Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Interesting article that supports a related analogy.

In 1942, the US having entered World War II, losses in merchant shipping went up.

Why? Because not only had US shipping lost the nominal protection of being neutral (Hitler having ordered Doenitz not to target US ships, despite US violations of international law regarding the behavior of neutral shipping and non-belligerents), but US naval policy was profoundly wrong-headed.

Despite experience from both World War I and the first two years of the war, Chief of Naval Operations Ernest King opposed the creation of convoys. The resulting "happy time" for U-boat commanders resulted in a massive rate of sinking that, at various points, threatened to cripple the allied war effort.

It took quite a long time before the US Navy agreed to convoy not only all trans-Atlantic shipping, but also all coastal shipping (and do things like black-out coastal cities so as to not silhouette ships).

The point is that, in 1942, the naval war against Hitler was being lost, due to improper tactics and methods.

By the arguments one hears about Iraq, you would think that the proper solution would be to try and reach some kind of solution by 1943---especially as the number of Brits, French, Dutch, and Belgians that died under allied bombing was greater than that killed by the Germans at this point. (The Jews, of course, being a separate issue, but then, in 1942, the US was hardly fighting in order to prevent Treblinka or Auschwitz.)

And wrongheaded decisions were being okayed at the very top---King's decisions presumably implicate FDR (who was himself a former Secretary of the Navy who therefore clearly should have known better).

Perhaps it was because of his chickenhawk nature that FDR didn't do a better job?

Of course, the reality is that mistakes happen in wartime, people die (both b/c of those mistakes and more generally b/c of the war), and whether the war should continue or not is hardly a function of either of those two realities.

Posted by Lurking Observer at July 24, 2007 08:23 AM

Here is the money quote, IMHO:

Someday, 2006 may be seen as Iraq's 1943. It appears that Gen. David Petreaus has discovered the correct strategy for Iraq: engaging the Jihadis all over the map as close to simultaneously as possible. Keeping them on the run constantly, giving them no place to stand, rest or refit. Increasing operational tempo to an extent that they cannot match ("Getting inside their decision cycle", as the 4th generation warfare school would call it), leaving them harried, uncertain, and apt to make mistakes.

How do WE sustain this operational tempo without more infantry units? Especially if Pakistan heats up. Having additional infantry brigades (as proposed by John Kerry in 2004) would be useful right about now.

But YES this is how we should have done it since 2003 and after years of FUBAR we are finally finding the right track. Too bad we need more infantry and more translators (that we do not have) to complete the job.

Going forward? Eradicate al Qaeda and turn Iraq over to the Shia after arming the Sunni/Baath sufficiently to prevent Shia on Sunni genocide.

Oh, and facilitate a de facto Kurdistan.

Too bad it took 3 1/2 years to figure what was obvious to people like Senator Jim Webb from the beginning.

Anyway, I still have this fear that al Qaeda's next central front shall be in Pakistan.

Posted by Bill White at July 24, 2007 08:37 AM

Easy isn't it? Redefine success as

(1) arming the Sunnis
(2) giving up on a consensus government
(3) overcoming Al-Qaeda, which was hardly a presence in Iraq in 2003.

One more step to go. (4) Partition Iraq

That will come next, and when it does, it will have been due to the surge too. And, wow, you've been right all along!

Posted by Offside at July 24, 2007 08:58 AM

How to build support for the surge

If the Right starts calling for General Petreaus to meet with and make his case to Glenn Greenwald then I will be more comfortable that the surge is more than a PR stunt intended merely to kick the can down the road.

If not, then I am more likely to believe that the Right sees liberals rather than radical Islam as their real enemy. And therefore, everything they write about the surge is suspect.

Posted by Bill White at July 24, 2007 09:16 AM

I'll worry about the left being a more immediate threat when they start actively killing Americans. Until then, they're indirect collaborators and useful idiots to the enemy at the worst.

Meanwhile, Bill, I challenge you to make the same claim about folks like Mr. Sockpuppet--who among the far left believes that Zawahiri is a greater threat than Bush?

