The Redhunter

If you change one factor in an equation, everything else changes too. The first problem I have with Biden and McCaffrey is that they are engaged in static thinking.

Dynamic vs Static Analysis

Their mistake is in thinking along static lines. They assume that if you change one factor in an equation, nothing else will change. This is such a basic error that I am amazed that it happens so often, and by people who should know better.

For example, if you raise taxes by 10% on an item, it is invalid to automatically assume that the government will get 10% more money. It is true that on some items, such as cigarettes, the increase in revinue will be about 10%, because the demand curve for such items is inelastic. But on other items, such as candy bars, people will simply adjust their spending habits, buy less of the product, and the government may not end up with any appreciable increase in revinue at all.

People who blithely say that we “need(ed) more troops” or that we should have “kept the Iraqi Army together” assume that only positive results would come from such a decision. They seem not to realize that there were potential negative consequences from taking a decision other than what we did.

More specifically, they seem not to realize that if you change one factor in the equation of history, everything else changes too.

So people who say that we "need(ed) more troops" or "should have kept the Iraqi army" may be right, or they may be wrong, but I have yet to hear aargument from any of them yet that takes any of this into account.

Now that we've laid the groundwork, let's go though each one in more detail.

"We Need(ed) More Troops"

As Rich Lowry of National Review pointed out last year in "What Went Wrong" (subscription required), there were significant disadvantages to having put more troops in the field of battle:

If more troops would have enhanced security in the aftermath of thw war (a debateable proposition, as we shall see), the lighter and more mobile force had significant advantages in the prosecution of it. "The decision was made to collapse the regime as quickly and violently as possible," says a senior administration official. the most kimportant advantage of this approach, he sways, was simple: "A quick collapse saves American lives and Iraqi lives."

It served other objectives as well. It made it possible to take the oilfields - crucial to Iraq's rebuilding - mostly intact before Saddam had time to destroy them. And there was the political consideration. It was thought important to avoid a drawn-out war, and the destabilizing effect it might have on the region. "You don't want an American army slogging it's way to an Arab capital," is how one official puts it.

I can hear it now from the lefties: "But we have lost a lot of American and Iraqi lives!" To which the only logical response is; "not by historical standards, and remember, the situation could be much worse. Remember the "battle of Baghdad" we were assured would happen?"

The problem I have with the "more troops" crowd is not that they're necessarily wrong, but that they don't even think it necessary to consider that the presence of more troops might have made the situation worse.

For example, we are told that with more troops we could have "stopped the looting." Really? How exactly? It is not clear that the mere presence of our soldiers would have stopped anything. By shooting the looters? Oh that would go over well in the rest of the world. By "detaining" them? And put them where, and for how long? What about trials, which our "human rights" groups would not be long in demanding? They never say.

And how would we get all of these troops into Kuwait? They forget that during the Gulf War we had access to huge Saudi ports. In this war we only had access to smaller, less numerous ports in Kuwait. It is not clear that we could have even gotten a significantly larger force into Kuwait and kept it supplied. More troops would also have presented Saddam with an even more inviting pre-invasion target.

In addition, we need to recall that our military was significantly smaller in 2003 than it was in 1991, by a factor of about 40% overall. True it was much more capable on a unit-by-unit basis, but a ship or soldier can still only be in one place at a time. Bottom line; we would have had to drain troops from other theaters.

This would have presented the world's troublemakers with a perhaps rresistible opportunity.

Suppose Kim Il Sung had taken the opportunity to invade the south, or China decided to make trouble over Taiwan. What would the critics be saying them? That it was "obvious" that by depleting troops from other theaters we were inviting trouble.

We should not have disbanded the Iraqi Army

The first thing to say is that we did not disband the Iraqi army; it disbanded itself. It literally disintegrated in the closing days of major combat operations. We would have had to recall it. People who advocated this need to think carefully about the consequences.

Once again, those who say we should have kept or recalled the Iraqi army only see the potiential positives. They fail to even consider that doing this may have made the situation worse.

Armies in many third-world countries are used as much to oppress the population as they are to defend the borders, sometimes more so. In the case of Iraq Saddam had long used some units to carry out his murderous atrocities. Many Iraqis didn't have much respect for much of the army, and saw it as an oppressive institution. To have kept it in place might have made the population even more angry at us. Remember, things can always be worse.

Further, Iraqi units were organized along sectarian lines. Shi'is, tired of Sunni oppression, might have taken this opportunity to seek revenge. Shi'ite units might well have moved into Sunni neighborhoods and wrecked havoc. Same with the Kurds. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine Iraqi units fighting each other. And who is to say that they would not have turned on us is an opportunity presented itself?

Imagine the consequences of any perceived atrocity; "human-rights" groups would immediately protest that it was all the fault of the United States, that because we invaded and kept the Iraqi units together, we were responsible for their actions. The western media would have a field day.

Back to Analysis

Again, what bothers me so much about the sort of 20/20 hindsight analysis that we hear so often is not that it is wrong, but that it is not even stated correctly. The critics do not even think it necessary to consider that had we done things their way, things might be worse. They only see the positives. As Lowry makes clear in his article, the idea that there was "no plan for after the invasion" is utter nonsense.

Prior to the invasion, our government spent a lot of time planning, it's just that many of the things they planned for; mass starvation, a major refugee crisis, destruction of the oil wells, use of WMD, civil war, SCUD missile attacks on Israel, didn't happen.

And, of course, these are many of the things the critics assured us would happen.