redlightning
Banned
What if instead of the 250,000 American and British sized force which invades Iraq in 2003, that is doubled for the war instead?
WI: US Invades Iraq in 2003 With Force of 500,000?
- Thread starter redlightning
- Start date
that might have been enough to guard all the weapons dumps and equipment seized and ensure order was maintained. I remember something along those lines is what General Shensheki asked for, only to be firmly rebuffed and basically forced to resign by Rumsfeld
Apparently the Pentagon officers knew how to count and what the proper ratio of occupiers was in an area the size and population of California but the civilian leadership didn't like the answers.
I am still pissed about that
Apparently the Pentagon officers knew how to count and what the proper ratio of occupiers was in an area the size and population of California but the civilian leadership didn't like the answers.
I am still pissed about that
Well one of the biggest mistakes was Rumsfeld's contempt for the demand for half a million troops.
"Why would you need more men to keep order than to take the country?" was approximately what he said in an interview. I don't THINK it was the same interview where he was asked how the Iraqi people would respond to a foreign army conquering the country and responded "They will be greeted as liberators!"
Getting the 500.000 men would require a better grip on reality than was actually shown because it would be harder to do, practically and politically. They would have to understand the need for it, the potential for chaos and badness without it.
More troops because the planners have a clue, or at least the suspicion of a clue, would be better, yes.
Where would they get the extra troops?
They struggle with getting the small amount of allies they manage get(outside of UK). We're talking about doubling the size from 250k to 500k. They would need to somehow rally all the EU/Nato force to put in alot more, maybe 50-100K. If they some how got the Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc., involve for another 50k. Then maybe the US can come up with another 50 to 100k. But who would fit the bill? What would be in it for the "allies"?
They struggle with getting the small amount of allies they manage get(outside of UK). We're talking about doubling the size from 250k to 500k. They would need to somehow rally all the EU/Nato force to put in alot more, maybe 50-100K. If they some how got the Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc., involve for another 50k. Then maybe the US can come up with another 50 to 100k. But who would fit the bill? What would be in it for the "allies"?
At the peak of the Vietnam War there were about 550,000 american troops in country there. That was with a draft though.
Would it be that easy to get to that number of forces in an all-volunteer army in 2003?
Would it be that easy to get to that number of forces in an all-volunteer army in 2003?
Setting up a potential:
Rumsfeld: "We need half a million men, and they need to be as good man for man as the smaller force I was thinking of sending."
Response from Combined Chiefs: "We can't do it in the time available."
Rumsfeld: "But we need them!"
Chiefs: "We don't have them and can't get them without bringing back the draft and expanding the army, call it five years to do with a blank cheque budget."
Rumsfeld: "So why did you ask for them if you knew we couldn't supply them?"
Chiefs: "Because we need them to do the job."
Circular argument continues for some time. There is a lot of shouting and arm waving.
Contrary to popular belief it was most of the top brasses contempt for it as well.
Also 500,000 means nothing if you don't do COIN and the generals had no idea at the time. As an institution the army hates COIN with a fiery passion of a thousand suns. The lessons of how to fight in Vietnam was chucked right after Vietnam.
The U.S. Military as an institution is fairly poor to be frank because it doesn't want to prepare for any war as the British Army of 100 years ago would do. It wants to only prepare for fighting a massive conventional war. Just look at the Air Force continually wanting to kill the most effective plane they have for dealing with the enemies we have actually fought the past 12 years.
The problem is on one hand some of the civilian leaders promoted maximalist ambitions for changing Iraq down to undermining Bush's own orders to retain much of the Iraqi Army on the other hand you had a military and Pentagon that by in large wanted to get in and get out.
Then they didn't accurately problem define how big a problem what Syria was doing was and read them and the Turks the riot act.
Getting the ammo dumps mean nothing if Syria, Turkey and others are willing to provide an endless supply of jihadists and bombs to the enemy and they were willing to do so.
Most importantly we needed to know we needed to do things the Iraqi way and have separate armies and perhaps even militias for various tasks and build them up for both conventional and asymmetric warfare. That didn't happen until now.
We didn't need half a million troops and didn't have the forces for that unless Bush asked for a huge increase in the size of the military after 911. We needed at least 250K troops with a clear plan on what to do with the religiously radicalized Baathists while retaining more but far from all of the security apparatus. And, we needed to make it ultra clear to Assad the price of playing games with the jihadists.
Last edited:
Dayton Kitchens
Banned
I've read that many believed that the Pentagon had requested more than 500,000 troops in Desert Storm NOT because they were needed but to impress upon American political leaders the level of commitment they wanted if the U.S. was going to war.
Remember that in late 1990, the U.S. force in Saudi Arabia was set at about 300,000 and wasn't increased until just after the mid term elections.
It became somewhat of a joke in the 1990s that the Defense Dept. had this standard answer for any inquiry about using military force:
"The answer is 6 months and 500,000 troops. What is your question".
Thus there was serious questions about whether the number of troops asked for was being inflated yet again in 2003
Remember that in late 1990, the U.S. force in Saudi Arabia was set at about 300,000 and wasn't increased until just after the mid term elections.
It became somewhat of a joke in the 1990s that the Defense Dept. had this standard answer for any inquiry about using military force:
"The answer is 6 months and 500,000 troops. What is your question".
Thus there was serious questions about whether the number of troops asked for was being inflated yet again in 2003
jahenders
Banned
All armies hate COIN, especially those from civil democracies -- it's hard, it's long, it's bloody, and often unsuccessful. An army from a brutal totalitarian state at least has the option of slaughtering huge populations, brutal repression, etc. That doesn't really work either, but it's less frustrating for soldiers than playing nice with the locals while their buddies get killed by locals every day.
Yes, the US Army does tend to want to revert to what it feels is its greatest strength -- mechanized land warfare. Almost all organizations have that tendency -- when it doubt focus on what you do best. However, there are forces within the Army that know it has to prepare for COIN, Spec Ops, etc.
WRT Iraq, the biggest problem was that Rumsfield, etc wanted to keep the force small and focused on winning the fight. They accepted concepts and/or assumed that civilian authorities (State Dept, etc) would have good plans for keeping the peace (law and order, governance, etc). However, it should have been obvious to the most casual observer that State and such were completely incapable of ramping up that much that fast. This was made worse because political/civilian authorities WERE put in charge of key decisions, couldn't support their own concepts, and made some terrible ideas. The decision to forbid Baath members in government offices was terrible -- it resulted in 10s of thousands of military-trained Iraqi young men leaving with no job to go to. Many turned to terror.
You're right that 500K was probably a no go, but getting closer to that would have improved things. More importantly, there needed to be clear inter-agency agreement on exactly who was doing what and when. Instead, DoD basically said, "Ok, we're ready to fight," and other agencies said, "OK, we'll do the peace." But, they didn't work together to really ensure that there weren't HUGE gaps.
The other thing that would have helped was if we weren't quite as deluded that we were going to be able to liberate them and turn them into a democracy. We should have gone in, kicked butt, occupied key areas, and then written their initial constitution for them. Instead, we waited and watched while their tribal leaders failed repeatedly to complete a constitution. Uncertainty and insurgency grew as that dragged on.
Finally, we should always consider the "Kick butt, break things, and get out" option. We operate under this nebulous concept that "If you break it, you've got to fix it." We don't want a failed state. So, instead we spent trillions and many lives and we still have a failed state. We could have gone in, destroyed Saddam, his key government entities, and his army and then left them with a stern warning, "Don't make us come back here." Perhaps we could have seized and held a key oil transit region as a permanent base and a guarantee of good behavior
Yes, the US Army does tend to want to revert to what it feels is its greatest strength -- mechanized land warfare. Almost all organizations have that tendency -- when it doubt focus on what you do best. However, there are forces within the Army that know it has to prepare for COIN, Spec Ops, etc.
