Today's Ralph Peters Column

[Birdstrike]

Another excellent column from Ralph Peters. From the New York Post's opinion page: ​

RELEARNING WAR ​

By RALPH PETERS

October 20, 2004 -- As the presidential election approaches, the cynical charges of "failure" in Iraq obscure a fundamental truth: The conflict has improved our military dramatically.

War teaches. And we're very good learners. We already had the best-trained, best-equipped armed forces in the world. Now we have the most experienced troops, as well. With enduringly high morale.

Operation Iraqi Freedom and the subsequent occupation swept away a pile of dangerous nonsense. We found — again — that airpower alone cannot win wars and that the infantryman remains as indispensable in the 21st century as he was in the bronze age.

The think-tank theories collapsed. Grit, guts and tough training carried the day. "Shock-and-awe" fizzled embarrassingly, but aircraft armed with precision weapons discovered a new role in supporting ground troops fighting in urban terrain.

In the past, preparatory fires from massed artillery preceded major attacks, causing broad destruction. Today, focused prep fires delivered from the air can target terrorist hide-outs over weeks and even months, weakening the enemy physically and psychologically — while dramatically reducing civilian losses — before the troops go in.

Faced with the challenges of operating in cities, our soldiers and their leaders have developed innovative techniques to suit different situations. Some operations are now designed to start and finish between sunset and sunrise. Major assaults have begun to use mass to overwhelm opponents before they can react, to finish in days a fight that doctrine holds would take weeks or months.

And the new ways work. The enemy leaders in Fallujah aren't begging to play "Let's Make a Deal" because our forces are failing.

Above all, morale remains high among our troops. Again and again, I've had the chance to speak with soldiers and Marines coming from or going to Iraq. There is no sense of defeatism. On the contrary, the negative media coverage baffles the veterans. They believe they're winning a very important struggle.

In the past few days, two minor issues have been blown out of proportion, thanks to the debased quality of this year's election campaign. In one instance, an admitted Kerry supporter leaked a year-old message from Lt.-Gen. Rick Sanchez, our former commander in Baghdad. The memo stressed the need to provide supplies and spare parts more swiftly.

Kerry leapt on the document, thundering that the president had failed the troops. In fact, the memo reflected the tardiness of the military logistics system in adapting to wartime conditions. The problems were in the warehouse, not the White House.

Although much progress has been made since the general sent his memo, there are serious problems in the support system. But they weren't created by President Bush. Successive administrations, Republican and Democrat, starved spare parts and readiness accounts to channel defense dollars to contractors hawking glamorous big-ticket items. We needed tires, batteries and body armor. We got submarines without missions and programs to buy outrageously expensive fighters designed to defeat the Soviets. In 2004.

Both parties failed our troops.

Forecasting what the military will need in wartime isn't a new problem. In World War II, we overestimated the amount of air-defense artillery required and badly underestimated the need for artillery shells and infantrymen. In the latter months of 1944, as our troops approached the Rhine, artillery rounds had to be rationed. At one point, the infantry replacement pool for the entire European Theater was down to one very lonely soldier. War is not the domain of perfection. Never was, never will be.

The other recent incident involved disobedience to orders. A handful of soldiers refused to drive their assigned vehicles on a convoy mission, complaining that the trucks were in poor shape and protection was inadequate. Well, soldiers in a combat zone don't get to choose the orders they obey. Illegal orders must be refused, but you don't get to decline orders you just don't like.

Danger is part of soldiering. You go where you're told to go and fight when you must. Infantrymen go into danger daily. Drivers can't opt out because a mission worries them.

We should be proud that such incidents have been so few. Trouble makes headlines, not the many soldiers and Marines who serve honorably.

Yet the mini-mutiny does highlight other problems that reach back through multiple administrations. As with the troublemakers at Abu Ghraib, the soldiers in question were reservists. Overall, our Reserve and National Guard forces have performed superbly in Iraq — despite lengthier deployments than they expected. But our military's reserve components aren't structured for 21st-century warfare. Their training, although improved, is uneven. Much of their gear is aging. They often get second-class treatment.

We Americans owe the Reserves and the Guard far more than we have given them.

An even more pervasive problem behind the "We won't drive" protest first showed up in the march to Baghdad, when support troops proved unprepared for the chaotic postmodern battlefield, with its lack of defined combat zones and safe rear areas.

Today, every soldier, no matter his or her specialty, must have a mastery of basic combat skills. Soldiers can no longer think of themselves primarily as mechanics, or drivers, or clerks. On the new battlefield, everybody's a fighter. Our military realizes this and has begun to adjust training accordingly. But there's an inevitable lag-time between the schoolhouse and the field. Those reservists who refused an order were from the old system. They didn't quite understand what soldiering means.

These recent problems simply reflect the changing shape of war. Our military is evolving with the times — and doing so effectively. But no matter how good we get, we'll never see trouble-free combat. To pretend otherwise is immeasurable folly.

Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace."