Iraq & The Debate Over the Size of the Army
The debate over whether the U.S. Army should be larger is beside the point.
The real question is what kind of an Army the United States should have five years after the 9/11 attacks dramatically changed the global military equation.
* Do we want an Army that still is largely unprepared to fight counterinsurgency warfare?* Do we want an Army without enough of the right tools because of a crumbling infrastructure – broken-down tanks, APVs and other vehicles backed up in a repair and resupply chain that is overwhelmed?
* Do we want an Army that is unable to fight simultaneous wars in separate theaters because it can’t even keep up with the overwhelming nature of its one current war?
* Do we want an Army where almost no one speaks Arabic or other languages although civil affairs missions in overseas theaters have become as important as military missions?
* Do we want an Army where sexual orientation remains an issue?
* Do we want an Army where proselytizing Christianists are dominant?
Let’s try to answer these questions first. The question of what size the Army should be will then answer itself.
36 Responses to “Iraq & The Debate Over the Size of the Army”
Hmmm not quite the way I would put it. Mostly I’d say that you need to deal with the current quality of your army first, and then, once you’ve overhauled the current army, worry about making it larger. Since I have exactly zero knowledge in the military field, I have no criteria to judge the state of the armed forces today but I can make some common sense statements.
1. The fact that the Iraq war is going so amazingly badly cannot categorically be blamed on the quality of the Army itself out of hand. You can have the best Japanese sword in the world, but if you use the dull edge of it, it won’t work well. All the articles I’ve read seem to point to the fact that it was bad strategy, more than bad training or equipment, that caused the failure, though the latter didn’t help.
2. Assuming that there is in fact a terrible lack out counterinsurgenxy training and a shortage of good, working equipment, then these are the most important priorities, well beyond sexual orientation or religious freedom. I deeply appreciate both concerns. The prohibition of open gays in the military (while closeted are allowed) is like saying women shouldn’t be in the military because they “distract” the men, an argument that has been made in the past and has (like blacks in the military) begun to slowly die. Religous problems are also difficult, as they can lead to rather serious harassment. Still though, neither is likely to get you killed (most of the time) while unpreparedness for insurgents and bad equipment WILL get you killed, and therefore need to be top priorities.
3. A question for people with more actual military knowledge. So far as I know, there are around 5 million Arab Americans. A decent percentage of those probably know Arabic and of those I’m sure there are at the very least many many thousands that could pass a rigorous background check and are patriotic and willing to help. Why can’t they be recruited as linguists? It seems like the orientation is taking non-arab soldiers and training them as linguists. Why not hire civilian speakers and put them under a strict code of secrecy? Can this be done? Oh, and firing over 55 Arab linguists for being Gay probably isn’t the best damned strategy for victory, either.
Lynx:
Terrific response. If I may, I’ll respond to your points one by one:
(1.) You’re spot on. Good military, bad strategy. Bush is no Abraham Lincoln or FDR, the two greatest wartime commanders in chief.
(2.) The lack of counterinsurgency training cannot be emphasized enough. This borders on the criminal since the biggest lesson of Vietnam was that the Army and Marines needed to train hard to fight insurgencies, which were correctly viewed as the wars of the future.
(3.) The problem is not recruiting linguists. The problems is understanding why linguists need to be recruited. That is because the people running the show don’t want to understand the cultures, customs, religions and languages of friends or foes. Witness the recent spate of stories about how ranking pols and other official were blithfully ignorant of the differences between Shiites and Sunnis.
What would a bigger army be good for? The US forces have shown every single time that they can effectively eliminate threats (real or fancied) coming from a nation like Korea, South Vietnam, Iraq, you name it. What they can’t do is securing a nation this size from inside insurgency in the long term. And even a doubling of troop strength won’t accomplish this, not to speak of the enormous costs that would cripple US domestic policies.
Before discussing how large you want the US forces to be, you should first determine what exactly are the tasks they shall fulfill.
“South Vietnam”!? Of course, I meant North Vietnam (and North Korea)…
I have three answers to this question, so please bear with me.
First of all, the answer is “causality�. Neither the US Army, nor the military in general, put us behind the proverbial 8-ball by itself. A fair amount of the blame must be shifted to both our “strategic� leaders back in Washington DC, as well as to those persons delegated the power to run the day-in, day-out issues (Coalition Provisional Authority).