WRT Iraq, the biggest problem was that Rumsfield, etc wanted to keep the force small and focused on winning the fight. They accepted concepts and/or assumed that civilian authorities (State Dept, etc) would have good plans for keeping the peace (law and order, governance, etc). However, it should have been obvious to the most casual observer that State and such were completely incapable of ramping up that much that fast. This was made worse because political/civilian authorities WERE put in charge of key decisions, couldn't support their own concepts, and made some terrible ideas. The decision to forbid Baath members in government offices was terrible -- it resulted in 10s of thousands of military-trained Iraqi young men leaving with no job to go to. Many turned to terror.
You're right that 500K was probably a no go, but getting closer to that would have improved things. More importantly, there needed to be clear inter-agency agreement on exactly who was doing what and when. Instead, DoD basically said, "Ok, we're ready to fight," and other agencies said, "OK, we'll do the peace." But, they didn't work together to really ensure that there weren't HUGE gaps.
The other thing that would have helped was if we weren't quite as deluded that we were going to be able to liberate them and turn them into a democracy. We should have gone in, kicked butt, occupied key areas, and then written their initial constitution for them. Instead, we waited and watched while their tribal leaders failed repeatedly to complete a constitution. Uncertainty and insurgency grew as that dragged on.
Finally, we should always consider the "Kick butt, break things, and get out" option. We operate under this nebulous concept that "If you break it, you've got to fix it." We don't want a failed state. So, instead we spent trillions and many lives and we still have a failed state. We could have gone in, destroyed Saddam, his key government entities, and his army and then left them with a stern warning, "Don't make us come back here." Perhaps we could have seized and held a key oil transit region as a permanent base and a guarantee of good behavior
At the end of the day we did win the war though the military had to adapt and change as did the Pentagon as did the government. Quite frankly they had to re-learn something we lost after Vietnam. We lost the peace not because it had to happen, but because the next WH wanted to politically and militarily totally wash their hands of it while Syria was burning.
We are again in the process of junking the lessons of COIN as the military as an institution doesn't want to fight these wars and doesn't even want to contemplate that they might have to fight these wars.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan were messes and never going to be easy even if we did everything right, but you can't just junk the lessons of how to fight the war of the flea.
We are always going to screw up at early on in these wars if we don't actually even contemplate what you have to do to fight them and the military as an institution doesn't want to do that. While it may be understandable it's also stupid not to prepare for any type of war not just facing off against dozens of Russian divisions.
gaijin
Banned
I think the bold part is a policy that has been tried in Libya. Turns out it doesn't work.
The problem here is one of perspective. Countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen are basically tribal societies that have been traumatized by decades of brutal dictatorship and internal violence. If you remove central authority, people will generally look for security in structures offering protection and support: the tribe and in a larger sense the ethnic (Kurd, Berber, etc.) or religious community (Sunni, Shia, Allawi, etc.) they are part of.
Since these communities are often a pressure kettle of ethnic, religious, and sectarian pressures, removing the lid (central authority) often leads to an explosion. The question the OP is asking, is basically, how can we open this high pressure pot, and hope to limit the explosion by adding more towels.
I do not think this is possible to be honest.
This does not mean that societies in the Middle East can't achieve a workable status quo. Lebanon shows how an (uneasy) status quo might work. However, it is in my opinion very naive to expect societies like Iraq or Libya, that have suffered under decades of violent oppression, with little to no civil society, to not go through violent upheaval once the central authority is removed,
To return to the OP. Adding more troops to the initial invasion, might help stem the initial disorder and violence, but will do little to cure the real problems that haunt Iraqi soeciety. There would still be a violent uprising against the US occupation, it would just be a bit longer in the making.
what really aggravates me is that the bulk, by an overwhelming margin in terms of year, of the institutional experience of the US Army is counterinsurgency... be it Indians, Filipinos, Viet Cong or Jihadis, the US Army has spent far more time fighting insurgents than conventional forces.
