The air war over Iraq

November 28, 2005 10:10 AM

Seymour Hersh's fact piece in the current New Yorker lays out current behind-the-scenes thinking about getting out of Iraq. One piece of the article talks about the problems created by the President's sense that he has a divine mandate to pursue his policies...

...the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said.

Most worrisome to some in the military are questions about reducing American troops and substituting air power for boots on the ground. Apparently the air war has been growing without much comment from the congress or media. Hersh cites a press release that the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone has dropped over 500,000 tons of ordinance. But if American troops are gone, who will provide targeting for the air strikes? The scenario of handing targeting over to the Iraqis apparently makes many military planners uncomfortable.
posted by jasper411 (45 comments total)

posted by Heywood Mogroot at 10:20 AM on November 28, 2005

I'm really going to be relieved when I wake up from this dream. Can you imagine if this stuff was happening for real? Yikes.
posted by JWright at 10:21 AM on November 28, 2005

If our mission in Iraq is actually a humanitarian one, don't more air strikes=more loss of civilian life?

Are we at war with Iraq or are we trying to save them from whatever?

Is this another one of those "We had to destroy the village in order to save it" situations?
posted by leftcoastbob at 10:24 AM on November 28, 2005

Most worrisome to me is that the training of the Iraqi Army is apparantly a near impossible task and is nowhere near being even out of its infancy. According to an article in the recent Vanity Fair by a reporter returing to the unit he had been embedded with, there are two major problems in training the Iraqi Army: 1) the Iraqi Ministry of Defense has the only approval authority for ALL spending on the IA and is notoriously stingy and besotted with politics and corruption; and 2) there is a huge cultural challenge to overcome in that officers refuse to train with (or even excerise at all), live with or have anything to do with the common ranks and insist on 'leading from the rear'. In other words, we would be turning over security to a completely unprepared and ill-functioning military beauracracy that is still operating under the old 'buy your rank' mentality. If we leave without overcoming this, there is no way this operation can be salvaged in any way.
posted by spicynuts at 10:24 AM on November 28, 2005

Oh, sorry, and that reporter bases his assertions on the fact that the unit he went back to is in charge of training the IA.
posted by spicynuts at 10:25 AM on November 28, 2005

I'm fairly confident that Bush would never pull out until Iraq is overwhelmingly safe for business and doesn't risk a government coming in and nationalizing the oil fields. It would be ridiculous to pull out and simply wage an air campaign over Iraq unless I'm severly underestimating the ability of our airforce. This seems to me just wishful thinking by some in the Pentagon as a way to gracefully bow out. If there's one thing we can count on it is Bush's cowboy mentality of doing whatever he wants -- and he sure doesn't want to be seen as the President who lost this war. The political pressure within the Republican party would have to be overwhelming to get him to change, and I just don't see it right now.
posted by geoff. at 10:33 AM on November 28, 2005

Heywood Mogroot, what's that picture? It looks familiar but I can't identify it.
posted by alumshubby at 10:37 AM on November 28, 2005

Please, if this government can get people to think that saddam = 9/11 and how many people think that there were WMD's found in Iraq (Paris Paramus isn't the only one, you know) They can pull troupes out without making it look like we pulled troupes out

If people think there will be 'political fallout' over an Iraq pullout, they are seriously over estimating the American people. Half the people don't want to be involved in the war in the first place, and the other half are so gullible they'll believe whatever talking points come out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth.
posted by delmoi at 10:42 AM on November 28, 2005

Troupes? As in "send in the clowns"?
posted by five fresh fish at 10:46 AM on November 28, 2005

I think that "500,000 tons of ordnance" from the DoD PR is a typo, btw.

It comes from early November 2004, when the 3MAW had been in-country for 8 months.

The 3rd MAF has 8 F-18 squadrons, ~80 planes total (ignoring the unit's AV-8s, which don't carry much AFAIK).

Over 8 months, that's an operational tempo of each F-18 delivering 26 1-ton bombs every day, or 3 full-load missions/day, every day, for 8 months.

