Short form: I came up with a scorecard for the performance of American armed forces in every major war since the Revolution, to identify what strengths and weaknesses carried the day in most conflicts, and which ones did not in the few instances of stalemates or losses.
A score of 40 obtains a stalemate in the cases presented here. Below that (Vietnam) is a loss. Above that is a win.
In case you’re curious, Iraq started out nicely, then degraded quickly, and that deterioriation is ongoing.
Should anyone be into that sort of thing, I’ve tacked on some advice on how to mitigate the damage that this war is doing to our military (I think it can be reversed, but only at some exertion, it will take a mininum of three years to do it, and while a complete retreat from Iraq is not requisite, a sea change in approach most certainly is.
The Scorecard
I came up with a scorecard for all the major wars in American History, and rated:
1. Intelligence (Gathering and Analysis) – Getting the data and making sense of it. This is SIGINT, HUMINT, Ops and Analysis all rolled up. If you have a clear picture of the enemy, his wants, his means for obtaining his will, his fears and concerns, you’ve got a great starting advantage in conflict. In fact, war might not even be necessary, if you play it right.
2. Doctrine, Strategy and Tactics – Devising a battle plan. Make no mistake, this is damn tough business, quite easily the hardest and most essential activity of a fighting force. Technologies change all the time. There is nothing so fleeting as a military secret. But devising, refining and implementing a doctrine, a business plan for war, that is what separates the winners from the losers in almost all contests, save where one side has a thousand year-plus technological advantage over the other. And even then time and lives can be saved by having a good doctrine. And once again, even war might be unnecessary in many instances.
3. Political, Officer Cadre, NCO Leadership – Make judgment calls with it. A war with strong civilian, CO and NCO talent usually gets a “6” rating and no better. “7” scores are only given in cases where there’s solid strength in all three PLUS a truly noteworthy genius or two thrown in for good measure. Alas, the presence of such brillance (and arrogance!) can just as easily degrade the leadership quality by generating highly visible dissensions (See: MacArthur). Once more, superior leaderships recognizes options, including those other than fighting on a given day.
4. Loyalty and Esprit de Corps – Trusting your troops to trust and do what you say, to rebuff distractions and criticisms send your way, to defend your honor as their own, as that of the corps. A war can suck and the troops still stand with you…just not for too long. And if the troops trust that you will not send them recklessly into harm’s way, they’ll love you even more.
5. Supply and Logistics – Giving them the means to do their jobs. But Pizza Hut and Starbucks outlets are nice, too. This rating tends to degrade over the course of long wars, though the contemporary US military has been a model of resupply, to the point of profligacy. As a sad, sordid rule, armies love getting loot. Those that get it from their quartermasters, rather than those whom they are sent to protect or liberate (using modern parlance), tend to win both ways. But it’s expensive. Ultimately, a fighting force needs armor more than Arby’s roast beef sandwiches. Though I do love them so.
6. Coordination and Communications – Communicating and, where necessary, enforcing your will. Some C3I is essential, good C3I is great. Too much past that is constrictive and wasteful. Blocking Internet access and purging officers who give you professional advice that you do not wish to hear might serve some function. The question is that the best use of that particular unit of resources. As opposed to getting armor to the troops, for example.
7. Morale – The intangible energy, fighting spirit, confidence of the troops. Heavily influenced by strengths/weakness in other areas. a well-rested, well-supplied, well-led army acting on good intel with a solid and flexible battle plan can win almost anything. Armies that dont, don’t.
8. Adaptability, Autonomy, Trainability – Rest, volunteer or draftee status, quality of the NCO cadre, whether ‘Sarge’ is likewise counting tours or years to retirement, education level, support for training factor in. Some armies want supermen. Others want warm bodies.
All these categories were rated on a scale from 1 to 10, except for Morale, which is always 1 + the number of other scores that are “6” (very good) or better. This is also a way to raise the opportunity cost of a fighting force developing super-competency in just one area of the battle planning ‘wheel’. It also provides incentive for planners (in the model, that is) to not exert themselves compensating for glaring weaknesses, and instead boost marginal strengths (4’s and 5’s) to commanding ones (6’s on up).
The Historical Wars, By The Numbers
Category....Rev....W1812....MexWar....CivWar....SpanAm....WW I......WW II..
Intel.......6......6........6.........7.........7.........7.........7......
