because the men giving the orders prefered not to do this.

There is no militia in Iraq that can operate long range artillary for any length of time. The only option would be if they got rockets like Hezbollah has been shooting at Israel. And the likelyhood of several thousand of these rockets suddenly appearing in Iraq without some warning is pretty slim.

If there is any warning of these types of rockets coming into Iraq...

You clearly have greater faith in the effectiveness of our intelligence operations in a non-friendly country where we do not have enough translators and interpreters than I can muster. Israel's current experiences with Hezbollah, if not our own in Iraq prior to today's date, should suggest the unwisdom of assuming we know everything that's happening everywhere.

It wouldn't be Diembienphu, it would be Khe Sahn... The fact that we'd prefer the latter to the former should not blind us to the possibility that it might be the former. Because denying the possibility and failing to consider it as a possibility (which is what Bushco has been doing) is a good way to turn it from a possibility into a probability.

As for the other states in the area--plan for the worst, and hope for the best. Adopting the technique of planning for the best and denying the worst is what has gotten us where we are today.

Posted August 8, 2006 2:58 PM by fidelio

You're effectively taking the position that the US cannot be militarily defeated.

No, I'm taking on the position that military action doesn't happen in a vacuum. It seems to be a popular US myth, that we can march in and bomb the shit out of stuff and then leave without any repurcussions, but being a superpower has lulled some americans into that myth. Yeah, sure, Iran could march into Iraq and kill a lot of American service personel in a surprise attack, maybe even kill every single american there.

Japan did something like that to us in Pearl Harbor. Their admiral seemed to understand the shortsightedness of it. rule the seas for six months, or something like that.

The scenarios needed to have our entire military presence in Iraq wiped out is a Pearl Harbor attack. Except this time around, we've got a fleet of Enola Gay's ready to roll. And I don't think anyone is really that stupid. At least no one who isn't a superpower.

Iran can't entertain myths of exercising power in a vacuum, of waging state level war without repercussions. And the fact that they aren't a superpower means they likely haven't been seduced by that sort of nonsense either.

Posted August 8, 2006 3:00 PM by Greg London

rule the seas for six months, or something like that.

"For the first six months I shall run wild. After that I can give no guarantees."

Posted August 8, 2006 3:08 PM by James D. Macdonald

If there is any warning of these types of rockets coming into Iraq...

You clearly have greater faith in the effectiveness of our intelligence operations

No, I don't. But I do know that the number of rockets needed to wipe out teh US military in Iraq is a lot of gawddamn rockets. Hezbollah's rockets appear to be about as effective as Hitler's V2's. Scary. Loud booms. But the number of casualties inflicted are not the levels needed to actually have any real effect on teh war, otehr than psychological.

If we get to the point of switching from Khe Sahn to Diembienphu, we'll know about it long before it happens, because the attackers will need tens of thousands of rockets.

B52's will still be able to operate and bomb the perimeter so a ground assault won't work. Which means they'll need enough rockets to kill everyone. That's a lot fo rockets. You ain't sneaking that many into Iraq without someone running into one somewhere in a raid.

And then it'll have Iranian markings on it, and we'll greenlight Israel to bomb Iran's nuke plant and ay other targets of opportunity, and Iran gains nothing and loses a lot.

Which in teh end, is why Iran will never supply enough rockets to wipe out the US military, because they'll be worse off then they were before.

Before we invaded Iraq, I kept saying that they didn't have WMD's because they didn't need WMD's and Saddam didn't CARE about anyone other than himself to risk having WMD's. Having WMD's would guarantee his destruction and he had no reason to have them. And this is basically the idea that war doesn't happen in a vacuum. War happens because someone gets a material benefit. At least on a state level.

Guerrilla war happens for other reasons and has other formulas, but it won't escalate into state war unless someone materially benefits. See Israel invading Lebanon to go after guerrillas. Israel uses someoen else's land as a buffer zone. Israel benefits. And Israel is backed by teh US, so Israel's thinking is generally the thinking of a superpower, that war can be waged without repercussions.

Iran won't tip their hand against us. They are much better off watching the insurgents bleed us to death slowly, one IED at a time, and to keep their hands clean.

Posted August 8, 2006 3:14 PM by Greg London

Thanks for the quote, Jim. My brain is frazzled today.

Posted August 8, 2006 3:15 PM by Greg London

Anyone thinking the Iranians can cross the Persian Gulf in force and take Kuwait in a "flanking attack" needs to take a reality pill.