Doable, and if I'm wrong one helluva record, but I wonder how we kept the 3rd MAW supplied over those 8 months.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 10:56 AM on November 28, 2005

Has anyone considered that, since the vast majority of the violence in Iraq is aimed at US, if the United States pulled out, there probably wouldn't be nearly so much need for internal security?

I believe the time has come to start asking, are we causing MORE harm to Iraq by staying than we would by leaving?

No one wants to talk about it, but it seems to me that we've managed to screw up Iraq even more than it was, and there's nothing we're going to be able to do to fix problems that are, ultimately, rooted in centuries of internal ethnic disputes. (problems that became serious, essentially, when Iraq was created out of thin air with no regard to the ethnicities involved in its creation)

The Shiites and the Sunnis are always going to be at each others' throats, and *we will not fix it.* As soon as we turn our backs, whether in 1 month or a decade, they'll be right back at it.
posted by InnocentBystander at 11:01 AM on November 28, 2005

Troupes? As in "send in the clowns"?

Calling out PP brings out the French in Delmoi.
posted by tetsuo at 11:07 AM on November 28, 2005

WE are buying all this ordinance on the national credit card
anyone have any idea what the payment schedule and rate of interest?
posted by hortense at 11:07 AM on November 28, 2005

are we causing MORE harm to Iraq by staying than we would by leaving?

very possibly so. but once you leave, there's a fucked-up, divided, weak, corrupt military in charge of all that sweet, sweet oil.
it'd be interesting to see what would happen then -- power abhors a a vacuum and all that. American troops (ie, at this point, American cannon fodder) is propping up Iraq. nobody can say what's going to happen there without American troops. maybe we'll see it in the next few years.
it'll also be interesting to see another administration in January '09 (Jebby's or Hillary's is immaterial re: this point) receive the Iraqi mess straight from Bush's incompetent hands.
posted by matteo at 11:12 AM on November 28, 2005

hortense writes "anyone have any idea what the payment schedule and rate of interest?"

Here you go.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:15 AM on November 28, 2005

alum: "The Dead Zone" movie.

In other words, we would be turning over security to a completely unprepared and ill-functioning military beauracracy that is still operating under the old 'buy your rank' mentality

Sai-Sai-Sai-gon.

This was a primary difficulty in VN. The SVN, corrupt and largely incompetent, were demonstrably incapable of defending the regime against the insurgency (cf Ap Bac, 1963), so to avert a looming collapse in 1965-66 the military mission pushed ARVN to the sidelines and (largely) fought its attritive battles for it. Momentum carried our intervention up to 1968, then we began to spin down after taking ~35k KIA.

But building institutional excellence takes decades, not months.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:17 AM on November 28, 2005

Half the people don't want to be involved in the war in the first place, and the other half are so gullible they'll believe whatever talking points come out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth.
posted by delmoi at 12:42 PM CST on November 28 [!]

Truth.
posted by Ynoxas at 11:18 AM on November 28, 2005

anyone have any idea what the payment schedule and rate of interest?

There is no payment schedule. We will roll over the debt when it comes due in 1,2,3,4,5,10 years into new obligations, at any interest rate we can get.

As for interest, it is currently 3.5-4%.

So, $250B x 4% is $10B/year, forever. If you're the average taxpayer, that's $100/yr. Thanks, Ralph.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:23 AM on November 28, 2005

Airpower is a force multiplier not a force in and of itself. Zero multipied by any number no matter how great is still zero.

That said, I like Seymour, but that’s a lotta conjecture there. Didn’t he say we were headed to war with Iran? (We still might be...who knows?)
But “officials” say a lot of things. I know a guy who works for Microsoft. It doesn’t mean he’s dead on about everything Bill Gates is about.

