Lt. Col. Rick Francona
Adjusting combat tour length doesn’t solve the problem
Secretary of Defense of Gates announced Wednesday that he is
extending the combat tour length for active duty U.S. Army soldiers from the standard 12 months to 15 months, with the commitment that the period between combat rotations will be 12 months. This announcement does not affect the reserve components of the Army – the Reserves and National Guard – nor does it affect the length of deployment for the U.S. Marines, currently seven months.
While that sounds like it will provide more troops for the commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, in reality many of the troops are extended for that extra three months anyway. In the past, that was the most effective way to plus up the number of troops: maintain the inbound schedule but retain units about to rotate home an extra three months. In effect, this formalizes the longer tour length that has been imposed on many of the soldiers who have served and are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The objective is to provide soldiers at least 12 months between combat tours, and at the same time provide higher levels of troops in the region. It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. It will work in the short term, but at some point, you run out of soldiers.
The problem is not the tour length; it’s the fact that we do not have a sufficient number of soldiers – or Marines for that matter – to maintain the scale and pace of operations, the “ops tempo,” currently assigned to the armed forces.
Let’s be clear about our armed forces.
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The Iranians have decided to release the 15 British sailors and Marines they have held hostage for over 12 days. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that he had “pardoned” the British during the celebration of the birth of the prophet, which this year almost coincides with Easter. To the world, he appears to have made a magnanimous gesture.
Good news, of course, but now comes the post mortem. There are many questions to be answered, not the least of which are what did the British give to secure the release of their service members, and will Iran pay a price for their action?
Most of the world believes the British were operating in Iraqi waters and this whole affair was engineered by the Iranians to draw attention from its nuclear program. Inside Iran, the affair may have played well - distrust of the British is an ingrained emotion. It was Britain, after all, that granted Iraq total sovereignty over the Shatt al-Arab when they created the country in the aftermath of World War One. It is that same body of water that sparked decades of disputes between Iran and Iraq, including 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. It is also the venue of the current Iranian action against the British anti-smuggling team. The current border in the waterway is the thalweg, the deepest part of the channel, not always easy to define – confrontations are probably unavoidable.
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Okay guys, you stepped in it this time. You really need to figure out a face-saving way to get out of the mess you have created by seizing 15 British sailors and marines.
Your past record is abominable, so what makes you think that anyone is buying this fiction that the British were in Iranian waters? Putting young British sailors on Iranian television reciting obviously coerced “confessions” is ludicrous – no one but possibly the most gullible among your domestic audience takes these statements as fact. Even more ridiculous are the letters written by the sole woman among the detainees, as well as her appearances in a chador. Again, do you really think that anyone believes this charade is how members of the Royal Navy would comport themselves in captivity?
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On the surface, the initial “surge” statistics from Baghdad appear encouraging. By all measures, the number of deaths is down, the number of attacks is down and the number of Iraqi security forces on the street is up.
Good news, right?
Sure, but has the surge solved the problems of sectarian violence in the city and environs? Not if you look at the continued vicious Sunni attacks against the Shia in an attempt to provoke them to reignite the conflict, and the recent attack on a Sunni deputy prime minister. Thus far, the Sunnis have been unsuccessful in goading the Shia into retaliation – the Shia have followed the advice of their religious leadership and not rejoined the fight.
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Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be heading to New York to address the United Nations in hopes of convincing the world that his country’s nuclear research program is for energy and not weapons. He 
has complemented that effort with rhetoric that a military strike on his country’s nuclear facilities will lead to dire consequences.
The Arab countries across the Gulf from Iran are watching this unfolding situation with great concern. An expected consequence of a military strike on Iran is an Iranian attempt to the close the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Oman and Iran. About 25 percent of the world’s oil supply moves through the straits – most of it from the Gulf Arabs. For years, Iran has been developing military capabilities that will allow it to close the strategic waterway.
Disruption of the flow of oil through the straits is of concern to not just the Gulf Arabs, but the rest of the world as well. Although the United States imports less than 20 percent of its oil from the Gulf, oil is a fungible commodity. If that much oil was taken off the markets, the countries that normally buy this oil will compete with us for oil from our normal sources, driving prices up dramatically.
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On March 10th, representatives of the United States will meet in Baghdad with representatives of numerous other countries, including Iran and Syria, in an attempt to resolve the violence in Iraq. I continue to maintain that these two countries are part of the problem in Iraq and unlikely to become part of the solution, especially Iran. Iran and the United States are currently involved in a proxy war in Iraq – the victor will emerge as the pre-eminent power in the Persian Gulf region. I don’t envision them helping us.