The events of today did not appear out of no where – the causality of one event affecting another must be looked at. In regards to CPA, its two biggest decisions in which we are fighting today are the orders to disband the military and for whatever reason to give some lessons of capitalism to its industry and infrastructure sectors when the SOP has been to keep a lot of people employed. The current plans is to bring back the old Iraqi Army into the new army, as well as setting up ineffecient factories and sectors to make sure local nationals can feed their families and pay for those items where the costs have skyrocketed (food, petroleum products, etc).
As for the decision makers back in DC, the lack of troops added to the original occupying force has a lot to do with the transformation from Saddam rule to looting (“freedom is untidy�) and then morphing itself into proto-insurgency and full-blown insurgency. It also does not help when there are no phase-IV plans on how to transition from Saddam rule to occupying rule to local rule. It also does not help when reconstruction funds are held up because State Department and Defense Department are in DC having a pissing match to who gets to “rule� the country.
Secondly, much like the Hurricane Katrina debacle, the nation knows what and how to do emergency response but we failed because of the lack of purpose to make it our number one priority. The SOP seems to be do half-assed responses with an eye to playing to the political base, but making up propaganda and spin trying to explain why it is everyone else’s fault to why the results do not match up with the expectations.
Much like the emergency response to Hurricane Katrina, the leaders have failed to provide a strategy and resources to fight in Iraq. To make matters worse, it may look like we will lose Afghanistan in the process. We as a nation know how to provide emergency response to natural disasters, and our military knows how to fight a counter-insurgency conflict. The White House realizes it is political suicide to actually follow through with what is required to win – spend money which means higher taxes, call up more troops which either means the National Guard and reserves are going to get royally screwed or a draft will need to be enacted.
Thirdly, the strategy to win by the US military has already been written and is one the bookshelves. The military folks and historians have written guidelines on what steps need to be taken to successfully accomplish the counter-terrorism goals. One such place to start is with Hackworth, but there are other places to start also.
This third answer though shows that there is a lack of understanding back here in the states on how to destroy an insurgency. The “insurgency� in Iraq is not easily pigeon-holed into “them�. There are five local Iraqi flavors of insurgencies, and if one were to add foreign support to the mix, the number of insurgency groups adds up to at least eleven. Using one set of counter-insurgency tactics for all eleven groups will not work because they have: different strategies/goals, operate in different types of terrain, use propaganda to focus on their own goals, they capture local and foreign support differently, and so forth.
The counter-insurgency is also not specifically solved through the means of arms. There has to be some political, social reforms and/or outreach, propaganda, construction, and so forth that has to be done to show the populace to why our side is better than their side. It is turning out that our worst enemy is our selves – lack of knowledge of the events on the ground, context of the events, and worst of all, our endeavors to reconstruct our society and apply it to them (through the powers called CPA just 2-3 years ago).
We do this already. I want to say there is a contract with Titan to supply the US military with Arabic speakers.
Krous says:
* Do we want an Army that still is largely unprepared to fight counterinsurgency warfare?
No Army is ever fully prepared to fight an insurgency war. That is the point of an insurgency.
* Do we want an Army without enough of the right tools because of a crumbling infrastructure – broken down tanks, APVs and other vehicles backed up in a repair and resupply chain that is overwhelmed?
During WWII we simply mass produced equipment and never rebuilt anything. If it broke beyond 1st or 2nd echelon repair, it was destroyed or abandoned. Example: We produced 57,000 tanks in four years. Not a lot of rebuilding going on.
* Do we want an Army that is unable to fight simultaneous wars in separate theaters because it can’t even keep up with the overwhelming nature of its one current war?
Yes we may have too, but its rather stupid to get ourselves in that situation without full support of our allies, (if we have any left by then). Draft will be the answer, example: By mid 1944, no voluteers were accepted into the military and ALL were inducted becuase of the large number of people trying to get into “safer” military positions.
* Do we want an Army where almost no one speaks Arabic or other languages although civil affairs missions in overseas theaters have become as important as military missions?
