Fred Kagan released his great plan for victory the other day. It details just how we can beat the people whose country we’ve been occupying for almost four years now, and who resent us staying where we’re not wanted. They want us out, and a national government associated with one or more religious organizations.
Now, that’s not saying much, because two and one-half years ago the Iraqis viewed us unfavorably.
What Mr Kagan argues is the old warfare concept that there is no conquest without firm control of the enemy’s capital city. And any oxygen breathing biped understands we don’t control Baghdad, although we do have a pretty good handle on the Green Zone itself. We’ve got the Green Zone locked down behind multiple concentric circles of barriers, barbed wire, gunposts, and every other method of fortification we can think of.
Well, sort of.
BAGHDAD, Nov. 21 — A bomb exploded in an armored car among those belonging to the speaker of Parliament, wounding the American security guard who was driving it out of a parking area in the government Green Zone and disrupting a meeting of lawmakers nearby, a parliamentary aide said.
The difficulty with the strategy of conquest by controlling the enemy’s capital is that sometimes it doesn’t work. The British took control of our revolutionary capital, New York, and we moved the capital. We won that war. The British invaded us again in 1812, burned much of our capital, and then had to withdraw because they had an untenable position in Washington . We won that war, too. Napoleon occupied and burned Moscow and had to retreat because he had no safe supply lines. The Grande Armee invaded Russia with more than 600,000 troops. More than 400,000 died of wounds, partisan action, disease and starvation and Napoleon retreated, returning home with less than 30,000 troops, it is said.
When Kagan mentions center of gravity and "decisive factor" he’s actually fumpfeling, mixing metaphors and discrete moments in his fumbling attempts to salvage his own, and his PNAC associates reputations, for starting this g_dawful quagmire under misrepresented ideological reasons A "decisive factor" in warfare is something that is measurably superior to a quality or item the enemy possesses. In Iraq such a factor might be local air superiority, artillery, or even mobility. On the other hand, the "enemy" possesses his own decisive factor: They’re all over the damn place, and we are too few in numbers to match that ubiquity.
Mr Kagan argues that one great last push will solve all the problems. It would be cruel to imagine him hunched down over a Risk mapboard, feverishly moving colored plastic pieces around, mumbling to himself as he searches for the perfect combination of units to win, wouldn’t it?
A troop "surge" or exploitation of our superior mobility, can produce a temporary tactical advantage in a localized area, but the nature of combat in Iraq - urban insurgency – requires massive investment of resources to support that temporary manpower advantage. And you’ll find the smaller version of IEDs, booby traps, everywhere you go. All the insurgency has to do is what the VC did so successfully in Viet Nam: hide the weapons, wait, and exploit immediate opportunities when vulnerabilities are noticed. Or just hide the weapons and do nothing. We’ll find some of the weapons caches because the law of big numbers guarantees that. If there is no immediate resistance some fool will declare a local victory – the insurgency’s back is broken! Just about the time CENTCOM is writing up the award citations for themselves the resisters somewhere else take advantage of the area’s missing troops now working in Baghdad. Then we can move all those "surged" troops to another city and work it out there while Baghdad flares up again.
The term "center of gravity refers to a map point in positional land warfare at which maximum effort should be lodged against enemy forces so as to break their defensive line and enable the classic "breakthough" by exploiting your own maneuver advantage and effect a sweeping operation through the enemy’s rear with the goal of destroying, capturing or dislocating the enemy’s rear units such as command and communications centers, logistical supply locations, and so forth. The Germans, no mean theoretical and practical soldiers themselves, (von Moltke, Ludendorff, Hindenburg, Guderian, Manstein, Rommel, von Bock, von Manteuffel, for example,) term this the schwerpunkt,
A word about the Second World War in Europe: we defeated Germany because we out-produced them. We made and shipped tanks and trucks, rifles and soldiers, faster than they could destroy them. We had lots of help on the Russian Front, too.
I know it has escaped that great strategist, Mr Kagan. But the Ba’atist and Sunni resisters don’t have that sort of military establishment. It’s not publicly known whether the Sunnis, Ba’athist dead enders and Iraqi Army commanders directing them have such a hierarchical command structure. I’m sure if they did, and CENTCOM knew about it, they would have been taken out. We would have heard about it, because a large part of CENTCOM’s effort is expended in informational warfare – telling Americans about great successes. Now, it’s true that the Mahdi Army does have a command locus, insofar as whatever building Muqtada al-Sadr is sheltering in. Dislocating their communications network would be just about impossible unless we first tear down their landline and cellular telephone networks, and eliminate their power sources – electricity generating plants.
Oh. Wait. We did that. Those are a couple of the reasons why we have an insurgency today.
No one should consider the present situation ad conclude that this "surge" will not happen because it cannot work. To do so is to argue against the reality (OK, unreality) that George Bu$h is unable by personality and psychology to ever admit error and defeat. Likewise, the Likudniks at the heart of PNAC and the AEI cannot admit that their plan to save the Middle East was flawed from the get-go.
So the "surge" will happen. Troops scheduled for withdrawal will be kept past their rotation dates. Troops scheduled for deployment will be rushed in early, before they are truly prepared. And this frenetic schedule will be kept up, relentlessly grinding down our Army and Marines, until January, 2009 when it is scheduled for Mr Bu$h to leave our White House.