One thing I did that most who argued we had too few to win did was that I did not simply count US forces, relying on General Shinseki's testimony that we'd need several hundred thousand troops for the post-conventional war stabilization mission.
Especially early in the war, I searched for troops to count, including private militias when they fought the Sunnis or protected their own neighborhoods, contract security forces, all Iraqi security-related troops, and even assumed we should include some of the US troops in Kuwait who performed logistics and support functions for the Iraq campaign that otherwise would need to have been done by troops inside Iraq. And I broke down Iraq by threat level and assumed different force levels needed to prevail in those regions. Except for brief periods just after the invasion (before we could recruit Iraqis) and during the initial Sunni Arab and Sadrist uprisings in spring 2004 (when half the new Iraqi security forces melted away), I figured we had enough to win.
So it was with some interest that I read an article in Joint Force Quarterly addressing contractors in counter-insurgency:
The most highly prized attribute of private contractors is that they reduce troop requirements by replacing military personnel. This reduces the military and political resources that must be dedicated to the war. At the height of the surge in April 2008, the Department of Defense (DOD) stated it had 163,900 contractors supporting 160,000 troops in Iraq.6 Without the presence of contractors, the United States would have had to provide literally twice as many troops. The U.S. Armed Forces struggled to maintain 160,000 troops in Iraq; it is doubtful that they could have supported the 320,000 needed if contractors were not employed. While the vast majority of contractor personnel were involved in noncombatant logistics tasks, DOD estimated there were over 20,000 armed contractors in Iraq during 2007. Other organizations have much higher estimates.7 Even using the Pentagon's lower estimate, contractors provided three times more armed troops than the British. It should also be noted that in Iraq and Afghanistan, many unarmed logistic support personnel functioned in what the military would define as a combat role. The drivers were subjected to both improvised explosive devices and direct fire attacks. This combination of drivers willing to run the gauntlet of ambushes and armed contractors replaced at least two full combat divisions. Given the very low support-to-operator ratio that contractors maintain, it is not unreasonable to estimate they actually replaced three divisions.
I don't believe I ever tried to calculate the impact of the non-combat contractors on settling the question of whether we had enough to win. We did win the war, so obviously we had enough to win.
But it is useful to remember that when counting what is enough to win, it isn't enough to count just US troops on the ground in that theater. In the past, where we have drawn our historical examples of counter-insurgency numbers, virtually all the troops involved would have been in uniform and in the theater. That is no longer adequate to determine troop strength levels needed to win. Obviously, how we use the troops is more important so a more accurate way of fixating on the numbers isn't what I'm arguing for. Nor is it logical to assume that we can substitute one contractor for one troops and have a 1:1 effect forever. But this article is another useful reminder for the next time we debate whether we have enough to win a war: count everyone in the fight.
The really funny part of the article is that if you count contractors we hired (from around the world) we actually did have several hundred thousand troops and contractors in Iraq.
I guess this is as good a time as any to plug my compilation of blog posts on the issue of privatized warfare available for Kindle download.
