#ground troops

Mark Peterson for The New York Times

The Old Man Dreaming Up Wars for Young Men to Fight

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

I was a child during the Vietnam War, and it was impossible to miss antiwar protests. I remember a common sentiment best expressed by Senator George McGovern: “I’m tired of old men dreaming up wars for young men to fight.”

And here we go again.

President Trump has reached a fork in his Iran war. One path would be diplomatic, and Trump has tried to reassure financial markets that we’re headed that way. Iran is “‘begging’ us to make a deal,” he claimed.

The problem is that Iran is not in fact begging for a deal. On the contrary, it has found fabulous leverage by closing the Strait of Hormuz to most traffic other than its own. Iranians must be thinking that they largely gave up their nuclear program in the accord with President Barack Obama, and they got a measly $400 million for that (later, there was more). This month, all Iran had to do was block the Strait of Hormuz for a few weeks, and the Trump administration lifted some oil sanctions that could amount to upward of $14 billion. No wonder Iran seems to feel it has the upper hand.

So while Trump may want an offramp, his conundrum is that any deal reached now would be substantially worse than Iran’s reported offer last month (a three-year pause in all uranium enrichment and strict limits thereafter).

I’m in favor of the diplomatic path, but let’s be honest: Any deal would be a pretty bad one and would strengthen a brutal regime that oppresses its people and menaces the region.

Because the diplomatic option is so unappealing, Trump seems poised to seize an even worse one: dispatching ground troops to invade Iran. He is sending thousands of Marines and paratroopers to the region, and The Wall Street Journal reports that the Pentagon is considering whether to send another 10,000 ground troops.

“This is a dangerous point,” Vali Nasr, a veteran Iran watcher at Johns Hopkins University, told me. “Maybe Trump has no choice but to go down this path, because to go to the table right now would really admit defeat. But this is the quandary of his own making.”

The most discussed target for seizure is Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil export base. Yes, the Marines probably could conquer Kharg, even though the Iranians have reportedly laid traps and improved defenses. As Senator Lindsey Graham, the Trump whisperer, said, “We did Iwo Jima; we can do this.” What Graham didn’t mention was that 26,000 Americans were killed or wounded capturing the Japanese island of Iwo Jima near the end of World War II.

The challenge isn’t just seizing Kharg; the greater nightmare would be protecting troops there, day after day, week after week, from drones and other attacks.

The United States has been unable to fully protect its own hardened military bases in the region at much greater distances from Iran, forcing soldiers to evacuate to hotels. “Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable,” my Times colleagues Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt reported. So if we can’t protect our bases, how will we protect Marines dropped off on an Iranian island?

Why seize Kharg anyway? The theory advanced by hawks is that without oil revenues Iran would be forced to surrender. “Control that island, let this regime die on a vine,” urged Graham.

Unfortunately, that theory is probably wrong.

“Even if we take Kharg, Iran won’t capitulate,” Dennis Citrinowicz, formerly the top Iran watcher in Israel Defense Intelligence, told me. “And everything’s going to escalate, and the prices of oil and whatever will be dramatically higher.”

If Trump wanted to seize territory, the better choice might be several small islands — Abu Musa and the Tunb islands — that are also claimed by the United Arab Emirates. A joint American and Emirati force could seize them and Emiratis could occupy them.

But even that would be a huge escalation. The truth is that any seizure of Iranian-controlled land would most likely lead Iran to retaliate by attacking energy infrastructure around the region — and, more terrifying, desalination plants that provide the water on which some Gulf cities depend. With refineries out of commission, we could face oil and gas shortages for years to come. The Houthis in Yemen might also join the fray by blocking ship traffic through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which is the Red Sea choke point equivalent to Hormuz on the Persian Gulf.

“I don’t see this ending very soon,” Nasr warned. “I think the risk of this becoming uglier, with a lot of costs to the United States, is quite high.”

Trump’s aim if he dispatches ground troops is probably “to escalate to de-escalate,” hoping that he can gain leverage over Iran and get a better bargain. That’s possible. But my guess is the opposite: Collapsing financial markets would give Iran even more leverage than it has now.

Iran’s regime may also have more strategic patience than we do. Remember that after Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, Iran recovered its territory by 1982 but was so enraged that it refused a cease-fire and spent another six years fighting in the hope of overthrowing the Iraqi regime. Do we have the same staying power?

"Two (2) weeks to slow the curve."

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told G7 foreign ministers on Friday the war with Iran will continue for another two to four weeks, Axios reported citing sources with direct knowledge.

Rubio also told reporters the US can achieve its war objectives "without any ground troops."

"We are ahead of schedule on ​most of them (objectives), and we can achieve them without any ground troops, without any," ‌Rubio ⁠said.

The objectives, he said, were destroying Iran's missile and drone capabilities and factories to produce those weapons, as well as its navy and its air force.

Donald Trump encouraged his social media followers to listen to Mark Levin's show. Levin advocates boots on the ground to retrieve uranium.

“Nor the Battle to the Strong...” (S05E03, Stardate 50061.2) takes the time to show war from the perspective of someone who is not trained for life on the front lines. It delivers a powerful message of what it takes to reveal a person's true nature. At times it is a tad heavy-handed, but it works in the end.

