Your first link is broke.

As for the rest: my suspicion is that they'll get their funding.

"I think we will be in need of American forces for a long time"

Of course. It's no secret the Kurds want very very badly for their beloved (and more importantly, unsurpassed in military prowess) American friends to establish permanent military bases. After what's happened to them historically, you really can't blame them.

Our goal should probably be to get to a point where we only supply advisers, trainers and air support. That could happen in 2007, though 2008 seems more likely. I think we'll need about 500,000 ISF and more buy-in from Sunni tribal leaders (who are beginning to realize the elected gov't is the strong horse here).

Speaking of being there for a long time:

If memory serves me, we're still in Germany, Japan and South Korea. Should have stayed in South Vietnam too (even if not to fight, except to provide defensive air support). There would be at least 2,000,000 more Vietnamese alive now...

We come when it is in our interest. We leave when our interests are served. That's how it works or should work when you are a superpower.

BTW, there is a debate within the Army about whether the force level is right or not, which goes to the level of "a war who's name cannot be spoken " (ha!).

The Special Forces do not agree that more regular army are needed and think that the regular army is promoting the insurgency with their tactics, while the regular army thinks more regular army (and no special forces) are needed.

Just in case you hadn't seen it, there's a very good NYT article on this. (One of two real news articles from them in the last two week. I'm impressed.)

I have to second Carrick, the NYT article is very interesting.

Special ops is really meant for this kind of thing. Standing armies pretty much exist solely to fight other standing armies -- which our does very well. Counterinsurgency is a round hole for their square peg.

The regular army forces in Iraq are engaged in a balancing act between being present enough to suppress insurgents and being present too much and causing resentment of the Iraqis. In reality, the army is merely marking time hoping to keep some sort of tolerable status quo while the Iraqi army is recruited and trained and while Iraqi government institutions grow from infancy.

There isn't really a number that is "enough" troops and can't be.

Well said, Robin and TallDave. I've though the exact same things, which must make it right. ;-)

Maybe if people like the Commissar would take a much needed vacation, they would RELAX and start thinking clearly again. A lot of emotion and garbled logic is mostly what I'm seeing now.

The regular army forces in Iraq are engaged in a balancing act between being present enough to suppress insurgents and being present too much and causing resentment of the Iraqis.

To be honest, I think that's a throwaway assessment/excuse. The counterinsurgency tactic is to clear and hold. When you don't have enough troops to hold, the insurgency simply moves.

In addition, I'm reading more and more assessments that Rumsfeld's pre-war planning for the occupation was almost non-existent, entirely reliant on Iraqi security and social stability remaining intact via a quick strike. There didn't seem to be a plan B. When you have critical mass of voices saying this, you can't help but think it true. Especially when there is no cogent defense, except to say "plans change."

apparently insufficient troop levels.

When you don't have enough troops to hold, the insurgency simply moves.

Well, again, as was pointed out early on in Afghanistan, we just can't occupy every square inch of the the country, even with millions of troops. There's always going to be SOMEWHERE they can run to.

Remember, even Saddam never totally crushed the Shia/Kurd militias. He just kept killing people till they gave up. Unfortunately, the Sunni resistance isn't giving up, and Al Qaeda may never give up.

The strategy appears to be U.S. clears, ISF hold. The troop levels are probably about right for that strategy.

There's always going to be SOMEWHERE they can run to.

Yes, but insurgents formerly holed up in Fallujah don't suddenly teleport to Basra. A bigger concentration of boots on the ground in a given area has utility distinct from the idea of pacifying every square inch of the country.

Rumsfeld's pre-war planning for the occupation was almost non-existent, entirely reliant on Iraqi security and social stability remaining intact via a quick strike.

Well, you can only plan for what you know. All war planning is vulnerable to bad intel, and our intel obviously had serious flaws.

We know some postwar planning was done: Garner had all kinds of contingency plans for humanitarian crises like food/water shortages, disease outbreaks, etc -- all the usual things that happen in a war. Of course, none of that materialized, which is fortunate.

It seems likely that rather than formulating specific plans for a largely unpredictable postwar situation, the plan was to relly on military doctrine to formulate plans as the situation developed.

Really, though, how much difference could a pre-war plan have made, even given perfect intel? There would still be a Baathist/Qaedist insurgency regardless.

Well, you can only plan for what you know. All war planning is vulnerable to bad intel, and our intel obviously had serious flaws.

Others "knew" or forsaw the possibility, and he specifically disregarded their scenario planning.

Well, pardon my skepticism for Monday-morning QBs who just knew they should have thrown long on that 4th and 1.