Our 3 biggest conventional wars between them (Civil War, World War I, World War II) have between them roughly 8 years total. Less time than we spent fighting Viet Cong in Vietnam (which to be fair was also a conventional war too against conventional divisions using light infantry and even mechanized warfare tactics), but significantly less than Afghanistan (less than a few months of conventional fighting, but 15 years and counting insurgency operations)
We had a USMC guide called "Small Wars Manual" since the 1930s! You would think that it would be required reading. Obviously it isn't
I understand why of course, the Army would prefer and obviously needs to be prepared for the worst case scenario, which is a full scale conventional mechanized war against a peer or near peer competitor like the Russians or Chinese. But surely some study about insurgency would seem necessary.
Of course very few of a our civilian leaders have studied warfare or much history in the last 40 years either. Gingrich was a history professor, but he is rare. Even McCain wasn't a grunt, he flew jets of carriers. Most of our political class are lawyers, focusing on that their entire education and then focusing on just about anything but foreign affairs and military affairs.
But still we deserved better in Iraq. When the Army Chief of Staff, who literally reorganized the Army into a post Cold War expeditionary model (Stryker Brigaders and the Brigade Combat Team were all Shensiki). He was a Vietnam veteran with a ton of experience in the wars after. He is literally your expert.
To just blatantly ignore and then basically fire him because his answers don't jibe with your theories...
Yep, still pissed at Rumsfeld, and Cheney should have known better damn it and ultimately Bush accepted their advice. Which in our system makes him responsible.
Our 3 biggest conventional wars between them (Civil War, World War I, World War II) have between them roughly 8 years total. Less time than we spent fighting Viet Cong in Vietnam (which to be fair was also a conventional war too against conventional divisions using light infantry and even mechanized warfare tactics), but significantly less than Afghanistan (less than a few months of conventional fighting, but 15 years and counting insurgency operations)
We had a USMC guide called "Small Wars Manual" since the 1930s! You would think that it would be required reading. Obviously it isn't
I understand why of course, the Army would prefer and obviously needs to be prepared for the worst case scenario, which is a full scale conventional mechanized war against a peer or near peer competitor like the Russians or Chinese. But surely some study about insurgency would seem necessary.
Of course very few of a our civilian leaders have studied warfare or much history in the last 40 years either. Gingrich was a history professor, but he is rare. Even McCain wasn't a grunt, he flew jets of carriers. Most of our political class are lawyers, focusing on that their entire education and then focusing on just about anything but foreign affairs and military affairs.
But still we deserved better in Iraq. When the Army Chief of Staff, who literally reorganized the Army into a post Cold War expeditionary model (Stryker Brigaders and the Brigade Combat Team were all Shensiki). He was a Vietnam veteran with a ton of experience in the wars after. He is literally your expert.
To just blatantly ignore and then basically fire him because his answers don't jibe with your theories...
Yep, still pissed at Rumsfeld, and Cheney should have known better damn it and ultimately Bush accepted their advice. Which in our system makes him responsible.
The numbers were there in including the Reserves and National Guard. The two problems were:
1. Reserves & NG required several months spin up training for this operation. Less so at the company level, but very much for the HQ staff. This is especially important where a proper occupation is to be done.
2. The logistics train for 500,000 vs 250k would have delayed the entire operation months. A portion of that would have had to be built from scratch. Some of the problems revealed during Desert Storm had been corrected, others not, and a few of the improvements actually set aside later as "uneeded".
Not so much contempt as aghast at the size of the post invasion occupation requirement. Lt Col Ann Wright was attached to the Central Command G5 (civil affairs) back in the 1990s. She described the briefing the 18th AB Corps commander on the occupation requirements. The man was at a loss to how his staff, support units, & corps in general could handle the task. It was clear massive augumentation would be required as soon as the battle was over, if not during the invasion.