The Iran/Iraq border is mostly marsh and is fairly constricted on both sides. That's why their war was so bloody; no maneuver room and it turned into a WWI engagement with modern weapons.

The desert between Syria and Baghdad is open and prime airpower target land. No way would Syria risk their army across it when the USAF would have a field day on them.

As long as the Army is led by competent men (and by this I mean the ones in uniform), I see no way they would suffer a military defeat in Iraq on the scale mentioned earlier. A strategic/political defeat certainly, but not on the field of battle.

Posted August 8, 2006 3:32 PM by John

Just to liven things up a bit....

Are we feeling reasonably confident that the Bush-Cheney crew wouldn't just write off thousands or tens of thousands of soldiers? It would, after all, be the thing to do for the sort of CEO they like being - the units failed, the units are no longer of interest, anyone who makes a fuss about the units which are no longer of interest is distracting the management, distracting the management is unpatriotic, unpatriotic people exist in peace and quiet only at the management's discretion.

Before Katrina I would never have imagined such a thing.

Posted August 8, 2006 3:49 PM by Bruce Baugh

Are we feeling reasonably confident that the Bush-Cheney crew wouldn't just write off thousands or tens of thousands of soldiers?

This is sort of a unrelated tangent, since it has nothing to do with whether or not anyone could attack the US military in Iraq and inflict those levels of casualties. No one can and no one would.

But were the war to continue as it is, especially with a clueless administration abusing power in the vacuum of the White House, I would not be surprised if Bush would not keep us in Iraq as tens of thousands of US personell are killed slowly over many years.

Vietnam was 60,000 personell in 20 years? It would seem we're not too far off that graph.

Posted August 8, 2006 3:55 PM by Greg London

John, that open desert is where the "foreign fighters" are coming through. If it was easy to control via air power, we wouldn't have that problem. Granted, an open army on the march is different than groups of 10 to 20, but I'll remind you that the Syrian Army also has developed great anti-aircraft technology for use against the Israelis (who have similar equipment to our air forces). We would also be facing advances on other fronts. Those other fronts may distract us. Again, it also has a lot of oil equipment, so indiscriminate bombing would be out of the question. Syria may also just move to restrict flow of oil through Jordan.

Is Iran coming across the gulf improbable? Yes. It isn’t impossible, however. And if our command structure believes as you do, that’s how they will come.

Their border actually has a lot of different environments from swampy in the south to mountainous in the north. Also, it wasn’t trench warfare, it was WWIII-Europe tactics, which was why we were supporting Saddam at the time. For being no maneuver room, the front certainly went back and forth into both countries a lot.

Plus you make it sound like it’s easy to redeploy troops. It took over a month to choose and move the striker force into Baghdad. It also required extending that forces’ deployment in Iraq. War isn’t as easy as it’s being made to sound here (on both sides of the discussion).

Posted August 8, 2006 4:00 PM by Steve Buchheit

Speaking as one of those soldiers Graydon is talking about being both replaced, and outflanked, I think him wrong.

First, the actual use of such troops to impose order would be more widely resisted than most people think (there are a lot of non-authoritarian types who have guns, and training; which is less important than usually supposed).

Second, the scope the National Guard (which does have access to medium, as well as heavy weapons... some of us even know where the ammo for said heavy weapons is).

Third, I think a less than small scale uprising would be the result of the use of such troops to suppress a minor one. I don't think the populace would see it as they saw Shay's and the Whiskey rebellions.

Heavy weapons (tanks, helicopters, artillery) are overrated. A semi-skilled force can make their lives difficult. A moderately trained force can neutralise them.

The general level of morale (at least in the units I have been able to spend time with, which is more than most Guardsmen get because I get to more widescale excercises than most) is iffy.

More to the point, Mercenaries have a weakness, they fight for pay. To be more specific, they kill for pay. They are usually less than willing to die for it.

A real resistance (one which is widespread, or deep, or skilled) tends to make it harder to recruit new mercenaries, even if the captain is willing to try and keep the contract. What more often happens (or did, in the age of the condittieri) was mutiny when faced with a campaign of poor odds (individual battles were different, and some groups made a reputation of fighting with utter devotion; thought it is to be noted this was something done with parts, not the whole; see the Scots Guards of the King of France, or the, still extant, Swiss at the Vatican).

No, what I see as more likely (and more terrifying) is that a slow erosion of the liberties of the people continues, until they forget what it was to be free.

At which point the Army can be used to keep order.