It’s okay! If I’m understanding correctly, your question is whether infantry as a military unit is obsolete given the current technology. If that’s wrong, I’m terribly sorry for the lengthy (and irrelevant) reply!It’s true that the more we’ve invested into expensive and heavy-hitting ordnance and such, the bigger focus kinda shifted a bit from soldiers on the ground to the equipment on the ground. It’s one of the reasons WWI is called The Great War; it was the first major international war in which we were throwing marvelous technological advances like planes and tanks into the mix.The thing about infantry though is that we’ve yet to manufacture a weapon that is as efficient and flexible as a human being. Weapons and tanks require specialized maintenance and parts and their operational status can be disrupted for weeks for no apparent reason. The tiniest glitch or error in a system can render it unusable. Explosives require specially trained troops, not to mention carrying the C-4 or what-have-you in enough bulk that it can do some real damage. The more lethal weapons, say a 50 cal, are unbelievably weighty. Just the 50 cal itself weighs 84 pounds, never mind the boxes of ammo you need and the fact that it would do better in a prepared position, not to mention a crew to maintain, carry, and emplace the thing. And that’s just one relatively small weapon. And the TRANSPORT! The fucking obstacles we had to go through to transport our vehicles was in no way convenient or efficient. We humans can just be thrown out of boats or airplanes within days if that’s what it takes, but good luck getting a fast turnaround on a new Anything Else.Humans don’t suddenly jam if we get sand in the wrong place, we can sit out in the rain for days at a time, we don’t run out of gas or ammo, and most importantly of all, we can think and see. A crew stuck driving around in a tank just won’t be as observant or as maneuverable as a squad of infantry. A unit lugging around a howitzer has the same problem. Infantry can go through an urban area or forest or desert relatively unnoticed, unlike a Bradley. Infantry can pick up anything and use it as a weapon. Out of rounds for your M16? Fuck it; chuck some grenades, pick up a rifle from a dead enemy, start throwing rocks, fucking Vulcan nerve pinch that shit for all anyone cares. A gun without ammo is just a big ol’ bulky metal club. A human without ammo can still kill you in 500 ways.Furthermore, we’re CHEAP. The army’s currently overpopulated and more people are looking to enlist every day. That’s a helluva lot nicer on paper than purchasing even one new tank, and not to be completely brutal and macabre, but infantry create an easy target. The enemy will either be so distracted by the infantry that it’ll allow heavy ordnance to do its thing or the enemy will focus on taking out the heavies, thus allowing infantry to break through and assault them from within. 

And as we’ve proven in previous wars, a couple really good soldiers can beat most machines of war we’ve got, so it’s essential to have infantry on both sides as both a defense and an offense. The fact that all it would take is one well-placed explosive sneaked in by a single ballsy soldier to wreck some shit is good enough reason to keep at least some ground troops on hand. Worst case scenario, the enemy wastes a ton of ammo killing all the people we threw at them and will be easier to assault the next time we throw a lot of people at them. That’s literally how we’ve won entire battles: throwing too many people at the enemy for them to kill all at once. Pragmatically it’s not hard to keep throwing people at an enemy, but it eventually starts to get hard throwing tanks at them.Finally, ground troops are also better for causing as little collateral damage and casualties as possible. Even while aiming, a machine gun will be firing pretty randomly; the whole POINT of a machine gun is that it’s shooting as many bullets as possible and hopefully at least one of them will hit something. Especially in the current war climate, urban combat is extremely common, meaning that indiscriminate firing like that is bound to cause some unwanted destruction. The U.S. is already under heavy criticism (and rightfully so) for its haphazard drone strikes, and those have like a million times more finesse. I shudder to think what war would be like if we depended purely on war machines. You are right in that our tactics do often rely on keeping us separated because of grenade and IED threats. We’re supposed to keep a safe distance from each other on ruck marches, supposed to keep distance from each other on patrol or guard, etc. It is admittedly foolish to clump up a bunch of people when they could be blown up at any second by an RPG.

-Kingsley

PART THREE OF THREE This is the concluding part of a series that began as two pieces and became three, for the same reason this war began as a targeted operation and is becoming something else entirely. Part One, “Trump’s Team at War With Itself,” was published 8 March. Part Two, “The Dealmaker’s Cul-de-Sac,” was published 9 March. How This War Actually Started Axios has the story of the phone…

PART TWO OF THREE Trump demands unconditional surrender from a nation of 90 million. Iran elects a hardline new Supreme Leader and rules out any ceasefire. The MAGA coalition fractures. What began as targeted strikes has become a war without an exit, a plan, or a president capable of admitting either. As Operation Epic Fury stumbles into its second week, the self-styled dealmaker posts on Truth…

Source:Brookings Institution I think its pretty clear about what we’ve learned in the last thirteen-years or so in our Middle East adventures. That if you try to defend and govern a country that won’t do that for themselves, then they’ll expect you to stay indefinitely especially if you’re also putting up the bills. And the answer to that is don’t fight other people’s wars for them. This is what…

Here’s a look at one Russian motorized rifle brigade, created for another purpose, but perhaps worth sharing. The Kamenka brigade’s appeared on these pages before but mainly because of its order and discipline problems.

The 138th Independent Motorized Rifle Brigade (v/ch 02511) is based in Kamenka village, Vyborg rayon of Leningrad oblast. Its full honorific name is the 138th Independent Guards…