Posted by Big D at July 24, 2007 09:20 AM

If having Petraeus waste his time meeting with an asshat like Greenwald is necessary for that, I think that the "Right" will do just fine without your "confidence," Bill. Unlike many Democrats, they (and I) do see Islamists as the real enemy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at July 24, 2007 09:58 AM

The troops to sustain the surge are not a real issue (remember we are talking about 30-40k, even including peripheral out-of-theatre support) as I have mentioned before in other threads. More to the point, however, is whether or not support at home will be maintained. The Democrats, posturing aside, aren't going to be pulling anyone out while Bush remains in office, so with any luck things should clarify themselves during 2008 (good timing that...) and take the political heat off by the time a new president comes in during 2009. We are probably looking at 150-180k troops in Iraq through about 2010 or so, with a drawdown into the 50-60k range through about 2015, and hopefully a smallish residual force (about 15-20k) after that.

The idea that (barring some completely unexpected change in the world) we are going to deploy any significant number of ground troops elsewhere in the near to mid-term future is simply silly. No potential strike scenario against Iran includes more than a few special forces insertions following airstrikes and perhaps along the Gulf Coast (none permanent or even particularly long-lasting), and the political situation in Pakistan makes it highly unlikely that the US would even consider anything more than an airstrike or two there. I leave the North Korean situation as an exercise for the alert student.

The upshot of this is that the 'ground forces are overstretched' argument is simply nonsense. Sufficient forces exist to do the job, and while I wouldn't mind seeing a modest expansion of the ground compliment of the military, much of that can be done by altering the existing structure (eliminating division HQs, for instance, and going to a brigade/corps model instead) than adding more troops.

Posted by Scott at July 24, 2007 11:26 AM

A very encouraging article. I wish some real public light were turned on the seditious element of our society and they were totally discredited in general as they are with those that are paying attention.

I hope our good troops and their leadership are successful.

Posted by ken anthony at July 24, 2007 12:35 PM

Ken Anthony wrote: "... the seditious element of
our society ...": isn't accusing people of
"sedition" about as un-American as it gets?

There seems to be a chilling subtext to a lot of
these comments - a view that the Constitution is
expendable in "war" time, that not only is it
important to let the government have its way,
but that the people must shut up and not complain.

Well, it looks like folks that think that way
are only gonna get half of that: Bush is going to
"run the war his way", but he's going to have to
veto his way through it kicking and screaming...
so he's got till Jan '09 regardless of what
happens in Congress or the polls - at which point
he's term-limited out of there anyway (regardless
of what happens in Congress and the polls).

At which point we'll see what the country will
think of the party of a President who made no
bones about treating "the will of the people",
as communicated by way of the Congress, as an
irrelevancy.

I can hear the squawking now: "but don't you Want
US To Win The War? The damn Constitution isn't
more important than that, is it?"

Yes. Yes it is.

If "Winning The War" can only be achieved at the
cost of suppressing "sedition", at the cost of
the coercion of public speech and opinion, then
that would be a war that The United States Of
America has no business "winning".

-dw

Posted by dave w at July 24, 2007 04:26 PM

If a simple matter as reorganization wouldsolve the Army's manpower shortage, i'd have thought it would have been done years ago.

Posted by at July 24, 2007 08:17 PM

Unlike many Democrats, they (and I) do see Islamists as the real enemy.

That's about half a billion people Rand. All of them are the enemy?

Posted by Adrasteia at July 24, 2007 11:54 PM

Well, if by half a billion people you mean Muslims, and if all Muslims are Islamists (if by that Rand means "jihadist terrorists")... then I guess the answer would be "yes."

Are you accusing all Muslims of being jihadist terrorists?

(BTW, our inability to name our enemy is beginning to irritate -- I suggest we just cut to the chase and call them "Muslims." And no, that's not racist as Muslims aren't one race, but it's definitely prejudiced -- or rather postjudiced; I was fine with Muslims when they weren't the majority in the ranks of folks who wanted to kill me and mine.)

Posted by Andrea Harris at July 25, 2007 04:42 AM

BW: "the Right sees liberals rather than radical Islam as their real enemy."

