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Wednesday, September 08, 2004
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A THOUSAND CROSSES DEEP
Yesterday marked the 1,000th death of an American soldier since the commencement of hostilities in Iraq on March 19, 2003. While I grieve for the families of those who died in the conflict, one should keep in mind that, for a military commitment of this size, a thousand combat fatalities is shockingly low. In the summer of 2002, when it became clear to me that a war was indeed going to be waged in the Middle East, I discussed with friends in California what a potential conflict might look like. My prediction was that the war would be a single front assault from the south (which turned out to be the case), and that as many as three to possibly ten thousand American and British forces would lose their lives before the regime would fall. I also predicted the limited use of chemical weapons on the invasion force, in that Saddam must have known that this war was designed to depose him and there would be no reason for restraint on his part. In the last two predictions, I was quite happily wrong.
As it happened, Iraqi forces, including those of the Republican Guard, simply evaporated shortly following the fall of Basra. Baghdad was only marginally defended and the regime was deposed with fewer than 300 coalition casualties. It was a stunning victory by anyone's scorecard.
The remaining 700 fatalities are due almost entirely by political, rather than military decisions.
President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld, we now know, decided on entering Iraq with the smallest invasion force possible. This decision was in part strategic, a reflection of Rumsfeld's belief in "flexible force projection." This was successful beyond anyone's reckoning. But there was a political calculation at work. A large invasion force might have given the public the expectation of large scale casualties and might have damaged support for the use of force authorization vote in Congress. In both the strategic and political gambles, the administration won.
The problems came after "active combat" ended. There are circumstances where a small invasion force can prevail. The days of the 3:1 rule (where an invader must outnumber a defenders forces by a ratio of 3 to 1 to ensure victory) are long over. Also over are the days of the 10% rule (where 10% of a combat force will be killed in the field.)
But occupation is very different in nature from invasion. Under no circumstances is a small highly mobile offensive force designed to occupy a nation of 25 million potentially hostile civilians. Added to this is the fact that most of the regular Iraqi army and Republican Guard forces disappeared with their weapons during the combat phase of the war. One should have immediately assumed that they would have regrouped as a guerilla insurgency force. The neo-conservatives in the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice-President instead said publicly that US forces would be welcomed as "liberators" and "greeted with roses."
Vice President Cheney in particular held up the occupation of Germany and Japan as models for the Iraq occupation. Unfortunately, there are significant differences between 1945 and 2003. The civilian populations of the Axis powers were literally exhausted by years of targeted carpet bombing of city centers. As horrible as the war must have been for the citizens of Baghdad, at least there was a Baghdad after the war. The same cannot be said for Tokyo and Dreden. Nothing will demoralize a population into submission like destroying everything around them with impunity for years on end.
The military circumstances were very different as well. The Axis forces, particularly those of Germany could not have reverted into an insurgency force, because there was no German army left. The war, specifically on the Eastern front had so eaten away at the Nazis, that by the time the Red Army reached Berlin, the city was being defended by boys under 15 and men over 60. Without sodiers and weapons, an insurgency force is nearly impossible to create. After the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was no popular support for any resistance at all in Japan.
The problem of a very small occupation force facing a highly equipped and trained guerilla force was compounded by the immediate dissolution of the remaining Iraqi regular army units and local police forces by the Coalition Provisional Authority. While this may have had some immediate political benefits, due to the complicity of both groups in atrocities against the Iraqi people, it was strategically disastrous. I agree that a de-Ba'athification, or purge, of the upper echelons of the military and police would have been necessary. But for regular soldiers and police to lose their livelihoods and means of providing for their families may have only served to create more insurgents.
Disbanding the local authorities also put an American face on the occupation. If there were functioning Iraqi law enforcement, closely supervised by the CPA, American forces could have quickly withdrawn from the cities. Should there have a been a total breakdown in order, or even a localized incident, US forces could have quickly responded. Instead, they serve as a stationary target in city centers across Iraq. And every strike against them kills more Iraqis than it does Americans. This seems to have fuelled more popular resentment against the occupation than against the insurgents, particularly in the Shi'a centers of the country.
As I've noted here several times before, I supported this war. I still do, even in the absence of WMD or al-Qeada ties. Saddam's very presence was a destabilizing force in the Middle East. The political will to maintain the United Nations sanctions was deteriorating monthly. Were Saddam Hussien freed of the sanctions, there is little doubt that he would be an avid shopper in the international arms market. And everything in his history indicates that he would begin yet another war with his neighbors. If Iraq were to attack Kuwait, the United States have little choice but to wage another war, this one against a more heavily mechanized enemy than ever before. Regardless of the oratory of the Democratic Party, this was the right war at the right time.
It has been said of the Vietnam War that many American deaths were not attributable to military decisions in Saigon, or even strategic decisions in Hanoi, but political decisions in Washington. That this may have happened in the aftermath of the Iraq War is even more tragic than the war itself. The war was won by brilliant military strategies. However, nearly 700 Americans may have lost their lives due to bad political ones. And that may be the ultimate tragedy of this war.
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