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Pentagon says too MANY troops took part in Iraq operation

From think-tank analysts to angry retired generals to Capitol Hill lawmakers, it has become nearly universal conventional wisdom that the U.S. invasion force that conquered Iraq in 2003 lacked the manpower to secure the country after Saddams fall.

But the Pentagons civilian policymakers have learned a much different lesson. According to a senior civilian who played a crucial role in developing the just-released Quadrennial Defense Review, the problem with Operation Iraqi Freedom was not too few U.S. troops, but too many.

You could have adopted a radically different concept of operations, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. You could have trained free forces in various parts of Iraq and over time they could have gained greater control of the country.

Weve heard a lot of calls with people saying they would like to have seen a much larger force, especially for stability tasks. ... What is in some ways just as interesting is what if we had gone in with a much smaller force, but from the get-go leveraged the capabilities of the Iraqis?

IIUC that was the original idea, but then Congress got involved and vetoed the use of Chalabi's people and others, forcing the whole role onto coalition troops

People with ties to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had pushed such a plan in the months before the invasion, but military planners ultimately rejected it as unrealistic, and the defense official said the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction made such an approach impractical.

But the concept fits neatly with Rumsfelds push to use precision, speed and information technology to reduce the manpower requirements of warfare. And its more than just an argument over theory or past history; the less-is-more concept is crucial to the QDRs recommendations against increasing the size of U.S. ground forces, which analysts and politicians across the political spectrum have advocated.

To a number of experts, it illustrates the thinking of a Pentagon leadership that seems unwilling or unable to abandon previously held opinions in the face of new evidence.

Do they actually understand what is going on? asks retired Marine Col. Thomas X. Hammes, who has served in Iraq and written extensively on counterinsurgency and the future of warfare. They still dont get it. Theyre staying with their faith more than with reality. Thats the part that scares me.

the alternative can also be argued: that many military leaders are highly risk averse (paradoxically) and cannot step out of the working model they've been immersed in since the cold war was the mission

Criticism of the 2003 invasion force as too small and of the decision after Saddams fall to cancel deployment of additional troops for security is perhaps the most stinging criticism of the Rumsfeld Pentagon.

There is a period of time where there is a security vacuum, said Michele Flournoy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. What you need is a larger force for an initial period, so you dont allow widespread looting and chaos and disorder. If you go in bigger, you can come out faster.

Maybe, but the question is: what force with what mission and what capabilities? I don't know if Rumsfeld's ideas would have worked because they were hamstrung in some ways from the beginning.

But it is not surprising that defense leaders would suggest that a model so successful in Afghanistan could have worked in Iraq as well, said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Youve got a group of people in [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] who powerfully believe in small, fast, light, high-tech, Biddle said.

When such planners must choose between using a massive, traditional invasion force or one that relies on special operations forces and high-tech weapons, one of them looks like castor oil, and the other is an ice cream cone, Biddle said.

The preferred model of warfare for Rumsfeld and company is Afghanistan, Flournoy said. Thats what they want all campaigns to look like.

In many situations, Flournoy said, such an indirect approach is preferable. But applying it to Iraq, she suggested, ignores several facts. A campaign light on U.S. troops could succeed in a situation where an existing government needs support against an insurgency, she said, or, in a case such as Afghanistan, when an established insurgent fighting force opposes a weak central government.

Neither condition existed in Iraq in 2003. While exile leaders such as Ahmed Chalabi claimed to have thousands of freedom fighters at their disposal, their actual capabilities were much more modest. Its one thing to say youre going to install these guys in the government ministries, Flournoy said. But to say they had viable security forces that borders on fantasy.

OTOH, when the Pentagon wanted to finish training and supplying them, it got sabotaged and then vetoed in Congress by allies of the old school + the Dems.

Biddle, who has been deeply critical of the current push to expand Iraqi security forces, said relying on indigenous troops would only have exacerbated the religious and ethnic tensions now threatening to tear Iraq apart. Any native anti-Saddam force would overwhelmingly have consisted of Shiite Muslims and ethnic Kurds opposing Saddams Sunni Muslim-dominated regime giving those groups an early start on the rivalry now causing much of the bloodshed in Iraq.

