| Friday,
March 28, 2003
I have this from several sources, but nothing direct:
When in England at a fairly large conference,
Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for
Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.
He answered by saying that, "Over the
years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women
into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount
of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did
not return."
It became very quiet in the room.
This morning during the briefing I made two notes.
Secretary Rumsfeld pointed out that the 100 hour war took place after
38 days of air war bombardment. General Meyer added that this time we had
moved quickly into Iraq itself, with an entirely different war plan. Asked
why we did that, he said "Because we could."
The answer was made humorously but it wasn't flippant. Had we begun
with 38 days of bombardment, what would have happened?
First, there would have been a lot of destruction. There would have
been a lot of dead conscripts in the desert.
Second, there would have been daily cries to stop, "missions"
and emissaries to Baghdad, UN Security Council meetings, and a constant
media blitz, not on the progress of the war, but on "Stop the
madness."
Finally, when it was done, we would have had 95 degree heat, more
sandstorms, and our forces would have moved several hundred miles in a few
days with under 100 US casualties. Add to those the casualties from 38
days of air war, which would not have been zero.
At the end of 45 day we would have had:
- Our forces about where they are now.
- A lot more destroyed infrastructure.
- A lot more dead Iraqis.
- A lot more pictures of dead Iraqis
- A lot more discussion of dead Iraqis
- About the same number of US casualties, mostly to aircraft accidents
and general traffic.
Is there a flaw in that analysis? I admit to being distracted. But it
does seem to me that we have moved about as far and as fast as it is
possible to go.
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. In our case a major
part of the battle plan was upset by the Turks. We needed the 4th in the
north. Despite that, half the country is in our hands, the oil fields will
be productive within months if not sooner, and the cradle of Arab power
has been taken. With under 100 casualties on our side, and probably under
2,000 on theirs. I do not think of another precedent.
"Not the enemy we wargamed against" is an unfortunate, if
absolutely true, statement...
"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." I have n0w
been hearing that from senior US officers. I do not recall it ever being
used before in the US.
The best way out is still the establishment of a reasonably democratic
regime friendly to the US in particular and the West in general. Can that
be done?
A well known writer, former colonel, says
"It's like Viet Nam, where they tried to fight the wrong kind of war,
and it wasn't until Abrams got there and we stopped trying to fight the
last war..."
No, Colonel, it's not. First, none of the senior commanders here were
in WW II, and not all that many were in Viet Nam. For that matter, the
Viet Nam war was not a guerrilla war after Tet, and treating it like one
was a drastic mistake.
Viet Nam ended when we stabilized the area, and in 1972 an army of
150,000 marched south. That army had more armor than the Wehrmacht in the
biggest battles of WW II. That army was defeated by ARVN, aided by US Air
power, with fewer than 500 US casualties. That is a great victory. A great
victory that no one pays any attention to. But note that it was the defeat
of an invading army, armed with armor and artillery, fighting a relatively
"conventional war".
The Iraqi war is against a well armed conventional power with a lot of
armor, some artillery, and not a lot of air power. They are aided by
"guerrilla" fighters who can harass and delay, but who can't
make much actual difference in the outcome. Changing tactics to deal with
those is either trivial or a vast mistake: that is, changing our
deployment to deal with irregulars would be a very stupid thing to do, and
the fact that a former colonel who now has out a new book "hears
directly from the grunts on the ground and they are not saying what the
brass is saying" -- a nearly direct quote as I heard him on the radio
a few minutes ago -- is interesting, but irrelevant. Allowing the grand
tactics of a war to be decided on the basis of some phone calls from
junior troops on the ground to a retired colonel is the kind of stuff one
might find in a bad novel, but it's not realistic.
There has never been a war in which the commanders had better
information; and that information is that we have fewer than 100
casualties, many of those from accidents and our own weapons; the friction
is about what was expected; we have adjusted to the non-deployment of our
best division, but now we have it to deploy; and I doubt that junior
officers or senior NCO's already in the field are the right people to tell
us where it should be deployed.
And changing our tactics to deal with irregulars when there are fully
armed enemy divisions not yet defeated would be a very stupid thing to do.
Since I don't think the colonel is stupid, I do think he badly misstated
his position; and he probably ought to correct that.
We do not seem to be caught in a "quagmire". We do not seem
to be in a battalion a day, or a company a day, or a platoon a day, or
even a section a day meatgrinder. We do seem to be taking large amounts of
territory, and we do need to consolidate our supply lines, and I much
doubt that General Franks and his people are unaware of any of this.
Are we there yet?
A SARS Alert
Here in Ontario we had broadcasting interrupted to
show President Bush And Prime Minister Blair talking in Camp David. They
then interrupted President Bush's speech to go to the Ontario Minister of
Health ordering everyone who had visited a particular hospital since 16
March to stay in their houses for 10 days and wear masks when in contact
with others in their houses. One person is openly defying this order
because he needs to keep working at his company - of all things a courier
business. Customs agents at airports are now being given the option to
wear masks and gloves.
Stephen Hart
And now an important announcement:
Subject: Microsoft abandons NT4.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/29985.html
Roland Dobbins
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