Obviously, the giant news of the day is Bush's plan for href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/world/10cnd-prexy.html">more
troops in Iraq. And I have to say, I'm having trouble getting my
arms around the story. Because I can't find anyone -- anyone -- that
thinks this "surge," this "escalation," is a good idea. That believes
it will truly deliver a significant impact.
So I'm asking the Republican die-hards out there -- the folks who are
deeply committed in their support of the President, the people who
think he's done a solid job, given extremely difficult circumstances
-- for a little help. Let's hear from you, either in the comments
here or on my blog, href="http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003146.html#comments">DefenseTech.org:
Do you really think adding 20,000 troops is going to make much of a
difference in Iraq? And if so, how?
Don't get me wrong. For more than three years, I've had soldiers
complaining to me about the lack of boots on the ground. About how
winnable this war might be with more troops. But these guys didn't
want a 10 or 15 percent increase in manpower, like the President will
call for tonight. They wanted several divisions to join 'em.
Enough troops to completely blanket the country -- or at least to
pull off the classic counterinsurgency move of clearing out
neighborhoods of guerrillas, and holding the areas for the good guys.
As Slate's Fred Kaplan notes, incoming Iraq commander href="http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003130.html">Gen. David
Petraeus and his co-authors "discussed this strategy at great
length" when they put together the Army's new href="http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003081.html">counterinsurgency
field manual.
One point they made is that it href="http://www.slate.com/id/2157155/">requires a lot of manpower
-- at minimum, 20 combat troops for every 1,000 people
in the area's population. Baghdad has about 6 million people;
so clearing, holding, and building it will require about
120,000 combat troops.Right now, the United States has about 70,000 combat troops in all of
Iraq (another 60,000 or so are support troops or headquarters
personnel). Even an extra 20,000 would leave the force well
short of the minimum required -- and that's with every soldier and
Marine in Iraq moved to Baghdad. (emphasis
mine)
Which we all know ain't gonna happen. Like Iraq and Afghanistan
Veterans of America chief Paul
Rieckhoff said on MSNBC the other day: "This is not like a Hail
Mary pass on the part of the President. This is like href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X30ncwvogKI&eurl=">calling a draw
play when you're down big in the 4th quarter." A half-effort,
that's not going to win the game.
It doesn't even seem like the surge's intellectual authors even back
the plan. Gen Jack Keane, who helped push the idea to the White
House, called for href="http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/05/america/NA_ANL_US_Troop_Buildup.php">32,000
troops -- 50% more than what the President is supposed to ask for.
John McCain, Congress' most visible backer for more troops, is
squirming, too. On the Today show last week, the Senator was asked if
20,000 more soldiers would be enough. His answer: "I'm not sure... To
make it of short duration and small size would be the href=" http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/9519.html">worst
of all options to exercise, in my opinion."
Former Bush-backers in blogosphere, like href="http://www.windsofchange.net/">Winds of Change founder
Joe Katzman, are none too pleased, either. The escalation option "has
deep blind spots that destroy my confidence in [its] proposed
solutio[n] as anything except a href="http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/009334.php#009334">recipe
for accelerated defeat," he concludes. Katzman's got a long,
detailed list of the surge effort's unanswered questions. A few:
* If capturing terrorists in Iraq continues to
result in "catch and release" due to a poorly-functioning and often
intimidated Iraqi judicial system, what do you expect to accomplish
with more troops? A higher flow-through rate?* What are the fundamental attitudes on the ground of Sunni and
Shi'ite leaders? Are the Sunnis really prepared to deal, or are they
still maniacally focused on their loss of dominance in Iraq?* If you stupidly continue to let Moqtada "death squads" al-Sadr
live, what lasting good do 50,000 troops do when you propose to deploy
them for a while in Baghdad? US troops have whittled down his forces
before - how do the long-term results look now? What happens after US
troops leave, if al-Sadr is still breathing?