Well that's not what bothers me. What bothers me is the idea that Plan B wasn't sitting on a shelf, ready for use if plan A failed. I agree that those who deride plan A on its face are exercising the hubris of hindsight.

Generals told Rumsfeld and Bush before the invasion we might face an insurgency and they ignored them. Generals have been saying for three years that we need more troops on the ground and all this time they've been ignored.

Generals have also been telling them for years that pushing force transformation on the Army at the same time you're asking them to conduct two counter-insurgency campaigns and asking them to do it all on a peace-time budget is putting unsustainable stress on the Army. Again, all this time they've been ignored.

You can say the call the generals Monday-morning QBs, but if we end up losing this thing (God forbid) it's not going to be because the Army failed, because of the Left's nonsense, or because we lost our will. It'll be because the civilians in charge think they know more about warfare than people who have given their entire lives to living and studying it.

I don't even know what Plan B these people are allagedly referring to. I think that entire line of reasoning is predicated on the mistaken idea that anything we did would have altered the actions of jihadists and Baathists.

Peace requires two willing parties. War does not.

SeanH, are you saying Abizaid is lying when he says he gets the troops he asks for?

No. I'm saying the consensus among civilians that know war and officers free to speak their minds seems to be that we don't have enough troops and never did. Rumsfeld has been told so over and over.

I wouldn't ever call him a liar, but whether Abizaid, specifically, agrees with Rumsfeld or just refuses to be critical because he's a good soldier who can say. One thing I do know is "all the troops I ask for" is not the same as "all the troops we need to do this correctly". I've heard plenty of the first and never heard him say the second.

I don't even know what Plan B these people are allagedly referring to. I think that entire line of reasoning is predicated on the mistaken idea that anything we did would have altered the actions of jihadists and Baathists.

True. That said, there is a magical projection of force and security that influences the actions of bad actors. When riots spark in LA, everyone goes nuts, as this illusion of security is broken. A similar situation happened when we invaded Iraq and Iraqi civil society melted with unforeseen rapidity.

I'm not saying that it was an unreasonable gamble to go in light and simply enact regime change with an intact society, I'm saying that it was fairly clear that this wouldn't pan out early on, and I question why these plans on the shelf were never considered or utilized. You need to read some of the critical books about the occupation, if only to know the specifics of some of these charges.

To focus on the budget issues... The idea that the army should get "budget" money to fix war damage of its equipment sounds false. Lots of Dems and Reps deride the idea of funding the War through special appropriations, but it makes sense in terms of the neverending budgetary warfare that characterises any large org and is specifically endemic to the US government, with the interservice and intraservice battles for resources being beyond legendary. Special appropriations don't build any long term commitments for spending, while increaing the regular army budget would have devastating long term effects.

Further, a large special appropriation just got passed, with money specifically targeted to fixing or replacing equipment damaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus it appears that the entire issue was false and is now moot. Totally useless controversy.

the consensus among civilians that know war and officers free to speak their minds seems to be that we don't have enough troops

Consensus? Has a poll been done? Or is just that we're hearing the voices that disagree because they're the shrillest and they make the headlines?

I'm saying that it was fairly clear that this wouldn't pan out early on,

Debatable. That's a speculative criticism, because we don't really know for sure whether more troops would make the overall situation better or worse. In Algeria the French had an order of magnitude more troops per capita, and it didn't help them (they lost).

This isn't a series of set piece battles where more troops are always better. Commanders tasked with a particular mission might find it easier to accomplish that mission with more troops, but the overall strategic effect might be negative. Here's an argument that a larger force would probably have made things much worse: note the "approve of attacks" number. It seems likely the more troops we have there blowing stuff up and doing bad things to civilian traffic, the more the population would resent them, and the higher that number would go. Note that the approval of attacks has gone up since we began moving against Shia militias.

I've read Fiasco and Cobra. They don't impress me as containing many substantive criticisms. They come across more as collections of talking points.

Rumsfeld inevitably stepped on a lot of toes in remaking the military, esp in the Army. It doesn't surprise me that the long knives are out for him among some retirees.

It may be a consensus among regular army that not enough troops are there now. The special forces disagree, as you can find in this article::

"It's not about bulldozing Hit, driving through with a tank, with all the kids running away. . . . These insurgencies are defeated by personal relationships."

It might have helped to have had more regular troops at the beginning. I fear that time has past. One of the more interesting results from the latest Iraqi poll is that most Iraqis agree with this assessment:

On the question "Effect of US Military Presence: Do you think the US military in Iraq is currently provoking more conflict than it is preventing," 78% of Iraqis agreed. Only 21% (mostly Kurds) thought it acted as a stabilizing force.

