Wampum

Dr. Rice went out of her way on the subject of Syria yesterday.

What could happen if the Syrians, or the Iranians, or both, decided that since they will lose all the assets they have that are on the American air taskings -- early warning, air defense, aircraft, runways, telephone exchanges, ministry buidlings, munitions dumps, vehicle parks, barracks, ... at some point in the proximal future, decided to expend these assets imposing cost on the Americans, rather than attempt to impose cost on the Americans as the air taskings are executed? Then undertake the long war of attrition that characterizes distributed defense in depth against a technologically superior but logistically inferior smaller force, the war after the American air taskings has exhausted its target list and moves on to bombing civilian economic targets and military targets of opportunity?

The Americans have already shown that they are affected by the existing level of Iraqi forces, and forced to convoy and airlift interior to Iraq. Could the convoy and airlift interior cost boundary be extended to a larger area? Could the Americans transit Israel at no cost, or would they by force to fight in Syria by extending MSR Tampa from Camp Anaconda to somewhere proximal to Damascus? Could the Americans transit Pakistan at no cost, or would they by force to fight in trans-Zagros Iran from Basra? Actually, those are "givens", since "transit" through either adjacent state would place those states in the zone of unrestricted warfare. And "unrestricted" really means "unrestricted".

But before the Americans impose battle at the times and places and terms of their choosing on the active-duty and reserve military in Syria and Iran, those militaries can impose battle on the over-extended and most fragile elements of the American forces organized as an occupation of Iraq, and being re-organized as invasion forces.

An inverted pyramid is unstable. Kuwait is the apex of the American pyramid in Iraq, and the Americans could be forced to defend on six fronts simultaniously -- the central Iraq front, the current war, the Gulf front in a second War of the Tankers, expanded to target inbound container vessels, the Basra front targeting the UK forces and political committment to remain a party to the expanded agression in Iraq, the Western Desert front extending manouver into Saudi Arabia, the Khouzestan front to tie down forces along the entire front, the Koremshah front facing Baghdad, and finally, the northern roll of the dice. Is Turkey in or out? Can the Americans draw-down leaving the Kurdish Pershmegas to guard American interests, or do they have to garrison Iraq Kurdistan and contain regular army and paramilitary forces operating from Iranian Kurdistan?

Of course the Americans will win, but all they will have won is the destruction of assets the air taking orders were supposed to eliminate at no cost when the Americans chose to impose battle, and there will be costs. A month or two of bad news. Then the Americans will have to start the 100km/day advances into Syria and Iran, until they stall out and the attrition-phase of the stereo version of the 2nd Iraq-Iran War begins.

Unless ... the reserve army of 400,000 men, well armed yet overrun, the Iraq army, reactivates during this opportunity. If that happens, surprise may be an understatement.

The nice thing about writing about Iran, is that very few people actually read what I write.