I don't want to overdo any comparison between the American Revolution and the current conflict in Iraq, but there may be some lessons to learn.
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1776 British Problems |
Possible Iraq Parallel |
A large burden of debt incurred in the wars of the preceding century had forced crippling economies on both Army and Navy. |
The Bush Administration has racked up enormous deficits and has tried to cut military pay, retention bonuses, and veterans' benefits. Also, U.S. Armed Forces are overextended because of numerous deployments around the world. |
British administrative and supply systems, though far superior to anything the Americans could improvise, were also characterized by division and confusion of authority, and there was much corruption in high places. |
Yes, there's plenty of corruption and a "confusion of authority" over public procurement v. private contractors. |
To suppress the revolt, Britain had first to raise the necessary forces, then transport and sustain them over 3,ooo miles of ocean, and finally use them effectively to regain control of a vast and sparsely populated territory. |
More miles of ocean, but ditto. |
Recruiting men for an eighteenth century army was most difficult. The British Government had no power to compel service except in the militia in defense of the homeland, and service in the British Army overseas was immensely unpopular. |
In the 21st century it's not far different. |
To meet Sir William Howe's request for 50,000 men to conduct the campaign in 1776, the ministry resorted to hiring mercenaries from the small German states, particularly Hesse-Cassell (hence Hessians). These German states were to contribute almost 30,000 men to the British service during the war--complete organizations with their own officers up to the rank of major general and schooled in the system of Frederick the Great. |
The role of mercenaries is similar today. |
Howe did not get his 50,000 men but by midsummer 1776 his force had passed 30,000 British and Hessians, and additional reinforcements were sent to Canada during the year. Maintaining a force of this size proved to be virtually impossible. |
Maintaining current force levels in Iraq, or even increasing them, is also proving to be virtually impossible. |
The attrition rate in America from battle losses, sickness, disease, and desertion was tremendously high. |
Let's hope not, but there are danger signs. |
English jails and poorhouses were drained of able-bodied men, bounties were paid, patriotic appeals were launched throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, and all the ancient methods of impressment were tried, but the British were never able to recruit enough men to meet the needs of their commanders in America. |
The modern equivalent includes "inducements" to the few allies we still have and impressing soldiers who have finished their terms. |
Once in America, British armies could find no strategic center or centers whose capture would bring victory. |
Ditto. |
Flat, open country where warfare could be carried on in European style was not common; and woods, hills, and swamps suited to the operations of militia and irregulars were plentiful. A British Army that could win victories in the field over the Continentals had great difficulty in making those victories meaningful. |
The Iraqi equivalent is the urban woods and swamps. |
But to crush the revolt the British Army had to cut loose from coastal bases and rivers. When it did so its logistical problems multiplied and its lines of communications became vulnerable to constant harassment. British armies almost inevitably came to grief every time they moved very far from the areas where they could be nurtured by supply ships from the homeland. These difficulties, a British colonel asserted in 1777, had "absolutely prevented us this whole war from going fifteen miles from a navigable river." |
In Iraq, the equivalents are garrisons, particularly for non-U.S. troops. Venturing beyond these little islands can cause grief. |
The British could not, in any case, ever hope to muster enough strength to occupy with their own troops the vast territory they sought to restore to British rule. Their only real hope of meaningful victory was to use American loyalists as an instrument for controlling the country, as one British general put it, to help "the good Americans to subdue the bad." |
Ditto. |
There were many obstacles to making effective use of the Tories. Patriot organization, weak at the center, was strong at the grass roots, in the local communities throughout America, whereas the Tories were neither well organized nor energetically led. |
Ditto. |
The patriots seized the machinery of local government in most communities at the outset, held it until the British Army appeared in their midst, and then normally regained it after the British departed. Strong local control enabled the patriots to root out the more ardent Tories at the very outset, and by making an example of them to sway the apathetic and indifferent. |
Ditto. |
British commanders were usually disappointed in the number of Tories who flocked to their standards and even more upset by the alacrity with which many of them switched their allegiance when the British Army moved out. They found the Tories a demanding, discordant, and puzzling lot, and they made no really earnest effort to enlist them in British forces until late in the war. |
Ditto. |
On the frontiers the British could also expect support from the Indian tribes who almost inevitably drifted into the orbit of whatever power controlled Canada. But support of the Indians was a two-edged sword, for nothing could raise frontier enthusiasm for battle like the threat of an Indian attack. |
Sounds like the Kurds. |
Finally, the British had to fight the war with one eye on their ancient enemies in Europe. France, thirsting for revenge for defeat in the Seven Years' War, stood ready to aid the American cause if for no other purpose than to weaken British power, and by virtue of a Family Compact could almost certainly carry Spain along in any war with England. France and Spain could at the very least provide badly needed money and supplies to sustain the American effort and force the British to divert their forces from the contest in America. At most the combined Franco-Spanish fleet might well prove a match for the British Fleet and neutralize that essential control of the seas needed by the British to carry on the American war. |
The global politics are definitely hurting the U.S. effort. There are many, many countries who would (quietly) wish the U.S. humbled in this campaign. France is now a critic, and Spain just became one with its election. |
Like I said, these sorts of comparisons are interesting but never exact. For one thing the Iraqi insurgency arguably has more religious grounding. (The American Revolution was a more humanistic, secular effort in its ideology.) That may be a distinction without a (relevant) difference, though.