Awww gee. I guess it would be politically incorrect to note that the Sunnis by and large were the support base for Saddam.

And both point out that even a large indigenous force likely would have lacked the manpower to guard Iraqs border, patrol its dense urban areas, round up the massive ammunition stockpiles that have fueled the insurgency or secure suspected nuclear, chemical and biological sites.

BUT ... they might have had a lot of information that would target such a search more effectively

Its sort of hard to see, Biddle said, how you get anything other than chaos.

LASIK is quite inexpensive nowadays - I highly recommend it for those who are shortsighted.

Words vs. actions

Perhaps more important than the argument over what already has happened in Iraq is the debate over the future size and shape of the military, and strategies for future operations.

Iraq has been held up as Exhibit A in the case for a larger Army and Marine Corps. Many outside analysts and retired officers say the strains of the past three years make clear the ground forces simply arent large enough to carry out the nations strategy.

But the senior Pentagon civilian said concepts such as the different approach to the Iraq invasion were crucial to the QDR, which attempts to lay out a long-range strategy.

Its not one-size-fits-all, the official said. But we increasingly see, especially in complex situations where we need to defeat military forces as well as the broader challenge of stability and establishing legitimate governance, that we have to think about some very different approaches.

This led to the QDRs conclusion that while the size of the U.S. military is about right, the available personnel should be shifted away from traditional heavy formations to boost such capabilities as special operations, civil affairs and support functions, the official said.

People havent grasped the point that its a big admission on our part that the mix of forces and capabilities weve got is wrong and we need to change that, the official said.

The force structure left over from the cold war had some major hidden costs. For instance the large force in Iraq imposed a huge logistical support burden. Many of the IEDs hit supply convoys rather than patrols.

The question is whether they alone are enough. Even as the administration argues it isnt using a one-size-fits-all approach, its refusal to consider larger ground forces leaves the U.S. military too small to cope with situations requiring heavy forces.

Do you want to count on the assumption that youll always have some indigenous force thats up to handling the job with more modest support from special ops? Flournoy said. Im not willing to count on it. I think its a prudent hedge to have ground forces that are able to do that.

Some, sure. But it's interesting to see that not one critic mentions the role of technology to support that smaller force. We've already fielded things like robots to search caves and microUAVs to do tactical recon. Not everyone has figured out how to use this stuff, though

Hammes, the retired Marine colonel, said this is especially true if, as the QDR contends, the military must take on counterinsurgency as a core mission.

The primary requirement for counterinsurgency is security, which is manpower-intensive, said Hammes, whose book, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, has made him one of the countrys leading experts on fighting insurgents.

see above re: vision.

As far as the plans Rumsfeld and his senior aides have for the U.S. military, Theres a great deal of tension between what theyre saying and what theyre doing, Hammes said. It just doesnt make any sense.

Not if you keep seeing it through the eyes of old doctrine. The irony here is that the Marines overall have been much quicker to pick up on Rumsfeld's changes than the Army ... not surprising, given that our post-WWII Army is a huge bureaucracy aimed at fielding hundreds of thousands of troops at a time. The doctrine, roles, policies and procedures are all oriented that way. The Marines are stretching some too, but because they started with an expeditionary capability they've been much more adaptable in Iraq, doctrinally, in the use of technology and in dealing with the Iraqis. That's why under Rummy we have a Marine as chair of the joint staff and another Marine general as commander of Strategic Command (!!!). These guys get it. A lot of the Army generals, and a lot of *retired* Marine officers don't. They are quite capable of executing old doctrine well. But the world has changed and they haven't.

Saw this recently in a briefing in which a soon to retire Army colonel wanted to rehash Army vs. Navy armwrestling re: resources. It's the wrong question. The right question is, where should we invest our defense dollars to build up the JOINT force. A lot of the retired (and some active duty) generals are making good points about potential downsides of changing doctrine. But a lot of others are like the French 'students' protesting economic reforms. They don't want changes, but have no recognition a vastly changed world or solutions for the problems that world poses TODAY.

JMNSHO

Posted by: lotp 2006-04-20

http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=149203