From such a “melting pot of a nation of immigrants”, you would think we would have an abundance of languages to choose from
* Do we want an Army where sexual orientation remains an issue?
Irrelevent IMO
* Do we want an Army where prosteletizing Christianists are dominant?
This is a weird phenomenon. I wonder how much of this is actually true? I cannot imagine that “dominant” is the proper word here.
ES:
A great response. It is clear that you know your stuff because you mention Hackworth.
For the unitiated, he is David Hackworth, who was said to be the most decorated Vietnam vet. If you can read only one non-fiction book on Vietnam, read his “About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior.” Amazon currently has used paperback copies for pennies.
Krous:
“No Army is ever fully prepared to fight an insurgency war. That is the point of an insurgency.”
Right and wrong. No Army is indeed ever “fully prepared,” but despite the lessons of Vietnam (and Mogadishu and Kosovo, to name two more recent hot spots) and the thinking of some of the Pentagon’s best war planners, counterinsurgency indoctrination and training simply has not been in the U.S. kit bag.
I have trouble understanding why that’s so unless it’s as simple as door-to-door combat and other aspects of fighting insurgents not being as sexy as arraying armadas of tanks and aircraft across a theater and launching an old-style attack.
Any thoughts on this?
Quite a few Arab speakers were dismissed from the Army for being gay. Priorities are a bit skewed, aren’t they?
Krous, do a google news search for “Christian Embassy”.
Again, the discussion seems to miss the central point: Why fight an insurgency when it is backed by a majority of the population?
Do you respect the right of the Iraqi people for self-determination or is all this just about enforcing a US ‘victory’? At least to me, the insistence on carrying on with the occupation and crushing the insurgency sounds like ‘in order to secure the town, we had to destroy it’.
Not if your highest priority is stamping out teh gayness.
Remember, society will collapse if gays get married and stuff. Just look at Massachusetts!
Gray I’d slightly alter that “from majority of the population” to a “majority of the powerbrokers.” The fact is that in Afghanistan and Iraq their society is still based on layers of tribal alliegances. All voting does really is reflect the number of people allied to each leader (well more accurately in many cases, how many people are allied to a leader allied to a politician) not their own personal beliefs.
It’s a catch-22: they need the local tribal alliegances because the central government can’t support/protect many places, but the same mechanism allows for a small group of power hungry individuals to impell the masses to act on their selfish behalf.
“Majority favor attacks on U.S.
The poll’s summary also suggests that most Iraqis think the American presence is doing more harm than good.
“An overwhelming majority believes that the U.S. military presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing and there is growing confidence in the Iraqi army,” the summary said. “If the U.S. made a commitment to withdraw, a majority believes that this would strengthen the Iraqi government.
“Support for attacks on U.S.-led forces has grown to a majority position — now 6 in 10. Support appears to be related to a widespread perception, held by all ethnic groups, that the U.S. government plans to have permanent military bases in Iraq.” “
The military does a great job fighting the insurgents, but they can’t win political battles. That’s the job of the president and the State Department – our civilian leaders are responsible for the loss of Iraq.
Oh that’s a fair point. I misinterpreted your statement to say that a majority supported what will lead to a civil war. Considering that’s a main flaw in any analysis I always look for that first.
But your point is perhaps even more important.
Gray62:
You are welcome to hijack my generic argument for seeing what kind of Army we want before we figure out how big it should be because you make a big point:
“Why fight an insurgency when it is backed by a majority of the population?
“Do you respect the right of the Iraqi people for self-determination or is all this just about enforcing a US ‘victory’? At least to me, the insistence on carrying on with the occupation and crushing the insurgency sounds like ‘in order to secure the town, we had to destroy it’.”
If you are addressing the me “me” and not the editorial “we,” then I would answer as follows:
The Iraqi insurgency did not exist. The U.S. invasion made it. The botched U.S. occupation assured that many Iraqis would support it. (I dispute whether it’s a majority, but that’s kind of beside the point.)
The Vietnam analogy — “we had to destroy the village to save it” — cuts two ways here in that I have to wonder whether that’s an aim of the insurgency, as well as the U.S.
Meanwhile, any takers on why the U.S. military refuses to embrace counterinsurgency indoctrination and training despite the lessons of Vietnam, Somalia, Kosovo . . . ?
