the power of one

A few weeks back Sen. Hagel (I’m name dropping again) was asked something along the lines of “how easy will it be for you to run as an anti-war candidate?” He paused as he always seems to, and then answered thusly, “who said I’m anti-war? I’m not anti-war, but I don’t support the execution of this war.” And there it is.

What reminded me of the press conference was some talk in the car the other day as we were heading out to buy Easter Egg Hunt goodies for the kids (my idea; there will be four here on Sunday). And we don’t need to go into any discussion about holy days and candy; I honestly don’t think much about it…so there. Anyway, my stance when it comes to this point of war/anti-war classification is similar: I’m neither. In the case of Afghanistan – fire away, in the case of Iraq – I wasn’t onboard. Either way, the die was cast and we end up in Iraq…now what do we do? Well, as a jumping off point, we should have done what we did 15 years ago and sent in 400,000+ troops. The U.S. military is a machine and it's not too caught up in the politics of 'invade or stay home', or the worries of international support; it doesn’t care, nor does the enemy. The military does what it’s told to do, but the one thing you can't do is handcuff it by not supplying the overwhelming force needed for a given mission. The inability to manage the after-effects of the conventional combat mission (how did no one think beyond 5-10 days?) was criminal. Who plans for ten days when they decide to invade a country? This very first mistake laid the path to where we are right now. Four years later, innumerable opportunities to at least attempt to fix things, and what we get is 20,000 additional troops in Baghdad? Gen Petraeus, who’s now the commander of combat troops in Iraq, rewrote the Army’s counterinsurgency field manual in 2004, here’s basically what it says:

“The new field manual recommends a troop density of at least 20 combat troops to every 1,000 people in Iraq. There are 6 million people in Baghdad, which means the manual would suggest 120,000 combat troops to effectively secure the city. Right now, there are about 130,000 U.S. troops in all of Iraq, and of those 60,000 are support troops or personnel, American officials say.” (pbs.org)

My Nebraska math says that we had (pre-surge) about 70,000 combat troops in all of Iraq. That leaves a shortage of 50,000 troops IF we move all of them to Baghdad. Let’s say we do that, and we bring in 50,000 more; what do we do about Mosul, Tal Afar, the rest of the Sunni Triangle? We just ripped all those troops from the rest of the country so we’d need to backfill in order to continue to secure the country – in fact, based on the training manual we’d need a total of over 530,000 combat troops (July 2006 Iraq population estimate 26.7 million [www.cia.gov]) – so I’m at a total of nearly 450,000 additional troops if we really needed to secure the country, or a minimum of 120,000 if we were just securing Baghdad and backfilling in other areas. I’ll make this easier:

120,000 additional combat troops if you want to get off on the cheap
450,000 additional combat troops if you want to get the job done

Our answer: 20,000+.

Unfortunately, we’ve got a shortage of troops these days and somehow believe that we can only rotate x number in-country on yearly tours. But, if as it's claimed, this is the most important war since WWII, and if we must contain the region and secure Iraq, then you send in every troop you have, you tell them they’ll be there ‘for the duration’, and you finish the job. Would that suck? Yes. Did WWII suck? Yes. If the guys in suits running this war want to win then they have to flood the country in order to secure it. At that point, and only at that point, can we talk about the political solution that is buzzing around the big blue sky. How does anyone expect Iraqis to be happy (or even content) with the security situation when daily life is so shitty? Never mind what John McCain says about ‘walking around Baghdad’ as if all is peachy…he’s lost his train of thought. I’ve read somewhere that Baghdad averages about six hours of electrical power each day…six hours! My bathtub backs up and I'm thoroughly pissed off. Power. Water. Security. According to Pentagon spokespeople the cost of the war started at $4.4 billion/month in 2003 and is up to a forecasted $8.8 billion/month in 2008. More math for me, and I’ll be generous to the Administration, says that by the end of 2007 we’ll be in this thing for upwards of $360 billion – we can’t get the power on in Baghdad? I’m pretty sure that in Todd’s Top Ten Ways to Prevent Hatred and Insurgency, infrastructure is pretty high on the list. If you want your money to fight the war, Mr. Bush, then make some hard decisions.

Here’s my support for the situation in Iraq: send in everyone or get the hell out. Throwing an additional 20,000 troops into the situation is putting 20,000 more military members in harm’s way for no good tactical or strategic mission. None. You want my anti-war stance? More troops. There you have it.

Now the 29% of Americans who still support this Administration can go back to reading Us Magazine, debating about Britney Spears' breakdown, and watching Fox News.

I’m done.

T.