| US forces advance into Republican Guard positions north of Karbala on the Euphrates, and at Kut on the Tigris. No details yet, so it's unclear whether the Guards stood and fought, fled or pulled back into metropolitan Baghdad. Baghdad is still the prize -- and yes, it does have its own oil field (from the invaluable Perry Castaneda map collection) just southeast of town...
Meanwhile US forces are being very careful in dislodging the Ba'athist opposition in the holy Shi'ite cities of Karbala and Najaf -- the home-in-exile of Ayatollah Khomeini until the Iranian Revolution of 1978. With these advances and the very low US/UK casualties rate to date, it's a stretch to say that the war is going badly. (Winning the peace is another story). Still, critics of the Rumsfeld/Myers/Franks war plan have focused on three shortcomings: i) Too few divisions -- and not enough tanks -- were sent to Iraq, particularly considering the need to secure rear areas from guerillas/gunmen; ii) If Hersh's anonymous sources are right, the haste to get the war started interfered with logistical considerations (especially fuel, spares and ammunition); that's why supply lines are now stretched to near-maximum; iii) Air support for ground forces has been hampered by a lack of land bases; carrier-based aircraft are having to fill in for the fighter-bombers and ground-attack planes that were to have been based in Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Blame the last factor on diplomatic failures if you like, but the first two are attributable to the Pentagon's enthusiastic embrace of the Revolution in Military Affairs doctrine. A key RMA theorist Andrew W Marshall was profiled in the 16 July 2001 New Yorker piece, Dreaming About War. (It's not available on their site, but thanks to Bush Watch for archiving it and to net environments for the link.) It makes it clear that Rumsfeld championed RMA against the Joint Chiefs well before this war became likely. And RMA doctrine (many useful links here) does emphasize information technology and light forces while playing down the importance of some hard assets (e.g. heavy tanks). Could the US military's infatuation with high-tech gadgetry trip it up at some point -- not in this war, perhaps, but in the next? |
return to: Ruminatrix |
"...What few in the press are talking about, though, is: what was Wallace referring to and what's the significance of it? I've mentioned the story a few times now but haven't managed yet to say what's on my mind. A discussion over at Ru(m)ination (bruno's weblog at digitalmediatree) has just prompted me to try to put my thoughts more simply (what a little dialogue can do). The larger issue here, it seems to me, is that with the "transformation" — the so-called revolution ..." |
