Baker to the rescue.-
Stratford
Having learned from Vietnam that constantly rotating individuals into units for one-year tours undermines unit cohesion, the Army shifted to rotating entire divisions into and out of Iraq after roughly one year. Had the conflict ended in two years, that might have worked. But it now has been more than three years and divisions are doing their second tours, mobilizing Reserve and National Guard units as they go. Consider this example: The 1st Cavalry Division is now deploying on its second tour to take control of the Baghdad region from the 4th Infantry Division. For the coming year, the 1st Cav is going to be locked down in Iraq, but the 4th ID will not be available for operations elsewhere. Upon arriving back in the United States, they will need to rest, repair and integrate new equipment and integrate new recruits to replace veterans leaving the Army. The 4th ID will not be available to deploy anywhere for many months. In effect, for every division in Iraq, one division is being overhauled. Add to this the weakness in the Reserves and National Guard and the phrase "the force is broken" begins to make sense.
In other words, Iraq is eating up U.S. geopolitical options by eating up the Army. This is the first major, extended ground war the United States has fought in a century without dramatically increasing the size of the Army. World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam all brought massive increases in military size, mostly through conscription. The Bush administration did not view Iraq as a potentially multi-year, multi-divisional combat operation. It maintained the force roughly as it started, and now that force is broken.
It now is becoming clear that the administration understands this.
More important is the second thing: James Baker, a former secretary of state and a close adviser for both President Bushes, has been chairing a genuinely bipartisan committee called the Iraq Study Group (ISG), which has been conducting a bottom-up review of the war. Over the weekend, Baker spoke to the media, hinting at the parameters of the recommendations the ISG will make once the elections have been held. He made it clear that a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq is impossible, since that would create a massive vacuum in which Iran and Syria would move. At the same time, he made it clear that the country will have to adopt a new strategy.
At the center of the problem is the fact that the United States has been trying to create a coherent government in Baghdad that is made up of hostile and competing parties. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps have been given the assignment of creating a secure environment in which this can be accomplished. To do this, they must suppress the militias and insurgent groups that want to block the political process. The United States has been trying to do this militarily since the summer of 2003. Its forces have failed for a host of reasons -- ranging from the number of troops, the quality of intelligence, the impossibility of engaging combatants while simultaneously protecting noncombatants (who are themselves frequently hostile to U.S. forces), and so on.
So long as the United States continues to regard suppression of militias and insurgents as the precondition for creating a government -- and the creation of such a government remains the strategic goal of the United States -- the Army and Marine Corps will continue to be sucked up by Iraq, and countries like North Korea will be free to maneuver. Therefore, it follows that the ISG either will recommend that the administration abandon its goal of creating a unified government in Iraq or that the establishment of such a government should not depend on the United States creating a secure environment.
In short, we expect the ISG to recommend that the mission of U.S. forces be shifted away from responsibility for day-to-day security, allowing the United States to act instead as a general guarantor of Iraq's independence from Iranian control, and as a block against the expansion of Iranian power in the Arabian Peninsula. This would mean a withdrawal of U.S. forces from populated areas to enclaves that are close to the cities, and to the south and west of the Euphrates River. It has been suggested by some that U.S. forces be based primarily in northern Iraq, but this would depend on Turkey's willingness to allow the force to be supplied through Turkish ports, which is far from certain. |