A case "could" be made that liberals ARE, in some ways, more dangerous to US security than radical islam.

There are many liberals who are working to achieve the same goals as radical islamists are (remove US troops from Iraq for one). That is a fact Bill, no room for discussion. What makes them more dangerous is that they do so from INSIDE the US government.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at July 25, 2007 05:28 AM

Talk about projection!

Was it not the Left that long ago concluded that anti-Communists were far more dangerous than Communists?

That the domestic threat (say, of the home-grown Right) was far worse than anything that might arise from abroad?

Posted by Lurking Observer at July 25, 2007 07:50 AM

Well, since the communists weren't blowing up our buildings and killing a slew of people who disagree with them, yes that view was viable. But now, we have a section of fanatical people that want to kill us all and the left seems to want to give them the opportunity to do so, on our own shores, that paints a picture of a political party that can't understand a simple fact. If we kill the fanatics over there, they aren't coming over here. We haven't had any more 9/11s on our shores partly because we're killing the enemy over there.

Posted by Mac at July 25, 2007 07:57 AM

> We are probably looking at 150-180k troops in Iraq through about 2010 or so, with a drawdown into the 50-60k range through about 2015, and hopefully a smallish residual force (about 15-20k) after that.

All of the Dem presidential candidates disagree.

Are they lying or wrong? Which answer is an argument for electing them?

Posted by Andy Freeman at July 25, 2007 09:28 AM

"But [General Petraeus] is being undermined by incessant withdrawal demands from home, which are convincing our enemies that they can wait us out."

How is he being undermined by people thousands of miles away with a megaphone and some banners? I don't think those protests are costing him any materiel, not when congressional democrats fold like cheap lawn furniture. "Our enemies" may have their morale boosted by western broadcasts, but it's not like hearing about Hillary Clinton is going to save them from getting shot in the head. Also, hearing about Americans who want to help Iraqis could well soften their hatred for us. It's hard to imagine America as the Great Satan when the majority of its population wants to end the war. If American GIs had known that most Japanese citizens wanted to give up in WW2 long before the war ended, it would probably have been harder to demonize them, so letting your "weakness" show could be advantageous to you.

Posted by Ashley at July 25, 2007 10:34 AM

Many wars are merely negotiations where people die. It appears to me that this is the case in Iraq. The insurgents are holding out for a big piece of Iraq while US troops are the biggest tool of coercion the Iraqi government currently has for getting insurgents to quit and become part of the political structure. So having politicians advocate troop withdrawal does weaken the negotiation position of the Iraqi government. I don't know how much.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at July 25, 2007 11:38 AM

Here is the REAL money quote Bill:

"The American left wants a return to the 1970s -- without Jimmy Carter. (Okay, without disco, either.) They want a cowed GOP. They want control of the institutions and the branches. They want a miserable, defeated country they can manipulate. And they want it all under the gaze not of the Saint of Plains, but of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who can assure that left-wing predominance will continue for a generation or more."

Posted by Cecil Trotter at July 25, 2007 12:19 PM

So having politicians advocate troop withdrawal does weaken the negotiation position of the Iraqi government.

What Iraqi government? The Shia part or the Sunni part? Or did you mean the Kurdish part or Moqtada's folks? Or the non-existent true patriot Iraqis who want a united country that we are trying to force on them?

So our troops will help which part of the government negotiate with which part? Certainly you can't be talking about negotiating with Al-Qaeda, now could you?

What our troops really do is continue the stalemate, the farce that we are propping up from the castle in the Green Zone.

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at July 25, 2007 05:08 PM

What our troops really do is continue the stalemate...

It isn't a stalemate in Anbar, TnT. Don't you read the news?

Posted by Carl Pham at July 25, 2007 06:31 PM

In think TnT is channeling BS.

And yes I meant that to go with the two obvious meanings of BS.

Posted by Steve at July 25, 2007 07:22 PM

OK, so 2006 was 1943. So what are 2008's Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I have a couple of good candidates.

Posted by Fletcher Christian at July 27, 2007 02:09 AM

Post a comment