Mitchell M. Zais, Ph.D.
  President, Newberry College
  2100 College Street
  Newberry, SC 29108
  803-321-5102
 
  ===================================
 
  US Strategy in Iraq
  By General Mitchell Zais, USA (Ret.)
 
  Honors Convocation
  Newberry College
  9 November 2006
 
 
  Many of our faculty and staff have asked me my views about the
  current situation in Iraq. A few students have also asked. So I
  thought I would
  take this opportunity, two days before Veterans' Day, to provide you with
  some insights as seen from the perspective of a combat veteran who served
  as the Commanding General of US and allied forces in Iraq. I also served
  as Chief of War Plans in the Pentagon and have spent considerable
  time studying national security affairs, including a fellowship at
  the National Defense University. So while it's true that everyone
  has opinions about Iraq, I would argue that not all of those
  opinions are equally well-informed.
 
  This talk will address our strategy in Iraq. I won't talk about
  what the
  next steps should be, what the long-term prospects for peace in Iraq are,
  or how we can best get out of the quagmire we are in. Those might
  be other talks. For today I'm going to focus on strategy
 
  Let me begin by saying that most of our problems in Iraq stem from a
  flawed strategy that has been in place since the beginning of the war.
 
  It's important that you understand what strategy is. In military
  terminology there is a distinction between strategy, operations, tactics,
  and techniques.
 
  Strategy pertains to national decision-making at the highest level.
  For example, our strategy in World War II was to mobilize the
  nation, then defeat the Nazi regime while conducting a holding
  action in the Pacific, then shift our forces to destroy the Japanese
  Empire. Afterwards, our strategy was to rebuild both defeated
  nations into capitalistic democracies in order to make them future allies.
 
  An example of an operational decision from World War II would be the
  decision to invade North Africa and then Italy and Southern France before
  moving directly for the heart of Germany by coming ashore in
  Northern France or Belgium.
 
  Tactics characterize a scheme of maneuver that integrates the
  different capabilities of, for example, infantry, armor, and artillery.
 
  A technique might describe a way of employing machine guns with
  overlapping fields of fire or of setting up a roadblock.
 
  Our strategy in Iraq has been:
 
  1. fight the war on the cheap;
 
  2. ask the ground forces to perform missions that are more suitably
  performed by other branches of the American government;
 
  3. inconvenience the American people as little as possible, and
 
  4. continue to fund the Air Force and Navy at the same levels that
  they have been funded at for the last 30 years while shortchanging
  the Army and Marines who are doing all of the fighting.
 
  No wonder the war is not going well.
 
  Let me explain how the war is being fought on the cheap.
 
  From the very beginning, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who
  thankfully announced his departure yesterday, has striven to
  minimize the
  number of soldiers and Marines in Iraq. Instead of employing the
  Colin Powell doctrine of "use massive force at the beginning to
  achieve a quick and decisive victory," his goal has been "use no
  more troops than absolutely necessary so we can spend defense dollars on new technology."
 
  Before hostilities began, the Army Chief of Staff, Eric Shinseki,
  testified before Congress that an occupation of Iraq would require
  hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Shinseki made his estimate based
  on his extensive experience in the former Yugoslavia where he worked
  to disengage the warring factions of Orthodox Serbians, Catholic
  Croatians, and Muslim Kosovars.
 
  Shinseki also had available the results of a wargame
  conducted in
  1999 that involved 70 military, diplomatic, and intelligence officials.
  This recently declassified study concluded that 400,000 troops on
  the ground were needed to keep order, seal borders, and take care of
  other security needs. And even then stability would not be guaranteed.
 
  Because of his testimony before Congress, Rumsfeld moved Shinseki aside.
  In a nearly unprecedented move, to replace Shinseki, Rumsfeld
  recalled from active duty a retired general who was more likely to
  accept his theory that we could win a war in Iraq and establish a
  stable government with a small number of troops.
 
