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The scenario for using such forces would go
something like this. After our departure, Iraqi Army
forces would battle insurgents as necessary to clear
and hold contested areas. They would occasionally be
overmatched tactically and need assistance. They
would call U.S. commanders in Kuwait or Kurdistan
for help. American forces, kept on alert for just
such a contingency, would rush to the rescue,
restore the situation, and again leave, allowing the
Iraqis
to proceed with pacifying their own country. At this
level of abstraction, it sounds reasonable. When any
of the practical difficulties are considered, it is
revealed as utter nonsense.
U.S. forces now operate in Iraq from forward
operating bases, or FOBs. FOBs provide housing and
food for soldiers, ammunition and fuel storage,
depots for vehicles, command and control centers,
and medical care, among other things. They require a
constant stream of supplies to keep them going. Most
of these supplies travel by sea to Kuwait's ports
and then by road to the FOBs dotted around Iraq. The
idea of maintaining some sort of super-FOB in
Kurdistan while abandoning all of Iraq to the south
is logistical madness. Everything would have to be
flown in, requiring a massive airlift effort-unless
one imagines that the Turks would allow us to supply
it from their territory. Even with their permission,
that would be a daunting undertaking, as supplies
and reinforcements would have to travel hundreds of
miles by rail from Turkey's Mediterranean ports just
to get to Kurdistan. The cost would be astronomical
and the entire set-up at the mercy of Ankara.
Let us suppose, then, that the quick-reaction force
is based in Kuwait, where we already have a
significant and stable logistics infrastructure. We
would keep several battalions there at least,
possibly several brigades. How will they get to
where the Iraqis need them? It's about 600 miles
from Kuwait to Baghdad-several days' drive for a
military convoy. If we have pulled all of our troops
out of Iraq, moreover, we will be driving through
unsecured roads. The distance will give insurgents
plenty of time to place IEDs and establish ambushes.
We will have no U.S. local commanders to get
intelligence of such activities or clear the roads
before the QRF comes through. We will lose vehicles
and soldiers, the convoys will be delayed, possibly
halted. At best, they will have to fight their way
through half the country to get where they're
needed. They will surely not arrive in time or in
shape to help.
Most advocates of this proposal probably imagine
that our troops would instead fly from their
super-FOB to where they are needed. That is in
principle feasible. U.S. troops could theoretically
mount helicopters and fly them from Kuwait into the
Sunni Triangle, then land near the fighting and
charge in. But 600 miles is a long way. Our soldiers
do not fly out on such missions, engage briefly in
combat, and then get back in their birds and fly
home at night. They would have to land somewhere at
a distance from the fight, set up a secure base, and
then move out. Given the distance, in fact, they
would probably need to make a stop to set up an
interim support base before proceeding to the final
objective. The helicopters would have to be refueled,
of course, and the soldiers would need supplies of
ammunition, food, water, etc. Such materials cannot
be transported in large quantities by helicopter. So
our soldiers will have to secure an airfield. If the
insurgents conveniently choose to fight near an
airfield, then the base can be quickly established
relatively close to the fight. Of course, if the
insurgents are actually within range of the
airfield, then the airfield must be seized by
helicopter assault-a complex and dangerous operation
in itself. Most likely, though, the airfield will
not be that close to the fighting, so the QRF will
have to land, form its base, and then advance
through unsecured territory to the fight, facing
IEDs and ambushes
all the way.
It is certainly possible to proceed in this fashion
from a military standpoint. But how quick will such
a quick reaction force actually be? To begin with,
it will take time to launch the operation. Some
troops at the super-FOB would be on alert, trained,
and ready to go quickly. Soldiers in alert status
will not be sitting in their helicopters or vehicles
all the time, however. When the Iraqi request for
support comes in, it will take hours to gather the
soldiers and load them onto their means of
transportation. Flying 600 or more miles in
helicopters takes a few hours. Establishing a new
base near the fighting takes more hours. Securing an
airfield nearby still more. All of that would have
to be done before the QRF joined the Iraqis in any
numbers. The whole process would surely take a day
or two even in the most optimistic scenarios.
That may not sound too long, but it is eternity in
any combat situation. Unless the Iraqis are going to
be calling us in all the time, the Iraqi commander
will have to wait until he's in real trouble-about
to be overrun, say, or unable to drive insurgents
from some key location in a vital operation. In any
sort of tactical emergency, the day or two delay in
the arrival of the QRF is almost certain to spell
disaster. The insurgents will either finish off the
beleaguered unit before we arrive, or abandon that
fight to set up ambushes for our troops, or simply
leave the area before we get there, setting up a
base somewhere else and waiting for us to leave
before resuming their attacks. A QRF based in Kuwait
will almost never be relevant for tactical
emergencies in Iraq.
