Turtles In Iraq – Moon of Alabama

January 12, 2006

Turtles In Iraq

Army officials said Wednesday that they had decided to send additional body armor to Iraq to protect soldiers from insurgents’ attacks.

The ceramic plates now worn by most members of the military shield just some of the upper body from bullets and shrapnel, and the Army said it would buy plates that would extend this protection to the sides of soldiers.
Army Sending Added Armor to Iraq Units

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[T]he empirical evidence supports the following
broad conclusions about the U.S. Army in theatre over his period:

…

U.S. Army personnel instinctively turned to technology to solve problems. Similarly,their instinct was to seek means, including technology,
to minimise frequent close personal contact with the local in order to enhance force protection, but this served further to alienate the troops from the population.
Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, British Army (PDF)

Posted by b on January 12, 2006 at 19:19 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Since at least the Civil War, the US armed forces have gotten by on the belief that technology and training are more important than numbers, and that keeping their soldiers alive was the highest priority. For example, in the war in the pacific in WWII, the more heavily armored, easily evacuated US planes kept more pilots alive than the faster, flimsier Zeroes. By the end of the war, the Japanese had virtually no pilots of any experience left alive.
This is a good idea in conventional warfare. However, it’s a really bad idea in counter-insurgency, where as your latter quote suggests, it does nothing to make the soldiers personable to the populace, and insurgents’ kills become more relatively effective.

Posted by: Rowan | Jan 12 2006 21:13 utc | 1

Troops build wall of sand to keep insurgents in their homes
SINIYAH, Iraq — Villagers watched from rooftops as U.S. military bulldozers heaved a wall of sand into snaking lines around their homes Saturday in an attempt to trap insurgents believed to be hiding among them. (…)
Similar “walls” built around Fallujah and Samarra in recent months have quelled restive insurgent cells. Army commanders in Samarra said the number of attacks dropped drastically after an 11-mile barrier was built around the city.
Marine Corps Times
Hispanic groups plan to protest wall proposal
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Leaders from nine Hispanic organizations joined hands at a local taqueria and announced plans to protest a proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. (…) The cost of building the 700-mile long wall is an estimated $2.1 billion ….
Star Telegram
In many places, walls, barriers, checkpoints; fences, grilles – even in the middle of cities – are going up. Gated communities are growing.
In other places, the appropriation of territory is more subtle. Quarters, districts, locking in, lost bus lines, endless security, etc.
The old order is collapsing, because it has now become obvious that:
1) Pragmatically, to hold energy ressources it is necessary to control the territory that produces it, as well as all the material links from producer to consumer – a pipeline can always be bombed – and that ‘soft’ control (hearts and flowers, constitutions, diplomacy, bullying and negotations..) is not sufficient
2) More weirdly, in the Western world, and that is what counts, as they are the dominators, classical space-time relations have been altered. On the one hand, the world has shrunk, and shrunk massively. (E.g. moves to cities, population clumps, time for travel, technology which provides; this is not just a ‘the world is your oyster’ poster from your local TA, or ‘globalisation is goodforyou’ from your dopey pol, but a profound change in both reality and conceptions).
On the other, it has grown wider, larger, more dangerous, a landscape unexplored, not understood (melting ice caps, failed states, etc.) – menacing.
While protecting the body is a prime preoccupation of agressors who are thus vulnerable to attack (e.g. soldiers) how to handle the space dimension (territory, basically) has become so confused that no-one can even see how anybody can prevail.. Rummy has his ideas which never included over-arming or protecting the body of the agressor. He was – is – probably right (from a cynical pov.)

Posted by: Noisette | Jan 13 2006 16:10 utc | 2

NYT OpEd: All Dressed Up With No Way to Fight

But in Iraq, as well, the “soldier’s load” is often unbearable. Most studies recommend that a soldier should not be burdened with more than one-third of his body weight. But if you take a 160-pound soldier and put 40 pounds of Kevlar and body armor on him and then he picks up an automatic weapon, ammunition, water and first aid equipment, it’s not long before he is carrying half his body weight – and he is then expected to run, jump and fight insurgents, themselves carrying little more than a 10-pound AK-47. All of this, of course, often takes place in 120-degree heat in the cities of Iraq.
Lost among the politicians’ cries for more extensive armor for the troops is the fact that most soldiers, in my experience and based on discussions with many, feel they have enough armor already – and many feel they are increasingly being burdened with too much equipment. And the new supplementary body armor unveiled this week in Washington doubles the weight of the equipment – worn over the torso and, now, the upper arms – to 32 pounds from 16 pounds (for a medium-sized soldier).
…
The problem with this noble sentiment is that the American public and its elected representatives don’t always understand what military officers and soldiers do: that the safety of individual soldiers must always be balanced against the ability to accomplish the unit mission.
I worry that this timeless lesson is now being forgotten in the interest of minimizing American casualties. “Protecting soldiers,” as an Army spokesman told me the other day, “is our No. 1 priority.”
Excuse me, but shouldn’t winning the war be our No. 1 priority?

This is one reason why the US forces have not a chance to win. Force protection is No.1 – A turtle racing rabbits …

Posted by: b | Jan 14 2006 7:35 utc | 3

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