Friday, Nov. 7, 2003 | 6:24 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION Nov. 8 - 9, 2003 Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.
U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER Condoleezza Rice, the top gun for the Bush administration's Middle East policies, made known her displeasure with the Israeli security fence. We have yet to hear if the barbed wire fence coalition forces have put around the Tikrit suburb Al Auja has upset her. Al Auja is the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. Allow me to suggest that maybe the entire city of Tikrit should be fenced in until the guerrilla activity against our forces in that area cease.
The fence in Israel is being built to keep out terrorists from the West Bank who are trained to kill innocent Israeli citizens. The fence around Tikrit would be designed to keep guerrillas and terrorists inside and not out killing Americans and other foreigners.
The residents of Tikrit openly show disdain for coalition forces and praise Saddam Hussein. More than $1 million of American taxpayer money has been spent to improve schools and public buildings in this city of 30,000 people. The pro-Saddam activities continue. Maybe it's about time we say, "No more Mr. Nice Guy."
Author Ralph Peters, writing in the New York Post, selects another city known for its harboring and production of killers. Fallujah has earned the anger of Peters, who writes, "If the populace continues to harbor our enemies and the enemies of a healthy Iraqi state, we need to impose strict martial law. Instead of lavishing more development funds on the city -- bribes that aren't working -- we need to cut back on electricity, ration water, restrict access to the city and organize food distribution through a ration card system. And we need to occupy the city so thickly that the inhabitants can't step out of their front doors without bumping into an American soldier."
I'm not sure that this action would work, but feel, like most Americans, that the continual killing and wounding of our military people isn't acceptable.
Withdrawing from Iraq at this time also isn't acceptable because it could result in even greater danger for Americans around the world and here at home. Forced withdrawal is the goal of the terrorists and guerrillas. Therefore, it's time to increase the number of combat troops in Iraq with strong and specific security goals to be reached in that dangerous Sunni triangle of communities. Allow me to stress the words "combat troops," because the war isn't over and we already have plenty of support troops on the ground. There is also little doubt that we need more operational and tactical intelligence for these combat soldiers.
The Pentagon tells us there are 133,000 American men and women wearing our uniform in Iraq. Fine, except some experts tell us this means about 56,000 are combat-trained. Edward N. Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, recently wrote in The New York Times that "even the finest soldiers must sleep and eat. Thus the number of troops on patrol at any one time is no more than 28,000 -- to oversee frontiers terrorists are trying to cross, to patrol rural terrain including vast oil fields, to control inter-city roads, and to protect American and coalition facilities. Even if so few could do so much, it still leaves the question of how to police the squares, streets and alleys of Baghdad, with its six million inhabitants, not to mention Mosul with 1.7 million, Kirkuk with 800,000, and Sunni towns like Fallujah, with its qu arter-million restive residents."
Luttwak goes on to tell readers: "In fact, the 28,000 American troops are now so thinly spread that they cannot reliably protect even themselves; the helicopter shot down on Sunday was taking off from an area that had not been secured, because doing so would have required hundreds of soldiers. For comparison, there are 39,000 police officers in New York City alone -- and they at least know the languages of most of the inhabitants, few of whom are likely to be armed Baathist or Islamist fanatics."
The Pentagon strategists and the White House experts should be listening to Sen. John McCain, who says that at least 15,000 more troops are needed in Iraq now. This is true unless, as the senator says, we want to risk "the most serious defeat on the global stage since Vietnam." Happy noises coming from the Pentagon and White House about cutting back on the number of troops is no longer music to the ears of a growing number of Americans.
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