  The Defense Department has fought the war on the cheap because,
  despite overwhelming evidence that the Army and Marine Corps need a
  significant increase in their size in order to accomplished their
  assigned missions, the civilian officials who run the Pentagon have
  refused to request authorization from Congress to do so. Two
  Democratic representatives, Mark Udall from Colorado and Ellen
  Tauscher of California, have introduced a bill into Congress that
  would add 80,000 troops to the end-strength of the active Army.
  Currently, this bill has no support from the Defense Department.
 
  When I was commissioned in 1969 the Army was one and a half million.
  Despite the fact that we're engaged in combat in Iraq, in
  Afghanistan, in
  the Philippines, and committed to peacekeeping missions in Bosnia,
  Kosovo, and the Sinai, and on operational deployments in over 70
  countries, our Army is now less than one third that size. We had
  more soldiers in Saudi Arabia in the first Gulf war than we have in
  the entire
  Army today. In fact, Wal-Mart has three times as many employees as
  the American Army has soldiers.
 
  As late as 1990, Army end-strength was approximately 770,000. With fewer
  than a half-million today, defense analysts have argued that we need
  to add nearly 200,000 soldiers to the active ranks.
 
  Today, the Army is so bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq that fewer
than 10,000 soldiers are ready and able to deal with any new crisis
  elsewhere in the world. And because the Army is so small, after
  only a year at home units are returning to Iraq for a second and
  even a third 12-month tour of duty.
 
  Let me add a parenthetical note here explaining a difference
  between our services. Army tours of duty in Iraq are for 12 or 13
  months. For Marines it's normally six months. For Air Force
  personnel it's typically four months. So when a soldier says he's
  going back to Iraq for his third tour, it means something totally
  different than when an airman says the same thing.
 
  Because the active force is too small, the mission of our National
  Guard and reserve forces has been changed. Their original purpose
  was to save the nation in time of peril. Today they serve as
  fillers for an inadequately sized active force. This change in
  mission has occurred with no national debate and no input from Congress.
 
  We have fought the war on the cheap because we have never adequately
  funded the rebuilding of the Iraqi military or the training and equipping
  of the Iraqi police forces. The e-mails I receive from soldiers and
  Marines assigned to train Iraqi forces all complain of their
  inadequate resources because they are at the very bottom of the
  supply chain and the  lowest priority.
 
  We have fought the war on the cheap because we have failed to
  purchase necessary equipment for our troops or repair that which has
  been broken or a worn out in combat. You've all read the stories
  about soldiers having to purchase their own bulletproof vests and
  other equipment. And the Army Chief of Staff has testified that he
  needs an extra $17 billion to fix equipment. For example, nearly
  1500 war-fighting vehicles await repair in Texas with 500 tanks sitting in Alabama.
 
  Finally, we are fighting this war on the cheap because our
  defense budget of 3.8% of gross domestic product is too small. In
  the Kennedy administration it averaged 9% of GDP. The average
  defense budget
  in the post Vietnam era, from 1974 to 1994, was about 5.8% of GDP.
  If we
  are in a global war against radical Islam, and we are, then we need
  a defense budget that reflects wartime requirements.
 
  A second part of our strategy is to ask the military to perform
  missions that are more appropriate for other branches of government.
 
  Our Army and Marine Corps are taking the lead in such projects as
  building roads and sewage treatment plants, establishing schools,
  training a neutral judiciary, and developing a modern banking system.
  The press refers to these activities as nation-building. Our
  soldiers and Marines are neither equipped nor trained to do these
  things. They attempt them, and in general they succeed, because
  they are so committed and so obedient. But it is not what they do
  well and what only they alone can do.
 
  But I would ask, where are our Department of Energy and Department
  of Transportation in restoring Iraqi infrastructure? What's the
  role of our
  Department of Education in rebuilding an Iraqi educational system?
  What does our Department of Justice do to help stand up an impartial
  judicial system? Where is the US Information Agency in establishing
  a modern equivalent of Radio Free Europe? And why did it take a
  year after the end of the active fighting for the State Department
  to assume responsibility from the Department of Defense in setting
  up an Iraqi government? These other US government agencies are only
  peripherally and  secondarily involved in Iraq.
 
