Classical Values :: Stretch Them To The Breaking Point

January 27, 2008

Stretch Them To The Breaking Point

Stretch them to the breaking point and then increase the pressure. Collapse will follow. In the early days of the siege of Richmond, Lee admitted that if Grant had been able to bring one or two more brigades to bear he would have been crushed as he had no reserves left.

It appears that this is what Bush has done in Iraq according to the Weekly Standard. It appears that Bush made one of the most audacious moves in civilian control of the Military since Lincoln appointed Relentless Grant to lead the Union Armies.

In September, Rumsfeld had rejected the idea of a surge when retired general Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army and a member of the advisory Defense Policy Review Board, met with him and Pace. Keane insisted the "train and leave" strategy, as Bush referred to it, was failing. He proposed a counterinsurgency strategy, the addition of five to eight Army brigades, and a primary focus on taking back Baghdad. Rumsfeld was unconvinced. But now, with Bush favoring a strategy nearly identical to Keane's, he didn't object. "Rumsfeld was never a lose guy," a Bush adviser said. "He always wanted to win."

With Bush's connivance, Cheney asked the chiefs a series of questions designed to ease their qualms about a surge. What would be the consequences of losing in Iraq? Was the Iraqi army capable of quelling the sectarian violence without substantial help from American troops?

The chiefs had real grievances to air, and they didn't hold back. Schoomaker cited the stress on combat forces from repeated tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. That, Bush told me, was "the main thing I remember from that meeting. That was clearly a factor in some of the people around the table's thinking . . . if you sustain our level, much less increase the level, you could, Mr. President, strain the force, which is an important consideration."

Bush agreed that strain was a problem. Then he delivered a sharp rejoinder, touching on a theme he returned to in nearly every meeting on Iraq. "The biggest strain on the force would be a defeat in Iraq," he said. Winning trumped strain. To alleviate the strain, the president committed to enlarging the Army by two divisions and increasing the size of the Marine Corps. The chiefs had two more complaints. The military, practically alone, was carrying the load in Iraq. Where were the civilians from the State Department and other agencies? Again, Bush agreed with their point. He promised to assign more civilians to Iraq. (The number of provincial reconstruction teams was soon doubled.)

Their final problem was the unreliability of Iraq's Shia government and army. Would Iraqi forces show up and do their part in the surge? And would they act in a non-sectarian manner, treating Sunnis the same as Shia? Bush said he'd get a public commitment on both counts from Maliki before making a final decision on the surge. And he did.

The article goes into General Petraeus' call for more brigades. The initial plan called for a one or two brigade surge. Petraeus asked for 5 brigades and got them.

On top of that Congress voted to increase the size of the military. The Democrat controlled Congress. Obviously it is never wise to come up short of divisions in wartime. It could adversely affect re-election prospects. Even of Democrats.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

posted by Simon on 01.27.08 at 02:42 PM

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Comments

You would think that coming up a couple of divisions short would matter and get talked about, no? Strangely enough, the US was in that exact, same position in Afghanistan right after 9/11 as not only were two divisions not up to snuff, having fallen to their lowest readiness status by neglect from the President and Congress, but one of them is *custom made* for the Afghan environment and climate: 10th Mountain Division or 10MD. They could *not* be deployed as they were still undergoing refit, personnel changes and ensuring that the entire division was recovering due to 'peace keeping' stays in Bosnia that stretched out far too long and were repeated far too often. Almost all of Afghanistan is elevated terrain and most of the major fighting to dislodge groups takes place in mountainous terrain, which 10MD is perfectly suited to do.

Unless you actually spend time learning about Mountain Warfare, the actual meaning of 'showing up at the lowest readiness since Vietnam' doesn't get across the true scale of the problem. MW units (Alpini/Jaeger/etc.) undergo at least one full year of training for stamina at high altituted plus seasonal survival, so as to operate in such terrain winter or summer. Described as 'light infantry' they typically punch way above their weight class, with Canadian small MW forces able to hold off Panzer divisions in WWII and Yugoslav MW Partisans being able to joust with AlpenKorps and still tie up armored units in the Balkans during that conflict. On flat terrain that stamina makes these troops highly confident and those Canadian MW troops fought on flat terrain... likewise AlpenKorps were able to thwart at least on Soviet armored thrust during WWII, and the MW to MW conflict in northern Italy remains a classic small forces battle that large forces would have been slaughtered trying to perform.

But no one *talked* about that in 1999 or during 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and so far in this election season. That is part of the reason the 'light footprint' was *necessary* with one Army Division only recently reaching full readiness and 10MD getting split between Afghanistan and Iraq, there were no other ready troops to allow a 'rotation schedule' with a larger force. That force was paid for in the 1990's.

Perhaps we remember the 'peace dividend'? Forces cut to smaller size and readiness allowed to go to hell? When Sen. McCain wrote a book containing the grand idea that 1/3 of the armed forces should be 'unready to fight' at any given time? If those decisions had political ramifications this field of candidates would be highly altered as well as the composition of the Congressional elections that were about those individuals that allowed such things to happen on their watch.

Coming up a couple of divisions short?

BTDTGTTS.

We are damned lucky to have one of the highest re-enlistment rates *ever* to let us keep combat veterans who know their profession inside and out, so as to work well at defending the Nation. They show more faith in the Nation than we show gratitude towards them for doing such harsh work. But that requires that we, as a people, show gratitude to them for doing such hard work even, and especially, if you *disagree with the job itself*.

ajacksonian · January 30, 2008 08:42 AM

aj,

America always cuts its forces in peacetime beyond what is prudent. It is a recurring theme.

In any case the Army is set to get 2 more divisions and the Marines a couple of brigades.

M. Simon · January 30, 2008 09:43 AM