In the 20th century, the US had a myopic reactive strategy in the first 50 years that lost 500,000 killed. In the second 50 years it switched to an active control strategy that reduced the deaths to 100,000 killed despite nuclear weapons and more advanced conventional technology of death. In rate terms, the first 50 years was 10,000 killed per year, and the second 50 years was 2,000 killed per year.
We currently lose under 1000 killed per year in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is half the rate in the second half of the 20th century. This doesn’t mean we should stay in Iraq, but it means the cost is reasonable if we get a benefit.
If you are going to fight wars in the Middle East, you want to start from Iraq. Its the central land location. It lets us attack Iran, our most likely enemy combatant in a war in the next 5 years. So if we are going to stay in the Middle East, we should stay in Iraq.
So if we are not going to retreat from the Middle East as a whole, we need to stay in Iraq. Invading Iraq in the first place made sense if you wanted the capability to fight Iran or to fight ground wars in the Middle East.
A Nimitz class carrier carries 5700 people or more. One Iranian deployed Russian made Sunburn anti-ship missile could potentially cost almost 6000 lives. This makes a sea invasion of Iran substantially more risky than a ground invasion from Iraq.
In Afghanistan, we depend on supply through others. This makes it less suitable for invading Iran than Iraq. If we had invaded Iran, we would have secure supply under our control to Iraq. That would give us leverage over Pakistan which knows we don’t have reliable supply to our troops in Afghanistan and thus makes those troops hostages to Pakistan. That lets Pakistan support insurgents, which costs us higher losses per month.
Combat phase losses in Iraq were under 200 for US and UK combined. A ground invasion from Iraq into Iran will cost us far fewer deaths than coming by sea and having our ships destroyed by anti-ship missiles with troops on board.
So our best strategy is to hold Iraq. That costs us 70+ deaths per month. Invading Iran may lessen that number killed, and also will lessen killed in Afghanistan as Pakistan loses its hostages in Afghanistan, our troops.
Strategically the way forward for the US in the Middle East is to hold Iraq and then invade Iran if they don’t agree to a deal on our terms. That would be one that showed a drop in our troop losses in Iraq and a complete abandonment by them of their nuclear program and showing us their secret sites and giving us the ability to roam freely to check for secret sites.
==When they attack we lose more than we attack 1st
At the Marine Barracks in Lebanon we lost 241 killed. On 9-11 we lost about 3000 killed. When we invaded Iraq we had ground phase combat deaths of under 200. That includes the UK losses.
So when we let them pick the time and place of their attac, we lose more. If we had in Pearl Harbor we get another example.
When we pick the time and place of the attack, and defat them totally as in Iraq, we can do it during the combat phase with low losses.
Now we are faced with Iran. We can let them feed the insurgency and we lose 70 or 80 or more killed per month. That comes to 840 or more per year. We can do a missile strike, and let them retaliate. We can do a ground invasion.
It seems the low cost choice is a ground invasion. We should pull our ships out of the Gulf and go in on the ground and clear out their anti-ship missiles. If we do a bombing raid, we will have to face the risk of their retaliation at a time and place of their choosing. That may include on civilian targets in the US by organizations with no known return address and with state support to use advanced weapons on US civilian targets like aircraft, nuclear plants, etc.
The targets they pick may be different than al Qaeda. They may pick trains with chemicals that pass through DC near the Capitol and might release enough toxic gas to kill many more than we would lose invading Iran and finishing them off.
==
“Need more precise language than mess, winning, etc”
Currently 70 Americans or so are killed per month. Some numbers of Iraqis.
So many Iraqis can go to work each day. So many women don’t leave the house for fear.
We need to have a set of such metrics, and do surveys or other means, even internet ones with data analysis to recalibrate them, to get a set of metrics (state data) on the situation in Iraq.
Then we need to determine whether we can change those variables on a short run, intermediate or long run basis. These are really probability estimates, i.e. probabilities on a set of scenarios of the set of state data.
Then we need to estimate the ability of us to change them and then the cost of that. This is also probabilistic.
Then we compare that to alternative uses.
As Newt Gingrich pointed out in an earlier Front Page article, if Iraq was a problem of Iraq only, we would leave. Its only because its part of a wider regional conflict that we might decide to stay, and might then supply a certain level of activities.
Between complete withdrawal and say the current surge, we might find there are lower costs activities, in lives, dollars, troop commitments, etc. that we prefer out of this analysis.
70 lives lost per month is 840 per year. We may decide that this is acceptable in a larger war or mission. In 100 years, losing 840 per year comes to 84,000 lost.
==
“Myopic Strategy has jumps and higher losses”
In the 20th century our military casualties in war were about 600,000. That comes to 6,000 per year.
A mission of losing 840 per year is thus not unreasonable.
We used force in the 20th century to control powerful forces that we feared might come here. We could have chosen to instead not intervened and seen what happened. In the case of WWI that might have been better, or it might not have been.
We should think of a century control strategy and expenditure. In the 19th century, we also lost 600,000 people in the Civil War. Other countries lost more in the 20th century.
