Ambiguous anniversary -- 10 years after Iraq, personal thoughts

Seth In Iraq, April 2003

From early childhood I was always fascinated with the military, the history of war and soldiering. I cannot remember a time when this wasn't so. Before I was out of elementary school I had read every book of military history at my local library. Growing up I always knew what I was going to do when I grew up -- be a soldier.

Along the way I discovered other loves and interests as well, and being a journalist often vied for first place in my heart, but when it came time to apply for college (and there was absolutely no question of a skipping college, as I wanted to be an officer) my selection criteria were two -- that it have a journalism program and that it have ROTC. I had also applied for West Point, and my Congressman, Rep. Hastings Keith, had appointed me as an alternate, but the primary apparently went and I wasn't willing to wait another year.

Now 30+ years of life brings a lot of detours, side trips and changes in perspective and it's not my place here to recount my entire life story. Suffice it to say that I did get the chance to be both a journalist and a soldier, so I did get to be what I wanted to be when I grew up. But the 10 year anniversary being marked today has much more to do with the soldierly part of my personal story, than the journalist part.

Naturally, a military career involves the possibility of going to war and, as it turned out, right up until New Year's Day of 2003, I thought the twists and turns of fate were going to mean that it was my fate to serve a full military career without ever going to war. Sure, there had been plenty of wartime incidents since I earned my commission in 1979 -- Grenada, Panama, Bosnia, Kuwait and more. But it always seemed that I was in the wrong place as each happened and I missed out. For example, because I was the Commandant's List graduate at the Field Artillery School, I was offered the opportunity to go on active duty and I had a choice of going to Fort Bragg for the 82d Airborne or going to Germany. Well, I'd always wanted to go to Germany, so that was my selection -- and just as I arrived in Germany Grenada happened!  While there's no guarantee I would gone to Grenada anyway -- possibly a newly arrived lieutenant might not have been deployed -- it's possible I might have. Instead I spent three years serving in Germany in the Cold War that never turned hot.

Likewise I missed the first Gulf War because I was in the Yankee Division at the time and it wasn't activated.

So I watched the gathering war clouds in late 2002 like every other citizen, with little notion that I might personally be affected. When asked, as I was often, I would tell people that it seemed very unlikely that the Army would need or want a broken-down old major from the Individual Ready Reserve.

And then on Jan. 7, 2003, the telegram came.

"Pursuant to Presidential Executive Order of 14 Sept., 2001, you are relieved from your present reserve component status and are ordered to active duty."

My daughter could hear from from the hallway as I employed my soldierly vocabulary rather loudly to express my astonishment.

So on Feb. 2, the day after my 48th birthday, I was off to Fort Sill, Oklahoma and a peculiar adventure.

Through a series of events that are all-to-familiar to anyone who has spent any time in uniform and yet are too banal to be worth memorializing, I found myself watching the start of the Iraq War like most everyone else -- on CNN. In my case, I was watching the opening salvos from a hotel room in Fort Carson, Colo., where I was temporarily parked while I waited for transportation to join my wartime assigned unit -- Joint Special Operations Task Force -- North.

Yeah, in yet another peculiarity of my wartime career, I was on my way to take part in the war in the Kurdish zone up north. Ironically, I would get to earn a combat patch after all -- and that patch would be the Special Forces Patch!!!  I will credit my extensive reading of history to help me handle the capriciousness of wartime fate that brought this result. For it meant, quite frankly, that I had a very easy war, personally.

Joint Special Operations Task Force North was built around the Headquarters, 10th Special Forces Group, and they were on the move, so it took me a while to catch up to them, but finally in early April I did, in Costanza, Romania, after passing through Germany. And so I got to watch the fall of Baghdad, like many of you -- on Fox News, which we had a feed for. Eventually I ended up in Iraq, itself. If you look at the map, below, from the wargame Operation Iraqi Freedom, I landed in hex "I-2" flying in on a C-17 I shared with an M1 tank! We rode into a convoy to Irbil, in hex H-2 on the map, where I spent the next 35 days working in the HQ for JSOFTF-N.  For most of that time I held a position on the staff called "Ground Fires Officer" which essentially meant I was coordinating the artillery in the JSOFTF-N area. This would have been an interesting job -- except for the Turkish parliament. Because Turkey refused to let the 4th Infantry Division invade Iraq via Turkey, they had to go through Kuwait instead -- which meant there was no artillery in JSOFTF-N to coordinate! We had a grand total of six guns of 105mm artillery in the entire area (and that only because the commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade insisted on bringing his whole brigade). All our fire support was provide by air, so the Air Force guy sitting next to me was pretty busy, but I had little to do except watch his desk while he went to the latrine and a few other admin tasks.

It was a great ringside seat, however. While much smaller than the Task Force that invaded Iraq from Kuwait, JSOFTF-N was considered a corps-level command under CENTCOM and therefore I got to see the war unfold at a higher level HQ.

Operation Iraqi Freedom. Seth passed through hexes I-2, H-2, H-3 and H-4

A little over a month after arriving in Iraq the 10th SFG handed over control of operations in northern Iraq to the 101st Airborne and pulled out -- European Command wanted their Green Berets back. So we drive through Hex H-3 to hex H-4 (Kirkuk) and flew out, bound for Germany and then Colorado and my war was over, just like that. It took another six months for the Army to finally decide it didn't need me anymore and send me home, but those six months were just spent in casual duty at Ft. Carson and Ft. Sill.

