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December 12, 2004

The Army You Have

Note: this is a post recovered from my old blog, before it died of an insufficient backup. Any comments/trackbacks on it have not been brought over, but can be seen with the original. The date is that of the original posting.

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Donald Rumsfeld is taking some heat for a comment made to a soldier in theater. When asked about the lack of armor for trucks and HMMWV's, Rumsfeld replied that manufacturers were pushing as hard as they can (according to Fox News, production of armored HMMWV's has gone from 15/month to 450/month - 30 times what it was!) and that "You go to war with the Army you have." Little Green Footballs links to a couple of different sources on the event.

I have a few thoughts on this. First, SecDef Rumsfeld is absolutely right: you do go to war with what you have. We sent 10's of thousands of HMMWV's to Iraq, and we only had a few hundred armored HMMWV's in the entire military. When, some 6 months after the Ba'ath were overthrown, IEDs became a serious threat, armoring not just HMMWV's, but trucks and utility vehicles of all kinds became a priority for the first time. Now, a little more than a year after that, we are well on our way to building the Army we need to fight the war we are fighting. Not only are we up to 78% armored HMMWV's in Iraq (Fox News again), but we are also developing and deploying armored, self-sealing fuel trucks, armored ammo trucks, and various specialized vehicles for detecting and defeating IEDs (as well as tactics against VBEDs). But defense is a small part of the solution: doctrine, training and new tactics have also adapted to fight the threat. While it will never be possible to fully eliminate casualties from such attacks, we are already doing far better than the Russians in Chechnya, a decade after they got into the same situation.

Worse, really, for us is that it takes literally two years to change purchasing plans for the military. This is not a product of bureaucracy per se, but a deliberate policy of the Congress. Congress has set up the budget process for the military to make it very difficult for the military to do things without Congressional approval. This long turnaround time makes it very difficult to react to events.

But I don't want to let the administration entirely off the hook here. Yes, it is true that the transformation plans for the Army will end up putting more units of action in the field - eventually - and that it takes 3-5 years to train up new units. Yes, it is true that building a division, even around a cadre like 24th Mech (never mind having to build the headquarters and senior NCOs, too!) takes a long time. But it's also true that we have been at war for three years now, and there's little excuse for the military still being at roughly the same size as it was. I don't think we need more ships or more aircraft (though we need a core of more-modern aircraft to use in addition to our 1970's-vintage air fleet currently available), but I don't think we have enough trigger pullers. Here's why:

With our current level of troops in Iraq, the Army is essentially either there, refitting after being there, or training up to go there. This means that we do not have sufficient troops available to take on Syria - largely complicit in the Iraq war currently - or Iran - currently developing nuclear weapons as fast as they can. We can use our air and naval power on both of these enemies, but we cannot occupy them, and thus cannot truly conquer them. For that reason, both Iran and Syria are working as hard as they can to defeat us in Iraq and to develop the eventual means to deter us completely. Effectively, we are repeating one of the big mistakes of Viet Nam: we are allowing the enemy sanctuaries.

I don't know our long-term strategy. I do know that we will have to take on our enemies aggressively, or fail in this war. I am not yet ready to declare the administration wrong, but I'm more concerned than I was six months ago, because I just don't see where we're going next. If the administration begins to move openly against Syria or Iran (hopefully, Iran) shortly, I'll relax a little. But I'm getting nervous.

Back to the original point, though, I have to laugh at people who take issues with statements like "You go to war with the Army you have." I mean, have these people ever tried to do anything? It's simply the case that what looks right on paper is not what exists in the real world. There are always complications and frustrations and mistakes and problems and things that inexplicably (until well after the fact) just don't work. Even common things, like going out to buy a particular item, can fall to this. How many times have you gone to the store to find that it was out of what you wanted, only to find that the next store you go to never carried it (and who knows why you thought it did) and that when you do find it it's twice what you expected to pay? Welcome to the world.

But in the neverland of politics, such everyday complications are the cause of excoriation and bitter tears, not to mention outright condemnation and scorn. How could anyone have gotten this wrong, ask the pundits with their 20/20 hindsight and complete lack of understanding of how anything except political commentary works. Not that I'm bitter. Frankly, I think we'd be a lot better served if the professional pundits ever got their hands dirty. It'd help their judgment and understanding somewhat, I suspect.

UPDATE: Expat Yank points out something I meant to, but got too busy ranting to say: it's a good thing that our soldiers can stand up to the SecDef and criticize his performance in public. It means that, though we've had a professional, standing Army for decades, the soldiers are still Americans, and haven't become a breed apart. (The moment they show signs of it, we destroy the standing military; there's no other way. Just a Truman remove MacArthur for disobedience to civilian command, we must be vigilant to ensure that this fine military we have created remains a tool of our civil society, rather than its master.)