[lit-ideas] Re: Iraq and news

Here's something to pop everybody's gusset: Mark Helprin, writing in 
2003, arguing that the proper strategy against Iraq was to have gotten 
VERY VERY VERY ANGRY instead of just a little bit annoyed.

The path of excess leads to the palace of...Saddam?

_____

The unprecedented military and economic potential of even the United 
States alone, thus far so imperfectly utilized, is the appropriate 
instrument. Adjusting military spending to the level of the peacetime 
years of the past half-century would raise outlays from approximately 
$370 billion to approximately $650 billion.

If the United States had the will, it could, excessively, field 20 
million men, build 200 aircraft carriers, or almost instantly turn every 
Arab capital into molten glass, and the Arabs know this. No matter what 
the advances in regional power, the position of the Arab Middle East 
relative to that of the United States is no less disadvantageous than 
was that of the Arab Middle East to the 19th-century European powers. 
But, given the changes listed in the previous paragraph, the signal 
strength necessary to convey an effective message is now far greater.

In the Gulf War, the overwhelming forces marshaled by the coalition 
might have sufficed as such a signal but for the fact that they were 
halted prematurely and withdrawn precipitously, gratuitously leaving 
both Saudi Arabia and Iraq an inexplicable freedom of action that 
probably left them stunned by their good luck.

Before the Iraq War, high officials were seriously considering an 
invasion force of 500 backed by air power. The numbers climbed steadily: 
5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 25,000, 40,000, 50,000, 60,000, and so on, with 
the supposedly retrograde "heavy army" prevailing finally, and 300,000 
troops in the theater. When offered vehement advice to go into Iraq with 
massive force and many times overkill, a brilliant and responsible 
senior official responded, almost with incredulity, "Why would we need 
the force that you recommend, when in the Gulf War we used only 10 
percent of what we had?" In the Gulf War, we did not occupy a country of 
23 million.

As of this writing, the army reportedly has 23 combat brigades, 18 of 
which are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, three of which are in refit, 
one in Kosovo, and two in Korea, leaving nine brigades, or about 45,000 
men, to pick up the slack anywhere and everywhere else. Though 
independent echelons and the Marines increase this figure many fold, 
they do not have sufficient lift and logistics, and even if they did it 
would not be enough. This is as much the result of the Bush 
Administration's failure to increase defense spending appreciably and 
rebuild the military before (and even after) September 11, as the lack 
of real shock and awe was the result of the administration's desire to 
go to war according to a sort of just-in-time-inventory paradigm.

Managers rather than strategists, they did not understand the essence of 
their task, which was not merely to win in Iraq but to stun the Arab 
World. Although it is possible, with just enough force, to win, it is 
not possible, with just enough force, to stun. The war in Iraq should 
have been an expedition originating in the secure base of Saudi Arabia, 
from the safety of which the United States could with immense, husbanded 
force easily reach anywhere in the region. The eastern section of the 
country, far from Mecca and Medina, fronting the sea, with high 
infrastructure and large spaces for maneuver, basing, and an air-tight 
defense, is ideal. Had the Saudis not offered this to us, we might have 
taken it, which probably would have been unnecessary, given that our 
expressed determination would likely have elicited an invitation. As it 
was, we were willing to alienate the entire world so as to thrust 
ourselves into a difficult situation in Iraq, but unwilling to achieve a 
commanding position in Saudi Arabia for fear of alienating the House of 
Saud. One might kindly call this, in that it is about as sensible as 
wearing one's clothes backwards, "strategic hip hop."

It was, in any case, some kind of deliberate minimalism. Sufficiency was 
the watchword. The secretary of defense wanted to show that his new 
transformational force could do the job without recourse to mass. The 
president wanted no more than sufficiency, because he had not advanced 
and had no plans to advance the military establishment beyond the levels 
established by his predecessor. With the magic of transformation, he 
would rebuild it at glacial pace and little cost lest he imperil his own 
and Republican fortunes by embarking on a Reagan-style restoration after 
an election decided by as many voters as would fit in a large Starbucks, 
and that he won by leaning, un-Reagan-like, to the center.

The war in Iraq was a war of sufficiency when what was needed was a war 
of surplus, for the proper objective should have been not merely to 
drive to Baghdad but to engage and impress the imagination of the Arab 
and Islamic worlds on the scale of the thousand-year war that is to 
them, if not to us, still ongoing. Had the United States delivered a 
coup de main soon after September 11 and, on an appropriate scale, had 
the president asked Congress on the 12th for a declaration of war and 
all he needed to wage war, and had this country risen to the occasion as 
it has done so often, the war on terrorism would now be largely over.

But the country did not rise to the occasion, and our enemies know that 
we fought them on the cheap. They know that we did not, would not, and 
will not tolerate the disruption of our normal way of life. They know 
that they did not seize our full attention. They know that we have 
hardly stirred. And as long as they have these things to know, they will 
neither stand down nor shrink back, and, for us, the sorrows that will 
come will be greater than the sorrows that have been.

from http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/fall2003/helprin.html


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