So I had an easy war. Remarkably, we did not suffer a single fatal casualty among American forces in JSOTF-N while I was there. Our job was to tie down Saddam's forces in Northern Iraq so they couldn't intervene  elsewhere. To do that we had an eclectic mix of forces. Numerically, the bulk of the force was represented by about 60,000 Kurdish Peshmerga militia, but the bulk of the combat power was represented by the three battalions of green berets of the 10th Special Forces Group. At various times we also had a battalion of infantry from the 10th Mountain Division, a Marine Expeditionary Unit, the 173rd Airborne Brigade and other stuff. There was air support provided by the USAF, USMC and USN. Oh, and some folks from the "Other Government Agency" were about, here and there.

So here's my ambivalence about the whole experience. I got to go to war, after all, which was a childhood ambition and the culmination of an entire military career. And I'm thankful that I came through it not only physically safe, but spared any real psychological toll from my experience. As I have told people before, it's an oddity of my life that, despite being a "combat vet," that the only place I've been downrange from hostile fire ended up being as a reporter in Brockton, Massachusetts!

And yet, while I am proud of my service, I have come to feel very disillusioned about what that service amounted to. While nothing I did contributed to that outcome, the bottom line is that the war I was in ended up being a huge disaster for my country.

Like most Americans, I was deeply affected by 9/11 and when the Bush administration made its case for war, I was prepared to believe them. I was convinced that they must have secret information that proved that Saddam really had WMD and was ready to use it. Certainly we acted at JSOTF-N as if that were the case. It was a genuine concern throughout combat ops. I would have found it unbelievably cynical to think that the administration was wrong about there being WMD. And I simply assumed that the government would not do something like invade without having a well-thought-out postwar plan.

Well, we know now that I was wrong, of course. Not only were there no WMD, but worse, there was no plan. You know, I can forgive the delusion about the WMD. We were owed better, but they were human and I understand how human failings can lead to a delusion like the WMD fiasco. But I can't forgive the lack of planning for the postwar situation. I mean, there was no possibility we were going to lose the fighting part of the war. Zero, zilch, nada. Long before the end of World War II, Gen. George C. Marshall and his planners started planning for the end of World War II -- and while many mistakes were made in 1945 and 1946, there was a plan and it was carried out and it basically worked. So what's the excuse for the Iraq debacle? There was at least as much time available planning for that postwar world as Marshall had.

So, while we won the initial campaign, we lost the war because we were failed at the highest levels. And I resent it. I resent it that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Franks lost my war.

Those who follow me online at Facebook and elsewhere know that I have been a consistent critic of those who advocate for war with Iran, and I'll make no bones about it, my Iraq War experience drives that criticism. I've since retired from the Army. I, personally, won't be going back to war. (Any scenario that has me toting a  rifle again is so dire that you know we'd in deep doodoo.) But I have had to go to a funeral for someone who died in the war -- a friend of my daughter -- and I have seen the corrosive cost of the Iraq War on our politics, our budget, our civil liberties and our good sense. The bar has been raised, in my view. For at least the second time in my life, I have seen the government get us into an ill-advised war (Vietnam, now Iraq) that it couldn't win.  Third time is not a charm.

So 10 years on, I find myself an older, sadder and, I hope, wiser man. I hope it's also a wiser country.

Back to the Future -- Iraq 2002

It's an anniversary season surprisingly little remarked upon in the mass media, but this summer 10 years ago the Pentagon was drawing up plans for the invasion of Iraq. I suppose the presidential campaign season is sucking most of the air of of the room, but can anyone doubt that ,had the war turned out as the Bush administration hoped and expected, the 10th anniversary of the war would be a big deal and this summer's anniversary of the fateful decision to invade would have been noteworthy?

Of course, things didn't turn out as expected, and from the point of view of a wargamer there's an interesting point of view to be had on that.

While the vast majority of wargames depict battles and campaigns that actually happened, there has always been a significant portion based on what-could-be, not just what was. Indeed. the very first wargames were military training tools and were largely geared towards helping train officers to conduct future operations. A secondary purpose was to evaluate plans and tactics. Hobby wargames based on history were a much later development, with H.G. Wells Little Wars in the early 1900s and Roverts Gettysburg in the 1960s.

Once they went there, wargame designers found that there was a much bigger market for refighting the battles of the past than speculative or training style wargames. But wargames based on possible future wars or battles have never been  completely absent and were quite popular during the Cold War ear, especially.

In particular, just about every aspect of the Cold war turning hot was explored in a vast number of NATO vs. Warsaw Pact games. But various other potential wars have featured in sundry games over the years -- from rather likely ones such as renewed Arab-Israeli and Indo-Pakisatni wars to some highly unlikely one such as fighting between Flemings and Walloons in Belgium or invasions of the United States by foeign coalitions.

But remarkably, very few of the actual major wars that have been fought since the rise of modern wargaming have been anticipated. There was no wargame predicting the Iraq-Iran war, the Falklands War or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.   During the Gulf War the previously published Gulf Strike was repurposed to cover the developing situation and S&T under Jim Dunnigan did a fairly credible job of throwing together Arabian Nightmare, also reflecting imminent operations, but this was a rather different case of prognostication than the typical what-if game.

So there's very little evidence available for evaluating whether what-if games about potential wars are really worth anything at all, as far as providing any insights, aside from games at a very tactical level, which often mix actual and hypothetical scenarios.

Which brings me to the unique case of Back to Iraq, Ty Bomba's examination of a potential second war between Iraq and the United Startes which went through three editions between the end of the first Gulf War and the second Iraq War.  Historians in the future sufficiently detached from the passions and partisanship of today may, I think legitimately look at Back to Iraq as part of the groundwork that prepared the way for that war's occurance.

