California Conservative

Many Democrats have been questioning whether or not we (the United States) had an “end plan” or a plan to “win the peace” after we won the war. Of course we had a plan.

We had numerous plans and contingency plans leading up to, during and after the war. This plan included possible timetables for the final withdrawal of troops. That’s what the Pentagon does, they plan wars. Anybody who makes the comment that “George Bush had a plan to win the war but not the peace” doesn’t know anything about the U.S. Military or any large organization with a chain of command. This includes a plan for final withdrawal of troops. The President and military leadership has numerous plans.

The President of the United States (Commander and Chief) establishes “goals” for the U.S. Military, working with his advisors. The people at the Pentagon and the leadership of the U.S. Armed Forces formulate a plan and then execute their plan. “Formulate a plan and execute it” is how the Military works. Any plans formulated at the top are more general. As the plan works its way down to smaller groups or individuals, the plan or details of how to execute the plan become more specific.

The United States doesn’t deploy hundreds of thousands of troops and equipment into a foreign country, get there and say “what do we do now?” Everything done in the military is a “mission”. A truck driver delivering fuel is on a specific “mission”. Missions performed, are the “execution of a plan”. Everything an individual soldier does goes towards the execution of the “overall “plan. Soldiers do not do anything on their own, they are instructed to do so and that instruction originates from the top and from the “overall” plan or objective.

As the original plan unfolds the leadership receives input from the ground, regarding the effectiveness of their plan. Adjustments are constantly made to improve execution of the plan. This is how football games are won. Both teams have a plan, each player is given specific plays to perform (missions) towards the completion of the overall plan, to win the game. There is a constant communication and exchange of “real time” or recent information moving up and down the chain-of-command.

One of the current objectives or plans is to recruit, train, deploy and retain Iraqi soldiers to protect and defend their country. Once this plan is fully executed then our soldier can begin to downsize, withdrawal or re-deploy and ultimately return home or to Afghanistan or to where-ever they are needed. This is not a small task or a “simple” plan to execute.

The problem with timetables is there are some who don’t want to go along with our plan. We can not control those who have a desire to defeat our plan. We can only plan for contingencies and continue to push towards the completion of the overall plan. The advantage we have in Iraq is that we have the best team in the world.

Let’s look at this on a basic level. If you have a plan or mission to deliver 1500 gallons of fuel to camp “X“, you can estimate, based on know resources and known variables, how long it will take to deliver the fuel. However the military does not have complete control over the execution of a plan. Plans are not executed in a vacuum. If an insurgent element decided to ambush the fuel truck, they could obviously effect or stop the execution of the original plan, or Plan “A”. Plan “B” could be, find and destroy that insurgent element causing the problem, send another fuel truck with force protection, use a different route and again, attempt to execute, using a contingency plan.

If the execution of a “simple” plan or mission can be interrupted or defeated, then how can one put an accurate timetable on the execution of a much more complicated plan requiring many more resources and having many more known and unknown variables?

Imagine a total collapse of the local government in the city of Los Angeles. Imagine that all of the police personnel vanished and now you have to find, and recruit “qualified” replacements. Now you are given the task to find, then train, deploy and retain the “new” police personnel at an effective operational level, say 9000. How long do think this would take? Now multiply this by a 100 or so and apply it to the situation in Iraq. Include all of the variables, such as entire recruit classes destroyed by a suicide bomber upon completion of training and everything that has happen or could possibly happen to disrupt the plan, now how long would it take?

The plan currently in play is a good plan and we have the best team on the field to execute the plan and win. I have heard people complain about the current plan but I have not heard anyone state how they would change the execution of the plan. One can estimate and end-time, say more or less than one year or five years but only a fool or a liar would be able to provide and accurate timetable for withdrawal.

We do not have a magic wand that we can waive over Iraq to make a couple hundred thousand trained and qualified Iraqi soldiers appear. What we can do, is what football fans do. We can support our team, our President, our troops and our Country, let them execute their plan and don’t walk out of the stands before the game is over or ask our team to quit and walk off the field. Support your team, the United States of America.

We have the right plan and it is working, but it isn’t going to happen over-night.

Submitted by reader, Jimmy Brousseau, LAPD - Retired

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 at 11:35 am and is filed under Foreign Policy, Iraq, Military, Op-Ed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.