Posted August 8, 2006 4:06 PM by Terry Karney

Are we feeling reasonably confident that the Bush-Cheney crew wouldn't just write off thousands or tens of thousands of soldiers? It would, after all, be the thing to do for the sort of CEO they like being - the units failed, the units are no longer of interest, anyone who makes a fuss about the units which are no longer of interest is distracting the management, distracting the management is unpatriotic, unpatriotic people exist in peace and quiet only at the management's discretion.

I could believe that Bush & Cheney might personally be capable of writing them off (Cheney more than Bush). But losing tens of thousands of troops without achieving a clear victory -- or losing wars in general -- is one of the very best ways to get voted out of office. (And while neither Bush nor Cheney is concerned with re-election, the Republicans in general certainly are.)

Posted August 8, 2006 4:14 PM by Peter Erwin

I find it somewhat curious that no one has offered a plausible reason for Syria (or even more outlandishly, Jordan) to intervene, other than a kind of "they'll get dragged in" hand-waving. I'd assume the Syrian government is very leery about stirring things up that might rebound on them (e.g., ending up either fighting against or promoting the sorts of Islamist radicals who have tried to bring down the Syrian government.)

(Not to mention the fact that Syria is rather vulnerable to air attack from the Mediterranean.)

Posted August 8, 2006 4:26 PM by Peter Erwin

Syria is already involved providing passage for foreign fighters. They could also feel it's in their best interests to attack before the US attacks them directly, contribute to a defeat of US forces in the middle east, demoralizing the US populace ending with only minor retalatory strikes by the US (the Administration talking about Syria being a possible depository of of Saddam's WMDs, Bathists in Syria, all the sabre rattling which has diminished since Syria left Lebanon, and the example of the Marines barracks in Beriut). If Iran took a larger role in the war, they might also force Syria into action.

Right now Syria is trying to leverage the Israeli-Hezbolla conflict into a greater role and power in the region. If they felt the US was going to by-pass them, they would loose their major reason for not getting involved to a greater degree in Iraq.

They might also feel a need to support their Sunni brothers (need to check to make sure Syria is majority Sunni, I think so but it's been awhile since I looked), who are woefully outnumbered in Iraq.

Jordan gets a lot of money by trucking into Iraq (food, medicine, etc) and exporting Iraqi oil. A destabilization might force the young king into a rash act to secure his own rule.

Posted August 8, 2006 4:47 PM by Steve Buchheit

Syria is already involved providing passage for foreign fighters. They could also feel it's in their best interests to attack before the US attacks them directly, contribute to a defeat of US forces in the middle east, demoralizing the US populace ending with only minor retalatory strikes by the US (the Administration talking about Syria being a possible depository of of Saddam's WMDs, Bathists in Syria, all the sabre rattling which has diminished since Syria left Lebanon, and the example of the Marines barracks in Beriut). If Iran took a larger role in the war, they might also force Syria into action.

There's kind of a difference between "providing passage for foreign fighters" (which can be as simple as not policing your borders as hard as you possibly could) and "sending in your army."

Right now Syria is trying to leverage the Israeli-Hezbolla conflict into a greater role and power in the region. If they felt the US was going to by-pass them, they would loose their major reason for not getting involved to a greater degree in Iraq.

No, they're trying to recover lost ground and influence in Lebanon, which is where they've traditionally had power, and where they can plausibly have power. (Lebanon is much smaller than Syria and has one-fifth the population; Iraq is much larger and has more people than Syria.) And they're worried about what the Israelis might do next. (Another reason for Syria not to intervene in Iraq: any armies sent into Iraq are being sent away from the border with Israel.)

They might also feel a need to support their Sunni brothers (need to check to make sure Syria is majority Sunni, I think so but it's been awhile since I looked), who are woefully outnumbered in Iraq.

Yes, Syria is majority Sunni (about 75%, I think). But the regime is secular -- Ba'ath Party, remember? -- and moreover is dominated by Alawites, who are viewed as not being real Muslims by many Sunnis (and Shi'ites), and the regime has twice been threatened by fundamentalist Sunnis (in the early 1980s and again right now). One of the last things the Syrian government wants to do is promote Sunni fundamentalists right next door. Consider this quote from an article in a Cairo newspaper:

The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 played an important role in reviving Syrian militant Islam. True, Syria did turn a blind eye to those who crossed the border to fight in Iraq in 2003, but it soon corrected this policy, seeing that when fighters were defeated or deported back to Syria, a combination of frustration, anger and despair took over in them. Unable to strike at the Americans in Iraq, or the Israelis in Palestine, they unleashed their anger on their fellow Syrians.