And I don't mean to pick on Bomba at all. When he wrote so matter-of-factly that "(Saddam) regained the freedom necessary to carry on his various chemical, biological and nuclear weapons research programs" he was expressing a sentiment shared by many, myself included, at the time.

Rather, the lesson to be drawn is how unimaginable the future is, especially the further into it you go and the more of it you include. Back to Iraq, third edition, which appeared early in 2002 (evidence in the magazine suggests that it was largely designed in Oct. 2001), does a credible job of predicting the general course of events and even some of the order of battle. It's a relatively straightforward job to adjust it to match the historical events, which I did in this "historical scenario,"

But subsequent events showed that the game fundamentally missed the point of the war, which that it was not about defeating Saddam's rickety rump conventional forces, but was about creating the conditions on the ground that would win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people and give the United States the stable ally it wanted in the region. To be fair, Bomba was hardly alone in missing this point. President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, Gen. Franks and viceroy Bremer were among those who also misread the fundamental nature of Iraq and led the United States down the wrong  path. But to the extent that Back to Iraq didn't attempt to ask the question of "what next?" let alone attempt an answer, it illustrates the biggest limitation of any what-if wargame that attempts to provide an insight into a potential war.

A contemporary example of this is the Clash of Arms game Persian Incursion. based on the excellent Harpoon 4 system, I don't think there's a better or more exhaustive open source examination of what an Israeli war with Iran would look like, and, frankly, I suspect there isn't a classified examination that's better, either.

The strength of Persian Incursion, however, lies in its technical and tactical evaluation of how the Israelis could target Iran's nuclear capabilities and what the Iranians can do about it. Militarily the answer ends up being clear. The biggest challenge for Israel is the logistics of mounting the raid and delivering the ordnance. And there's very little that Iran can do about it and nothing they do has a significant effect on the outcome. So does this make the whole thing a forgone conclusion?

Not really, because Larry Bond, as the game designer, is compelled to address the other ramifications of such a raid and the war by adding a subset of rules, styled "political" to deal with the larger context of the war. Now I think he does  a pretty good job and its highly entertaining.  Indeed, because of the manifest military impotence of the Iranian side it's the only thing that makes this a "game" at all. But this illustrates starkly the predictive limitation of the game as a whole. There's really no question that Israel has the physical means to destroy any target in Iran it chooses to destroy. But what that ends up meaning and whether the end result even counts as a "victory" is less clear. In the game it's possible for Iran to win a political victory regardless of the fate of its nuclear program. Where the player would be wrong is in assuming this is just an artificiality to make Persian Incursion a "game." In fact, it's the main insight of Persian Incursion as opposed to Back to Iraq and what makes PI a better tool than Back to Iraq was. Indeed, properly understood, PI is the cautionary tale that Back to Iraq never was, because PI makes it clear that the key battleground of an Israeli-Iran war is not between the two military establishments but the political context in which the war occurs. This is a truth that flew right over the head of Back to Iraq.

A commercial wargame is just one small voice in the wilderness of the mass media, but to the extent that it provides a little insight to the citizen weighing the costs of war something like PI provides a much more solid contribution than Back to Iraq by at least asking the right question -- even if it can't provide an answer.

Unremarked anniversary

Even by me, but yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the end of ground operations during Desert Storm -- an anniversary little mentioned in the media. One suspects that the ongoing morass that ensued after we did go on to Baghdad has something to do with that.

That said, it is hard to imagine that 20 years have gone by. As it turned out, I missed Round 1 of the Iraq contests because my National Guard unit was not called up for duty -- there being plenty of regular troops available in that immediate post-Cold War world to easily handle the contingency. In contrast I ended up being called out tothe IRR to serve in Round 2 because the military was so short of field grade officers that someone like me was needed! What a difference a decade makes.

The First Iraq War was notable for the quick response of wargame companies to the unfolding situation. Strategy & Tactics rushed out Arabian Nightmare before the fighting even commenced, while even stodgy old Avalon Hill updated its Gulf Strike (under the Victory Games brand) with exampsions that covered the unfolding situation. I remember at the time testing out the situation using both games soliatire -- and each, while using very different systems, made it clear that the only question was WHEN, not IF, Iraq was going to be ejected from Kuwait. Other games, such as Omega Games Desert Victory, made it clear on the tactical level that the Iraqis were out of their depth. As it turned out, no game was able to capture the full extent of the impending Iraqi rout, largely because it was off the charts and anything that reflected the reality would have been deemed "unrealistic."

Even the post-war Desert Storm published in Command Magazine (cover above) had to have special "Historical" rules to reflect the actual event while presenting as a standard game a more credible Iraqi opponent. It didn't help. While a perfectly good wargame, Desert Storm wasn't too popular.

There were a few games published before Round Two as well, notably Back to Iraq (Thre editions in Command and S&T) and Millennium Wars: Iraq and at least one right after the fighting (Iraqi Freedom in Armchair General) but none of them dealt with anything past the intiial fighting. This, of course, turned out to be a major oversight because the period AFTER the conventional phase turned out to be the critical one. It's too bad that on one thought to ask those questions at the time because it might have provided a cautionary tale when it was really needed.

So where is this generation's "Grunt?"

Back in 1971, while combat operations still raged in Vietnam, Strategy & tactics magazine published a groundbreaking design called Grunt. This game included a number of firsts. It was the first commercial squad-level wargame. It was S&T's first game with die-cut counters. It was one of the very first simulation games published about a conflict during that conflict.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be little interest in designing such a game dealing with today's conflicts. I can understand a certain reluctance to try designing a game dealing with the strategy or politics of the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq -- everybody seems to be having a hard time wrapping their minds around what forces are really at work.