It might, in theory, be relevant for higher-level
operational emergencies. If the Iraqi Army were
trying to take a key city or town and became
dangerously bogged down, American forces arriving
within a few days might be able to make a
difference. One could imagine our soldiers entering
the fight at the right moment to take some key
position to allow the Iraqis to achieve their aims.
This image, too, does not bear up well under closer
scrutiny. In operations of this scale, the few
hundred soldiers that we could reasonably expect to
move rapidly by helicopter are unlikely to be
decisive. It is not possible to move vehicles by
helicopter, for one thing, so we would be confined
to sending in light infantry-something of which the
Iraqis have plenty. Moving tanks, Bradleys, or
Strykers by air would take considerably more time
and make us, once more, dependent on having an
airfield nearby. Once again, it is hard to imagine
moving a force of the requisite size and composition
to help accomplish a major clearing operation fast
enough to make a difference.
If we could get to the trouble spot in a timely
fashion, however, we would still face a terrible
dilemma. How do we know whom to shoot? We would,
presumably, be responding to a call for help from a
local Iraqi commander. Without any of our own
soldiers on the ground to start, we would have
limited intelligence. Is the commander who called on
us a good guy, or engaged in sectarian cleansing and
atrocities? Are the people he's telling us to kill
really radical anti-regime elements, or are they
moderates he wishes to eliminate for his own
political purposes. The recent news reports from
Baquba are distressing in this regard-the local
Iraqi division commander (a Shia) asked his American
partners to arrest a long list of Sunni Arab
leaders, whom he regarded as leaders of the
insurgency. It turned out that almost all of those
leaders were men we had been negotiating with and
saw as the key to restoring order to the city. The
U.S. commander refused to put his troops at the
disposal of someone trying to increase rather than
reduce sectarian strife. He could do so only because
he had been in the area long enough to know that the
Sunni Arabs he was being told to arrest were really
the good guys-and that he should not trust the
Shi'ite commander he was partnered with. An
over-the-horizon QRF will be at the mercy of
whatever Iraqi commander calls on it, and will be
far more likely to be drawn into sectarian strife in
a damaging way, rather than a helpful one.
Over-the-horizon quick-reaction forces are simply a
fantasy. We will not end up using them for all of
the reasons given above and for one more: They will
put our soldiers at far greater risk than they now
face. QRFs moving around an unsecured country about
which they have little meaningful intelligence will
take high casualties. Flying helicopters over
insurgent areas means losing some of them, with
their soldiers. Light infantry moving through
unknown land will inevitably be ambushed, sometimes
with heavy losses. The lack of readily available
armor support will expose our troops to losses,
including the possibility of mini-Mogadishus in the
urban areas. Tanks have played an unheralded but
vital role even in the urban portions of this
conflict, providing moving armor protection and
instant firepower that the insurgents can't match or
defend against. The bottom line is that the QRFs
will have virtually none of the advantages our
troops now enjoy, while facing far greater risks.
Those who claim to care about our troops cannot
possibly support such a proposal.
We face a stark choice now. We can either maintain
bases and large forces in Iraq, or we can withdraw.
If we withdraw, the Iraqi Army will collapse, and we
will not be able to help it except by re-entering
the country in large numbers and in a much worse
situation. Attempts to mask this reality with
militarily nonsensical solutions are dangerous. They
will lead to higher U.S. casualties or to defeat-and
quite possibly to both.
Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute.
Frederick W. Kagan, military historian who has
taught at West Point, AEI resident scholar Frederick
Kagan specializes in defense issues and the American
military. In particular he studies defense
transformation, the defense budget, and defense
strategy and warfare. He has also written about
Russian and European military history.
Professional Experience
-Associate professor of military history, 2001-2005;
assistant professor of military history, 1995-2001;
United States Military Academy (West Point)
Education
B.A., Soviet and East European studies; Ph.D.,
Russian and Soviet military history, Yale University
Articles and Short Publications
No Third Way in Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld's
Self-Inflicted Wounds, Insult to Injury in Iraq
Books
Finding the Target
The End of the Old Order
The Transformation of the American Military .
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