McMaster on war (merged thread)

[Merv Benson]

While it is a good book, it is wrong to compare the situation in the book to the situation with respect to Iraq. In Vietnam, specific troop request were denied or cut in half. In Iraq, no one in the chain of command ever had a troop request denied. Ever. While people can make legitimate arguments over Gen. Abizaid's "small foot print" strategy, it is his strategy and there is no evidence that it was forced on him. In fact there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Both the President and the Secretary of defense have indicated on numerous occassions that if the commanders in the field say they need more troops they will get them. When testifying before congress Gen. Abizaid and Gen Casey have also made it clear that they have made no request for additional troops.

Let's have an honest debate over the small foot print strategy instead of trying to scape goat civilian leadership over a commanders strategy that some may disagree with. If you read Tommy Franks book American Soldier, it is clear that he and his component commanders got the troops they requested and that it was their plan that was approved for execution in Iraq. There is little doubt that through Phase III of the plan it was one of the most brilliant plans for combat operations ever. It is the Phase IV aspect of the plan that has come into question. The problem with most of the complaints about the Phase IV aspect of the plan is that the enemy was forced to change his plan and adapt to the reality of losing the war and come up with a new plan to continue fighting. He is continuing to adapt as we adapt to his plans.

It is not only an unfair criticism of civilian leadership to blame them for not knowing plans that the enemy did not even have at the time, it is a disservice to the military commanders in the field who are dealing with an adapting enemy.

One more point about McMaster should be made. His innovative plan for the liberation of Tal Afar is an example of our military adapting and dealing with the enemy in a very successful operation. There is no indication that civilian leadership inhibited his planning and execution of his assignment in Tal Afar, particularly the way civilian leadership did in operations in Vietnam. The Tal Afar operation is in many ways a vindication of Gen. Abizaid's small footprint strategy which includes reliance on Iraqi troops to get the force to space ratio needed to cutoff and kill the insurgency. The real problem with the strategy was its requiring US forces to buy the same real estate more than once during the period before there were sufficient Iraqi troops to hold territory taken from the enemy.