Posted on 03/12/2006 11:00:01 PM PST by jmc1969
The war was barely a week old when Gen. Tommy Franks threatened to fire the Army's field commander.
From the first days of the invasion, American forces had tangled with fanatical Saddam Fedayeen paramilitary fighters. Gen. Wallace, had told reporters that his soldiers needed to delay their advance on the capital to suppress the Fedayeen.
Soon after, General Franks phoned Gen. McKiernan, to warn that he might relieve General Wallace.
A US Marines intelligence officer warned, that the Fedayeen would continue to mount attacks after the fall of Baghdad since many of the enemy fighters were being bypassed in the race to the capital.
Instead of sending additional troops to impose order after the fall of Baghdad, Rumsfeld and General Franks canceled the deployment of the First Cavalry Division.
General McKiernan was unhappy with the decision, which was made at a time when ground forces were needed to deal with the chaos.
General Franks eventually went along. He later acknowledged that the defense secretary had put the issue on the table. "Rumsfeld did in fact make the decision to off-ramp the First Cavalry Division," General Franks said in an earlier interview.
General McKiernan, the senior United States general in Iraq at the time, was not happy about the decision but did not protest.
"The insurgency surprised us and we had not developed a comprehensive option for dealing with this possibility, one that would have included more military police, civil affairs units, interrogators, and Special Operations forces," said Gen. Keane of the Army, who served as the chief of staff.
"If we had planned for an insurgency, we probably would have deployed the First Cavalry Division and it would have assisted greatly with the occupation. "This was not just an intelligence community failure, but also our failure as senior military leaders."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How you got here, from there, boggles my mind, but this post of yours is going down as my post of the day.
I can see the headline now:
New York Times Recommends Preemptive Surrender
For the record, I don't believe for even the most inane split second that our 'plan' was to draw the terrorists to Iraq. Our plan was to overthrow the Baathist regime, establish a model capitalist democracy in the heart of the Middle East, establish permanent bases in said democracy, and from there project democratic freedoms and American hegemony throughout the Mideast.
The very last thing they wanted was to draw thousands of terrorist malcontents to Iraq. That was completely contrary to everything that the prewar designs aimed for. That was also completely contrary to the way the postwar administration of Iraq was set up in the immediate aftermath and to this very day.
...but you knew Islamic fundamentalist groups, like Al Qaeda, could not permit an Arab democracy in Mesopotamia. So there was some recognition that we would have some level of post-Saddam violence from outsiders.
Whining that the US military successfully invaded Iraq, a nation of 25 million people, and stormed through to Baghdad, against an army that supposedly was the most formidable in the region, without "planning for" subsequent resistance and random terror attacks, is like whining that a doctor successfully cured someone's cancer without "planning for" their subsequent acne.
Of course they knew that, but what they apparently expected would happen was that the Iraqis would clasp hands in joyous liberation, sing kumbaya on the way to the polling booth, and promptly defend their own nation, paid for by their own oil revenues.
(a) No serious person doubted that the US military could successfully invade Iraq or storm through to Baghdad.
(b) No serious person thought the Iraqi army was the most formidable in the region. That's the Iranian army, by a very long shot.
(c) Your analogy is inept, at best. The easy part was always the totally predictable crushing of Iraq's standing army. The difficult and unpredictable part was always the aftermath.
I'll give you the statement that, "the war will be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues," because that statement was indeed made (by Paul Wolfowicz, I believe). But the turnout at the Iraqi polling places was far higher than at most US national elections. Despite the violence Shia & Kurdish communities exhibited an eagerness to vote. In the last election even the Sunnis got into the act. So you're batting .500.
Although that's a nice goal of course, and would be desirable, that sort of thing is not and cannot be a military objective.
"Preventing all bad things" is not a serious military objective.
If it were, we would have to conclude that we have failed in countless cities across the USA.