Doctrine....7......6........7.........6.........6.........6.........6......
Leadership..7......5........5.........7.........6.........6.........7......
Loyalty.....7......7........6.........5.........6.........7.........8......
Supply......3......4........5.........5.........5.........6.........6......
Control.....4......4........5.........5.........5.........6.........7......
Morale......5......4........4.........4.........5.........7.........8......
Training....4......4........5.........4.........5.........5.........6......
Total.......43.....40.......43........43........45........50........55.....
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Category....Kor....Nam......GulfWar...Iraq03....Iraq04....Iraq05...........
Intel.......6......6........7.........6.........5.........4................
Doctrine....5......5........6.........6.........5.........5................
Leadership..5......5........6.........6.........5.........4................
Loyalty.....5......5........7.........7.........6.........5................
Supply......5......6........7.........6.........5.........4................
Control.....6......5........8.........6.........7.........8................
Morale......3......3........8.........8.........4.........2................
Training....5......3........6.........6.........6.........5................
Total.......40.....38.......55........51........43........37...............
Per this criteria, a score of 40 total will get you a stalemate (War of 1812, Korea, current conflict these past two years). A “50” (WWI, WWII, Gulf War, Iraq in ’03) is pretty much a butt-kicking. Less than a 40 (Vietnam clocks in at 38) gets you one in the “L” column.
There are no absolutes, and flirting with sub-40 for a while is not an automatic loss (one imagines that 1942 was not a pleasant experience for our boys in the Pacific, nor for the Russians.
A sub-35 scoring is theoretical in American history, but I’d rate it a rout in the making. A sub-30 is probably a trigger level for a fighting force turning on its own civilian leadership (again, not a risk for US forces, but this model can be applied to other world powers, as well).
Where We Might Be Headed in Iraq As A Fighting Force
In two of three scenarios? To a very bad place.
Category....Iraq06Great..Iraq06Course..Iraq06Postal........
Intel.......5............4.............4...................
Doctrine....6............5.............5...................
Leadership..5............3.............3...................
Loyalty.....5............4.............4...................
Supply......5............3.............3...................
Control.....9............9.............6...................
Morale......3............2.............2...................
Training....4............4.............4...................
Total.......42...........34............31..................
Staying the Course = Chosin Reservoir-like Wrongness
If inertia decides the next fiscal year of war, the Coalition presence in Iraq will probably fall to pieces probably by Election Day if not sooner. I submit that this is a bad thing for the Bushies and the Republicans…and an even worse thing for America is general. We’ve not seen an American army or any significant component of it put to rout since the Chinese entered the Korean War in force, the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in particular.
The insurgents, the militias, and even the putative Iraqi Security Forces are hardly in the same bandwidth as adversaries as the People’s Liberation Army, even that of the 1950s.
But increasingly, the factions in Iraq have relatively (to us) poorly-armed, numerous, enthusiastic friends in Iran who see the continued American presence (never mind recent rhetoric) to be a threat to their existence as a nation.
That’s how the Chinese saw things in 1950. And they up and did something about it, rather than wait for the hammer to fall.
Right now, the American armed forces are far too strong to risk such a move. But a degradation of the situation past a certain point might invite, oh, movement of arms en masse to sympathetic factions in Iraq, especially in the south, more clandestine movement of training cadres and irregulars (sic?) to fight alongside the Mehdi Army or its like, and radicalize the situation even further. Perhaps that is happening right now. In fact it is quite likely, seeing as how the dominant Shia factions (despite infighting) are strong advocates of closer ties with the Islamic Republic.
It’s what the Chinese did ahead of crossing the Yalu River in force, and it’s a very real threat in the here and now.
And if that occurs, suddenly the War in Iraq is not just the War in Iraq.
I submit that staying the course is bad freakin’ news for everybody.
But Perhaps The Corner is Nigh
But perhaps a real, bona corner might be turned. The best-case scenario is that intel improves, as new contacts are developed, via Iraqi political parties and factions that are better served by American backing than without it vis a vis their domestic competition. Ironically, that means Sunnis more than Kurds and Shia. All it would take would be some insight, imagination and initiative.
