Demosophia

Interesting Theory About the Troop Withdrawals

I initially figured that the President may have been drawing down troops to coincide with the 2004 election. But go to this post on Winds of Change and read the two comments by Trent Telenko. His basic theory is that the pattern of troop withdrawals from Iraq suggest the reconstitution of an invasion force rather than a strategic defense force, and that the likely target will be Iran, around the time of the 2004 election. (Before or after is anyone's guess.) That corresponds to a strategy for relieving some of the pressure on Iraq by staunching the flow of outside agitators coming into Iraq through Iran. Trent argues that the pattern of troop rotations, training, and redeployment correspond to a classic pattern used by the American military during WWII in the Pacific, with the island-hopping invasions in the Azores. The period of the pattern is longer, though, because Middle Eastern countries are larger than Pacific islands, requiring a longer time to build up the force. Interesting theory.

Some key points of Telenko's theory:

Then I read somewhere Thursday or Friday on the Early Bird that 37% of that 105,000 strong force is going to be Guard/Reserve. Add in the Marines rotating in with two Stryker brigades and it looks like the majority of the Army heavy forces and 18th Airborne Corps going to be out of Iraq. Now add into the mix Bush's Democracy speech on the need to remake the Arab world democratically (that included a hint to the Egyptians that they are going to suffer an involuntary regime change). A horse of a different color emerged for me.

First, take six months of down time, catching up higher schooling, rebuilding equipment and spares stockpiles for these returning units. Then take another six months of training to bring those Regular Army combat units back up to peak fighting pitch. You then see a window of opportunity for a new American ground campaign opening up. In so many words, the Navy isn't the only service planning on major surges of forces to forward deployments. Rumsfeld isn't rebuilding a strategic reserve, he is building a Strategic Invasion Force. I think we are going to have to plan for a "pizza watch" on the Pentagon to start just in time for the final days of the 2004 election campaign and running through the early winter months of 2005.

We are looking at an operational pattern similar to what was used for ground forces in the Pacific theater of WW2. America wins a victory with combat forces, replaces them with other troops to mop up, rebuilds the combat forces for the next operation, and then strikes again. Except Arab Tyrannies are bigger, and thus the operational pauses between invasions are longer, than Pacific atolls.

and in a separate post:

The nature of the units being recalled is a major reason for my thinking this is an invasion force.

We have the whole of the 18th Airborne Corps coming home. As Cato noted above, We also have the 3rd Mech. Infantry Division home now with the 1st Mech. Infantry Division, 1st Armored Division, 3rd Armored Cavaly (sic) regiment (brigade sized) set to follow.

These are not the units we would have in reserve if we were plainning (sic) for a war with Korea as mountain fighting requires the kind of infantry forces we have deployed for stability operations in Iraq.

Read the whole thing on Winds of Change, including other comments.

Update: As Mitch points out below, in a comment, this theory may not be falsifiable. I don't know enough about the topic to tell whether (as Trent contends) the troop withdrawals would actually be different for a strategic or an invasion force, but it stands to reason that a strict FIFO logic would be pulling out the forces necessary for an invasion, because they've been there the longest (since they were used in the invasion).

Posted by Demosophist at November 10, 2003 01:31 PM | TrackBack