It is an interesting turn of events – much of the current violence in Iraq is directly attributable to the actions of Iran and Syria. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, there was some low level cooperation between the Syrian and American intelligence services against al-Qaeda – Syria is a secular Baathist state with no interest in furthering the aims of a fundamentalist Islamic movement (which ironically, is who runs its ally Iran). However, since the removal of Saddam Hussein, Syria has been a conduit and suspected training ground for foreign insurgents entering Iraq as part of the al-Qaeda in Iraq organization.
Iran and Syria have been close allies since the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 when Damascus spurned its Arab neighbors and supported non-Arab Iran. The two countries just renewed a longstanding mutual defense pact. It’s a convenient arrangement – Iran gets access to Lebanon via Damascus to support Hezbollah (as we witnessed last summer), the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. In turn, Syria gets cheap oil credits from Iran, a powerful ally in the region, and a bargaining chip in its demands for the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Despite Syrian support to terrorist groups in Iraq, the United States continues to maintain diplomatic relations with Damascus. It has not always been friendly - I was the air attaché in Damascus for over two years and can personally attest to that. The level of U.S. representation changed in 2005 - following Syrian involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri in Beirut in February 2005, Washington withdrew our ambassador. While she has not yet returned, Syria continues to keep its ambassador in Washington.
Syria’s role in the Baghdad conference will be interesting to watch. Will it continue to be a puppet of Tehran or begin distancing itself in hopes of better relations with the United States and the West? Will the United States and Iran compete for Syria’s affections?
Syria’s overriding national interests are the return of the Golan Heights and renewed influence in Lebanon. If Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was assured that these two things could happen, he might be persuaded to distance himself from Iran. Driving a wedge between these two unlikely allies – a fundamentalist Shia theocracy in Iran and a secular socialist dictatorship in Syria – would be a spectacular diplomatic success. Not only would it re-energize the Middle East peace process, it would also cripple Iran’s ability to support Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
While Iran is focused on splitting atoms, we should focus on splitting the Tehran-Damascus alliance.
I had mixed thoughts as I heard the guilty verdicts read today. In 1991, after my return from Operation Desert Storm, I was assigned to the team drafting the Defense Department’s report on the war – Scooter was an Assistant Secretary of Defense in charge of the effort. It was Scooter Libby that pinned on my Bronze Star in a Pentagon ceremony.
I also recall serving at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in the late 1980’s, the same embassy where Joe Wilson later served as the deputy chief of mission. Joe did an outstanding job during those initial months of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent evacuation of American citizens and embassy staff.
Both men have served their country well. What continues to bother me is how these two public servants have ended up on opposites of a legal battle. The jury found Scooter Libby guilty of obstruction, false statements and perjury. What they did not find him guilty of is releasing the name of an intelligence officer under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. Nor should they have.
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On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced that U.S. troops had begun the invasion of Cambodia, accusing the Southeast Asian nation of allowing North Vietnamese forces to use the country as a transit route and safe haven for its units operating in neighboring South Vietnam. After years of watching the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese using both Laos and Cambodia in this manner, American military commanders requested permission to chase the enemy into these neighboring countries. In 1970, Cambodia lost its “off limits” status.
Let’s fast forward to present day Afghanistan. The U.S. invasion (Operation Enduring Freedom) shortly following the attacks on the United States by al-Qaeda terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, removed the Taliban-led government of the country and forced al-Qaeda to head for the mountains. After being cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, most of the surviving al-Qaeda fighters fled to neighboring Pakistan, specifically to the federally administered tribal areas and the Pushtun provinces of North Waziristan and South Waziristan (where Islamabad exercises little authority).
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Just days after the United Nations declared that Iran failed to comply with a Security Council resolution demanding that Iran cease its uranium enrichment activities, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remarked, “Iran’s nuclear program is an unstoppable train without brakes.”
The Iranian “nuclear energy” program, which most analysts believe is a cover for a weapons development effort, is complemented by continued ballistic missile development. Last week, Iran announced that it had launched a rocket into earth orbit - nothing more than a test of long-range multi-stage missile. Iran has constantly reported developments and acquisitions of new and improved naval and air defense weapons.
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On Sunday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was flown by U.S. military aircraft from his residence in As-Sulaymaniyah to the King Hussein Medical City in Amman, Jordan, one of the best hospitals in the region. The reason for the medical evacuation is reportedly "exhaustion and a mild inflammation of the lungs."
I worked closely with “Mam Jalal,” as he is known to his friends, in northern Iraq while assigned to the Central Intelligence Agency in the mid-1990’s. Talabani, 73, is a Kurd with a long history of guerrilla operations against the Baath Party. In addition to serving as President of Iraq, he is the Secretary General of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). He has emerged as one of the few leaders in Iraq with the stature and political savvy to keep the nation from fracturing into three ethnic enclaves. Ironic – considering that for decades he was one of the key proponents of an independent Kurdistan.
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