Dissecting the U.S. deployment of 133,000 troops on the ground in Iraq, Edward Luttwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently calculated that only 28,000 are actually in the field at any given time.
To put that number in perspective, Luttwak points out that the New York City Police force has 37,000 police officers - yet U.S. coalition forces are being asked to keep control over a nation of 28 million, including the urban hotspots of Baghdad with its 6 million inhabitants, Mosul with 1.7 million, Kirkuk with 800,000 and Fallujah, a Sunni stronghold with a population of 250,000.
That's just 28,000 soldiers to interdict insurgents and jihadists coming over the borders with Syria and Iran, to patrol all the cities, protect all the oil fields, pipelines, banks and utility infrastructure... and to provide cover for the U.S. military bases, airfields and convoys.
It gets worse: the latest plan proposed by the administration cuts U.S. forces to just 104,000 troops, with an increasing share being National Guard and Army Reservists who, rather than playing their usual supporting role, are this time headed for the front line - because when it comes to Iraq, it's pretty much all front line.
To give you some sense of the danger, small arms are so abundant that $10 will buy you, retail from a street vendor, an AK-47 machine gun and all the ammunition you can carry.
Which brings us to the question addressed in this special WWNK feature, can the U.S. win in Iraq?
No comments:
Post a Comment