The New Generation of War

Defense expert Chet Richards on Lebanon, Iraq, and the future of the American military

Jesse Walker | July 20, 2006

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However, if what we're really seeing is a communal civil war, things are really different. Because now each of the sides tries to figure out how they can use us to their advantage. You can see that now where some of the Sunni leaders are reported to have said, "Please don't leave, United States, because we'll get massacred by the Shi'ites." Originally the Shi'ites in the south were our friends. Now perhaps things are shifting. It's like we've gotten in the middle of this five- or six-way family dispute. Even the Shi'a are split among several different factions. We're one more player in a game we really don't understand.

Reason: If Dick Cheney called you up tomorrow and asked for your advice on how to proceed there, what would you tell him?

CR: I'd say, "Dickie, you've got two choices: Get in or get out." And by "get in," I mean open your Roman history. You can see how it has to be done. We're talking 27 million people in Iraq, so figure a couple percent, 500,000 to a million people, and lock the place down. Get it back under control, and then you can think about withdrawing.

If you're not going to do that, then just get out. What we have now is the worst of all possible worlds. We've got enough force in there to be an irritant and a target, but not nearly enough to influence the situation.

If you go in, you have to go in with enough force and enough people. You have to go house to house to take the weapons away. If you don't bring that much force in, you're better to get out.

Reason: Does the U.S. have that much force?

CR: We spend half a trillion dollars a year on defense, equal to the rest of the world put together. We choose to spend it on Cold War weapon systems. But if we wanted to spend it on a force that big, it would not be difficult to do. Look at it this way: We're spending more than we were at the height of the Vietnam War, when we had 500,000 troops in Vietnam, plus our commitments in NATO and the rest of the world. So if we wanted to do it, we certainly could. The question is, Why would we want to do it? Because we get tired of watching the war on CNN?

But if you're not going to do that, you might as well get out. If we tell them, "Hey, we're out of here by the end of the year, you guys figure it out," then we at least give them some incentive to come up with arrangements that they can live with.

It may not look anything like Iraq today. As you know, that's a pretty artificial creation. They're going to have some horse-trading, and there might be some little statelets; you might see the Sunni section becoming part of Jordan or Syria or something along those lines. I don't know what it will look like. But I can't imagine that beginning to coalesce as long as we're still in there stirring things up.

Reason: Suppose Cheney were to ask you about Afghanistan. How would your advice be different?

CR: The classic solution to Afghanistan is just get out. I think in this case that's probably not a bad one.

Reason: The U.S. went into Afghanistan because it was a failed state that allowed Al Qaeda to put bases there. How do you keep them from filling the void that reappears?

CR: I think they're already doing it. If we could go in and somehow change them, I'd say great. But people have been trying to do that for a long, long time. Alexander broke his pick in Afghanistan. He won several battles, but at such enormous cost that he had to withdraw.

We can probably do raids that ensure the Al Qaeda training camps don't become particularly effective. I don't think Clinton's drive-by shootings were the way to go. But if we had to we could put about a thousand special forces into an area and operate for a couple of weeks, disrupt the hell out of it, and then just leave. In the meantime they'll grow poppies and they'll fight among themselves. Let them play that game of polo with each other's heads and have a great time back in the thirteenth century.

Besides, most of the people who went through the Al Qaeda training camps, including that young American, were sent up north to fight the Northern Alliance. And of course the Northern Alliance is gone now.