The "Surge" Fantasy & Troop Levels

[unlawflcombatnt]

As most people are now aware, President Bush plans to send an additional 20-40 thousand troops into Iraq. All of his military advisors have opposed such a move. The increase from this "surge" is far too small to make any positive difference. In fact, some military advisors believe the only "benefit" will be to provide more targets for the insurgents.

The general consensus among military leaders, both past and present, is that troop levels of 1 per 50 Iraqis would be necessary for even the possibility of stabilization. With an Iraqi population of approximately 26 million, this would require 520,000 troops. A "surge" addition of 20,000 troops to our current 150,000 gives only 170,000 troops. This is roughly 1/3 of what's necessary to stabilize Iraq, according to standard military formulas.

Paul Krugman describes this in his October 27th article, The Arithmetic of Failure, republished from the "Smirking Chimp" (published originally in the New York Times):

"Iraq is a lost cause. It’s just a matter of arithmetic: given the violence of the environment, with ethnic groups and rival militias at each other’s throats, American forces there are large enough to suffer terrible losses, but far too small to stabilize the country....

The classic analysis of the arithmetic of insurgencies is a 1995 article by James T. Quinlivan, an analyst at the Rand Corporation. “Force Requirements in Stability Operations,” published in Parameters, the journal of the U.S. Army War College, looked at the number of troops that peacekeeping forces have historically needed to maintain order and cope with insurgencies. Mr. Quinlivan’s comparisons suggested that even small countries might need large occupying forces....

examples like the British campaign against communist guerrillas in Malaya and the fight against the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland indicated that establishing order and stability in a difficult environment could require about 20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants.

The implication was clear: “Many countries are simply too big to be plausible candidates for stabilization by external forces,” Mr. Quinlivan wrote.

Maybe, just maybe, the invasion and occupation of Iraq could have been managed in such a way that a force the United States was actually capable of sending would have been enough to maintain order and stability. But that didn’t happen, and at this point Iraq is a cauldron of violence, far worse than Malaya or Ulster ever was. And that means that stabilizing Iraq would require a force of at least 20 troops per 1,000 Iraqis — that is, 500,000 soldiers and marines.

We don’t have that kind of force. The combined strength of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps is less than 700,000 — and the combination of America’s other commitments plus the need to rotate units home for retraining means that only a fraction of those forces can be deployed for stability operations at any given time. Even maintaining the forces we now have deployed in Iraq, which are less than a third as large as the Quinlivan analysis suggests is necessary, is slowly breaking the Army...."

(The following are other links to this same article by Paul Krugman:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/10/paul_krugman_th_3.html
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/2006/10/paul-krugman-arithmetic-of-failure.html
http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2006/10/paul-krugman-arithmetic-of-failure.html)


Krugman is right. The war in Iraq is lost. The question now is how many more will die before the government of this country realizes this, and acts accordingly. The issue is whether we lose now and cut our losses, or lose later with much greater losses.

unlawflcombatnt

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[Quakerfriend]

1. I don't understand all this talk about the surge. How can *co.

surge without the approval of Congress?? And, I assume that now that Dems are in control the surge would never happen.

:shrug:

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. They can do it because we present them with non-binding

resolutions instead of legislation with teeth - in the sake of non-partisan agreement we lose intent.

[unlawflcombatnt]

3. Exactly

Resolutions alone not are going to stop Bush. He's made it clear that the will of the public concerns him none whatsoever. Cutting off funding is the only way to stop Bush. Some in Congress maintain that it's already too late to cut the funding, others claim otherwise.

If it's even technically possible, funds should be cut off. There's simply no other way to stop Bush (other than impeachment).

[Imagevision]

4. Bush has apporved of sending troops from Afgan to Iraq - does this say anything?...