I totally agree, Shaun. I just think, the question you raised in your article where to specific. Imho the main point really is: Before discussing how large you want the US forces to be, you should first determine what exactly are the tasks they shall fulfill.
Shaun I do have a specific point outside of Gray’s: it’s no longer acceptable to just slaughter a populace, and since WWII it’s been noted that the victor needs to help build back up the country so there are less problems in the future. I agree with both of these, but it also implies that insurgency tactics will most likely be used in almost every single war from here on out.
It’s one thing if we take over a country and try to reform it — it’s another thing if we’re attacked and our response gets us dragged into a never ending conflict (this sounds familiar actually). I know it sounds radical, but I wouldn’t be surprised if our allies were in more danger because of the thought “if we attack them and aren’t successful, we can just pull them into a quagmire and eventually win.”
“it’s no longer acceptable to just slaughter a populace, and since WWII it’s been noted that the victor needs to help build back up the country so there are less problems in the future.”
Good point, Mikkel. Indeed, “you break it, you won it” seems to have become a global mainstream idea. And rightly so. So, there have to be plans ready for stabilizing a country after US forces eliminated a threat there. The question is, how to prepare for this task, and what are the consequences on the size, structure, and equippment of the US army?
Hopefully our experiences in Iraq will make us ask more of these questions before we plan an invasion next time. Rumsfeld won the battle with Powell over whether an overwhelming force was necessary to do the job, but it is already quite apparent that the decision to go with a smaller, more mobile force has led to our abject failure.
Either we need to leave a large portion of a country’s infrastructure in place, or we need overwhelming force to prevent the rise of an insurgency, to seal off borders, and to hold territory that has already been fought over and cleared. If territory isn’t held, there’s no way to build on it later, and no way to generate local support. I’m still in awe that the Pentagon went ahead with Rumsfeld’s plan- but I guess it was more politically palatable to market the war as easy, quick and cheap.
There are any number of plans and precedents on the shelf regarding how to stabilizing a country after a primary threat is eliminated. The Bush cabal chose to ignore them despite warnings from the State Department and a number of Pentagon planners whose heads were not up their backsides.
The sheer hubris and arrogance of the Bush administration resulted in the U.S. plucking defeat from the jaws of victory.
That small window of opportunity early in the occupation when Iraqi hearts and minds might have been won was squandered and no Army of any size is going to change that.
Shaun- I agree its too late now. We’re just compounding the initial errors by promoting the fiction that sending more men in will fix them. It appears that Bush has deemed that the consequences of civil war and anarchy are so devastating that he is willing to exhaust our military strength to avoid facing them. By commissioning other studies that came out with their reports at the same time as the ISG, he could muddy the waters with other interpretations.
I actually agree that we need a larger army, and need to rehabilitate what’s broken in the existing one, but not so that they can get in the middle of the civil war that we helped to create. Its pointless, as that battle is no longer ours to control, and sending 35,000 more in won’t change that. What surprises me is that with all of Bush/Cheney’s problems with credibility, that anyone is listening now.
Well, not sure where to place the information, but it seems the need for a larger army is no longer needed. According to ABC News,
This is absolutely going to kill the strained deployment schedule for the next two years.
The news reporters are either complete dolts or complete incompetant suck-ups. Sorry Martha and Geoff, but the plan for the soldiers has already been altered for some troops in Iraq – they are already been told they are going to stay 14 months, and this was info was provided at least 1.5 months ago.
ES:
Extending tours by three months is chump change. Some units already have been rotated back to Iraq three times. Some combat specialists — like triage surgeons — have been rotated back three times.
This brings up a salient point: the learning curve.
The insurgents have taken a lot of hits, but their learning curve has been steep. They have learned from their mistakes and adapted and adjusted.
On the other hand, besides being ill prepared to fight insurgents, the U.S.’s learning curve has been pitifully shallow. This is in large part because each time a unit is rotated back into the theater, a substantial number of troopers are newbies who, while they get some pretty intense on-the-job training, simply do not have the skills to keep up with those wily insurgents.
The debate over whether the U.S. Army should be larger is beside the point.