Posted August 8, 2006 5:45 PM by Peter Erwin

John, Greg: Honestly, if a popular uprising were to be sustained, the troops are fucked.

The, "simple" act of pulling the troops into a defensive lager would be expensive materiel. Fact, the 3ID stop in place, during the drive on Baghdad, was planned. The time it spent in place was not. The reason? They were out of supply.

Besieged, in the desert, with no fuel... it's just a matter of time. SAMs will take out some of the supplies. Those supplies have a long way to go.

And holding that perimeter (ignoring the difficulties in building a berm, the idea that ArcLights can dig a moat is far-fetched, at the least), is going to be exhausting. The frontage is vast (even assuming it's ten-miles around you are talking, not ten miles across) and covering it is going to be thin.

Which is going to wear out the troops.

As will the squalor of be besieged. No water, field sanitation will be limited, disease is likely. Add heat (assuming a summer attack, though in the winter we have the thrill of mud) and the fatality rate for wounds will go up (because absent fuel, there will be damn all heat for AC, and that means shelter will be at a premium).

Do I think all of 130,000 troops will be killed? No.

Do I think it might get to as high as 20-30,000? Yes. That will have some effect on the way the army is built, trained, and (in future) used.

When the troops pull into those cantons, they will have damn all for artillery ammo, and not much more than the basic load for the tanks. Small arms might be a bit better, if they think to sacrifice all comfort items for bullets and grenades, but even that is going to be expended pretty damned fast, should there be any real probing of the lines, much less a real attempt to break them.

The problem of defending such a laager, is twofold; the location is known, and the commander has to defend every point along the line. A breach, no matter how small, is fatal.

It would be battles of attrition. If the Iraqis wan't to make it so, the only option would be surrender. Nothing requires them to attack all of them at once, and wiping one out would show how it could be done.

But the more likely attack would be to just mass a group of hostiles in some city, and co-ordinate an attack. Ambush a patrol, then ambush the relief, then attack the rest of the Americans in the area where they hunker down to ride it out.

The assault on the Governor's Palace which led to the questions of the writer's authenticity here, what two years ago, show how those battle would play out. Just make it citywide, and thus reduce the ability to ressuply the troops. By all reports they were down to last mags, at least once.

It could get that ugly on a wider scale.

Posted August 8, 2006 5:47 PM by Terry Karney

Honestly, if a popular uprising were to be sustained, the troops are fucked. ... Do I think all of 130,000 troops will be killed? No. Do I think it might get to as high as 20-30,000? Yes.

I agree with the fked-ness of such a situation. I believe, however, that the discussion was total annhilation of all American troops in Iraq.

And the moat comment, well, I didn't possess a literary license for that metaphor, so I apologize.

Whether a popular uprising as you describe could happen, I'm not sure. Certainly Steven Green incidents don't help. The Boston massacre wasn't nearly as barbaric, but it became the cause celebre for the revolution. I think if things go from bad to worse, it likely won't be a planned widespread attack, it will be something oportunistic, like Black Hawk Down times ten. A lot of our guys get killed, and the american public demands we pull out.

Then it's Nixon's secret plan: Iraqification
followed by a Christmas Bombing,
and helicopters evacuating the embassy.

That seems like a not-improbable end to this nightmare. Which is depressing enough as it is.

Posted August 8, 2006 6:11 PM by Greg London

Well, I'm not ignoring Iran crossing the Persian Gulf to invade Kuwait; I recognize that the USN would make bloody hash of the few capable warships the Iranian Navy has shortly after they left their harbors.

Now, if Syria improbably decided to counterinvade Iraq to help drive out the US invaders, unless they just send in men on foot there will be vehicles in that desert. Lots of them, meaning lots of targets for air strikes. Not only they too will have logistic problems, compounded by the USAF and USN planes flying at will over their columns. They'll quickly find out what happens when your side doesn't control the airspace.

Same with Iran. If they want to try and advance into Iraq, they'd better do it pretty damn quickly, because their supply lines are even more vulnerable than Syria's given the proximity of air and naval bases to them.

I don't see either nation sticking their noses into this fight, even if Iraq turns into a bloody civil war (which it appears they are on the way to).

