BOOTS ON THE GROUND

[MKSheppard]

BOOTS ON THE GROUND
By RALPH PETERS

March 22, 2003 -- WITH our air campaign of shock- and-awe pummeling the Iraqi regime with all the technologies America's military can muster, the infantryman remains the indispensable man. Airpower may give us the decisive edge, but ground troops remain the foundation of military victory.

I certainly do not mean to slight our pilots or our technology. While I am not shocked, I certainly am awed by the devastating, yet precisely focused, attacks on our enemies. The ongoing airstrikes are undeniably accelerating our march to victory. And I do not suggest that ground forces alone can win our wars.

Rather, the basic lesson of this war is that we continue to need balanced forces - every one of our armed services - in order to give our country the flexibility and depth to respond to humanity's capacity for deadly mischief.

But our ground forces are now the slighted stepchildren of our military establishment. The requirement for boots on the ground has been dismissed time and again by "visionaries" who insist that one technology or another has finally eliminated the need for massed divisions.

Time and again, the theorists have been wrong. But it hasn't deterred them from trying to cut our ground forces to the bone.

This is a critical issue, since there is another very dangerous war behind the war in Iraq. This other fight is underway in the halls of the Pentagon.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been a superb leader in crisis and war, but he remains an ideologue when it comes to the future of our armed forces. And he is as close-minded as a commissar when it comes to his preference for high-tech weapons over adequate numbers of well-trained personnel.

Rumsfeld and his key advisers have argued, ceaselessly, for cutting manpower in the Army in order to underwrite a blank check for the defense industry. Since he entered office, Rumsfeld's staff has undercut the Army's efforts to field more deployable medium-weight forces - of exactly the sort that would have been invaluable in this crisis - in order to force the Army into strategic "irrelevance."

The new brigades the Army has fought to field could have been airlifted into Iraq or could have supplemented our hitting power as our forces crossed the Iraqi desert from Kuwait - if only those brigades had been given adequate support and funding.

In order to prove his contention that airpower is the single critical arm in 21st century warfare, Secretary Rumsfeld dismissed the advice of his generals over the past several months, delaying the deployment of Army divisions to the Gulf and limiting the number of ground forces finally deployed. He may win his gamble, but he has taken an unnecessary risk.

We had the resources, and our secretary of defense chose not to use them. Just to prove a point.

Certainly, we are going to win this war. But a key planner now serving with our ground forces in the Gulf worries that we have gone into battle without a sufficient reserve in place in the theater of war.

Despite the images on your TV set of tanks sweeping across the desert, our ground forces in Iraq, though powerful, are spread very thin. Things can go wrong, even in the best-planned, high-tech conflict. And we have not taken out much insurance.

We may well get away with this gamble. God knows, I hope so. But it was an unnecessary and callous risk to take simply to force a "proof" that our Army is of diminishing relevance.

As the campaign of shock-and-awe went on hold in the first days of the war and the Iraqis began to ignite oil fields while launching missiles into Kuwait, it was our ground forces from the Army, Marines and allied militaries who had to accelerate their plans and thrust into Iraq on an emergency basis.

Airpower is a magnificent tool. But you cannot stop sabotage from 25,000 feet. You cannot convince enemy military formations they are beaten until you demonstrate your presence on their soil. You cannot take prisoners, or protect refugees, or secure crucial facilities and resources from the air. And you certainly cannot stop genocide or ethnic cleansing from the sky.

Ground troops had to seize ports and oil infrastructure targets in Iraq. Tanks had to race across the desert to provide tangible evidence to the Iraqis that the Yanks really were coming.

Ground troops will be critical to winning any engagements against units that decide to resist, especially in urban terrain (although we will not be foolish enough to engage in widespread combat in cities). And good, old-fashioned grunts will need to patrol the peace that all of our military arms, working together, will establish.

From Bosnia to Afghanistan, ground forces continue to contribute the bulk of the forces deployed in support of our enduring missions around the globe. And ground forces will need to remain in Iraq long after the stealth bombers have returned to their base in Missouri.

Again, I want to stress that I am not elevating the Army and Marines above the Air Force, Navy or Coast Guard (and yes, I know that the Marines are an arm of the Navy - though they fight on terra firma). But we need to beware attempts to assign our ground forces a lower priority than the other services for political purposes or to please civilian theorists who have never served our country in uniform.

After the dazzling - truly remarkable - effects of the shock-and-awe air campaign have faded, we need to remember that the key to an effective national defense will always be balanced forces. We need all of our services, adequately manned and equipped, to face the daunting range of challenges posed by this troubled world.

The greatest problem, of course, is that, when the posturing in Congress is over, the individual soldier doesn't have many friends on the Hill. But defense contractors, with their campaign contributions and promises of jobs in congressional districts, will always have plenty of elected supporters. And the defense industry always pushes for fewer troops and more expensive technologies.

Appropriate technologies are marvelous tools, but they still are not a substitute for well-trained, motivated troops.

We need both.

As you watch the stunning campaign unfold on television screens and read about our technology-driven successes in the newspapers, always remember that tens of thousands of young Americans in uniform are doing the far less glamorous work of warfare on the ground in Iraq.

I would argue against any fool who derided our technological advantages, but I will always fight the abstract theorists and greedy salesmen who dismiss the enduring importance of GI Joe.

Ralph Peters is a retired military officer and the author of the novel "Flames of Heaven."