The Coalition of the Swilling

See, THIS is the kind of cautionary voice I don't mind hearing. Who cares what hay is made by political opportunists? This is a guy we obviously need to listen to in order to improve our war readiness. And if the Administration didn't want this to turn into DNC talking points, they should have listened to him in 2002 when he was kicking their simulated tails all over the Gulf.

A friend of mine got thrown into jail for this riddle, in Romania:

Q: What do you get when you cross a penis and a potato?
A: A dick-tater!

Yeah, I've seen that use of stupid tactics and plans that somehow win the war anyhow myself. I recall one tabletop exercise where the brigade commander sent a tank battalion across a river without any bridging because the scenario was in the winter, and "...the river is frozen." FYI, I checked -- that particularly never froze to the thickness needed to support trucks, let alone tanks. When I pointed this out to the other S3 officers, I received a large number of dirty looks.

There seems to be a regulation somewhere that all exercises must result in victory. I've never understood that. You can learn much from failures, if you can accept them.

Well, except that it seems either we did learn from this...or Saddam didn't, as the invasion was won very quickly.

The aftermath, is of course another story.

I'm with Bingley.

I think that episode was blown out of proportion. Of course they're going to "refloat ships" and resurrect troops. There's a lot of effort and people brought together for the exercise and it does no one any good to simply stop exercising just because the scenario ended quickly.

So to get the most out of the exercise you set it back to a point you've trained for and continue.

To understand and prepare for the new paradigm that resulted in such an unexpected win for the red forces takes time. There's no time during the exercise for that kind of circumspection, it's best to do that later.

I'm not sure why you bring up Van Riper's name. What did he do recently?

The invasion was indeed a victory, Mr. Bingley, but I don't know that this exercise contributed to it. That's the devil's advocate in me; I have been through exercises where victory was won by slight of hand. So it could go either way. But I tend to be cynical about them, so, grain of salt, etc.

For myself, I think that the victory was at least as much due to the troops, equipment, and leadership (say, brigade and lower) of Coalition forces than this exercise. That's ignoring the state of the then-Iraqi Army and their leadership, of course.

I note that despite the adverse war games that Saddam didn't sink any of our ships.

Nor did he delay our attacking forces significantly. In fact they coverered 160 miles in one day. The longest recorded one day tank advance in armored warfare.

Post war has been more difficult. However, post war is a political problem. Given how Rs and Ds fight it out here it is amazing that the Iraqis have been able to come to any kind of agreement.

So the war games as a purelely military exercise were a dud. However, the general does not make that criticism. More is the pity.

>I'm not sure why you bring up Van Riper's name. What did he do recently?

He wanted to Rip van Riper! Get it? Rip . . . oh, never mind.

Gosh, JeffS, I'm sure they learned something...I hope.

But I also think that, while Van Riper's tactics were brilliant given what he had, we also need to remember that this was 2002, when we all thought that Saddam had more than he did, which means that the game designers gave Van Riper more to play with than Saddam had (the Silkworms, the civilian navy flotillas, etc) so, in effect, his side of the game was as much a fantasy as the Coalition's side. So I think to some extent this exercise at least hopefully alerted the brass to perils which luckily turned out not to exist in this case and to the dangers of really unconventional warfare.

Okay, but why did Van Riper's name come up?

I believe because he's joined the chorus of Rummy Must Go, too.

I think.

That was my impression as well, Mr. Bingley.

Here's an interview with him from 2004 or so where he's not to thrilled with Rummy. Which is fine, of course, but for backround on this discussion.

Okay, Van Riper is not a stupid man, but he clearly thinks highly of himself and his opinions.

Here's a quote that he made in the interview cited above:

"If Mr. Wolfowitz truly believed that the difficulty was not pursuing Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War automatically, just a full-on military operation, he clearly doesn't understand the relationship between policy, strategy and military operations. You don't simply on a whim say, "Let's continue this military operation and do something different than we started out at the beginning." That's how you get this mission creep. Now you've got yourself in great difficulty, and we've seen that happen a number of times in smaller operations."

I don't get how he can say this with a straight face. It is not "mission creep" to pursue the enemy when he is routed. That IS the mission.

When you read military history, there are so many incidences of armies being allowed to escape after being routed. Often this is excusable because the vanquishing side is overcome and stretched thin, or is unaware of the state of their fleeing enemy.

We had no excuse. We were powerful, victorious, and still in a position to move and dominate. This failure to pursue is a fundamental, amateurish error.

Van Riper goes on and on claiming that those disagreeing with him are uneducated, yet with his education he chooses to misinterpret such fundamental principles.

I've lost a lot of respect for the man.

Mike, I don't think he said what you think he said. In the case of pursuing the enemy after he is routed you do that if the mission is to do that. In the first Gulf War it was not the mission, liberating Kuwait was the mission. Personally I felt that we should have regrouped a bit and then gone after the regime then but Bush #1 didn't do that. I don't think Van Riper thinks that just because you disagree with him that you are uneducated he disagrees with some policy he feels made by some who were uneducated, there's a difference.

Perhaps you're right about the "educated" versus "uneducated" issue, but I strongly disagree with the pursuit concept being used by Riper.

Our mission was to take Kuwait back and we did, and it was not our mission to conduct a change of regime. Agreed. But part of taking Kuwait away from the Iraqis has the implied mission of destroying their offensive capability to take it again. That includes destroying their offensive capability. That means destroying their fleeing army.

I'm not saying follow them to the ends of the earth and kill every last one of them, though that wouldn't have been bad. I'm saying his most powerful and intact units should have been decimated and rendered inert. This is military tactics 101. You learn it at TBS in everything you do. You don't attack an objective and stop, you attack through the objective and pursue the enemy, if you can do so, to prevent them from being able to counter attack. It's basic.

If you remember Mike we were poised to do just that till the so called "highway of death" came into view. Van Riper notes that there was a lot of destruction but not a lot of death. I agree as I was there a day or two after and there were a lot wrecked vehicles (all packed with stolen goods)but not a lot of bodies. I think Van Riper would agree that we should have blasted the rest of the Republican Guard but I don't know about going to Bagdad without a plan for occupation, that is what he was talking about in regards to Wolfowitz. Bing what Van Riper did in the war game was use insurgent type tactics against our war plan, remember Saddam did not think we would attack. In the war game the bad guys jump us before we were ready hence the "do over". Think what would have happened in the 1st Gulf War if Saddam had pressed the attack in aug or sept?

Agreed, going to Baghdad would have been changing the mission, and I can understand not doing that. But leaving their army largely intact is a different breed of dog.