SPECIAL INTEREST (via Kevin Whited):

Rumsfeld in Denial: We won't win in Iraq unless we face reality. (BARRY R. MCCAFFREY, November 30, 2003, Wall Street Journal)

Iraq is a military and political mess, and it's not getting better. The insurgency by Sunni Baathist cadres backed up by a presence of foreign terrorists is going to grow more violent. Our casualties will continue to increase. Baghdad and other cities are wracked by small arms and remote bomb ambushes and by mortar and rocket attacks, and are closed to commercial air traffic. The mayhem has driven much of the international aid and political community out of the contested zones. Assassins stalk the emerging Iraqi leadership to separate collaborators from the Coalition. Saddam Hussein remains a fugitive and therefore a terror in the minds of all Iraqis, and our allies shrink back from supporting us with serious levels of resources or troops.

Our Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is in denial of reality. He publicly states the situation on the ground in Iraq is being distorted by the media and characterizes the violence as comparable to Washington, D.C., crime levels. He has denied there is a "guerrilla war" and insisted that the only opposition is a handful of "dead enders." He points with increasing defensiveness to the small number of coalition forces (besides the courageous Brits) and the increasing hours of electricity per day as evidence that his policies are working.

Some argue that Mr. Rumsfeld has ill served the president. We claimed victory in the initial war intervention. Our adversaries, however, haven't seen themselves as defeated. Mr. Rumsfeld's critics feel that he dug in his heels and inadequately resourced the campaign's opening phase. In my judgment, the manner in which we intervened, and ended the regime, has been a major source of our subsequent problems. It's not enough to achieve victory--which we did; you've got to achieve a situation in which your adversary recognizes that he's been defeated, and that violent resistance is futile--which we didn't. We went in with a small force that, while unstoppable militarily, was incapable of the sort of "takedown" of an entrenched opposition that our troops now face. We should have front-loaded our military power and withdrawn forces as things got better; instead, we went in light, and augmented power after the regime's fall.

The inadequate resourcing of the campaign's first phase is linked to a broader problem: The U.S. Army is stretched to the breaking point.

We may like the fellas making the argument better than their peers, but it's worth keeping in mind that such is really just special interest pleading. If General McCaffrey had been in the Air Force he'd be arguing we needed more planes and pilots, if in the Navy, more boats. Here's a more disinterested look at the same situation, There is good news in Iraq: if you just look for it (Michael O'Hanlon, 11/30/03, The Baltimore Sun):

Things could still get worse in Iraq. But, at the risk of speculating, it seems more likely that they will start getting better. We are already witnessing improvements in the Iraqi quality of life; we may soon start to see improvements in the security situation.

The reasons are twofold. First, Baathist holdouts and foreign jihadists have now used most of the plausible weapons and tactics available to them. Escalation will be increasingly difficult. Second, anyone in Iraq associated with the United States must realize he is a possible target. While tragic, it also means that more are likely to protect themselves robustly.

While the Iraqi resistance has shown increasing competence and coordination, all of its tactics are taken from the standard insurgent and terrorist textbooks of the last decade. Use of roadside bombs is reminiscent of attacks by Hezbollah on Israeli forces in Lebanon. Ambushes on vehicle convoys smack of mujahedeen resistance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Truck bombs and suicide bombers follow patterns established by Hamas, al-Qaida and others.

There are few standard, simple new tactics left to exploit. Of course, insurgents could keep hurting us by using the same tactics repeatedly or escalating their frequency. They have worked in the past. Indeed, to date, coalition forces have developed relatively poor defenses against such methods. For example, we still are not very good at countering improvised explosive devices.

But there is some good news.

Now that we know what tactics are being used, we can take at least some limited steps. We can clear roads of debris where bombs are often hidden, hasten to deploy electronic jammers to make it harder to detonate such devices remotely, place armored meshes around vehicles to intercept rocket-propelled grenades and avoid flying helicopters at predictable altitudes over predictable sites, especially in daylight.

Indeed, the latest news from Iraq suggests the inherent limitations of the resistance and the strengths of an Allied military that's figured out what they're doing, Thwarted Ambush Was Highly Coordinated, U.S. Officials Say (EDWARD WONG, 12/01/03, NY Times)

American military officials said today that a pair of ambushes of American forces in central Iraq on Sunday reflected a level of planning, scale and coordination not seen among guerrilla forces since the regime of Saddam Hussein was ousted last spring.

"Are we looking at this one closely? Yes." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said today. "Is this something larger than we have seen over the past couple of months? Yes. Are we concerned about it? Yeah, we will look at it and we will take the appropriate measures."

American forces killed 54 people in the intense firefight in the town of Samarra after soldiers delivering Iraqi currency to two banks were bombarded with small-arms and antitank-grenade fire, General Kimmitt, a senior military spokesman, said. He added that 22 attackers had been wounded and that one had been detained. On Sunday, the military put the number of Iraqis killed at 46.

A military statement said that "many of the dead attackers were found wearing fedayeen uniforms," a reference to the militias loyal to Mr. Hussein that put up some of the fiercest resistance to the American-led invasion last spring.

What use is co-ordination when engagement is suicidal? Let them all co-ordinate and we can kill them in one fell swoop.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 1, 2003 3:45 PM