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10.07.2007 at 06:58am

Additional articles recently posted by Armed Forces Journal.

Washington’s War by Colonel Douglas MacGregor (USA Ret.)

The human and material cost of America’s occupation of Iraq is reaching a climax. The ongoing “surge” of ground combat troops into Baghdad and its surroundings is producing higher U.S. casualties, exacerbating intersectarian violence and draining the last reserves of American patience.

Like the French Army in Algeria and the British Army in Ireland, the generals in Baghdad are discovering that soldiers and Marines in Iraq control only what they stand on, and when they no longer stand on it, they don’t control it. Meanwhile, the Army grinds itself to pieces while the national military leader¬ship stands by watching, clinging to the promise of more troops for a larger ground force in the future — a promise that is irrelevant to the challenge we now face: getting out of Iraq…

Maintaining American Influence by Colonel Robert Killebrew (USA Ret.)

From the day the Iraqi insurgency began until today’s “surge” strategy, the U.S.-led war in Iraq has followed an entirely predictable course. Absent making Iraq the 51st state, it has been pretty clear that to give its newly democratic government any chance of survival, the Iraqi security forces, and particularly the army, would have to be rebuilt.

Why the rebuilding lagged, and how the various opposition groups gained the upper hand in Baghdad and throughout Iraq, is a story for another day. But by the time the president announced his surge strategy, the various insurgent groups in Baghdad and elsewhere had clearly gained momentum over government forces. Now, American troops and their Iraqi allies are back in the neighborhoods, contesting for the upper hand…

The Immorality of Leaving Iraq by Seth Cropsey

That Americans are irritated and frustrated by the war in Iraq is clear. What is less clear is what voters want to do about it. If President Bush could convince people that more of the progress Gen. David Petraeus has demonstrated can bring enough order to reduce violence and inch Iraq toward stable political institutions, would most Americans still want to pull up stakes and bring the troops home? Probably not.

George Patton comes closest to the truth: “Americans,” he famously insisted, “love a winner and will not tolerate a loser,” an observation that offers a losing Republican president as little solace as a Democratic-controlled national legislature that calculates it can claim credit for ending a war while escaping the blame for its loss — and more importantly, what is likely to follow the loss. And if the hysterics that Bush’s name generates could be brushed aside for a moment, Americans might even reflect that where Abraham Lincoln went through a platoon of commanding generals before finding a winner, Bush — although he took too long to do so — got a winner the moment he decided he’d had enough of what had already been tried…

Assessing the Surge by Ralph Peters

U.S. commanders with whom I spoke in Anbar province in August were worried — worried that their Marines would get bored in the absence of combat action. Enlisted Marines on return tours of duty expressed surprise verging on bewilderment that cities such as Fallujah, long wracked by insurgent violence, were calm and open for business. Foreign terrorists who once ruled the streets still launched minor attacks, but had been marginalized across the province. And last year’s Sunni-Arab enemies were busily scheming how to profit from the American presence.

Although a few portions of Anbar remain dangerous — not least, for Iraqis — the turnaround during the last six months has been remarkable, an illustration of the nonlinear developments in warfare that confound academic theorists. Numerous factors influenced the Sunni-Arab “flip,” but, on the whole, it remains one of those events that analysts could not foresee and which was by no means inevitable. At a certain point, the chemistry was simply there and a few alert commanders recognized it and acted…

Culture Battle by Colonel Henry Foresman Jr. (USA)

The Army, like all military organizations, is defined by its culture, and the culture is defined by the history. Its culture has been defined by its overwhelming success in World War II and shaped by a perceived history of fighting grand wars. Although the culture is consistent with the perceived history, the reality is the Army has been involved in stability and support operations, not grand wars, for almost 80 percent of its existence.

Grand wars, as I define them, are those military engagements that pit army against army. I define stability and support operations as those in which the military is not fighting an army but is opposed either by those resistant to its occupation, passively or aggressively, or is opposed by an organized force executing disperse, nonconnected and localized operations designed to defeat the will of the occupiers to achieve victory…

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