US Army Threatened by Loss in a Morass

This question is not simply metaphor or hyperbole. There is a real danger, as I noted over nine months ago that the US could literally lose its army in Iraq. This would occur were the army's supply lines to be cut and then surrounded by various forces that have a unified strategy to surround the army and kill it. ..

William S. Lind is now reiterating those concerns. For Lind, this potential for a devastating defeat and bloodbath would occur if the Iranians are either attacked by Israel/US or they take the initiative and press their strategic positions.

Lind lays out several scenarios for how such a debacle might occur. Unfortunately, as Lind notes, the thinking among the technocrats and the military is immune to these dangers.

Lind writes:

Perhaps the greatest danger lies in the fact that, just as the French high command refused to consider the possibility of a German attack through the Ardennes in 1940, Washington will not consider the possibility that an attack on Iran could cost us our army in Iraq. We have made one of the most common military mistakes—believing our own propaganda. Over and over, the U.S. military tells the world and itself, “No one can defeat us. No one can even fight us. We are the greatest military the world has ever seen!”

Unfortunately, like most propaganda, it’s bunk. The U.S. Armed Forces are technically well-trained, lavishly resourced Second-Generation militaries. They are today being fought and beaten by Fourth-Generation opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They can also be defeated by Third-Generation opponents who can react faster than America’s process-ridden, PowerPoint-enslaved military headquarters. They can be defeated by superior strategy, by trick, by surprise, and by preemption. Unbeatable militaries are like unsinkable ships: they are unsinkable until something sinks them.

If the U.S. were to lose the army it has in Iraq to Iraqi militias, Iranian regular forces, or a combination of both, cutting our one line of supply and then encircling us, the world would change. It would be our Adrianople, our Rocroi, our Stalingrad. American power and prestige would never recover. Nothing, not even Israel’s demands, should lead us to run this risk, which is inherent in any attack on Iran.

These points bode very ill for the US. If the Democrats continue to show the stoneless grit that they did before they won the last elections, they will have once again shown their craven kowtowing to Washington machinations and Israeli interests.

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