The instant disbandment of the Iraqi army dumbfounded me. The much more throughly defeated German army of 1945 was released slowly & methodically. The Japanese army remained under arms for months in some cases, and the command staff and support operations were not dissolved. Actually I cant think of many cases at all where a surrendered army was released as rapidly and sloppily as the Iraqi army.
One alternate course would ahve been to make it clear to the Iraqi generals their own lives and the futurre prosperity of their famiies depended on keeping disciplien of their troops and the weapons accounted for. Shooting one of those gentelmen early on for failing (resistance) would have helped in this. Turning a couple more out into the street figuratively in their underwear would have reinforced the point.
Ordering the Iraqi army imeadiatly into their barracks or permanent camps & then paying them to clean up and start some public works projects would have prevented the release of several hundred thousand disgruntled and unemployed men into the population. A orderly release paced over many months, proper screening of the soldiers could have reduced the subsequent violence & resitance.
I dont quite agree with the numbers, but it is absolutely correct a far better plan was needed. One million men would not have done a bit of good had the same unrealistic plan been in place.
It dumbfounded Bush as well as that was not the plan. Bush needed to have unity of command over the mission and he allowed a half dozen interests put their hands in the pot and each try to stir.
Same problem in Afghanistan and the anti-IS war at the start.
250K American troops, we still would have had about 50K coalition troops with us and if we did it right some Iraqi units doing guard duties for awhile.
Mind you if the Brits decide to draw down so fast like they did OTL then you need at least closer to 280K.
The problem for the US in counterinsurgency is doing it in the first place. Every single thing the advocates of the Vietnam War said would happen if South Vietnam were to be conquered by North Vietnam failed to happen, and when the United States finally withdrew the consequences for it were absolutely nothing. Instead of an ever-expanding tide of Communism, as soon as we were gone as a common enemy the Communists started killing each other. Every single thing the advocates of the Iraq War said was false, and setting aside whether it was ever "winnable" or not, the greater point is that even if it was and had been "won" the United States would have gotten absolutely nothing out of it. The absolute best outcome would have been another Saddam Hussein, so at best the whole thing would have been pointless since there was already a Saddam Hussein in charge. Afghanistan is I suppose the most justifiable since Al Qaeda actually was there, and from our point of view needed to be taken out. But I don't see why we couldn't have done something like the drone strikes being done in Pakistan now, which have been quite effective without a prolonged, costly, and needless occupation the outcome of which was entirely predictable from the Soviet-Afghan War. If you think conventional war is obsolete, the thing to do is cut the Army, Air Force, and Navy down to a bare minimum and concentrate on nuclear weapons.
Last edited:
Dayton Kitchens
Banned
Nuclear weapons which we cannot use.
And I don't get what makes you think drone strikes have been "effective".
Dayton Kitchens
Banned
South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos.
Communism expanded quite nicely.
And the hundreds of thousands of people killed by the North Vietnamese in the aftermath of the fall of Saigon might well disagree with you about the consequences being "nothing".
I can't see more men really mattering that much in Iraq. What lost the war was a misunderstanding of politics not a lack of boots on the ground.
And yes, we lost the war. I don't think you can look at Iraq today and not call the violence there a continuation of the war started in 2003. (and earlier)
And yes, we lost the war. I don't think you can look at Iraq today and not call the violence there a continuation of the war started in 2003. (and earlier)
The whole point of nuclear weapons is MAD, to not use them. Not using them is a sign that they are working.
All the news reports I have seen indicate that the Al Qaeda central leadership in Pakistan had been degraded immensely by the drone campaign. From my understanding, the parts of AQ which are now generally considered the most dangerous are its offshoots in place like Yemen. I can't remember the last time a terrorist plot from the Pakistan-based AQ against the United States came close to being pulled off.