But ok, I fully concede the zeitgeist around Bush’s religious tendancies. I’m just pointing out, it’s a lot of ‘maybe’s. I’m not disputing the cogency of the picture painted though.
It would be politically expedient to pull out and declare victory (Stewie: "Victory is mine!") and lay whatever chaos ensues on the Iraqis. And hell, we were bombing the crap out of Iraq under Clinton. There were so many contrails in the Iraqi no fly zone they must’ve thought they were living under a big net. Why that would change I don’t know.
posted by Smedleyman at 11:45 AM on November 28, 2005

very possibly so. but once you leave, there's a fucked-up, divided, weak, corrupt military in charge of all that sweet, sweet oil. Arguably, we have that now... according to some..- Avoiding self link here - and to lazy to find the exact comments, but you'll get the drift......
posted by Elim at 11:47 AM on November 28, 2005

geoff: until Iraq is overwhelmingly safe for business

Which business? Dyncorp? Halliburton? CSC? They all do better if it's not "safe". Plus, if the situation is unstable, it's an argument for a 'fatherly hand' on the shoulder, so to speak...
posted by lodurr at 11:52 AM on November 28, 2005

but once you leave, there's a fucked-up, divided, weak, corrupt military in charge of all that sweet, sweet oil.

It'd be interesting to study the new Iraqi constitution and search for any language that could be interpreted in such a way as to allow autonomous regions to conduct their own foreign policy, i.e., call for foreign intervention should they feel threatened. That'd be one way to cover our bases, so to speak. I've looked here and there, but not thoroughly (enough to notice that every Iraqi has a constitutional right to free healthcare, though-nice!).

This new reliance on airpower is disturbing, and seems like nothing more than "hey, it worked in Afghanistan!" In terms of military tactics, has anyone read anything interesting about the tactics in use in Iraq, and whether or not the paradigm is outdated? Meaning not so much "the Americans are trigger-happy" variety and more the "is it really necessary to project strength, send out endless patrols into hostile territory hoping to confront the enemy?" variety, if that exists. Is anyone calling for more inventive tactics than those currently in use?

I don't know anything about military tactics, so I'm curious. Hope that's not a derail--email address in my profile if you want to keep it out of the thread.
posted by halcyon_daze at 12:08 PM on November 28, 2005

smeldeyman, I think Hersh often ends up being a channel for military sources. Despite some bad feelings toward him after My Lai, he seems to be very close to senior flag officers -- they trust him. I seem to recall that he was a grunt, himself, back in the day, and a lot of those senior officers now were morally conflicted young officers back then.

And I get the impression he feels loyalty of a sort to the military. What I've read of his recent work is always careful to lay ultimate blame outside of the military domain. Even for things like torture and the killing of civilians, he always takes care to make sure it's understood that civilians set teh tune and stock the bar.

Which is to say, that conjecture or no, I think this is essentially a message from the military leadership to the American people to tell us that they're scared: Scared that the President is destroying something they love. It's like when the spouse of a religious fanatic talks "in confidence" to friends about the extreme things that his/her spouse is doing at home...
posted by lodurr at 12:12 PM on November 28, 2005

It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was part of a good platoon.
We were on manoeuvers in Louisiana,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain said, "We've got to ford the river",
That's where it all began.
We were knee deep in the Big Muddy,
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,
This is the way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, I once crossed this river
Not a mile above this place.
It'll be a little soggy but we'll keep slogging.
We'll soon be on dry ground."
We were waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

"Captain, sir, with all this gear
No man'll be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Follow me, I'll lead on."
We were neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

All of a sudden, the moon clouded over,
All we heard was a gurgling cry.
A second later, the captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Than the place where he'd once been.
For another stream had joined the Muddy
A half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to get out of the Big Muddy
When the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

Well, you might not want to draw conclusions
I'll leave that to yourself
Maybe you're still walking, maybe you're still talking
Maybe you've still got your health.
But every time I hear the news
That old feeling comes back on;
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools kept yelling to push on.

Knee deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on
Waist deep! Neck deep! we'll be drowning before too long
We're neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on.
posted by jokeefe at 12:17 PM on November 28, 2005

Doable, and if I'm wrong one helluva record, but I wonder how we kept the 3rd MAW supplied over those 8 months.

