Redstate

You can edit your diaries now. There's no need for the follow-up comment.

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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.

Good point. And it's sporting of you and docj to humor my inversion of his diary.

I just happen to think this is a more than worthy exercise and give you an "Atta Boy!" for making it happen.

BTW, my reasons for not commenting beyond this are:

1) I don't necesarily think Rummy is the best SecDef in ages, though perhaps the best since, say, Cap,
2) Rummy would NOT be on my short list for POTUS
3) Rummy's ideas on transformation are not (in my very, very humble opinion) uniformly marvelous
4) Rummy is not "the problem" - or even in my opinion a large part of "the problem" - vis-a-vis Iraq.

As such, I'm not precisely certain my opinions on Rummy are what you're looking for.

FTR, my principal quibble with Rummy is that it appears he has not held his theatre commanders to the standards of "success" The Dissatisfieds wish to hold him to - but it really is a quibble, and little more.

Cheers.

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

I'm a fan, so here is my answer
1). The objectives are:
a). Removal of Saddam and the Baath party from power.
b). Secondary military objectives: Capturing Saddam, Elimination of Sadr's army (in the summer of 04), Recapturing Fallujah, Eliminating Zarqawi, etc.
c). Keep the casualties sufficiently low, such that they are not a strain on the operational abilities and are not used (by the MSM & Dems) to undermine the war at home.
d). Ensure progress that progress towards Iraq becoming a Democratic Republic continues. Meaning, make sure that the elections aren't disrupted and that a reasonable constitution/government emerges.
e). Contain the insurgency and prevent the situation from degenerating into a civil war.
f). Train the Iraqi military.

I'd say a) and b) could have been accomplished by any defence secretary, but the trick is to do it without sacrificing c),d),e),f). This is where Rumsfeld's "high-tech, light, mobile military" comes in

2). The problem is not just that the enemy hides behind civilians. It is that these are the same people who we need, not only not to take up arms against us, but also to vote reasonably in elections and join the Iraqi army to fight alongside with ours. So you have to make collateral damage very limited.

For example, let's say there's an attack on a supply convoy in the Sunni Triangle. The preRumsfeld approach says that you should gather an overwhelming force and then go through the neighboring towns trying to roundup the terrorists. Distinguishing them from the local population would be quite a task in itself. And after you're done, how many locals will still support you!? And how many dead will there be for the media to use to undermine the war!? So the military needs to be geared towards tracking and hitting the terrorists before they merge back into the population. I.e. you should rely on surveilance drones, helicopter support, more mobile infantry; rather than heavy power. And if you do need to go house to house, the soldiers need to be professional and well equipped enough to keep the casualties down. Thus the resources should into training and technology rather than numbers and raw power.

P.S. The Israeli situation is a bad analogy as it is much closer to a conventional war. Hezbullah used heavy artillery and did it from outside the state of Israel. If they didn't target civilians & use them as shields, it would be a regular war.

I'd say we certainly accomplished a-d but e and f are still ongoing. I agree that it's good to avoid civilian casualties when possible, but I'm not sure that this approach is the best way to do that in the long term. Certainly swooping down in quick strikes and then getting away before we take significant losses is a good way to kill some insurgents, but it doesn't seem to me to be the best way to prevent them from carrying out acts of terror, and once we leave they seem to just come back. I gotta think that it's necessary to hold territory and then maintain security, and I don't see how you do that without a lot of troops. Since these troops will be more or less stationary, they have to be heavily armed.

I guess what I'm getting at is that it seems to me to be preferable to more directly engage the insurgents, accepting greater initial casualties (including civilian) to avoid a long, drawn-out struggle. By taking, holding, and securing the bases from which they operate, I think you'd choke the insurgency more quickly. But, I'm not a military strategist by any stretch, and your points are certainly taken. Thanks for the thoughtful response.

Fighting insurgents and terrorists requires different methods than fighting an army. The insurgents mostly do not want to be engaged and aren't willing to stick around and be engaged. They hit and run. They operate in civilian areas in civilian clothes. Then they melt back into the civilian population. It is a much harder battle to fight... one we are still learning how to fight.

The only way I can see overwhelming force really working against these guys is if you are talking about allowing for massive civilian casualties. If you surround cities and level them with nuclear or conventional ordinance, you are bound to get quite a few insurgents at the same time. I don't think that would be a wise course of action, however.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

without recommending it I can only note that government death squads have an amazingly successful track record in dealing with insurgencies. I'd point to El Salvador, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina as for instances.

Speaking in general terms here, I'm suggesting sending heavily armored troops in to control cities. This would make it more difficult for the insurgents to operate openly, and keeping a strong force once the city is pacified would prevent them from coming back later. I think the hearts/minds bit would balance out: you'd inevitably have more incidents of accidental injury to civilians, but on the other hand the day-to-day interactions between civilians and our troops are generally quite positive. In some sense this would provide more targets, but as you say the difficulty is getting the insurgents to engage, so if it turns into a small-scale flypaper scenario that might be successful. I think a fair critique is that this is asking troops to do something a bit removed from their specific training, but I think they'd do alright anyway. I'm not convinced that small and fast alone is the best way to stamp out an insurgency.

Again, please take all of the above with a grain of salt, I've no expertise here.

I don't think it's an issue of securing the area vs. doing hit and run attacks on the insurgents. I'm not familiar with any situations where they had the superrior firepower and we had to 'swoop away' before taking losses. The point behind greater speed is to be able to come in and hit them before they get away. So it's more of a question of what kind of force will secure the area better and what the effect on casualties, local opinion, etc. will be. And the general idea is to minimize both the response time and the troop levels.
Also, if we could directly engage the insurgents and decisevely crush them using a heavy force I'd agree with you (and Rumsfeld would too). But, like another poster pointed out, this simply isn't an option. How do you quickly eliminate the enemy which blends into the civilian population and tries to wait you out? And if you have a large presence in the area there will inevitably be more situations where you end up alienating the locals. So the approach is to get the Iraqis to do the daily security duties and reserve our forces for when the terrorists actually do show themselves.

I was going to suggest Fallujah and Najaf but I guess the initial retreats there were politically motivated. I've got no problem with some fraction of the armed forces being quick-strike, I just think that having a large group to keep order afterwards is helpful when dealing with insurgents. You're probably right that there's apt to be less friction when Iraqis take on this role, although again I think that the day-to-day interactions between our troops and civilians are generally positive and the Iraqi security forces aren't without their own issues. Anyway, thanks for giving me plenty to think about.

Unfortunately that is all he's done right. President Bush should have picked someone else to lead the cleanup. I have heard from those inside the Pentagon his arrogance gets in the way of his decision making. I think he'll pull through two more years however.

what has he been doing for the past five years

President Bush should have picked someone else to lead the cleanup.

You mean like he did? Rumsfeld does not run State. Rumsfeld did not run the CPA. Just because Rumsfeld is near the top of the left's hit list doesn't mean he is responsible for everything that goes wrong.

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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson