A Large Rabble is No Army

I didn't think that Ethiopia had committed many troops to the Somalia operation, and wrote I'd be shocked if there were more than three brigades involved (which could mean 6,000 to 15,000 troops). As I've noted, massed thugs are not an army--they are just a target-rich environment for an actual army.

According to Strategypage, we're talking no more than a large brigade:

Ethiopia apparently sent in only about 5,000 troops. As is often the case in peacekeeping missions, these trained soldiers quickly dispersed the untrained militias of the Islamic Courts. Dispersed, but not destroyed. Now comes the hard
part.

Or it could have been two small brigades. Even when the talk was of up to 15,000 Ethiopians involved, it seemed odd to me that if so many troops were involved that the drive south from Mogadishu appeared to be led by a company-sized unit of Ethiopians (one news article mentioned ten tanks and vehicles in the column).

So let there be no more talk of how the Ethiopians used overwhelming force while we have used too little in Iraq.

And as I've written before in regard to Iraq, the government's force just have to be better than the enemy--not equivalent to our troops. Who wants to assert that the Ethiopian army units in Somalia match the quality of our troops? But they are good enough to scatter rabble.