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Tue. Nov 25, 2003

24th Post-Combat Division, US Army

24th Post-Combat Division, US Army – From the Washington Post: ”The Pentagon has begun to look seriously at creating military forces that would be dedicated to peacekeeping and reconstruction after future conflicts, defense officials said. The idea is to forge deployable brigades or whole divisions out of units of engineers, military police, civil affairs officers and other specialists critical to postwar operations.”

This is a concept obviously brought to the forefront by our experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite the fact our force structure has come up short in some obvious areas, one can expect resistance to this concept within the silver shouldered brigades based in DC. However, even ”Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has taken an interest in the notion. In a brief memo to subordinates in August, Rumsfeld raised the question of whether the Pentagon should ’try to fashion a … post-combat capability of some sort,’ according to a recipient of the memo.”

One wishes the Secretary had been more concerned about having a ”post-combat capability of some sort” prior to invading Iraq, i.e., as part of the plan, but better late than never, I guess (unless you live in Iraq). But the article notes, ”Even so, the idea is likely to face stiff resistance in the Army, where many still hold to a mind-set characterized by one civilian Pentagon official as ’We just do combat, and stability ops is a sideline.’”

You know what? That’s a self fulfilling policy. If you don’t do ”stability ops” with the same intensity, resources, and capabilities with which you do your primary mission, then you get to ”do combat” ... again. More dead soldiers. ”Long hard slog,” 500 pound bombs, ”Blackhawk Down,” and all that rot. And in my opinion, you absolutely betray the hard work and sacrifices of the men and women who busted their collective ass executing Phases One, Two, and Three of the invasion plan in an exemplary manner, only to find that when they turn to the next chapter, Phase Four, they were greeted by a blank page.

You might as well have tossed their efforts in the Euphrates.

I think in the past we may have had an edge to make up the post-war difference in sheer numbers. But the days of a war ending with 400,000 or 500,000 US troops in place are over. Because of technology, and by Pentagon policy.

”No longer do U.S. war plans envision slow buildups and prolonged fighting. Instead, as the invasion of Iraq demonstrated, the Pentagon is counting on rapid preparation and swift victory, with fewer combat troops needed as a result of advances in technology and improved coordination among the military services. The slimmed-down combat contingent means fewer troops available to deal with the aftermath.”

Double Duh! But perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect a huge bureaucracy like the Pentagon to spin on a dime, and not only ”transform” the way it fights wars, but also foresee the new problems in the aftermath. After all, 2.5 years ago, who could have imagined that the US would topple two governments by force, yet deploy a total of less than 200,000 troops to do it?

Perhaps we should simply be thankful the Pentagon now sees the need to enlarge the Army to accommodate this new reality. ”That 122-page study argued that the proposed two new divisions could be created without adding to the total size of the Army or siphoning troops from the Army’s existing 10 active-duty combat divisions.”

Oh. Now I see the study simply urges us to squeeze even more out of our already overstretched existing force structure.

Nevermind.