But at the tactical level it's not so complicated. One would think there's be some interest in depicting a G.I.-level view of the fighting, but there's little there and nothing yet in any of the wargame magazines, so far as I know. Why not? Is it the controversial subject? Hard to see that it cold be, after all, Vietnam was surely even more controversial when Grunt was published.

Plausible war? Red Dragon Rising

Speculative wargames have been a staple since SPI published Red Star/White Star, and in particular speculation about how a possible confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact as so fertile a topic for wargame designers that games on that topic were virtually a hobby within the hobby and contemporary combat generally ranked among the top two or three most popular wargame topics in SPI polls for years.

Of course that confrontation never came to be and the bottom sort of dropped out of the genre after the Fall of Communism in 1989. Oh sure, there's still an occasional game published on the topic, but it's dropped down somewhere between the Spanish-American War and the War of Austrian Succession in wargamer interest.

Even during the heyday of NATO-Warsaw Pact interest there were a few other stabs at treating other prospective wars -- and some of those even happened. The SPI game Sinai was famously redesigned in 1973 just before publication to account for the actual October War.

Still, I think it's fair to say that most of the major conflicts of the Cold War era that actually broke out were unanticipated by wargame designers. And who could blame them? There's a considerable amount of implausibility of Britain and Argentina coming to blows, Iraq invading Iran or even the Soviets invading Afghanistan. Implicit in making the case for a plausible future-history wargame is making a case that one side or the other has something to gain. The unpleasant outcome for the aggressor in those three wars suggest it really wasn't a good idea. (Yes, I am aware that Iraq supposedly "won" it's war with Iran, but I don't think there's any doubt it was a very hollow victory).

The post-Berlin Wall world has seen a steadily decreasing number of international state-on-state conflicts of the sort wargames handle best and wargamers find interesting. Most conflicts these days are low-level guerilla wars, insurgencies and terror campaigns.

Advances in printing technology have made it possible to rush into print with a wargame if there's sufficient lead-time in the crisis. Both the first Gulf War and the more recent Iraq War saw pre-conflict wargames hit the market, but they were hardly great examples of prognostication. The very title of Back to Iraq (which appeared in various editions in Command and then Strategy & Tactics magazine suggests how predictable the occurrence of that war would be. But even the Iraq War games that did appear missed the real nature of the war that would be fought -- stopping after a month or so of fighting in the belief that the issue would be decided. We now know that the "Mission Accomplished" moment was really just the beginning of the story. And I don't think anybody designed a wargame involving an American intervention in Afghanistan beforehand.

So how many plausible situations exist for a major state-to-state war in the current international climate? In the post-Cold War world there were brief fads of looking at potential wars between the United States and Japan, some kind of resurrected Russian state or even the "World" banding together to take down the remaining superpower USA. All of these had more of the aura of some kind of "Sci Fi" treatment than an examination of a real possibility.

There seem to be five possible international flash points that could boil over into some sort of major state-on-state war. Some of these have had wargames designed about them, a few have not.

1. Korea -- For more than 50 years the threat of war has hung over the Korean peninsula, but despite the weird reclusive nature of the North Korean regime, the chances of war breaking out there seem to recede each year. The fact is that any chance the North Koreas had of overrunning the South dissipated years ago -- a fact that even a madman can see. There have been a few of wargames looking at this, including some in detail -- but the last one was almost a decade ago.

2. Israel -- Another area that has seen more than a half-century of conflict and will undoubtedly see more, but not state-on-state. There gulf in military might between the Palestinians and the Israelis resembles late Nineteenth Century colonial warfare. No one has bothered to design a game on this topic.

3. Iran -- Possibly the single most likely war -- with both Israel and the United States has plausible foes to Iran, and yet no one has tried to design a wargame on how this could play out. Is it too politically fraught, hard to research or what?

4. Pakistan -- This resembles a NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation in miniature -- two large, conventional armies with nuclear weapons facing off along a long border in a shallow theater. There were a couple of wargames on the topic around the beginning of the decade but nothing recently. The chances of this one happening seem to have receded for the moment, but it wouldn't take a lot for it to come to a boil again.

5. China -- This one has caught the fancy of recent designers for some reason. Red Dragon Rising was a big hit in S&T magazine and even had some expansion counters in a recent issue. The last issue of Command Magazine featured a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. And Taiwan remains a potential flash point, but like many of the other long-simmering conflicts around the world, the passage of time seems to be lessening the chances of war. The potential costs are high and the stakes seem relatively low, especially because everyone concerned seems to have an interest in kicking the ball down the field.

Most of the anticipated conflicts seem unlikely to erupt into anything wargame-worthy. Are there any out-of-left field Falklands War situations out there?

There don't seem to be many candidates. Neither North America nor Western Europe seem to have any. The EU integration of economies and distaste for military spending make a state-on-state war unthinkable in Western Europe (which is an astounding break with the past, BTW).

Hardly any African states have the wherewithal to consider meaningful state-on-state fighting. South America has some countries with the potential for military power, but a lack of state-vs.-state disputes that anybody would want to fight over, the antics of Venezuela notwithstanding.

That leaves Asia and the Middle East where most of the potential wars have already been discussed. Could Thailand and Burma battle? What about Russian and the Ukraine? Australia and New Zealand? Well, I guess the last one would be quite a stretch. The Russia-Ukraine possibility was been touched on in one game, but that's it.

