Also at DKos.
The Guardian Unlimited reports that at an Association of the Army meeting in Fort Lauderdale, FL last week, top U.S. generals admitted that Iraqi rebels are smarter than they are.
Did these “top U.S. generals” honestly think the rest of us hadn’t noticed that?
Technocrats
From the Guardian:
In Vietnam, the US was eventually defeated by a well-armed, closely directed and highly militarised society that had tanks, armoured vehicles and sources of both military production and outside procurement. What is more devastating now is that the world’s only superpower is in danger of being driven back by a few tens of thousands of lightly armed irregulars, who have developed tactics capable of destroying multimillion-dollar vehicles and aircraft.
One three-star general at the conference told the Guardian that “Iraq and Afghanistan are sucking up resources at a faster rate than we planned for.”
That kind of razor’s edge analysis is the reason those three-stars make the big bucks.
The same three-star also said, “America’s warriors need the latest technology to defeat an enemy who is smart, agile and cunning–things we did not expect of the Soviets.”
The Guardian article doesn’t identify this three-star (of course), but it doesn’t matter. If guys like him are making three-stars in the U.S. Army, it’s little wonder the U.S. Army is getting its chin socked by numerically and technically inferior force.
The U.S. Army already has the latest technology–at least the latest technology that has been fielded. If an Army three-star thinks mo’ better technology will make up for lack of smarts and agility, well, we may as well disband the Army.
Bullets versus Arrows
We developed our World War II and Cold War military to counter adversaries who had significant and organized air, land and sea forces.
Technological advances aside, the basic components of today’s U.S. military are the same as the force we had in the latter portion of the 20th century: armor, artillery infantry, special forces, aircraft carriers, surface combatant ships, submarines, fighter and bomber aircraft, air and amphibious assault.
The adversaries we’re fighting today don’t have any of those things, and they’re kicking our cans up and down the sidewalk at will.
High tech, mobile forces are designed and trained to defeat other high tech, mobile forces. Insurgencies, they don’t do so well at. In multi-sided Hobbesian conflicts like the one we’re witnessing in Iraq, they positively suck. The U.S. Army hasn’t been worth a spit shine at fighting asymmetrical, counter-insurgency style wars since it won the west from the Indians.
Planning for Failure
General David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, will attempt to execute the Army’s new counterinsurgency doctrine (which he played a large part in formulating) in that country, but even he reportedly gives the “surge” plan only a one in four chance of succeeding.
How are things going? This from Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post :
Soon after arriving in Iraq, [NBC News anchor] Brian Williams was listening to an Army colonel describe how much safer Ramadi had gotten when another soldier shouted that it was too dangerous to stand there and hustled them inside the military outpost.
Days later at the Baghdad airport, Williams and his team heard five explosions, saw smoke rising near the taxiway in front of them, and were relieved to board the Fokker jet that carried them out of the country.
I wasn’t at all surprised to read in the Los Angeles Times that…
American military planners have begun plotting a fallback strategy for Iraq that includes a gradual withdrawal of forces and a renewed emphasis on training Iraqi fighters in case the current troop buildup fails…
If the man in charge says there’s a 75 percent chance of failure, it’s a good idea to plan on him being right.
A senior Pentagon official told the LA Times “This part of the world has an allergy against foreign presence,” and that the chances of the surge’s success may be diminishing. “You have a window of opportunity that is relatively short. Your ability to influence this with a large U.S. force eventually gets to the point that it is self-defeating.”
It’s too bad we didn’t think about that “allergy against foreign presence” thing before we decided to become the presence that caused the allergy. And it’s entirely tragic that we committed our “best-trained, best equipped” force into a situation where it was all but guaranteed to defeat itself.
It’s sadder still that after spending itself into the sand on a low odds escalation strategy, our land forces will adopt a periphery redeployment posture sometime in 2008 that resembles what Congressman Jack Murtha (D-PA) proposed in November of 2005.
Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
There is a reason for this. As William Lind has observed:
It is an indication of just how rotten Washington is that there is absolutely no discussion of reassessing military spending on weapons systems intended for a foe like the USSR, given our failure in Afghanistan and Iraq.
…for the quotes and links.
That’s precisely how I see it.
…is also absolutely unsustainable. How many gallons of fuel are required for each helo from the Green Zone to the airport? How many spares are left to repair the elevated rate of wear each helo is enduring? How much fuel are the two carrier groups burning steaming around the Persian Gulf? How much time, effort, and energy is expended to deliver luxury items like ice cream?
The folks on the other side have none of these concerns and have a far lower rate of consumption that is indefinitely sustainable compared to ours. I’ll bet that the average fighter is able to subsist on some bread, water, and careful conservation of rounds for his incredibly reliable, low-maintenance Kalishnikov.
Given the world’s current energy situation all they really need to do is wait us out.
Can’t remember where I read it-truthout or Information Clearing House maybe-that the US military is the 4th largest consumer of fuel in the entire world.
…I’ll keep an eye out for that reference. Thanks.
This Energy Bulletin article claims the Pentagon is the world’s largest non-state consumer of fossil fuel:
Pentagon Oil Addiction
They also provide some loose references to the Federal Fleet Report for FY 2006 and FEMA, DoD, and EIA/DoE annual energy reviews.
A simple comparison of the Pentagon’s fuel needs versus the CIA World Factbook seems to indicate there are only 35 countries on Earth more fuel thirsty.
…and we’ve gotten that way by design. The more the military consumes, the more the contractors who support it make.
…I would estimate that 60 to 75% of the 28% who still support BushCo are employees in the MI-complex.
That industry has been a pretty good place to be during BushCos reign. This is mainly because each year they’ve written about $500 billion in hot checks versus China’s goodwill. This gives the 28%ers the illusion of prosperity.
It gets worse. There are open displays of BushCo campaign material from ’04, Creationist literature, and stacks of Bibles with a sign that says ‘Take One if You Need One’. There is also an informal choir that sings gospels across the (busy) street from our building at lunch. I don’t believe the yard they stand in belongs to anyone in the company. Even the ones that think Bush is incompetent believe that the entire ME should be ‘turned into a sheet of glass’.
This would be all fine and well if people could express any views that are not far, far extreme right. I can tell you right now that people who expressed views that are center left would be blackballed, and the openly progressive would be run out the door.
In the past few days, and maybe I’m being hypersensitive due to my childhood experiences (last kid picked in gym and all that), I’ve witnessed episodes of ‘friendly banter’ where:
The whole MI-complex edifice needs to be exposed and torn down if we ever hope to live in a world that is not consumed by eternal war.
If guys like him are making three-stars in the U.S. Army, it’s little wonder the U.S. Army is getting its chin socked by numerically and technically inferior force.
It’s likely not that he’s dumb, pe se, he’s just not, shall we say, “street savvy” in a tough neighborhood, in a way that is tragically familiar to students of history:
In short I hope you’ll pardon my unseemly witty levity
When the substance of my comment is quite notable for brevity:
Those who find Santayana is quite something of a mystery
Will find what others also learned made for unpleasant history.
Lovely.