Putting Rummy in Crosshairs--Who Can Help Us Win This Fourth Generation War?

I haven't commented much on the recent Rumsfeld flap because I don't believe there has been much substance to it. This is political battle in the heat of war from many sides. The Generals in the middle of the Pentagon who were big advocates of Cold War-style kinetic engagements on a pitched battlefield against Rumsfeld's more technologically reliant, yet pitched battle focus through manuever and speed. With the Generals launching forward in attack, the Democrats smelled blood and, in typical fashion, have attached themselves to those who have launched into full-opposition with someone from the Bush Administration regardless of the actual substance of the attack.

In this current "argument" the biggest loser, regardless of outcome, is our country. The debate has come down to one thing: should Donald Rumsfeld lose his job? The most important question of how we can wage a more effective assymetric, or more specifically, Fourth Generation War against our Islamic Fundamentalist foes, has almost been entirely ignored.

Like any complex political battle, the lines have become blurred as to where each person actually stood during their relative places in space in time during the initial invasion period. Many of the Left opposed the intitial invasion and thought (hoped?) it would inevitably turn to disaster. Since the lightening quick strike that placed Coalition forces in control of a country the size of California in three weeks, they've looked for a foothold of opportunity to prove that they had been correct in predicting disaster all along.

The overall war in Iraq didn't turn out to be as clean as previous operations in Afghanistan. Within a few months, there was a full-fledged insurgency on our hands, and regardless of initial intentions or plans, we found ourselves in the middle of a Fourth Generation war unlike any other we had been a part of.

Mistakes were made in the early part of the war by the whole gammut of decision makers. You can point a finger to each and every leader from the President, to the Pentagon, to our boots on the ground, to our Congressional leadership, to our Intelligence Community, etc. Nothing went as it was planned, and given the knowledge and background of our current force structure, it was inevitably going to be a situation where we were going to have to learn hard and fast how to fight and win against an assymetric foe. However, the biggest and loudest criticsms during this time were not substantive, and loudly driven by Left in order to prove that their "patriot" opposition to the "illegal" war in the first place was correct, and they were able to leverage certain military minds who were eager to push back on Donald Rumsfeld in favor of their more Cold-War minded strategies.

I'm willing to give our leaders a rather wide-birth when it comes to conducting war. Firstly, there is an opponent on the other end of the stick that gets to have a say in the outcome, and secondly, the thought that there is a plan that can be conceived that can be so swift and decisive is so ridiculously absurd in it face, it can't pass the horselaugh test. There are so many components to geopolitics, kinetic warfare and general circumstances that the only perfect plan is the one developed in hindsight and in my view, this is what the recent Generals jumping on the Rumsfeld-bash wagon are trying to do.

Much has been said about the now famous General Eric Shinseki's view that a proper victory in Iraq could not be acheived without the aid of several hundred thousand troops. According to many who have come to throw heeping scorn on the initial invasion plan, these troops would have been able to snuff out the insurgeny before it began. Nothing, however, has been said on exactly how these additional troops would have been used to acheive such a task (Read Bobby Bran's post on the subject. As an Afghan-war veteran and West Pointer, he has a much better and more substantive argument that I can come up with on this).

Additional manpower on battlefield essentially helps you to increase kinetic firepower. But one thing our 3 years in Iraq has demonstrated is that if there is any strength American forces already have an abundance of, it is the incredible ability to deliver concentrated and lethal amounts of force at will. What we lack, is the ability to turn that firepower loose on an enemy whose sole purpose is not to beat us on the battlefield, but to cause increasing amounts of disorder in the hopes that American forces will politically be forced to withdraw.

Initially, the military strategy for defeating the insurgency was to hunt down and kill or capture as many as possible. While the military was able to do just this, it didn't do much about cutting into the strategy employed by the groups of insurgents terrorizing Iraqis and killing American soldiers in front of the Western Press.

Then, after two years of falling-down the stairs, our military and civilian leadership employed a strategy, which I ultimately believe, will give us the best chance of landing on our feet in Iraq. Based on copious amounts of intelligence, they determined that the way to stop bombs from blowing up in Bagdad, was to choke the long supply-lines that originated across the border in Syria, and continued along a network of strategic cities along the Euphrates into Bagdad. However, in conjunction with these operations, they would simultaneously train and put into action an indigenous Iraqi force who would hold ground gained from fleeing or dead terrorists, that were previously abandoned by attacking American forces. It was sound Fourth Generation Military Strategy.

The result of this well executed plan was panic in the eyes of our enemy. The most bloodthirsty part of the insurgency, al-Qaeda, began to panic as they started bombing each and everything they could get hit. They bombed women, children, religious sites and those who turned against them. Previously agnostic or sympathetic Sunnis turned against and openly fought them. Once the Iraqi elections were held, Sunnis defied many by turning out in great numbers to partcipate in their new government. Party they joined out of fear and resignation over being at the losing end of this war. Being a true democrat at that point was not the goal, and nor was it in 1865 for the Southerners who were welcomed back into the Union after their bloody rebellion.

Now, the political fights are left to the Iraqis, and the end results are far from certain, but that is beyond the scope of this post for now.

The American Army learned a tremendous lesson in how to fight Fourth Generation War. Given the sheer size and amount of bureaucracy that comes with such a large and potent force, it is actually remarkable to this average citizen that we responded so "quickly." However, our lessons are far from conclusive as it remains to be seen how much of what we learned has been institutionalized.

This is the debate I'd like to be having right now. Unfortunately, the only thing we get is a trumped-up "scandle of the week" designed almost entirely to destroy the credibilty in those in power, regardless of truth, by those who are seeking to regain it. Partisan politics have actually hampered and affected our ability to win a war against a foe that will not give up so easily.

I'm not entirely sure how committed Donald Rumsfeld is to waging and winning a Fourth Generation Style War in the long-run, but I do know that he has allowed his commanders on the ground to employ a very risky and ultimately successful strategy in Western Iraq. This is the wide-birth I'm talking about. Under no circumstances am I here to convince anyone that Rumsfeld is blame-free (and as SecDef, he should ultimately be held accountable), but I do believe that it is important that we allow our leadership, civilian and military, some significant room to make mistakes, learn from them, and to refine our warfighting capabilities against a real and nihilistic enemy. We don't have time to take our new ideas into the simulators and war-game them to death. We have to fight now, we are doing so, and have been seeing some favorable results recently.

In conclusion I support Rummy to stay on these grounds, as we'd just be firing someone over partisan pressures and mostly likely replacing him not with someone of superior ideas in fighting this war better, but with a contrarian benefitting from serendipidous circumstances. Find me someone with a better pedigree and I might reconsider, but John Kerry, Anthony Zinni and Wes Clark have done nothing but demonstrate that their ideas are a thing of the past, and that is the last place we need to be now.

Posted by 10 fingers 6 strings at April 23, 2006 09:05 PM | TrackBack