Of course, the lack of suitable topics for plausible future wars is not a bad thing. And our forbears have provided us with no shortage of historical wars to refight, so this is no crisis.

My wars

One of the driving forces behind my interest in wargames was World War II. As a kid growing up in the 1960s that war was ever-present in the media. Veterans of the war were men in the prime of their lives.

Quite a few Twilight Zone episodes were set in World War II, which is no surprise considering that Rod Serling was a combat vet himself. The war was also a popular theme for other TV shows. Some were action-oriented like Combat, Rat Patrol and 12-O'Clock High. Others were even comedies like McHale's Navy and, amazingly, Hogan's Heroes set in a prison camp.

And World War II movies were omnipresent on afternoon TV movie shows.

While my dad was a Korean War vet (the forgotten war) my best friend's dad was a veteran of Guadalcanal and we were therefore really excited when we found out there was an Avalon Hill game on the topic.

My own kids seem far less interested in such things, I guess because my own wars lack the drama of World War II, but I did get to serve in at least two wars in my own military career.

The least dramatic, although perhaps more important,was the Cold War. I served, like so many others, in the struggle between the democratic West and the Reds. Although it was a shooting war in some places and times, notably Korea and Vietnam, most of it involved little shooting but a of of training, boredom and "being there." In addition to my stateside service, I also got to spend a little over three years on the "front" in Germany with this unit (as depicted in the game TAC AIR):

The 1st Battalion, 80th Field Artillery was equipped with the Lance, a tactical ballistic missile that could be armed with a conventional warhead, but was primarily meant as a nuclear delivery system.

The counter depicts the missile on its portable launcher as deployed for airmobile use, but that was a rarely used capability that, frankly, seemed untenable on a battlefield. While the launcher had wheels, you couldn't safely tow the missile that way.

Instead the missile was almost invariably deployed on its fully tracked carrier, as example of which is shown here on display at the Field Artillery Museum at Fort Sill, Okla.:

Ironically, by going to Germany I may have missed out on being deployed to the shooting war that DID occur during my active duty stint, the Invasion of Grenada. I was on active duty in the first place because I had done well at the Field Artillery Officer Basic Course at Fort Sill. At the time they offered the top-performing reserve component officer the chance to go on active duty and I had the choice of going to Germany or going to Fort Bragg to be in the 82nd Airborne.
I had long wanted to go to Germany (I even took German in high school) so it was an easy choice, but in retrospect it's easy to se how things could have been different. Whether or not I would have happened to be part of the 82d that deployed to Grenada is impossible to say, but it was a possibility.

I likewise missed the First Gulf War, being at the time in the 26th Yankee Infantry Division. At the time the National Guard insisted that only whole units should be deployed. This meant that, given that no infantry divisions were needed, that the only Mass. National Guard units that saw combat were some non-divisional MP and truck units. The Guard changed their mind about that rule.

As my military career seemed about to wind down without seeing any action whatsoever, I was quite surprised to get a summons to active duty in 2003! I was in the Individual Ready Reserve by then, the non-drilling reserve component. Apparently the Army was short on field grade officers to man all the headquarters units it was creating to manage the second war in the Gulf and I ended up serving in Iraq with the Joint Special Operations Task Force North. This was an unusual unit. Basically it created a Corps-level headquarters around the core of the regimental-sized 10th Special Forces Group headquarters. Naturally, as a special forces group headquarters there were vast areas of expertise required for conventional operations and corps-sized responsibilities that the unit didn't have. So it was beefed up with all sorts of folks, from Navy SEALS, to National Guardsman, Air Force personnel, Marines, OGA (other govt' agency -- i.e. CIA) and, yes, IRRs like me.

The counter above, from the game Operation Iraqi Freedom, depicts some of the Special Forces troops that were part of JSOTF-N.

As it turned out, the refusal of the Turkish government to allow the 4th Mech Division to invade Iraq from the north meant I didn't personally have a very active war, as I was assigned to the "ground fires" section that was responsible for coordinating artillery fire. In the actual event there was just one 6-gun battery of 105m howitzers in our area that the 173rd Airborne Brigade brought along and all the fire support that the special forces teams received was in the form of air strikes coordinated by the Air Force folks instead of us.

I did get to serve, and although it wasn't a time of high drama personally, I've been around long enough to recognize that every small bit part does play its role in the larger story. War and politics being unpredictable, it's hard to say that things might not have played out differently. Or even that the way events did unfold was not in part because of our presence. Certainly the JSOTF-N did occupy the attention of a dozen Iraqi divisions using little more than three battalions-worth of green berets, some Kurds and about four battalions worth of Marines, paratroopers and mountain light infantry. There's little glory in an Economy of Force mission, but it's a Principle of War for good reason.

Here's me in Iraq:

That's one of the special ops helicopters used to support the green berets and other special operators.

Current wars engender surprisingly little wargame attention

One of the surprising things to me about the current state of the wargame hobby is the lack of attention to current contingencies.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s during the peak of the wargame hobby back then there was no shortage of games that dealt with actual contemporary military actions or the recent past. One of the early S&T games was Grunt, which depicted Vietnam combat even as fighting was still going on. Year of the Rat came out just a few months after the 1972 campaign it depicts. At least one Arab-Israeli wargame had to be redesigned because the 1973 war broke out just before publication. Test of Arms was published while some of its campaigns were still in the news. And, of course, the whole NATO vs. Warsaw Pact was an unending source of games until 1990. Even the first Gulf War prompted a batch of real-time depiction and immediate post-war titles.