There's a more compelling argument against.

500,000 tons / 1,000 = 500 kilotons = .5 megatons

500,000 tons / 13,000 = 38.4 Hiroshimas.

Or, if you wish, WWII as whole is reckoned as having expended 3 megatons of explosives, all told, including Trinity, Fat Man and Little Boy. This one unit, in eight months, has fired one sixth of the explosive power of WWII.
posted by eriko at 12:21 PM on November 28, 2005

eriko, I'm not sure, but I think you might be conflating the total mass of ordinance with the mass of the explosive itself.

I don't even know if this would make that significant of a difference either, just a thought.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 12:26 PM on November 28, 2005

halcyon_daze - I see the problem is that no one, even those I know in the mil or on TV seems to have any idea what the tactics or stratagy is (or even if there is one) beyond "keep on keeping on".
posted by Elim at 12:27 PM on November 28, 2005

This new reliance on airpower is disturbing

RUUUMSFELD!

Actually if you've seen the Iraqi sniper vid floating around (~20 US soldiers getting popped one-by-one) you might begin to think it's a good idea.

Me, March 9, 2003:

Second, we need a recommitment to security agreements. SWATO or whatever, nonaggression backed by both regional forces (ie Israeli and Saudi F-16's) and of course US strategic air power. US Marines and infantry are just ducks in a shooting gallery over there.

I am reminded of "The Man Who Never Missed". What a great movie that would make.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 12:32 PM on November 28, 2005

I'll retract in part -- can't find anything that says Hersh was a soldier; thought I'd seen that in a bio a while back.
posted by lodurr at 12:34 PM on November 28, 2005

The problem is that we're no longer in a war with Iraq, we're in a war with Iran, who are supplying and helping organize the Shiite power structures in the South. Shiite militias (whether "resistance" or nominally supporting the provisional government) compose the most organized and dominant force in the majority of the country, and if we withdraw, they take over, which basically means Iran is calling the shots, or at least have a very receptive ear.

Now imagine it's these same Shiite militiamen (read: Iran) calling in the U.S. airstrikes against the "resistance" (read: any one they have a grudge against), and you'll see why the military is concerned.
posted by TonyRobots at 1:04 PM on November 28, 2005

“Is anyone calling for more inventive tactics than those currently in use?
I don't know anything about military tactics, so I'm curious.” posted by halcyon_daze

The Marine Corps Small Wars manual written in the 1930's - an excellent resource on how to fight guerillas, etc. Not much has changed since then.
http://www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil/sw_manual.asp
It’s worked when and where it’s been employed. Where it hasn’t (*coughVietnamcough*) it devolves into a war of attrition, which is almost like fighting the tide unless you’re willing to just cede to commiting genocide. Superior attitude, ethical and judicious treatment of civilians, can lead to a tactical edge and an ultimate victory. War is indeed a battle of wills, not just carnage.

“that conjecture or no, I think this is essentially a message from the military leadership to the American people” - posted by lodurr

I can live with that perspective. I’m just tired of the “officials” or “unnamed sources” said, as a general thing in the media. And then everyone starts contemplating the “if’s” from ideology. But as to the import of the article itself, I don’t know it (because again ‘officials’ who?), but sure, that explaination serves.


“I'll retract in part -- can't find anything that says Hersh was a soldier; thought I'd seen that in a bio a while back.” - posted by lodurr

This one time, a long, long, long time ago, I made a very, very small mistake - once. I suppose I could let someone else slide...I guess.

I don’t know that it makes a difference though. If he’s straight with people and honest and doesn’t want to use you for his agenda, I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t trust him whether he was a ground pounder or not.
posted by Smedleyman at 1:14 PM on November 28, 2005

Crooks and Liars has video of Seymour Hersh discussing this with Wolf Blitzer. (Partial transcript.)

