Too Worried?”

Is Ralph Peters too worried that we will let the war drag out too long? I hope so. I agree that we need to go in big and as fast as possible. He thinks the leaked plans indicate we won’t. I think we will go in hard and fast. I think that Tommy Franks won this debate and that we only want the Iraqis to think we are going in slow and building up. I don’t think we will go for a two-stage attack that goes in on the Afghan model hoping for insurrection but then ships in the big guns just in case. I think we will have our 5-6 divisions (including the British) striking from day one. But we just won’t say so in order to inflate the impact of the invasion. Yes, Rumsfeld does seem to have an unfortunate fighter pilot view of the Army and does seem to want to reduce it. That is a different debate. (And one I hope he loses) But he has the Army now and I think he’ll use it to win this war. This doesn’t mean he won’t try to reduce it (dangerously) in the future, but he won’t ignore it now.

Maybe I’m projecting too much about what I would do, but the fact that the Army seems content with the plan leads me to trust that we will pound them, and not just poke them. To repeat, XVIII Airborne Corps with two heavy divisions and 101st Airborne attack from the west, with Baghdad the ultimate objective. One heavy division at least attacks from Jordan. (Could that road up from Saudi Arabia to the main Jordan-Iraq highway be used for one prong that unites west of Baghdad?) We fly the 101st into western Iraq from wherever we stage it—Egypt? Kuwait? Qatar? The British and Marines attack the Basra region from Kuwait. V Corps in Kuwait spoofs the main effort with maybe an armored cavalry regiment, screening western flank of the Marine-British thrust (and publicly staging the 101st into Kuwait before airlifting it into western Iraq would make V Corps look like the main effort too). And the British and 10th Mountain advance out of Turkey, hopefully with a Turkish corps in support. This isn’t based on too much, just scattered circumstantial evidence and a hunch, but I’m sticking with this scenario. War begins after Christmas. It will be big. It will be fast. And we will win.