In contrast, despite the fact that we're currently fighting TWO wars, there's very little to show for it. The initial march on Baghdad phase generated a little bit of action, such as Back to Iraq, but almost nothing since. Likewise the Afghanistan fighting hasn't provoked much in the way of wargame design, not even at the skirmish or tactical level. Where's the Grunt! for 2009?

Back to Iraq Historical Scenario

Back to Iraq (3rd Ed.) Historical Scenario

S&T No. 208

By Seth Owen

Back to Iraq was published in 2002 prior to the actual outbreak of fighting in 2003. Although pretty close to the mark, the actual course of events naturally diverged in details from the best Bomba/Miranda pre-war guesses.

This scenario reflects the actual events as they developed in game terms. Unless otherwise noted, all rules from Scenario One apply. This scenario is meant to use the Advanced Game rules.

3.2 Set aside all Turkish, Syrian, Al-Qaeda, Saudi, Israeli, French, Kuwaiti and NATO forces. None of these will be used. Pull out the three Iranian divisions numbered 1 through 3 and set the rest aside. They will not be used in this scenario.

3.3 Set up the following Coalition forces only.
Anywhere in Kuwait: HQ V Corps, HQ MEF-1, 3rd US Mech Div., 1st UK Armored Div., US MEF.
Anywhere in the Kurdish zone as shown on the map: The three US SOCPG and stacked with them the three like-minded “Iranian” infantry divisions. These now represent the Kurdish Peshmerga troops and are Coalition allies.
In any rough terrain hex within six hexes of the Syrian border: UK SAS
All the air units.

Reinforcements (Can’t move during turn of entry)
Place on the Turn Record Track:
Turn 2: 82nd Airborne and 101st Air Assault in Kuwait (I realize that the entire 82d didn’t deploy, but consider the counter to also represent various non-divisional units not otherwise accounted for.
Turn 4: 10th Mtn Div. Hex 2504 (Represents all the conventional force deployed with JSOTF-North including the 173rd Airborne Bde, the 26th MEU, the EUCOM Heavy Reaction Company with M1 tanks/M2 IFV, the EUCOM Medium Reaction Company with M113 APC and, yes, ONE battalion from the 10th Mountain Div.
Turn 12: 4th Mech Div. in Kuwait. (Optionally, to increase the chances the unit will arrive in time to fight, start rolling for arrival starting turn 5. On a roll of “6” the 4th Mech arrives in Kuwait and can move the following turn.

3.4 Set Up Iraqi forces as follows:
Within 3 hexes of Mosul, but NOT in any Kurdish area hex as shown by the shaded area on the map: V Corps HQ, 1st Mech Div, 7th, 16th and 38th Inf. Div., AA and AD Republican Gd. Div.
Within 3 hexes of Kirkuk, but NOT in any Kurdish area hex as shown by the shaded area on the map: I Corps HQ, 5th Mech Div., 2nd & 8th Inf. Div., NB Rep. Gd. Div.
Within 1 hex of Baqubah: II Corps HQ, 3rd Tank Div., 15th & 34th Inf. Div.
Within 3 hexes of Al-Amarah in Iraq: IV Corps HQ, 10th Tank Div., 14th & 18th Inf. Div.
Within 3 hexes of An-Nasiriyah: III Corps HQ, 6th Tank Div., 11th Inf. Div.
Hex 3329: 51st Mech Div.
Basra: 44th Marine Brigade
Al-Kut: Baghdad Rep. Gd. Div.
Hex 2811: MeK
Within 3 hexes of Baghdad but NOT in Baghdad: RGN HQ, RGS HQ, AN, AD and HM Rep. Gd. Div.
In Baghdad: SRG HQ, SRG “Corps” ADC Bde
Any hex not already containing a unit and NOT in Baghdad: 65thg, 66th and 68th SF Bde
ANY hex in Iraq: AC Tank Bde, RSV arty regt, SdFe Div., GSS Bde, RSV, SBM & MIR Bns, 999 SOF (remove the 999 SF Div.)
Strategic Targets (Rule AG 1.1) Remove the WMD and Terror Camps from the counter mix before following the Scenario 1 instructions

4.6. Iraqi units may not leave Iraq. Any unit which does so is immediately eliminated.

13.4 to 13.7 Do not use. There are no Iraqi chemical weapons

13.8 to 13.13 Do not use. There are no Iraqi nuclear weapons

AG 1.1 Remove the WMD and Terror Camps strategic targets before following the set up rules under Scenario 1.

Use rule sections AG 2.0, 3.0 except for AG 3.11 and AG 4.0

Use AG 5.5 an 5.6

Add the following special rule:

AG 7.0 Operation Iraqi Freedom

In the actual event the Iraqi regular armed forces played a minimal role in the fighting while the Iraqi special forces were much more difficult to neutralize than expected. To account for this employ the following rules:

AG 7.1 Iraqi morale collapse. All regular Iraqi units, defined as all units with black on red print, are subject to morale collapse from the beginning of the game. Any time a regular Iraqi unit moves or is engaged in a battle as either the attacker or defender then roll one die before resolving the battle or conducting the movement. On an odd number the Iraqi regular unit disbands and is permanently removed from play. Roll for each unit individually and roll for each occurrence of the eligible reason (so, for example, an Iraqi regular unit that attempts to move and then attack will roll twice – once before moving and again before attacking.
In addition, during every Coalition Recovery Phase the Iraqi player will roll one die for each regular Iraqi unit and add the current turn number, on a roll of 10 or greater than the unit is disbanded and removed from play. (Note: This means that all remaining Iraqi army units will automatically disband during the Coalition Recovery Phase of Turn 9)
All white-on-red print Iraqi units are immune from the provisions of this rule