Um, unless you’re actually in the Army, and finishing your second 15 month deployment in 3 1/2 years (1st Armored Div.) or facing your third one-year deployment in 4 years (3rd Infantry Division) or your 4th seven months deployment (various USMC units), to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Easy for you to say this is not important: spreading the burden among more troops, shortening deployments, lengthening time between deployments, stopping “stop-loss,” IRR recalls, etc.
Observer 5:
Thank you for that cold shower from the real world.
Be safe.
I agree that in the big scheme of things, three months is not much. As long as the extension did not come one month before being rotated home. That said, with some units on their second and third tours – in Afghanistan, US Army tours were 6 months in 2002; in Iraq, tours were 12 months in 2004 (minus those poor saps in 1AD who got extended three months); and now the tours are looking to be a minimum of 15 months longs. Like you said, the same people are doing the same jobs for more tours and possibly longer tours.
As for learning, that is why there is some overlap between the two units and the they do left-seat, right-seat missions together. The big loss as units rotate in and out seem to be the contacts with the local nationals: who does what, how reliable is this person, what makes him tick, what is his history and loyalties, and so forth. The people skills are constantly in flux.
ES:
Good points all. Especially the person-to-person contacts that are vital to this sort of bridge building.
This brings up another important point: While their leaders may be at sea, the troopers who are trying to make the best of a very bad situation deserve our sympathy, but most importantly our support.
A few points
Those of you who say that the military on the ground in Iraq have not adapted to counter-insurgency – do any of you read military blogs like Blackfive, FourthRail, MudvilleGazette? Sorry to conradict the MSM lie that our military is made up of uneducable losers but a lot of really bright young people are adapting to a new culture and new challenges doing very good relationship building and civil improvement efforts.
If this insurgency has been an information war, our media has joined the other side. Its proven that Reuters doctored photographs and transmitted staged scenarios and images to undermine American support. The AP is currently accused of using a phony “Sunni Police Captain” who may have been confabulating casualty counts. If our government responded in kind our media would immediately be labeled as propagandizing. Here is an important question — how valuable has the media support been to the insurgency?
If lefties and radical secularists (pardon the redundancy) are deeply concerned about “Christianist” influence in the military, perhaps it is time to quit intimidating recruiters in high schools and calling those who serve losers, who didn’t apply themselves, and didn’t have decent career prospects. Let the military recruit from the entire population, not just red states and those who value our western civilization’s values. But that would require embracing the thought that the US should prevail over the beheaders and bombers. Are we ready for that?
red, we’re not losing in Iraq because the media are biased against the U.S., we’re losing because the situation is no longer under American control.
Iraqi’s are dying by the thousands every month, even more are fleeing the country entirely. Cities and neighborhoods are being ethnically purified. Sadr and other militia leaders control personal fiefdoms and even members of parliament are taking sides.
It doesn’t matter so much that CBS or ABC cover these facts. It matters that these things are happening. Pretending that Iraq is a utopia doesn’t make it so. Propaganda can only give you a short period of doubt to clean up a mess. But eventually, the facts catch up with you.
The facts have caught up with Bush in Iraq. All of his pretending that things were going well (“14 of 18 provinces are doing fine!”) just delayed action past the point of no return.
Shaun 12.17.2006 10:48am
What kit bg? There is none.
Red the military blogs I’ve read also say that the adaptation is on the personnel level, not the strategic level. Sure our guys are adapting and cultivating the relationships that are required, but then they rotate out and the new guys need to rebuild the relationships and get their own handle on the situation. I’ve also read stuff by guys on their second or third tours that says so much changes when they’re gone that it takes them a few months to catch up and readjust to the new situation.
Does anyone know if these problems are addressed in any counter-insurgency doctrine?
I am not in the Army, but am close to some who are in this situation of repeated deployments.
This is why more troops are needed – for basic reasons of decency and humane treatment of our troops and their families, who have been bearing the burden of these wars alone over the last 4 years.
“This is why more troops are needed – for basic reasons of decency and humane treatment of our troops and their families, who have been bearing the burden of these wars alone over the last 4 years.”
Even enemies of the war are for helping the troops. But this goal could be accomplished much easier by withdrawal.
This column in WaPo covers the topic:
Stretched Too Thin
We Don’t Have Enough Troops to Meet Defense Demands