By John F. Burns
New York Times
19 June 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq - IF, in time, the attempt to implant a pro-Western,
democratic political system in Iraq ends up buried in the desert
sands, historians will have no shortage of things that went wrong.
Equally, if the problems here ultimately recede, supporters of the
enterprise will find vindication in the Bush administration's decision
to hold course as others lost faith.
Either way, any reckoning will examine the numbers of American troops
committed here: whether they were so thinly stretched that their
mission was doomed from the start, or, as Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld said last week, American commanders were given "exactly what
they've recommended" in terms of troops.
Mr. Rumsfeld has long taken a "less is more" approach to combat troop
levels, and in a BBC interview Monday, he seemed to move toward those
now pressing to reduce troop levels soon. "The reason for fewer," he
said, "is because ultimately it's going to be the Iraqi people who are
going to prevail in this insurgency" - in other words, Iraqi, not
American, troops are the ones who will win the war, if it can be won.
The words seemed at least to nod to politics. Last week, even as
opinion polls showed continuing erosion in support for the war, a
conservative from a state heavy with military bases who has been a
staunch supporter of the war, Representative Walter B. Jones of North
Carolina, joined with another Republican and two Democrats in calling
on President Bush to begin drawing down the troops in Iraq by Oct. 1,
2006.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon offered an even earlier date for an
initial reduction. But in recent weeks, American generals here have
been telling Congressional visitors that the disappointing performance
of many Iraqi combat units has made early departures impractical. They
say it will be two years or more before Iraqis can be expected to
begin replacing American units as the main guarantors of security.
Commanders concerned for their careers have not thought it prudent to
go further, and to say publicly what many say privately: that with
recent American troop levels - 139,000 now - they have been forced to
play an infernal board game, constantly shuttling combat units from
one war zone to another, leaving insurgent buildups unmet in some
places while they deal with more urgent problems elsewhere.
Generals are not famous for wanting smaller armies. But American
commanders here have been cautioned by the reality that the Pentagon,
in a time of all-volunteer forces and plunging recruiting levels, has
few if any extra troops to deploy, and that there are limits to what
American public opinion would bear. So the generals have kept quiet
about troop levels.
Soldiers in the field, though, have not. Among fighting units in the
war's badlands - in Falluja and Ramadi, in Haditha and Qaim, in Mosul
and Tal Afar - complaints about force levels are the talk of officers
and enlisted personnel alike.
The scope of the problem can be taken from the garrison in the Baghdad
area. Maj. Gen. William G. Webster, commander of the Third Infantry
Division, recently gave a rundown of the troops available to meet the
surge of suicide bombings, buried roadside explosives and ambushes
that have killed more than 600 people in the city since the new Shiite
majority government took office in early May: 27,000 American troops,
15,000 Iraqi policemen and 7,000 Iraqi soldiers. Saddam Hussein, he
said, had a regular garrison for the same area of 80,000 troops and
50,000 police.
Mr. Hussein ran a totalitarian state and had to worry about invasions,
so direct comparisons can be misleading. Still, the fact that an
American general had the statistics at his fingertips told its own
story. The pattern of thin force levels seems to be replicated, in
differing ways, almost everywhere Americans confront insurgents. The
exceptions have been those occasions, like the battles that restored
government control of Najaf last August and Falluja in November, when
American commanders concentrated thousands of troops to crush the
rebels.
But high-intensity operations like the one at Falluja are like driving
a stake into a hornets' nest, many American officers say. They scatter
the insurgents, who regroup and return as soon as American troop
concentrations are reduced. Seven months after Falluja was recaptured,
in ruins, pockets of insurgents still operate in the city. Tal Afar,
Mosul, Qaim, Haditha, Samarra, Ramadi, Hilla - all have been targets
of coalition offensives, only for the insurgents to come back,
starting the cycle over.
Partly, it is a matter of terrain. Iraq runs 600 miles north to south,
400 miles east to west, with vast deserts and innumerable villages
that can shelter rebels. American commanders, their army bottom-heavy
with support units, have at most 60,000 American and allied combat
soldiers available, and only a fraction as many Iraqi soldiers rated
combat-ready. Recent American intelligence estimates put the
insurgents' strength from 12,000 to 20,000.
No district of Baghdad, with Iraq's highest concentration of troops,
is remotely safe. And a rare drive outside the capital last week
showed how anarchic the hinterland has become. To move concrete blocks
for a new checkpoint near a base at Taji, 15 miles from Baghdad,
American troops blocked the main highway north for two hours with
tanks, troop carriers and Apache helicopters circling overhead. In an
80-mile round trip, it was the only sighting of Americans, though the
blight of war was everywhere. For mile after mile, the highway was
strewn with rusting hulks of blown-up cars and trucks, with huge bomb
craters beside the road.
Another journey last month pointed at the same challenge, not enough
troops to establish control. Officers of the 42nd Infantry Division at
Baquba, 50 miles northeast of Baghdad, presented a picture of restored
calm. A few days later, insurgents hiding in a sprawling palm grove
just south of the town shot down a Kiowa helicopter in a nighttime
attack, killing both crewmen, and pitted another Kiowa with ground
fire when it hovered over the burning wreckage, causing it to make an
emergency landing. American officers said later that with most of
their troops hunkered in their bases, they had been unaware that
rebels had infiltrated the grove.
In some cases, American commanders say, the problem can be too many
American troops, not too few. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top
American officer in Iraq, has said that American forces, while
stabilizing in some areas, can be destabilizing in others, by
encouraging Iraqis to depend too heavily on outsiders.
It is a lesson learned in Iraqi Kurdistan, where American officers
concluded that helping to resolve political disputes tended to keep
the Kurds from working out their differences themselves. It is a
conviction, too, among some American officers in the field, who
complain that newly trained Iraqi troops often malinger on operations,
confident that Americans will step in where they fail.
But whether there are too many American soldiers or too few, a feeling
is growing among senior officers in Baghdad and Washington that it is
only a matter of time before the Pentagon sets a timetable of its own
for withdrawal. These officers point to the effect on American public
opinion of the slow disintegration of the 30-nation military coalition
that America leads, and to frustration on Capitol Hill with the
faltering buildup of Iraqi forces. These officers also cite the
recruiting slump and fear the risk is growing that the war, like
Vietnam, will do lasting damage to the Army and the Marines.
"I think the drawdown will occur next year, whether the Iraqi security
forces are ready or not," a senior Marine officer in Washington said
last week. "Look for covering phrases like 'We need to start letting
the Iraqis stand on their own feet, and that isn't going to happen
until we start drawing down'. "
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Citation: John F. Burns, "Choose: More Troops in Iraq Will (Help) (Hurt)," New York Times, 19 June 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/weekinreview/19burns.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1119288980-eWoDjyXp3efdf3JaAoevag&pagewanted=print
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