Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Lessons learned in Iraq

Ralph Peters:

AS the presidential election approaches, the cynical charges of "failure" in Iraq obscure a fundamental truth: The conflict has improved our military dramatically.

War teaches. And we're very good learners. We already had the best-trained, best-equipped armed forces in the world. Now we have the most experienced troops, as well. With enduringly high morale.

Operation Iraqi Freedom and the subsequent occupation swept away a pile of dangerous nonsense. We found — again — that airpower alone cannot win wars and that the infantryman remains as indispensable in the 21st century as he was in the bronze age.

The think-tank theories collapsed. Grit, guts and tough training carried the day. "Shock-and-awe" fizzled embarrassingly, but aircraft armed with precision weapons discovered a new role in supporting ground troops fighting in urban terrain.

In the past, preparatory fires from massed artillery preceded major attacks, causing broad destruction. Today, focused prep fires delivered from the air can target terrorist hide-outs over weeks and even months, weakening the enemy physically and psychologically — while dramatically reducing civilian losses — before the troops go in.

Faced with the challenges of operating in cities, our soldiers and their leaders have developed innovative techniques to suit different situations. Some operations are now designed to start and finish between sunset and sunrise. Major assaults have begun to use mass to overwhelm opponents before they can react, to finish in days a fight that doctrine holds would take weeks or months.

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In the past few days, two minor issues have been blown out of proportion, thanks to the debased quality of this year's election campaign. In one instance, an admitted Kerry supporter leaked a year-old message from Lt.-Gen. Rick Sanchez, our former commander in Baghdad. The memo stressed the need to provide supplies and spare parts more swiftly.

Kerry leapt on the document, thundering that the president had failed the troops. In fact, the memo reflected the tardiness of the military logistics system in adapting to wartime conditions. The problems were in the warehouse, not the White House.

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Forecasting what the military will need in wartime isn't a new problem. In World War II, we overestimated the amount of air-defense artillery required and badly underestimated the need for artillery shells and infantrymen. In the latter months of 1944, as our troops approached the Rhine, artillery rounds had to be rationed. At one point, the infantry replacement pool for the entire European Theater was down to one very lonely soldier.

War is not the domain of perfection. Never was, never will be.

The other recent incident involved disobedience to orders. A handful of soldiers refused to drive their assigned vehicles on a convoy mission, complaining that the trucks were in poor shape and protection was inadequate. Well, soldiers in a combat zone don't get to choose the orders they obey. Illegal orders must be refused, but you don't get to decline orders you just don't like.

Danger is part of soldiering. You go where you're told to go and fight when you must. Infantrymen go into danger daily. Drivers can't opt out because a mission worries them.

We should be proud that such incidents have been so few. Trouble makes headlines, not the many soldiers and Marines who serve honorably.

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Today, every soldier, no matter his or her specialty, must have a mastery of basic combat skills. Soldiers can no longer think of themselves primarily as mechanics, or drivers, or clerks. On the new battlefield, everybody's a fighter.

This has always been Marine Corp doctrine. It was one reason why the Marines were able to break out from the Chosin Reservoir in Korea and defeat the Chinese 8th Army which had them surrounded. At one point doctors were pulled out of a hospital and handed rifles to stop a charge of Chinese soldiers. Clerks were in the fox holes with the infantry.