| Ander Nieuws week 48 / nieuwe oorlog 2006 |
The Washington Post
November 20, 2006
By William M. Arkin
By now, it should be clear to everyone that the options being bandied about for what to do in Iraq are all about the limitations of the United States military.
As Tom Ricks reports today in The Post there may end up being a short-term buildup of forces. Some will insist on portraying this as a feasible push to "break the back" of the insurgency. More accurately though, it a set-up to justify (and screen) a new strategy that everyone else on Planet Earth will refer to as withdrawal.
In the crazy ways of Washington, ever since the election swept in a Democratic majority fueled by public displeasure with the Iraq war, the momentum in the hallowed halls has been building for an increase in U.S. military forces in Iraq.
It is the desire of the President and the Vice President. It is the proposal of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and many others. It is the secret compromise "hybrid" plan of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
For all of the calls for even greater increases in U.S. forces in Iraq, a significant increase would be impossible to sustain. As the theater commander Gen. John P. Abizaid told Congress last week, psychologically and bureaucratically, the budget, the personal lives of the soldiers and the institutions involved can't shoulder nor sustain any significant increase.
What we are thus left with is a recipe for failure. The numbers involved in an "increase" in U.S. forces - some 20,000 additional troops - will, in no way make any significant dent in the situation on the ground. What is more, it will just lead to a picture on the part of the bad guys that the United States is powerless and incompetent militarily, a view that no doubt will serve as a terrific recruiting tool in the future.
The reality of the American force deployment is that the U.S. military has far more than 140,000 soldiers and Marines committed to the Iraq effort. The force is augmented and supported by well over 30,000 contractors in country, as well as who knows how many additional thousands of Iraqis and "third country" nationals working for the U.S. military as drivers, in food service and other personnel and logistical tasks.
Outside Iraq, additional tens of thousands of U.S. service men and women are stationed in Kuwait, in Qatar, in Bahrain and the other Gulf states. Back in Europe and the United States, additional thousands of U.S. military communicators, information technology and intelligence technicians provide still more "reach back" support.
Even amongst the troops on the ground, well fewer than half of the 140,000 men and women are actually engaged in "combat." The longer U.S. forces have dug in, the more the demands of "sustainment" and force protection have resulted in growth of the "tail." In Pentagon-eze, those who are actually doing the fighting are called the "teeth" and those doing the supporting of those doing the fighting are called the "tail."
I don't know what the actual "tooth to tail" ratio is today, but I suspect it is huge. Someone has to operate the gyms, the internet cafes, provide the hot meals and hot water, the amenities that far too many in uniform expect and "require" at their bases. It is just a reality of U.S. military culture that the build-up (and the care and feeding of) the desk warriors and sustainers in the Green Zone, at Camp Victory at the old Saddam International Airport and at mega-bases like Balad is mightily responsible for the military failure on the ground.
They say that the Pentagon doesn't go anywhere with light luggage. We are seeing the product of this reality in spades in Iraq.
The danger is not just that the gigantic tail allows for fewer American bricks-a-building and guns-a-blazing, it also feeds a false picture out there of insurgent and terrorist victory. The insurgents and terrorists will believe that they have defeated 140,000 U.S. combat troops, that we have been defeated on the battlefield, not that we have defeated ourselves with our impossible military design and culture.
So, we can't increase. We can't stay. We can't go home.
No wonder all of the great military minds end up arguing - or at least end up explaining - that the only option is continuing the fight, muddling along. As Ricks reports today, that is why the "Go Long" hybrid option of shrinking the U.S. presence and shifting to more training and advisory efforts is increasingly seen as the only option.
As the Iraq Study Group and the Democratic Congress gets into the details of all of their fabulous "plans" to do this and that, the reality will hit them that the military is structured and accustomed to provide only one answer.
Here is the biggest failure of the Rumsfeld era: for all the claims of a more agile Army and a more expeditionary force, the U.S. armed forces remain a lumbering colossus, paralyzed by their own laws of supply and demands.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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