There is a consensus recognition from all corners that existing American combat doctrine isn’t quite keeping up with the situation in Iraq. A rollout of a new! improved! doctrine could occur. While a one-year implementation in the midst of a conflict would be astonishing, such feats have occurred before (the decision of the US Navy to beef up its Pacific submarine fleet versus build more carriers, for example, during WW II probably shortened the war by a year or more, due to the effective blockade of the Japanese home islands). Of course, one reason this change was easy to make was the wear and tear on the existing carriers, and the long time required to build replacements….though new carriers were manufactured, as well.
Perhaps there will be a sudden improvement in the quality of leadership. After all there is an election coming up. Independent of that, significant efforts to keep the NCO cadre from collapsing — “rest” tours homeside, for starters — and more open and accepting debriefing of the CO experiences in-country — could do some wonders.
And there would be loyalty benefits from such efforts. Better intel, a battle plan that makes sense, and leadership that shows concern for the troops, not its polls, would be strong signals of positive change.
Less fast food and more body armor, ammunition, replacement vehicles — the stuff that lives as opposed to comfort depends upon — would work wonders, as well. It’s a rough place, that Iraq. It’s hard on equipment, needful things that need to be there when the furball starts. What’s that money going toward?
And if these things occur, morale will improve, and instead of looking down the barrel of a meltdown, perhaps an actual corner will be turned, after all. Then you got options.
What this would require, of course, is learning behavior from the top on down of a sort that would be unprecedented in the current-day situation.
It’s not impossible, just…well. There is always room to hope, one supposes.
Then again, maybe it really can get far, far worse.
The Nightmare Scenario
About the only thing that is different from the ‘Stay the Course’ venue is that command and control of the troops breaks down completely. Units are manning their stations, running their patrols, holding down their piece of turf, but they are doing ‘whatever it takes’ to survive, and that is not always good for the big picture. Discipline decays, unauthorized retribution taken out against local Iraqis, executions of civilians become the rule rather than the exception.
This is the ‘Fort Apache’ model of liberation: the Iraqis cease to be people that we are helping, become savages that we much subdue or shove aside, to make room for the settlers to come. Only it’s worse than that from a military vantage: it’s a public relations disaster (never mind that whole war crimes thing) that provokes an intense hatred of all things Coalition, which antes up the tensions on both sides that much further.
At some point beyond this, the troops via their officers start making their strong desire to be relocated, first from nasty corners like Al-Anbar and Sadr City, then from strongholds up to and including the Green Zone itself. Where are the supplies? Where’s the relief? A sense of abandonment ensues. Moral, already very low, cannot easily collapse further, but resistance to taking chances, even balking at some orders from command, creeps into the picture.
At which point real risk of mutiny is on the table, and all this within a country that is melting down, with us or without us, and all around us.
Like I said: It. Can. Always. Get. Worse.
Quickly! The Good News! How to Fix The Army and Be Effective In Iraq
For price of intel gathering and control ops, improve doctrine a bit and supply a lot, also rotate, rest and recruit to retain higher-caliber personnel and give them time to become even better. Stop-loss if you must; rotate stateside for tours to make it work.
Next, further improvements on cadre, esprit de corps, with attendant benefits to morale, which acts as a force multiplier here.
Final round of improvements on leadership (refinement of strategic objectives, leverage good political resources), beef up intel assets both ops and analysis, more morale boosting.
More intel enhancements, now’s the time to crank up emphasis on command and control, now that a long-term viable fighting force with experience in the theater and a means of sustaining and building on same is available.
If further improvements are required, make them by throwing a lot of money and supplies at the problem — logistics, big battalions winning battles, army fights on its stomach, that sort of thing.
Wrap
I’m quite sure the current dust-up in the sandbox is winnable — in the sense that American policy interests can be harmonized to local realities, and repair (quite possibly reparations) are made to mend fences with the country that we destroyed in order to save. However, we either implement major changes, right now, and commit to the change for a full three years, and do whatever we have to (including a departure from Iraq, if needs be) to salvage not Iraq, nor some politician’s legacy, but to save the United States armed forces from a bona fide meatgrinder that is doing in the service branches.
And if we win in Iraq, too, well, that’s gravy. But it’s not the most important thing right now.
Hindsight’s all nice and all; there are so many, many ways that we might have invaded, if we absolutely had to, regardless of the motive, and had we gone about things smartly and patiently, we’d have long since left Iraq, or remained with the full faith and credit of the Iraqi people behind us.
But that’s another universe, and we must live in this one, and make our way forward as best as we can.
