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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NickSE who wrote (9393)	9/25/2003 1:08:42 PM
From: Rollcast...	Respond to of 793759

The Debate Over More Troops for Iraq: Misleading Arguments orbat.com Ravi Rikhye In arguing against sending more troops to Iraq, proponents of the Less if More School point to Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Vietnam, they say that the US did not focus enough on providing security and on gathering intelligence. This would have vastly reduced both the number of US troops required, and the immense damage caused to the people and country because of the massive sweeps so beloved of American generals. Look at Afghanistan in contrast to Vietnam. A handful of American and NATO troops is inside the country. The operating pattern is to use intelligence to locate the Taliban, and then dispatch them with minimum use of US troops. Even the dimmest of analysts can see that America fought Vietnam all wrong. American commanders had little idea of where the enemy was, so they mounted a constant series of operations, lumbering around in the jungle day after day, saying to the enemy “hit me so I can see you” until the enemy reacted, and then the big battalions moved in, backed by the even bigger airpower. The result of American tactics was a charnel house with very high American losses and mind-boggling communist losses. Today the media gets spooked by 10 killed in a week in Iraq, there were weeks in Vietnam where 500 killed was merely an occasion to say “heavy fighting”. Anyone who was old enough to watch TV during the period knows of the horrible suffering the civilians, caught between the two sides, went through. Today if 10 innocents are killed, it’s a bad week. So clearly better security and intelligence were needed. At the same time, the paradoxical thing about Vietnam is that it was two wars: an insurgency and a conventional war. With a crack NVA regiment bearing down on your village, it would be a bit absurd to pin your hopes on village security and better intelligence. You’d have no choice but to fly in your battalion- and brigade-sized reaction forces and unleash the A-1s, A-4s, A-7s, F-4s, F-105s, and B-52s. You’d have still have needed hundreds of thousands of troops and taken hundreds of thousands of casualties. It would undoubtedly have been more economical of manpower and life, but you’d still have used immense numbers. In Afghanistan, it is true we see perhaps 9,000+ American troops and perhaps 4500 NATO troops, and it seems that basically a Taliban has only to pop out of his rate hole and it is killed. We know the US spends a great deal of time and some money to gather intelligence, and the intelligence of great help in keeping down the scum. Marvelous. Unfortunately, there are two problems with this thesis. Security in Afghanistan is being assured not by 14,000 foreign troops, but by hundreds of thousands of men in warlord militias and a growing Afghan National Army. And – this important – the Afghans don’t have the same sense of whining entitlement that the Iraqis display. They are dirt poor, never had anything, and don’t complain much because they have nothing now. The urban Iraqis, on the other hand, are used to a middle-class sort of existence, attenuated as it may be because of Saddam’s misrule and UN sanctions. You wont have the average Afghani worrying about his hijacked car or lack of power – he did not have either to begin with. Given the expectations of the two peoples are quite different, the need for a much higher level of security in Iraq is obvious. Have many people wondered why American troops have not been attacked in the Balkans despite an occupation that began 8 years ago? Its not because the Balkans lack nationalism or terrorism – they have plenty of both. It’s because Western troops are present in such overwhelming numbers that even the dimmest resistant can see there is no chance of driving them out. Considered in that light, there are far too few Americans in Iraq. The Sunni Triangle is being held by three divisions and three brigades. The rest of Iraq is of less concern. Getting more non-American troops into Iraq is important, but it won’t solve the Sunni Triangle problem: no country is going to agree to go in there. The 101st Airmobile Division must remain in Kurdish country: the region, and the issues, are too sensitive and too complex for anyone else to handle them. You can argue the number of reinforcements needed: I’d prefer to err on the side of caution. My recommendation is call up the reserves and send the 7th Infantry and 24th Mechanized Divisions – now in cadre form – to Iraq, plus 3-6 additional independent brigades [or as the Americans call them, separate brigades]. It’s absolutely futile to spend $1 billion a week – a sum that could pay for 2-million unemployed Americans to work on public service projects, commit 180,000 troops including those in Kuwait, and risk losing the critical first battles of the new Hundred Year War because a country of 300 million people wont send over an additional 75,000 troops. We know from the Balkans overwhelming force works. Americans have gotten to where they are in the world by doing what’s needed to do the job right, not by endlessly rationalizing themselves out of hard realities. Its time to face the realities in Iraq.