  Actually, it would be inaccurate to say that the American government
  is at war. The U.S. Army is at war. The Marine Corps is at war.
  And other small elements of our armed forces are at war. But our government
  is not.
 
  A third part of our strategy is to inconvenience the American people
  as little as possible.
 
  Ask yourself, are you at war? What tangible effect is this war
  having on
  your daily life? What sacrifices have you been asked to make for
  the sake of this war other than being inconvenienced at airports?
  No, America is not a war. Only a small number of young, brave,
  patriotic men
  and women, who bear the burden of fighting and dying, are at war.
 
  A fourth aspect of our strategy is to fund Navy and Air Force
  budgets at prewar levels while shortchanging the Marine Corps and
  the Army that are doing the fighting.
 
  This strategy, of spending billions on technology for a Navy and Air
  Force that face no threat, contributes mightily to our failures in Iraq.
 
  Secretary Rumsfeld is a former Navy pilot. His view of the
  battlefield is from 10,000 feet, antiseptic and surgical. Since
  coming into office he has funded the Air Force and the Navy at the
  expense of the Army and Marines because he believes technological
  leaps will render ground forces
  obsolete. He assumed that the rapid victory over the Taliban in
  Afghanistan confirmed this belief.
 
  For example, the Defense Department is pouring billions into buying
  the newest fighter aircraft, at $360 million each, to take on a
  non-existent enemy Air Force.
 
  But, for pilots like Rumsfeld, war is all about technology. It's
  computers, it's radar, and it's high tech weapons. Technologists
  have a hard time comprehending the motivations of a suicide bomber
  or a mother who celebrates the death of her son in such a way. It's
  difficult for them to understand that to overcome centuries of
  ethnic hatred and murder
  it will take more than one generation. It's hard for them to accept that
  for young men with little education, no wives or children, and few
  job prospects, war against the West is the only thing that gives
  meaning to their lives.
 
  But war on the ground is not conducted with technology. It is
  fought by 25-year-old sergeants leading 19-year-old soldiers
  carrying rifles, in a dangerous and alien environment, where you
  can't tell combatants from noncombatants, Shiites from Sunnis, or
  suicide bombers from freedom seeking Iraqis. This means war on the
  street is neither antiseptic nor surgical. It's dirty, complicated,
  and fraught with confusion and error.
 
  In essence, our strategy has been produced my men whose view
  of war is based on their understanding of technology and machinery,
  not their knowledge of men from an alien culture and the forces
  which motivate them. They fail to appreciate that if you want to
  hold and pacify a hostile land and a hostile people you need
  soldiers and Marines on the ground and in the mud, and lots of them.
 
  In summary, our flawed strategy in Iraq has produced the
  situation we now face. This strategy is a product of the Pentagon,
  not the White House. And remember, the Pentagon is run by civilian
  appointees in suits, not military men and women in uniform. From
  the very beginning Defense Department officials failed to appreciate
  what it would take to win this war.
 
  The US military has tried to support this strategy because they are
  trained and instructed to be subordinate to and obedient to civilian
  leadership. And the American people want it that way. The last
  thing you want is a uniformed military accustomed to debating in
  public the orders of their appointed civilian masters. But retired
  generals and admirals are starting to speak out, to criticize the
  strategy that has produced our current situation in Iraq.
 
  But, if we continue to fight the war on the cheap, if we continue
  to avoid involving the American people by asking them to make any
  sacrifice at all, if we continue to spend our dollars on technology while
  neglecting the soldiers and Marines on the ground, and if we fail to
  involve the full scope of the American government in rebuilding
  Iraq, then we might as well quit, and come home. But, what we have
  now is not a real strategy -- it's business as usual.
 
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  -end