AG 7.2 Fedayeen. All Iraqi white-on-red battalions, the GSS Bde, the SdFe “Saddam’s Fedayeen ‘division’” and 999 SOF units can “hide” during their turn by flipping over to their blank side Flipping must be the first action taken before any movement. While hidden they cannot attack or be attacked but can move normally. (Note this means they cannot move through Coalition units, they count for stacking and are subject to all supply and weather effects). Coalition unit can move through a hidden unit and if they end the turn stacked with a hidden unit then the hidden unit must immediately displace one hex within stacking limits and all other rules. If, for any reason, a hidden unit has no legal hex it can displace to then it is removed from the map and placed on the turn record track on the next turn. It can return to play in any legal hex in Iraq. Hidden units can be reconned by AG Surveillance Airstrikes just as if they were Strategic Marker. While face up these units act as ordinary units in every way.

Sources:

Cobra II, by Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor
The Iraq War, by Williamson Murray and Maj. Gen. Robert H., Scales Jr.
Saddam’s Forces Map, Army Times, Feb. 17, 2003
Author’s personal knowledge from duty with JSOFTF-North in 2003

A Line in the Sand on the mark

There are a lot of reasons to play wargames, but one of them is to get some insight into real-world events.
When I think of a game that's a real "study" of history I usually think of some deeply researched and detailed simulation such as Harpoon 4, The Longest Day or perhaps the Tactical Combat Series games I've been reviewing recently.

But sometimes you don't need a lot of hardware-oriented detail to make a pertinent point with a wargame. A good of example of that is a Line in the Sand, TSR's game about the then-looming Gulf War in 1991. It's clearly no detailed military simulation. Yet despite all the fighting the region's seen over the last 60+ years the conflicts there have very little to do with military tactics or strategy. The Middle East is all about the politics.
Militarily there's no real contest at all between the "West" (U.S., Israeli and European) forces and the forces of the Islamic states (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.). Unlike the combat between great powers in the first half of the 20th century which generally pitted roughly comparable military organizations, fighting in the Middle East has been characterized by an enormous gulf in effectiveness -- the kind more usually seen in colonial warfare. So long as a wargame reflects that vast gulf in effectiveness, the details are unimportant.

A Line in the Sand does have a military game, based on the same system used in Red Storm Rising, but it really comes into its own in the Diplomatic Game where players secretly select goals and conduct diplomatic gestures to affect world opinion and the mood of the "Arab Street." Its an amazingly sophisticated design , especially considering it was designed and published on a tight deadline dictated by fast-moving current events.

While there are some mistakes and typos betraying the haste of the production, the design itself works rather well.

It's not "fair" but it is interesting and it's authentic. Every side doesn't have an equal chance of winning, but any body could win, depending on how cleverly they play.

And despite the passage of more than 17 years, the game still feels very current. Iraq may be occupied, but the Iraqi "player" is clearly not out of the "game," just as A Line in the Sand reflects. Nearly every other Gulf War and Iraq War wargame really missed the point of the conflict, which would NOT be decided on some desert battlefield, but in the political arena.

Desert Storm review

Desert Storm: Mother of All Battles is the definitive hex-and-counter wargame on that lopsided, yet incomplete, campaign to Liberate Kuwait in 1991. (At least, no one has subsequently tried to depict the campaign.) It was the issue game in Command No. 13.

Systemically, it’s a variation on the Ty Bomba mechanized warfare system seen in games such as The Tigers are Burning and Blitzkrieg '41, building on common wargame conventions such as NATO-symbolized attack-defense-movement factor units with sequential movement and combat phases in alternating player turns. Each turn represents a day, each hex 12 kilometers and each unit is generally a brigade or division. The presentation is good, with a functional and attractive Mark Simonitch map covering Kuwait and the nearby regions of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. This game was the debut for the larger, 5/8-inch sized counters that graced many subsequent XTR titles. Easier the read and handle than the traditional ½-inch counters, the larger size also meant larger hexes on the map.

The 20-page rulebook hangs various rules on this common system to account for all the bells and whistles of state-of-the-art modern warfare. There is night combat, attack helicopters, supply, deliberate assault and artillery. Battles can be enhanced with engineers, close air support, artillery, attack helicopters, chemical warfare, etc. There are options for divisional integrity, amphibious warfare, naval gunfire support, airmobile tactics, etc., etc. and etc. some more.

So the coalition player, leading a formidable force whose order of battle is depicted in loving detail, has all the tools necessary for full-blown, full-scale mechanized warfare of the most advanced sort. Unfortunately (only in a game sense, of course, it was most fortunate in the actual event) the other side is not much of a challenge. The 12-turn standard scenario is a big “what-if” assuming the Iraqis were a reasonably well-led, competent, trained and motivated army that had an actual combat power resembling what its paper strength and combat experience implied.

As events proved, it had none of those attributes and the Historical scenario is a 4-turn solitaire rampage that the player loses if he manages to suffer even a single step loss.

The game includes some silly variants adding alternate universe Nazis, a Death Ray or Godzilla to the Iraqi army. Command No. 16 added some marginally more likely variants for Russian paratroopers, Iranian intervention and a Japanese contingent. Command No. 14 added the US 10th Mountain Division as an optional reinforcement.

Set up takes about 20 minutes with all unit starting locations printed on the counters. The game can easily be played to a conclusion in an evening,. Victory is based on victory points, with most being awarded for eliminating enemy units and some for territorial objectives.

Recommendations

(Yes) For Wargamers: Hey, it’s a playable, real wargame on the biggest mechanized battle since World War II.

