Jefferson Review

US Strategy in Iraq
Honors Convocation
Newberry College
9 November 2006
Mitchell Zais

Many of our faculty and staff have asked me my views about the current
situation in Iraq. A few students have also asked. So I thought I would
take this opportunity, two days before Veterans' Day, to provide you with
some insights as seen from the perspective of a combat veteran who served as
the Commanding General of US and allied forces in Iraq. I also served as
Chief of War Plans in the Pentagon and have spent considerable time studying
national security affairs, including a fellowship at the National Defense
University. So while it's true that everyone has opinions about Iraq, I
would argue that not all of those opinions are equally well-informed.

This talk will address our strategy in Iraq. I won't talk about what the
next steps should be, what the long-term prospects for peace in Iraq are, or
how we can best get out of the quagmire we are in. Those might be other
talks. For today I'm going to focus on strategy

Let me begin by saying that most of our problems in Iraq stem from a flawed
strategy that has been in place since the beginning of the war.

It's important that you understand what strategy is. In military
terminology there is a distinction between strategy, operations, tactics, and
techniques.

Strategy pertains to national decision-making at the highest level. For
example, our strategy in World War II was to mobilize the nation, then defeat
the Nazi regime while conducting a holding action in the Pacific, then shift
our forces to destroy the Japanese Empire. Afterwards, our strategy was to
rebuild both defeated nations into capitalistic democracies in order to make
them future allies.

An example of an operational decision from World War II would be the
decision to invade North Africa and then Italy and Southern France before

moving directly for the heart of Germany by coming ashore in Northern France
or Belgium.

Tactics characterize a scheme of maneuver that integrates the different
capabilities of, for example, infantry, armor, and artillery.

A technique might describe a way of employing machine guns with overlapping
fields of fire or of setting up a roadblock.

Our strategy in Iraq has been:

1. fight the war on the cheap;

2. ask the ground forces to perform missions that are more suitably
performed by other branches of the American government;

3. inconvenience the American people as little as possible, and

4. continue to fund the Air Force and Navy at the same levels that they
have been funded at for the last 30 years while shortchanging the Army and

Marines who are doing all of the fighting.

No wonder the war is not going well.

Let me explain how the war is being fought on the cheap.

From the very beginning, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who thankfully
announced his departure yesterday, has striven to minimize the number of
soldiers and Marines in Iraq. Instead of employing the Colin Powell doctrine
of "use massive force at the beginning to achieve a quick and decisive
victory," his goal has been "use no more troops than absolutely necessary so
we can spend defense dollars on new technology."

Before hostilities began, the Army Chief of Staff, Eric Shinseki, testified
before Congress that an occupation of Iraq would require hundreds of
thousands of soldiers. Shinseki made his estimate based on his extensive
experience in the former Yugoslavia where he worked to disengage the warring
factions of Orthodox Serbians, Catholic Croatians, and Muslim Kosovars.

Shinseki also had available the results of a wargame conducted in 1999 that
involved 70 military, diplomatic, and intelligence officials. This recently
declassified study concluded that 400,000 troops on the ground were needed to
keep order, seal borders, and take care of other security needs. And even
then stability would not be guaranteed.

Because of his testimony before Congress, Rumsfeld moved Shinseki aside. In
a nearly unprecedented move, to replace Shinseki, Rumsfeld recalled from
active duty a retired general who was more likely to accept his theory that
we could win a war in Iraq and establish a stable government with a small
number of troops.

The Defense Department has fought the war on the cheap because, despite
overwhelming evidence that the Army and Marine Corps need a significant
increase in their size in order to accomplished their assigned missions, the
civilian officials who run the Pentagon have refused to request authorization
from Congress to do so. Two Democratic representatives, Mark Udall from
Colorado and Ellen Tauscher of California, have introduced a bill into
Congress that would add 80,000 troops to the end-strength of the active Army.
Currently, this bill has no support from the Defense Department.

When I was commissioned in 1969 the Army was one and a half million.
Despite the fact that we're engaged in combat in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the
Philippines, and committed to peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and
the Sinai, and on operational deployments in over 70 countries, our Army is
now less than one third that size. We had more soldiers in Saudi Arabia in
the first Gulf war than we have in the entire Army today. In fact, Wal-Mart
has three times as many employees as the American Army has soldiers.

As late as 1990, Army end-strength was approximately 770,000. With fewer
than a half-million today, defense analysts have argued that we need to add
nearly 200,000 soldiers to the active ranks.

Today, the Army is so bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq that fewer than
10,000 soldiers are ready and able to deal with any new crisis elsewhere in
the world. And because the Army is so small, after only a year at home units
are returning to Iraq for a second and even a third 12-month tour of duty.

Let me add a parenthetical note here explaining a difference between our
services. Army tours of duty in Iraq are for 12 or 13 months. For Marines
it's normally six months. For Air Force personnel it's typically four
months. So when a soldier says he's going back to Iraq for his third tour,
it means something totally different than when an airman says the same thing.

Because the active force is too small, the mission of our National Guard
and reserve forces has been changed. Their original purpose was to save the
nation in time of peril. Today they serve as fillers for an inadequately
sized active force. This change in mission has occurred with no national
debate and no input from Congress.

