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| US Forces improperly structured for This War |
| 2008-06-14 |
| Today Iraq gets all the headlines, but the problems the U.S. military faces are bigger than any single conflict. If U.S. troops left Iraq tomorrow, the military would still be wrongly structured for any kind of war it is likely to face. The fault lines in that structure would still generate inappropriate and dangerous tensions; success would still require superhuman efforts on the part of individual senior leaders to transcend their legally defined roles and think only about the welfare of the nation as a whole. Some would do so; most would not. The system would continue to creak and groan and tear under the pressure of unbalanced strains it was never designed to bear. Iraq is a symptom of this disease, not the cause. Similar tensions occurred over Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, each with different people in the key positions. This is not a problem of personality dysfunction, and it is not a problem of ideology, although both have played important roles in recent failures. It is a problem of structure, of organization, and, more fundamentally, of the conception of what kinds of war we are likely to have to fight and how we will fight them. Of all the scary war scenarios facing the U.S. over the coming decades, the one for which our military is currently structured--simultaneous attacks on all fronts, in all dimensions, by a unitary global enemy--is the least likely. A grinding, prolonged, land-forces-based struggle within one regional command, or possibly two, is the most likely. Debate over the wisdom of the Iraq War and our current approach to it has obscured this reality for too long. Two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, it is time to adjust our military for the post-Cold War world. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #7 Our uniformed military leadership has the ability and know-how to craft a flexible response to nearly any threat and DEFEAT it! They have done it before, they can do it again. The problem starts when the CIVILIAN leadership and US State Department decide infuse trillions of taxpayer dollars to bring.... 'democracy' to some sinktrap country and use the military to make it happen. Besoeker 5 paragraph solution/COA follows: (1.) Say nothing to anybody, threaten no one. Do NOT telegraph your intentions. Stay deployable, stay ready, stay airborne, stay seaborne, train on the range, train with NVG's, demo, hand-to-hand. (2.) Deploy and get to the trouble spot and bad guys quickly. As soon as the ramp goes down or first troops hit the DZ, organized for combat. (3.) Start hammering the bastards asap! Attack, Attack, Attack and decisively vanquish anything the even remotely resembles a threat. (4.) Reconsolidate, release the POW's to warn others future adversaries and move to an extraction location, airfield, port, etc. Redeploy to CONUS. Get the hell out berfore CNN arrives. (5.) Revert to point #1. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2008-06-14 18:43 |
| #6 "Debate over the wisdom of the Iraq War and our current approach to it has obscured this reality for too long." A real leader should be able to articulate this fact. Bush simply doesn't posses the skills and McCain, so far, has proven equally under-whelming. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2008-06-14 11:16 |
| #5 A grinding, prolonged, land-forces-based struggle within one regional command, or possibly two, is the most likely. The answer is right there at the beginning of the sentence. It's a political problem, since we have the option to immediately end any "grinding, prolonged, land-forces-based struggle". The clue may well be that any discussion of "ROE" beyond civilian control of the military indicates the dilemma is political rather than military. |
| Posted by: Caesar Ebbaviger1593 2008-06-14 09:38 |
| #4 one prepares for the war which would have no 'second chances'. And the way EUrope is going EUrabian, that may be the war we're in. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2008-06-14 09:27 |
| #3 Rummy gets a bum rap in trying to wean the military from its Central Front Europe [WWII part Deux] mentality. Gates gets praise in finally getting around to hammering those who've distorted the structure during decades of peace that finds the resultant military force structure less than prepared to fight on the real battlefield. Rummy was right - you go to war with the military you have. There will be no optimal solution since the military establishment is so subject to 'political interests' that find work in districts, bases in districts, micro managing every step of the procurement process, underfunding training and spare parts/maintenance, etc. Neither is it helped by those in uniform who seek to build empires and acquire 'systems' for their own sake rather than their practical application in the whole environment. Top that off with vacillations in foreign policy that blunder the country into confrontation or conflict with an enemy or enemies that is not on the 'to do' list. The one saving grace is the American military aptitude to adapt, improvise, overcome relatively quickly. Ask yourself, which war was America prepared to fight? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-06-14 09:26 |
| #2 One doesn't focus on preparation for the most likely war; one prepares for the war which would have no 'second chances'. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2008-06-14 09:22 |
| #1 Of all the scary war scenarios facing the U.S. over the coming decades, the one for which our military is currently structured--simultaneous attacks on all fronts, in all dimensions, by a unitary global enemy--is the least likely. Unless, of course, USA will restructure its military to deal exclusively with with Iraq-style "police" actions. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-06-14 08:54 |