Bush "bump" (surge) is pointless - it's far too little and far too late

[ddeclue]

In response to the President's very misleading address this evening I have decided to make a realistic historical comparison relying on our past experience in Vietnam which was also an insurgent guerilla or "terrorist" war in similar circumstances.

Prior to the beginning of the Iraq invasion and occupation, General Shinseki testified before Congress that 250,000 troops would be required for at least 5 years to pacify and rebuild Iraq. Secretary Rumsfeld had Shinseki put out to pasture for saying even this much to the Congress which went against the official White House line that only 60,000 troops give or take would be required. In hindsight, after 4 years, it appears that even General Shinseki was low-balling his estimate in his testimony before Congress.

For historical comparison, I have compared our troop levels in Iraq today and after the President's proposed surge to the number of troops stationed in South Vietnam during the time of the Tet Offensive and the Siege of Khe Sahn in early 1968 and compared them with the relative populations of Iraq in 2006 and South Vietnam in 1968.

In 1968 we had 585,000 troops stationed in South Vietnam which had a population at the time of 16 milllion South Vietnamese. This meant there was 1 American soldier stationed in South Vietnam for every 27.35 South Vietnamese.

By comparison in Iraq today we have approximately 130,000 soldiers or only about 22.2% of the number of soldiers that we had in Vietnam in 1968.

These 130,000 soldiers must protect and pacify a population of 26,000,000 Iraqis which is 62.5% more Iraqis than there were South Vietnamese during the Tet Offensive.

Thus today we have 1 American soldier in Iraq for every 200 Iraqis vs. 1 American soldier for every 27.35 South Vietnamese. This means a soldier in Iraq today has 7.35 times as many people to be responsible for as the soldier did in 1968.

After the President's "surge" of 21,000 troops these numbers and ratios will not appreciably change. Instead of being responsible for 200 Iraqis, each soldier will be responsible for 172.2 Iraqis. This will still be 6.29 times as many as the soldier in 1968 had to deal with.

In 1968 in the Vietnam War there were 9.36 American soldiers for every square mile of South Vietnam.

Today in Iraq there is 0.83 American soldiers for every square mile of Iraq or in other words each American soldier in Iraq is responsible for protecting 1.2 square miles of the country, while in Vietnam, each American soldier was only responsible for protecting 0.11 square miles of Vietnam.

This means that the American soldier in Iraq today must not only protect 7.35 times as many people as his Vietnam counterpart but he (or she) must also protect 11.23 times as much land area as his (or her) Vietnam era counterpart.

Even after the Bush troop surge, the land area situation is still very unfavorable compared to the Vietnam era soldier with the U.S. soldier in Iraq still being responsible for an 1.03 square miles of Iraq or 9.66 times as much as his or her Vietnam era counterpart.

If we could not control South Vietnam with 585,000 troops (remember General Westmoreland and Secretary McNamara were calling on President Johnson to once again raise our troop levels to 750,000 in 1968) then how can anyone honestly believe that we can control a country with 62% more people and 2.5 times the land area of South Vietnam with a force only 22% as large?

To achieve the same force ratio we had in Vietnam in 1968 in Iraq today in terms of U.S. troops to indigenous population we would need to have 950,625 troops in Iraq.

To achieve the same force ratio we had in Vietnam in 1968 in Iraq today in terms of U.S. troops to land area we would need to have 1,460,160 troops in Iraq.

To split the difference between these two numbers, the middle of the range would be 1,205,393 troops in Iraq.

And remember this would be just to achieve parity with our situation in 1968 Vietnam.

It would not guarantee success.

The next troop escalation, had Westmoreland and McNamara been able to persuade President Johnson to grant it in 1968 would have resulted in 750,000 troops there. Meanwhile George Ball and Clark Clifford were advising Johnson at the time that it would actually take 1,000,000 U.S. troops to pacify South Vietnam and that it was therefore unwinnable situation.

If the Westmoreland/McNamara equivalent of 750,000 troops in Vietnam are required in Iraq in terms of force ratios then that would be between 1.2 million and 1.87 million troops with middle of this range at 1.5 million troops.

If the Ball/Clifford equivalent of 1 million troops in Vietnam are required in Iraq in terms of force ratios then that would be between 1.6 million and 2.5 million troops with the middle of this range at 2 milllion troops.

In short, President Bush's "surge" is mathematically and strategically insignificant to the outcome of the Iraqi situation and the number of troops required to make a significant difference is totally out of reach for the President.

The United States military simply does not have a fraction of the number of troops required to pacify Iraq and could not obtain them without an all out mobilization of manpower and material only seen three times in our history - the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. The United States has not had an expeditionary force abroad in a theater of combat of comparable size since the end of World War II.

Finally it is important to point out that the United States military in Vietnam had numerous other advantages not available to U.S. forces in Iraq today:

a) Vietnam is a peninsula with an extensive river system that allowed extensive use of both our blue water and brown water navy to patrol the coastline and rivers, shell and bomb from offshore and limit war materials from coming in via the coastline. Iraq has only a very small coastline and very large borders with both Iran and Syria and a limited river system which means our Navy is of much less use in Iraq.

b) In Vietnam the U.S. military was able to employ napalm, carpet bombing, massed artillery, naval bombardment, free fire zones, and agent orange defoliants - none of which would be politically or morally acceptable to either the American public or the world at large today.

c) In Vietnam the U.S. military was not subject to 24 hour instanteous news coverage as it is today. Today, collateral casualties (civillian deaths), and the blood and gore of war gets 24 hour immediate coverage so this necessarily requires that U.S. forces follow very restrictive rules of engagement that limit their effectiveness in order to avoid these casualties.

d) In Vietnam, the ARVN (the South Vietnamese Army) was a much more viable force than the IDF (the Iraqi Defense Force) has ever been and was 280,000 troops more. Additionally there were 15,000 Austrailians and 50,000 South Koreans in Vietnam which are substantially larger than our so-called "coalition of the willing" which consists almost entirely of several thousand British soldiers at this point.

In conclusion, the mathematics of the situation is that the Bush troop "surge" is only important to George W. Bush, his lunatic neo-con supporters, and unfortunately those 21,000 troops who will be put in harm's way in order to implement the 'surge'.

Only a fool would be willing to follow Bush any further down this insane path.

Three thousand soldiers have already died, must we again have 58,000 deaths before Bush will recognize his folly?

Respectfully,

Douglas J. De Clue

Orlando, FL

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[global1]

1. Could You Do The Math On Potential Of How Many Of Our Troops Would Die....

in Iraq if you make the comparison to Viet Nam. Given the number of troops that were in Viet Nam we had 58,000 deaths. What would be predicted for Iraq given the number of troops there?

[ddeclue]

2. That would be hard to say...

The casualty rates as of late are running about 100 a month but I would assume that is all about to change for the worse once these troops get deployed into house to house street to street fighting in Iraq and get embedded with Iraqis troops. The casualty rates might easily double or worse.

It also would depend on how long this is allowed to go on.

At the beginning of Johnson's elected term in 1965, only a few hundred had died. At the beginning 1968, 11,000 US troops had already died. There were single weeks during the Vietnam War where 500 or more US soldiers died.

By the end of Johnson's term (early 1969) 19,000 had died. In the next 6 years under Nixon and then Ford, the vast majority of troops who died in Vietnam died (about 39,000 more).

So I don't know how you go about predicting such numbers other than on a very short term basis to assume that next month will approximately look like last month as long as conditions remain relatively the same but even that much is often a guess.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL