Win Now

My experience in foreign affairs pretty much stops when I put the television remote down or when I stop ordering books from Amazon. I've watched Blackhawk Down at least four times, but I wouldn't be the first one anyone called when they wanted to plan a military mission, much less invade a country. But when I see my amateur analysis confirmed by people who do that sort of thing for a living, well, I almost feel vindicated...

Last fall, I posted my concerns about the need for more soldiers in Iraq. After this latest round of warfare and the inevitable casualties, I'm wondering again just exactly why things aren't under better control over there.

This week the Bush Administration was blasted with both barrels from an unlikely source, The Weekly Standard. Larry Miller writes in an article titled, Win Now,

Anyone who reads past page two has known since the president landed on that aircraft carrier that Falluja was the headquarters, the homeland, the core of everyone who ever worked and killed for Saddam Hussein. It's not just a place, a city, a neighborhood, with terrific down-home folks going to choir practice and trying to get by in tough times. It's the place--the bull's-eye. It might as well be named Tortureville, or Saddamfield, or Baathburg. What in the world did anyone imagine was going to sprout up there in the last 12 months? A chamber of commerce? A garden club? A band shell for Sunday programs of Sousa?

...and he's right. It's difficult to come up with a rational explanation for how things in Fallujah could've become so bad. The only explanation I can come up with is that the military forces over there are doing the best they can with the resources they have available. Therefore, it would seem that they don't have enough resources available.

William Kristol, a guy whose opinions I respect, writes in an article titled, Too Few Troops,

Close observers of the conflict in Iraq, civilian and military alike (military, of course, speaking off the record), say that at least two additional divisions--at least 30,000 extra troops--are needed in Iraq just to deal with the current crisis. Even more troops may well be needed to fully pacify the country. And it would be useful to have as many of those troops as possible there sooner rather than later.

The shortage of troops in Iraq is the product of a string of bad calculations and a hefty dose of wishful thinking. Above all, it is the product of Rumsfeld's fixation on high-tech military "transformation," his hostility to manpower-intensive nation-building in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and his refusal to increase the overall size of the military in the first place. The results are plain to see: We are trying to carry out Bush's post-9/11 foreign policy with Clinton's pre-9/11 military. It is a wonderful military, but it is too small for our responsibilities in the post-9/11 world. As a result, it will not be easy to find the additional brigades to send to Iraq. Troubling reductions in our deployments elsewhere will be required, and an already stressed military will be asked to do more still. Unfortunately, there is no choice.

Nearly every news report from Iraq detailing the ongoing conflicts there notes the presence of a great many "foreign fighters". These foreign fighters are from a variety of countries but most seem to be either Syrian or Iranian. I realize there are some complex issues associated with border control but it seems pretty logical to imagine the futility of trying to defeat these insurgents when they have a ready supply of both men and materiel' from across the border. If we have insufficient numbers to control the borders of Iraq, then we have an insufficient number of troops period.

William Kristol lays a lot of blame at the feet of Donald Rumsfeld, but George W. Bush will ultimately have only himself to blame if the dithering in Iraq goes on much longer. When diehard conservatives like William Kristol raise the alarm they'd better listen because pretty soon a whole lot more voices are going to be joining the chorus.