Sorry Bill & SeanH, but your opinions simply don't matter as much to me as though of the Iraqi people. They are "there", you are not. You are speculating about what they "know."

The US regular army is not trained as a peace keeping force, they are trained to kill tanks and enemy armies. Had we put in more forces at the beginning, it is hard to predict how that would affect things. It could have made them better, or it could have simply accelerated the scale of the violence.

The problem is (and this was my primary objection to an invasion to start with), our regular troops are the wrong "tool" for peacekeeping. What you really need is larger special forces, who are trained in this type of role, and understand how to mobilized the moderate Iraqis against the diehards, not just run over everybody with a tank.

I simply think that Bill is dead wrong on this. What we need to do, given our current situation, is to "hold the course" and train the Iraqi security forces and equip them(!) so that they can take over for our forces, and to make clear to the Iraqi people that this, not remaining in Iraq, is our long term goal. That, I think, is the only way to Iraqi security.

All of this haranguing at Rumsfeld (not one of my personal favorites in any case) is misplaced and based on an inaccurate situational awareness of what is going on in Iraq. What we need to do is keep the eye on the ball, what are our national interests here, and how to we achieve them.

Here's Bruce Thornton on VDH's site:

Take, for example, the most popular criticism of the war: that Rumsfeld, overconfident in the ability of technology to substitute for boots on the ground, and dismissive of the possibility of guerrilla warfare, shorted his generals on the numbers of troops needed not just to destroy Hussein’s army but to secure Iraq and restore order. But it’s not just the number of troops that’s important, but what you’re willing to do with them — and here’s where the political constraints become important.

And Victor himself:

Equally fossilized is the "more troops" debate. Whatever one's views about needing more troops in 2003-5, few Democratic senators or pundits are now calling for an infusion of 100,000 more Americans into Iraq. While everyone blames the present policy, no one ever suggests that current positive trends — a growing Iraqi security force and decreasing American deaths in March — might possibly be related to the moderate size of the American garrison forces.

So, for every argument offered by "experts," there was just as available a convincing counter-argument — something usually lost on those eager to keep up with the 24-hour news cycle.

More troops might have brought a larger footprint that made peacekeeping easier — but also raised a provocative Western profile in an Islamic country. More troops may have facilitated Iraqization — or, in the style of Vietnam, created perpetual dependency. More troops might have shortened the war and occupation — or made monthly dollar costs even higher, raised casualties, and ensured that eventual troop draw-downs would be more difficult. More troops might have bolstered U.S. prestige through a bold show of power — or simply attenuated our forces elsewhere, in Japan, Okinawa, Korea, and Europe, and invited adventurism by our enemies. Too few troops were the fault of the present Administration — or the chickens that came home to roost after the drastic cutbacks in the post-Cold war euphoria of the 1990s.

Critics who argue that more troops could’ve avoided the current chaos and insurgency assume that the mere presence of more American soldiers could’ve secured facilities, stopped looting, restored order, and strangled the insurgency in its cradle. Maybe. But for all those troops to have a credible deterrent effect, they would’ve had to kill a lot of people, something politically unpalatable. We keep hearing that the insurgency is fueled by anger at the occupation, but how much more intense would that rage had been if the occupying force were twice as large? More troops, if used effectively, mean more killing, more dying, more dead civilians, and more anger all over the Muslim world as Al Jezeera photographed the carnage. What would the reaction of the world be now if 60,000 instead of 30,000 civilians had died? And what would the political fallout here at home be if 5,000 U.S. soldiers instead of 2,300 were killed? More soldiers, more targets for the insurgency, more casualties for the media to dramatize. In those circumstances, what would the critics who now claim that too few troops were sent to do the job be saying now?

You cite an Iraqi opinion poll and the fact that I'm "not there" as evidence that I'm "dead wrong," and I'll cite US Military senior officers (including the man formerly responsible for training the Iraqi Army) who have been there as evidence that you're, if not "dead wrong," at least unreasonably hubristic in your opinion.

I don't pretend to have all of the answers, but if the man responsible for submitting the budget and other senior officers are not confident in the amount of resources available to win the war, I tend to take their concerns seriously.

Source: http://alternet.org/blogs/video/42137/

I'm citing the Iraqi people, you're citing military leaders. While I have respect for our military leaders, I somehow think my source is more authoritative than yours!

In the end, I respect that of those who live there, over those who have much to lose by admitting they aren't the right choice for this job.

My point is that the regular army can't win this for us. The only one's who can win it are the Iraqis themselves—We're just buying them time until they get back on their feet. And I think I would put more brook in our special forces, who live among the Iraqis, than a military leader in Washington (who is no doubt siding with the regular army in this dispute)...

My humble opinion!

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