Posted August 8, 2006 7:09 PM by John

What has happened to the 'nuke Tehran' option that was being mooted earlier this summer by Krauthammer et al? I have the feeling that it might be taken up by the Shrub administration in the hope that this would dry up Iranian support for Hizballah and Iraqi Shi'a. Someone please tell me I'm wrong.

Posted August 8, 2006 8:03 PM by Fragano Ledgister

I wonder, is the Anabasis required reading these days at the War College?

Claude Muncy, if the Anabasis is the text I know as "The Retreat Up-country," I believe you will find it in the library of all of the US military colleges. Whether it is still being actively taught, I do not know. (If it isn't, it should be.)

Just to be picky to the best of my knowledge the version at Carlisle is:
The Persian expedition / Translated by Rex Warner. With an introd. and notes by George Cawkwell.

I don't think it's taught, though it may be. Rather I suppose, I may be wrong, that Xenophon is assumed. Related reading includes:

Anderson, John Kinloch. Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.

aand many others -

The US Army War College seems to emphasize more recent works in the current curriculum at the War College. Books the students may not be familiar with.

I think, I may be completely wrong, that the various reading lists for the various services are intended to pick up the classics outside formal classrooms. Of course there are different reading lists for different interests -
every Marine will have read The Defense of Duffer’s Drift by E.D. Swinton but only Gunnery Sergeants are required to read Breakout [Chosin] by Martin Russ. One Marine division, lots of opposition. Korea, not Vietnam, was the last time U.S. forces were not only beaten but mauled (NOT decimated) in standup combat.

Curiously enough the Marines are ordered to read a book that details how the Army got the Marines into a mess at Chosin and how the Marines got themselves out. The Army is tasked to read how the unheralded sacrifices of an Army Regimental Combat Team saved the Marines.

Dr. Pournelle has some interesting references on the sacrifices of the artillery in Korea generally as well.

Given View from A Broad and her experience, combined with everything else reported, I suppose that, rather like the Indian Mutiny, anybody outside the wire and without heavy weapons support might be killed in one night+/-. Notice the large number of folks in a police role and without training and equipment, and especially permission from the Air Force, to call for air support. I don't know what heavy weapons are available and I'm sure nobody has fired settling shots and such. Notice though the night vision devices and optical gun sights now so common among American troops - can't run out of batteries. Even the M2 - 50 Browning commonly have Eotech or some sort of optical sight and blinding flashlights attached.

Just the same I'd suggest if anybody wants a Vietnam analogy - and it was the U.S. who lost in 1975 but it wasn't the U.S. forces - I'd pick Hue - early success followed by massive casualties among any uprising. In the circumstances of 5 digit casualty reports I'd expect things like the current Pacific Rim to be available for surge to Iraq. We saw 30 days + to simply move a few Apache from Germany to the former Yugoslavia and I'm sure a great many American weaknesses would be exposed. Whatever miracle might be required for supply I'd expect enough material to move to keep the American forces fighting.

I'm sure today's National Command Authority in the United States would react with all the accustomed ignorance and stupidity. Perhaps neither quickly nor wisely but I'd suggest there are enough emergency options - pull commercial 747's, load them with water and ammunition and fly them one way - plenty of planes in the Mojave to keep that up for a long time - short strips followed by runaway truck ramps work just fine if you don't plan to reuse the airplane.

For an analogy of the effect on the military and on the United States of America I'd look at France after Vietnam and Algeria and Portugal after Angola - governments were remade.

Taking a more pessimistic longterm than I really believe possible - I'd expect the, maybe former E3-E6, mercenary trainers mentioned above to be the leaders of the resistance - at least the ones I knew - think Randy Weaver not Mitch Werbel as corporate tool.

Posted August 8, 2006 8:04 PM by Clark E Myers

So what's the solution? What's the best possible outcome in Iraq at this point, and what, if anything, can the U.S. do to make that happen?

Seems to me that there are four options available:

1. Pull out. Now. That's the option the Republicans are ridiculing as "cut and run." Declare victory and go home. Forget promises to have the troops home by Christmas--get 'em home by Labor Day.

1a. Keep the bases in Iraq, but forget about stabilizing the country. We're using Iraq as a platform for possible future military operations in the region, we have no hopes of stabilizing the country.

2. The current, stated strategy: We stand down as the Iraqi army stands up.

3. Full, all-out commitment to fulfilling the initial, stated mission of bringing a free, peaceful democratic society to Iraq, and we do whatever it takes to bring that about. How many troops do we currently have there, 135,000? How many will it take to bring about the desired outcome? 270,000? 500,000? 1 million? We commit whatever it takes.

