The lifeline for American forces in Iraq is a 400-plus-mile main supply route that runs from Kuwait through Shia-dominated and Iranian-infiltrated southern Iraq to Baghdad and points north and west.
Along that route, trucks and tankers driven by third-country nationals — Turks, Pakistanis and others — haul 95 percent of the beans and bullets for our troops and 100 percent of the fuel that our tanks and Bradleys and Humvees gulp at staggering rates.
That route runs through the heart of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim south, an area now thoroughly infiltrated by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and under the sway of well-armed Shiite militiamen and Iraqi police who are often indistinguishable from the militiamen and sometimes the same people.
The lightly protected American convoys are vulnerable to ambushes, improvised explosive devices and even an occasional rocket-propelled grenade slamming into a fuel tanker.
In an article for The Christian Science Monitor, Lang asked what we could do if that supply route were cut. Only about 5 percent of the supplies for our troops in Iraq come in by air. With a huge effort, that could be doubled or perhaps even tripled, but an airlift couldn’t provide nearly enough food, ammunition and fuel to keep our troops on the job, even if the Sunni insurgents around Baghdad and Balad didn’t start trying to shoot down the supply flights or drop mortar rounds on the runways.
Would our military have to stop trying to end the sectarian violence in Iraq in order to keep its own supply lines open? How many troops and tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles and helicopters would have to be diverted to such an effort, and would it be worth it?
There’s another strategic vulnerability farther up the chain: Supplies for our forces must first reach the main port in Kuwait by ships — ships that must transit the Strait of Hormuz past a gantlet of Iranian Silkworm anti-ship missiles and suicide torpedo boats.
Little wonder, then, that Iran and its ayatollahs have the nerve to thumb their noses at efforts to curtail their nuclear ambitions and to supply thousands of short- and medium-range missiles to their Hezbollah proteges in Lebanon.
Ooh. Scary.
First of all, Sadr's Shias are a minority of Shias so even if Sadr goes for round three (and why is he still alive to try round three?), it doesn't mean we've lost the Shias of Iraq.
Look, we faced a far worse threat on land back in spring 2004 from both Sadr's goons and the Sunni jihadis and Baathist who rose up against us. And then, we had just-in-time logistics. We faced down that threat and kept the supply lines open while fighting the insurgents. Since then, we've restructured our logistics so that supply interruptions won't halt operations. The enemy cannot cut off our supplies. They just can't.
As for the Gulf? Well, we handled the threat pretty well twenty years ago and Iran's recent chest thumping about wonder weapons at sea has been less than impressive. And in the tanker war of 1987-88, we didn't even strike Iran. If Iran goes after our supply ships, every naval and air asset in Iran will be toast in a fortnight.
Lord knows I worry about Sadr. But if he rises up it isn't because we've provoked him--he's been our enemy since day one. And he doesn't have the allegiance of anywhere near a majority of Shias. If Sadr rises up and violence surges in open civil strife, we work the problem and remember our objective. Giving up never makes a problem better.
We need another Patton to give a whole lot of people a good slapping. Get a grip, people.