We should combine the losses of Britain and the US in the 20th century and use that as our reference. That takes it will over 1 million. Note Britain had a low population in WWI compared to the US today.
At 1 million deaths per century, we get 10,000 per year. Thus at 840 per year we are below the US UK rate for the 20th century.
We have, however, a higher population. Thus there is no need to panic in Iraq.
Need more precise language than mess, winning, etc – Old Atlantic 1/31/2007 8:20:32 AM
http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/index.asp?ID=26704&InvWord=0
==
Myopic Strategy has jumps and higher losses – Old Atlantic 1/31/2007 8:30:56 AM
In the 20th century we used a myopic strategy for the first 45 years or so. We would react to large events, WWI and WWII and get huge spikes in deaths. The UK had even bigger spikes as did others.
After WWII we transitioned into a managed strategy. This involved two wars of 50,000 deaths each.
The first 50 years of the 20th century we lost 500,000 killed. The last 50 years we lost 100,000 killed. We also averted a nuclear war.
By switching to active control as opposed to a passive reactive policy, we lowered our deaths from 500,000 for the first 50 years to 100,000 for the second 50 years.
The latter comes to a rate of 200,000 per century or 2,000 per year. We are now losing under 1,000 per year in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Again, the combined US and UK deaths or even France added may be more appropriate as benchmarks.
The myopic reactive strategy the Senate Democrats want was proven in WWII to result in higher deaths. The actiev control methodology, which was bipartisan at the start, as Gingrich points out, then deteriorated into a 70/30 type commitment. Republicans are 70 percent of it, Democrats 30 percent.
Democrats have used their periods of power to undermine the strategy, e.g. Vietnam withdrawal. That also weakened us to respond to Khomeini in Iran.
We need to recognize that an active control strategy has been shown by history to result in lower deaths and to avoid huge spikes that make up a large part of deaths in 20th century wars.
The current Bush strategy is better than withdrawal from Iraq. We need to increase the size of our military and strengthen our country by stopping immigration and know-how transfer. Our current effort, like Vietnam, is a superior strategy to the Democrat proposal which is myopic and reactive.
==Comments were in response to:
The Real War
By Newt Gingrich
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 31, 2007
Newt Gingrich gave the following testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 23, 2007. — The Editors.
Comments at Front Page Magazine
== Criticisms and Responses
1. Iraq didn’t attack us on 9-11, it was a war of choice. Now its a failure. Neocons, PNAC, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Richard Perle, etc. are responsible for this.
Answer
Iraq lets us invade Iran by land instead of by sea. Iran has Russian supplied anti-ship missiles. We could lose 5700 dead from one Nimitz class carrier going down. Iraq gives us position to strike at Iran or Syria.
2. You don’t have the moral right to invade Iraq.
Answer: Iraq had committed numerous acts of war against the US including violations of agreements in the first Iraq war.
3. Iraq was better as it was.
Answer: Saddam was an ongoing threat. The UN wanted to end sanctions and then he would have gotten nukes.
4. You don’t have the right to invade Iran.
Answer: Iran attacked the US in 1979 and has never made peace. Iran has threatened Israel.
5. This is all about Israel.
Answer: The US was attacked by al Qaeda on 9-11. Al Qaeda has had the support of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for years. Islam attacked the West in 633 AD. In the 20th century Turkey genocided Christians under the Young Turks who were supposed to be secular.
6. But we don’t have the right –
Answer to protect ourselves from an onslaught that has been taking place since 633 AD in every century. In no century have the Muslim nations not attacked the West or cleansed Christians. We do have the right to act at a time of our choosing, after they have attacked us many times. Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have over decades supported terrorism aimed at us. This is their national and religious policy. We do have a right to respond to it in a way to reduce our deaths.
7. This is colonialism.
Answer: Answer colonialism was a policy of peace. It created peace in lands that had never known them. European colonialism is what ended the Islamic slave economy of Africa. Until European ground troops arrived, slavery didn’t end in Africa. Africa took over 1 million Europeans slave from before the discovery of America until North Africa was occupied by European ground troops in the 19th century.
8. Zbigniew Brzezinski, this is a colonialist policy in a non-colonialist age.
Answer: They attacked us in the United States in the non-colonial era. They attacked in Madrid, London and every day in Paris, Malmo Sweden, Germany, Norway and Denmark, etc. So the non-colonialist age means free strike on the advanced world. The World Bank, IMF, Gates Buffet have funded an increase in 3rd world population that is unsustainable and has resulted in a condition where it results in violence. The cost of the war in Iraq is imposed on us by the universities, by Buffet Gates, etc. by their irresponsible war on equilibrium in the less developed world. They have attacked every means by which these lands deal with choices and consequences, so as to produce an unsustainable population bubble that has no soft landing.
9. But we hate America and Europe and want to see them suffer and be destroyed.
Answer: This is the attitude of the universities, lobbyists, business schools, etc. However, the American people don’t have to help it.
January 31, 2007 at 9:34 am
That is why we should elect NEWT ans DICTATOR. Put an end to all of this whimpy sucking up to the evil islamo-fascist empire of doom.
http://afterechoes.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/newt-gingrich-for-dictator-2008/