So which of those options--or what other options--should we proceed with?

I suspect, cynically, is that the most likely option at this point is that we'll find some likely strongman, back him up with the troops and materiel he needs to conquer the country, and then we declare that option #3 has been achieved and go home. Our chosen strongman will be a brutal thug, just like Saddam, but he'll be our brutal thug, and we'll claim he's actually the country's freedom-loving democratic leader. Thus we'll manage to postpone facing the problem for 30 years or so.

Posted August 8, 2006 8:46 PM by Mitch Wagner

What has happened to the 'nuke Tehran' option that was being mooted earlier this summer by Krauthammer et al? I have the feeling that it might be taken up by the Shrub administration in the hope that this would dry up Iranian support for Hizballah and Iraqi Shi'a. Someone please tell me I'm wrong.

I think that was overruled when The Senator From Standard Oil's heirs objected. End Times or no, Bush knows who's buttering his bread.

Posted August 8, 2006 9:15 PM by Josh Jasper

Josh Jasper: I sure as hell hope it has been overruled.

Posted August 8, 2006 9:26 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Our chosen strongman will be a brutal thug, just like Saddam, but he'll be our brutal thug....

Let's not forget that at one time Saddam was "our brutal thug."

I don't think that you can install democracy on the point of a bayonet, so however many troops it takes to fulfill our stated goals is exactly equal the number of troops it would take to teach cows to fly. Option 3 is an order to do the impossible.

1 and 1a work out to "Declare victory and get out" or "Wait ten years and 50,000 dead, then declare victory and get out." In either case what stays behind is an Islamic Republic that hates us, hates Israel, and funds international terrorism aimed at the West.

Option 2, we stand down as they stand up, gives us the worst deal. As we stand down, at some point comes the 21st century combination of the Indian Mutiny and the Retreat to Gandamak; we pull our survivors out leaving behind the Islamic Republic of Iraq (that hates us, hates Israel, etc.) or we go back in, hard and fast, pick up our 50,000 casualties through ten years of sniper attacks and car bombs, and create an Islamic Republic that hates us, etc. etc.

Posted August 8, 2006 9:33 PM by James D. Macdonald

John, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,787018,00.html
On the wargame "Millennium Challenge." The small OpFor Navy and missile batteries left a Marine Expeditionary Force and Carrier Group tattered and bleeding. That floatilla was larger than what we have there now. Iran has more Silkworms and other missiles, and at least one diesel sub (maybe old, but a torpedo in the right place will still ruin your day). Iran does a lot of shipping in the gulf, including really big oil tankers. Imagine one of those driven into a carrier. Not much would stop it. Cripple and set it ablaze early, yes. Once it would be at flank, other than sinking it to the bottom (it's own hazard in that region) not much is going to stop it. Best bet would be to board and take control, once you realized you were under attack.

Posted August 8, 2006 9:53 PM by Steve Buchheit

Seems to me there are more options entirely depending on granularity. Seems to me also that:

3. Full, all-out commitment to fulfilling the initial, stated mission of bringing a free, peaceful democratic society to Iraq, and we do whatever it takes to bring that about. How many troops do we currently have there, 135,000? How many will it take to bring about the desired outcome? 270,000? 500,000? 1 million? We commit whatever it takes.

This is not IMHO an option. Little here is an original thought of mine (many here will recognize some of my sources) but I join others in suggesting the United States of American can't change human nature, can't remake the world, can't do lots of things.

First Aside - In my view the cold war enemy, be it called communism or the USSR, has been every bit as evil as Hitler with the Axis and the USSR was much more dangerous to the United States and to the world. The United States sacrificed much of its best to win the cold war just as Great Britain and the Commonwealth sacrificed so much in other wars - as Churchill said England met every challenge rose to every occasion and yet in the end was not saved to continue as it had been (he was a Conservative in the end). Sacrificing the American Republic in the interests of a settled world order might be noble - something might then be done about Darfur and Robert Mugabe and global warming and Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and all the rest. Pax Romana had something to offer many who were citizens of Rome without being residents. A world in which the United States of America is a competent empire won't include a free, peaceful democratic society in Iraq - maybe in parts of Switzerland.

(aside for another forum I think Marxism always leads to Stalinism - Maoism always leads to the Cultural Revolution because Marxism has some truth to it at the level of the firm but not enough truth for a world view - but the best we can do however much better than Marxism is still very much incomplete)

That taking