The British tried controlling Iraq from the air during the mandate period. This study of the period suggests that "one cannot really police an empire with airpower."
posted by kirkaracha at 2:07 PM on November 28, 2005

Juan Cole has some interesting comments on the proposed use of air power.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:09 PM on November 28, 2005

Heywood Mogroot: Over 8 months, that's an operational tempo of each F-18 delivering 26 1-ton bombs every day, or 3 full-load missions/day, every day, for 8 months.

Not even close to possible, I think. USN's estimates (talking about the F/A-18F Super Hornet):

"Now, they are beginning to
enjoy the benefits of working on an aircraft that takes roughly
15 maintenance hours per flight hour as opposed to the
F-14D’s 50 maintenance hours per flight hour."

eriko, I don't buy the 500,000 tons number either, but I don't think your logic applies. Consider the tonnage dropped in various wars:

• Vietnam: 8 million tons (source)
• WWII: about 2.66 million tons (1/3rd of Vietnam, per above)
• Gulf War I: 90 thousand tons (source)

A lot of bombs were dropped on Vietnam. Iraq isn't going to look like that, but...
posted by Chuckles at 2:14 PM on November 28, 2005

No one wants to talk about it, but it seems to me that we've managed to screw up Iraq even more than it was, and there's nothing we're going to be able to do to fix problems that are, ultimately, rooted in centuries of internal ethnic disputes.

Meet the new boss(es), same as the old boss. (But also consider the source.)
posted by mrgrimm at 2:31 PM on November 28, 2005

15 maintenance hours per flight hour as opposed to the
F-14D’s 50 maintenance hours per flight hour

dunno, isn't that maintenance man-hour? Team of 5/plane would mean 9 hrs shoptime for 3 hrs of missions each day.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:33 PM on November 28, 2005

suggests that "one cannot really police an empire with airpower."

Habbaniya has real meaning for Iraqis. That's the abortive "coup", where the Iraqis tried to eject the British from their country in 1941, when the German tide in MENA was at its very crest.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:35 PM on November 28, 2005

What toasts my muffin is Iowa -- who we have to thank for Kerry, and Ohio AND Florida, which were the swing states that could have put Kerry over the top, now support Bush 35-37%.

w-t-f?
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:49 PM on November 28, 2005

oops
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:49 PM on November 28, 2005

ethical and judicious treatment of civilians

I'm sorry but the United States of Awesome is incapable of providing that, much less realize that it is important or required.

It has been said by many others, and I concur and will say it again: We lost at Abu Ghraib. Everything else is just counting how many flag-draped coffins we want to bring back.
posted by beth at 3:57 PM on November 28, 2005

500,000 tons of ordinance sounds like a big number, but comparatively speaking, it isn't. The general (Curtis) in charge of the air strikes on Japan in WW2 was preapared to drop 115,000 tons of napalm per month on the island of Honshu alone, before they mercifully dropped the atomic bombs. You can do the geographical math between Honshu and Iraq. And that's just napalm.
posted by allkindsoftime at 4:39 PM on November 28, 2005

Interestingly, the B-29s would carry about 7 tons of napalm each mission, about the payload of an F/A-18. ~300 planes would fly to the target, and IIRC they would hit a different city each week.

300 planes x 7 tons = 2,000 tons/week. Not sure where you're getting your 115,000 tons/month.

This site says the operational tempo was ~30,000 tons/month with ~4,000 sorties/month. The total dropped on Japan by the B-29s was 170,000 tons according to that site.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 6:05 PM on November 28, 2005

"He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances'"

.
posted by cytherea at 6:08 PM on November 28, 2005

Heywood Mogroot: isn't that maintenance man-hour?

I think you are right. I got confused when the article quoted an even larger number for maintenance man-hours for the F-14D... Turns out the larger number was 60 (instead of 50, so not as inconsistent as I thought).
posted by Chuckles at 9:43 PM on November 28, 2005

Heywood Mogroot:

My info was straight out of Flyboys, a NYT Bestseller. Again, 115,000 was what they were prepared to drop a month, not what they actually did drop.
posted by allkindsoftime at 6:32 AM on November 29, 2005