We have fought the war on the cheap because we have never adequately funded
the rebuilding of the Iraqi military or the training and equipping of the
Iraqi police forces. The e-mails I receive from soldiers and Marines
assigned to train Iraqi forces all complain of their inadequate resources
because they are at the very bottom of the supply chain and the lowest
priority.

We have fought the war on the cheap because we have failed to purchase
necessary equipment for our troops or repair that which has been broken or a
worn out in combat. You've all read the stories about soldiers having to
purchase their own bulletproof vests and other equipment. And the Army Chief
of Staff has testified that he needs an extra $17 billion to fix equipment.
For example, nearly 1500 war-fighting vehicles await repair in Texas with 500
tanks sitting in Alabama.

Finally, we are fighting this war on the cheap because our defense budget of
3.8% of gross domestic product is too small. In the Kennedy administration
it averaged 9% of GDP. The average defense budget in the post Vietnam era,
from 1974 to 1994, was about 5.8% of GDP. If we are in a global war against
radical Islam, and we are, then we need a defense budget that reflects
wartime requirements.

A second part of our strategy is to ask the military to perform missions
that are more appropriate for other branches of government.

Our Army and Marine Corps are taking the lead in such projects as building
roads and sewage treatment plants, establishing schools, training a neutral

judiciary, and developing a modern banking system. The press refers to these
activities as nation-building. Our soldiers and Marines are neither equipped
nor trained to do these things. They attempt them, and in general they
succeed, because they are so committed and so obedient. But it is not what
they do well and what only they alone can do.

But I would ask, where are our Department of Energy and Department of
Transportation in restoring Iraqi infrastructure? What's the role of our
Department of Education in rebuilding an Iraqi educational system? What does
our Department of Justice do to help stand up an impartial judicial system?
Where is the US Information Agency in establishing a modern equivalent of
Radio Free Europe? And why did it take a year after the end of the active
fighting for the State Department to assume responsibility

from the Department of Defense in setting up an Iraqi government? These
other US government agencies are only peripherally and secondarily involved
in Iraq.

Actually, it would be inaccurate to say that the American government is at
war. The U.S. Army is at war. The Marine Corps is at war. And other small
elements of our armed forces are at war. But our government is not.

A third part of our strategy is to inconvenience the American people as
little as possible.

Ask yourself, are you at war? What tangible effect is this war having on
your daily life? What sacrifices have you been asked to make for the sake of
this war other than being inconvenienced at airports? No, America is not at
war. Only a small number of young, brave, patriotic men and women, who bear
the burden of fighting and dying, are at war.

A fourth aspect of our strategy is to fund Navy and Air Force budgets at
prewar levels while shortchanging the Marine Corps and the Army that are
doing the fighting.

This strategy, of spending billions on technology for a Navy and Air Force
that face no threat, contributes mightily to our failures in Iraq.

Secretary Rumsfeld is a former Navy pilot. His view of the battlefield is
from 10,000 feet, antiseptic and surgical. Since coming into office he has
funded the Air Force and the Navy at the expense of the Army and Marines
because he believes technological leaps we'll render ground forces obsolete.
He assumed that the rapid victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan confirmed
this belief.

For example, the Defense Department is pouring billions into buying the
newest fighter aircraft, at $360 million each, to take on a non-existent
enemy Air Force.

But, for pilots like Rumsfeld, war is all about technology. It's
computers, it's radar, and it's high tech weapons. Technologists have a hard
time comprehending the motivations of a suicide bomber or a mother who
celebrates the death of her son in such a way. It's difficult for them to
understand that to overcome centuries of ethnic hatred and murder it will
take more than one generation. It's hard for them to accept that for young
men with little education, no wives or children, and few job prospects, war
against the West is the only thing that gives meaning to their lives.

But war on the ground is not conducted with technology. It is fought by
25-year-old sergeants leading 19-year-old soldiers carrying rifles, in a
dangerous and alien environment, where you can't tell combatants from
noncombatants, Shiites from Sunnis, or suicide bombers from freedom seeking
Iraqis. This means war on the street is neither antiseptic nor surgical.
It's dirty, complicated, and fraught with confusion and error.

In essence, our strategy has been produced my men whose view of war
is based on their understanding of technology and machinery, not their
knowledge of men from an alien culture and the forces which motivate them.
They fail to appreciate that if you want to hold and pacify a hostile land
and a hostile people you need soldiers and Marines on the ground and in the
mud, and lots of them.

In summary, our flawed strategy in Iraq has produced the situation
we now face. This strategy is a product of the Pentagon, not the White
House. And remember, the Pentagon is run by civilian appointees in suits,
not military men and women in uniform. From the very beginning Defense
Department officials failed to appreciate what it would take to win this war.

The US military has tried to support this strategy because they are trained
and instructed to be subordinate to and obedient to civilian leadership. And
the American people want it that way. The last thing you want is a uniformed
military accustomed to debating in public the orders of their appointed
civilian masters. But retired generals and admirals are starting to speak
out, to criticize the strategy that has produced our current situation in
Iraq.

But, if we continue to fight the war on the cheap, if we continue
to avoid involving the American people by not asking them to make any

	Jefferson Review
	"Your Liberty is Our Interest"	November 20, 2006
Home / Archives / Links / Quotes / Book Reviews / Advertise /Contact us / Subscribe / Calendar