Old news. I think Rumsfeld did miscalculate the number of troops needed for Iraq based on his success in Afghanistan using the Northern Alliance, airpower and small number of Spec Ops to topple the Taliban. However, the key to US success is in our management style which is flexible and can change as the situation changes. We entered Iraq assuming it will be handled like post war Germany. US troops occupying it for decades while we reshape the Iraqi nation. When we faced an insurgency composed of Sunni Baathists and foreign fighters, we immediately switched our approach using lessons learned from the Vietnam War. In three years we created an Iraqi proxy force who will do all the policing and fighting. We had setbacks in the first year when we attempted to field numbers over quality. Today the free Iraqi forces number 220,000 as of Jan 2006 and it continues to grow in size and quality. I think by summer of 2006 we will see US forces downsizing and redeploying as the free Iraqi forces takeover more functions. By 2008 the Iraqi forces will grow up to 300,000+ and majority of US forces will be gone or redeployed as backup. I think we entered the war with many of the plans going up in smoke, but by late 2003 we got our footing and strategicly we are achieving our military and political goals. By the time the US withdraws from Iraq, we will have one of the most experienced fighting forces in the world. China, Russia and Iran cannot claim this capability.
You are correct that the turnout at Iraqi polling places was higher than in US national elections, but that turnout was expected to take place in mid to late summer of 2003, not in the autumn of 2005. What that difference represents in terms of expectations versus reality is precisely at the crux of all of this.
OK, I get your point. If the Bush Administration ultimately succeeds in forming an Iraqi national government that is nominally democratic, then I suggest the 2-year delay will be forgotten. That delay was also largely due to the machinations of al Sadr and the uncertainty of the intentions of the Shia during the Bremmer administration. They couldn't agree on the election ground rules. The Shia eventually got one-man-one-vote. Had we accepted that up front, the elections might have come-off quite a bit earlier.
Yep.... and the pre war estimates by the White House said that 1 out of 5 Iraqis hated us and or would die for their cause. That's 5 million people. We never had the courage to kill that many people over there. So we began hoping to find a way to change their minds.
OK, on that we can agree! Though as I said above, I think the key at this stage will be somehow dealing with the regime in Tehran. So long as they are determined to destabilize our efforts in Iraq, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to achieve our objectives. It'll be very interesting to see what comes of all that, since I think the reckoning is imminent.
It serves no purpose other than to ANGER those who know little to nothing about military tactics and strategy.
It also provides fodder for the BLAME BUSH crowd which I suspect is the REAL purpose of this story!!
As you know, you've just written countless commentators out of the "serious person" category, I could dig up any number of prewar articles/predictions (many from war supporters) of 10x more doom and gloom than we, in fact, endured. But why bother. The real point is that all you establish by saying this is that opinions of expectations of the US military's capabilities are high - and, justifiably so.
The fact that the US military was expected to succeed at a monumental task doesn't make that task less monumental.
(b) No serious person thought the Iraqi army was the most formidable in the region. That's the Iranian army, by a very long shot.
Ok. Second most?
Does it matter to my point?
The easy part was always the totally predictable crushing of Iraq's standing army. The difficult and unpredictable part was always the aftermath.
So you say, with your 20/20 hindsight.
BTW, have you forgotten that one of the popular topics of conjecture back then was whether the Iraqis would surrender from just the shock & awe or whether we'd have to invade first?
More importantly, there's probably some dissonance between your comments and mine, that didn't occur to me until after I posted. There was a lot of talk back before the war about the prospect of urban warfare and how tough that would be. I was folding that in with the guerrilla tactics in general, as opposed to the military invasion, but that's certainly arguable.
So, I'll retract my point to a degree, but I do think that your analogy creates a far greater disparity between the two (the initial conquest versus securing the peace) than is valid. It is not like comparing surgery to acne.
May be next time we go to war you should lead the military campaign.
No, I was always far too impulsive and way too much of a loner back in my military days. I'd make an awful commander. Heck, it's amazing that I even survived. :)
On the other hand, I'm actually far more qualified to head the occupation transition authority, and would no doubt in my mind be more competent at such a task than Paul Bremer. So feel free to nominate me for that!
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