Fighting the Wrong War; What Rumsfeld's defenders don't want to admit.

Weekly Standard ^ | 1-9-05 | Frederick W. Kagan

[lepton]

Another way to look at it is that more troops would allow for more supression of the insurgency, reducing attacks overall. By your logic, hiring more firefighters for NYC is a bad idea because it increases the number of people exposed to dangerous fire control.

Hiring more firefighters is one thing. Sending more into the buildings, or more to fight a specific fire is another thing. The optimum size of the force is based upon the actual mission, logistics capability, and how much point you have in the spear. More people can mean shorter supplies, as well as more troops needed for force protection (which doesn't help the mission).

We should have been building up Regular forces a bit so that we can let Reservists and Guard go back home. The Reserve and Guard are only supposed to be interim forces. THAT part I think Rumsfeld is quite wrong on.

[lepton]

For example, the author lists 5 more things we could have done with more troops, such as guard the borders and dumps. Thousands of miles of borders to guard and in doing so you will have exhausted all additional troops.

That would be a change in mission. Maybe a good one, but a change. The increase in troops needed wouldn't be small, but maybe a half million more or so. At that point, we might as well colonize the place. Which would completely change the politics of the situation both inside and outside Iraq.

[Ranger]

Its rare that I agree with an article so emphatically. Its rare to see such an article so clearly and accurately lay out a complicated topic in a balanced manner. If that makes me a lefty with neoconservatives so be it. Last I checked, I was still an American.

[dts32041]

Still things where lost that should have been passed on, and then relearned.

I saw three complete rotations of unit sin 19 months, and I became institutional memory and if you know me that is a scary thought.