IT SEEMS TO COME as a surprise to some in Washington that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has had a hand in planning Operation Iraqi Freedom. Field Marshal Maureen Dowd declared her shock and awe in her Sunday column, declaring that U.S. ground forces were dangerously “exposed” in their positions less than 50 miles from Baghdad. Poor Rumsfeld. In checking with Tommy Franks, JCS Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, the National Security Council, and a few other civilians–like President Bush, the commander in chief–he neglected to run his war plan past either the New York Times or New Yorker editorial boards. The attack orders were never even fully briefed to the staffs of television rent-a-generals. My goodness, as the secretary might say, even the international neoconservative conspiracy was left somewhat in the dark.
You have two choices when you’re in the dark. One is to get angry and lash out. If you’ve been opposed to the Bush administration’s Iraq policy, that’s already a habit that’s hard to break. If you’re a military officer used to intimidating Clinton administration civilians, you’ve got some other scores to settle, too.
A second option is to switch on your flashlight, the better able to see your map, watch, and compass. Let’s start with the map: Find Iraq; locate Baghdad. It is the city at the waistline of the Mesopotamian valley. It is about 400 miles from Kuwait–that’s the triangular thing to the south and east, where U.S. forces began their attack 10 days ago. It is small. Before the attack, it was more than half-full with American combat vehicles and aircraft. Now it is a little less crowded, in particular its ports. It was a bottleneck that was pretty constricted but now forces can flow through it more freely. They are doing so now.
Now let’s consult the watch. How long does it take the thousands of vehicles in a U.S. heavy division–like, say, the 3rd Infantry Division–to drive past a single point? As every commuter knows, it depends on the size of the road, the quality of the traffic management and the number of accidents. But the answer is more often days than hours. Also, when you’re driving a 70-ton M1 tank, you have to stop for gas regularly. Sometimes in war the enemy shoots back, even attacking your supply lines, scorching the earth (or oil wells) behind them as they retreat, or trying to strike at your friends nearby.
Check out the compass, it’s cool. It can tell you where north is no matter where you are. North is the big “N” on the dial (yes, it’s still analog technology). In Iraq, “N” points more or less toward Turkey, where the 4th Infantry Division–another one of those really big and powerful heavy divisions–was supposed to be. The fact that it’s not there is a problem, but not really one of Rumsfeld’s making. That would be mostly Secretary of State Colin Powell’s responsibility, though it’s a good question whether even he could have convinced the Turks, who through extraordinary dedication and short-sightedness have snatched strategic defeat from the jaws of victory.
If you can manage this complex map-watch-compass exercise, you can tell generally where the Iraq war is, where it’s going, and how long it might take to achieve victory. You can judge that, if we choose to wait for them, reinforcements will arrive for the final attack on Baghdad at something like the right moment–indeed, the hard part will be to find space for them to participate in the attack.
Perhaps more importantly, reminding ourselves of the realities of the battlefield will remind us of the larger strategic and political realities. Military victories change things in international politics. There was no “regime change” in Vietnam, but we did not win that war, much to the detriment of the Vietnamese people. Even Obergruppenführer Dowd grasps that “we will conquer” Iraq, and admits that it will be “gratifying to see the Satanic Saddam running like a rat through the rubble of his palaces.” At that point, her thanks in large measure will be to George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Tommy Franks, and those who will have fought–and died–to achieve that purpose.
Tom Donnelly is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