(Yes) For Collectors: As probably the last serious wargame that will ever be published on the historical campaign (there were some other published during the actual run-up to the fighting) it has some collectible interest.

(No) For Euro gamers: As a hard-core hex-and-counter wargames it has a lot of detail and intricate mechanics and in the end, there is no “game” in the game, really. It’s a study.

Gulf Strike 25 years later

Gulf Strike is one of the more remarkable simulations to come out of Victory Games. It ended up coming far more true than nearly any other "what-if" game ever published.
When first published, in 1983, the game concentrated on the potential for a Soviet invasion of Iran and the reaction of the U.S. Rapid Deployment force.
No Soviet invasion of Iran ever came, but there was an Iraqi invasion of Iran, which resulted in a long and bloody war, as well as a low-level "Tanker War" in the Persian Gulf. These ended up being the topic of a 1988 second edition of Gulf Strike with a new scenario and more counters.
No sooner had that war ended than Saddam Hussein's legions invaded Kuwait. Avalon Hill/Victory Games rushed out another updated edition of Gulf Strike that added a new scenario covering the new war, more counters and more maps.
Finally, in The Avalon Hill General, literally has the first bombs started to fall, a final updated expansion with still more counters and a map were published.
I solitaired that "scenario" in real time and the game quite accurately predicted the fact that the Iraqis would be kicked out of Kuwait decisively.
The game itself is highly involved in the style of your typical hard-core simulation wargame. It involves multiple phases, a lot of procedures and quite a few die rolls and charts.
Each game turn, which represents two days of combat, starts with a "Strategic Stage." This quick phases involves resolving any political random events and adding reinforcements.
The second part of the turn is a "Unit Assignment Stage." During this part of the turn units are assigned various "modes" which can affect their ability to perform actions later in the turn. For example, air units can be assigned either "offensive" or "interception" mode.
There's a short Initiative Determination Stage" which determines who will be the "Initiative Player" for the balance of the turn.
There are then three "Action Stages." During the first two the initiative player moves units and conducts combat while the reaction player can make limited counter moves. In the third action stage the reaction player takes the lead and the initiative player reacts.
To say that the game and procedures are involved is to engage in considerable understatement. The game insert includes 28 examples and tables and other times. Each action stage comprises three phases, each with two or three "segments." Each land combat unit can be in one of seven different formations. There are eight different air missions that aircraft can be given. There are eight or nine
different ratings and values on a naval or air unit counter.
Command control and logistics constrain all operations, there are rules for the detection of targets and countermeasures. There are rules for mines, Patriot missiles, stealth aircraft and just about every imaginable other aspect of modern warfare.
It's really a pity that more so-called military experts and pundits who blithely urged military strikes against Iran recently didn't take the time to play through a game or two of Gulf Strike in order to develop a better appreciation for what was possible.
One reason I was very wary of seeing military action against Iran is because playing Gulf Strike had given me an appreciation for how difficult such a campaign could be. While I never tried playing a U.S. invasion of Iran, I have played out the old Soviet invasion of Iran, and their much larger army was still insufficient for a "cake walk" through Iran. It's a very large and rugged country and the logistics alone so daunting that it's obvious only a major military involvement could possibly succeed. An investment in military resources far beyond anything proposed or politically possible.
Unfortunately Victory Games and the old Avalon Hill is gone, otherwise we may have seen a further updated edition for the second war with Iraq and the potential war with Iran, but interested players can probably adjust the game with the counters and information already provided. The U.S. military forces committed to the latest war were substantially smaller than the forces in the earlier war. It would be an interesting exercise.

Bali in Iraq

I've never hit the lottery, but my deployment to Iraq in 2003 may be close to the wartime equivalent.
I spent 35 days in northern Iraq attached to the Joint Task Force North headquarters, which was the highest command level in that area.
While the threat of injury from enemy action was minimal, I did have a little concern over the number of folks walking around with loaded weapons! As it turns out, nothing untoward happened while I was there.
It's been said that war is long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. As I said, I missed out on any of the terrifying parts, but I did get my full share of the boring parts.
I was on the overnight shift in the main tactical operations center, so my 12-hour duty shifts were interesting, but the 12-hour off time was hard to fill. After eating and sleeping during the part of the day that wasn't too hot to sleep, there wasn't an awful lot to do and a lot of time to not do it in.
I had brought some playing cards, including a copy of the card game Bali. While I spent quite a bit of time playing solitaire games using may "Most Wanted Iraqi" 52-card deck, it was nice to take a break and do something along a different line.
The solitaire game of Bali revolves around using its 54-card deck to build words in columns. Some simple rules explain when cards can be moved around and how. Similar to Scrabble, some letters are worth more than others. For example, a "J" is worth 4, while a "D" is worth 1 point. The value of the letters is added up and then multiplied by the number of letters for a final score.
My goal became to beat my previous record, which meant a lot of pretty good games didn't make the cut. I got as high as 362 before I left. I haven't had a long stretch of boring time lately to devote to revisiting my Iraq record since then, but someday I'd like to see how high I can get.
I had the small Avalon Hill edition which was easy to travel with.

Another "phony soldier" heard from

Read only if you're ready for a lump in your throat:

http://armyofdude.blogspot.com/2007/09/real-deal.html

Credibility

One of the truisms of fighting a counterinsurgency is the information war is vital. One unfortunate corollary of this is that there's a natural tendency on the military's side to start trying to manipulate the numbers. There's nothing wrong with making your best case and it's useful to try to influence the perception of all parties concerned so long as it's done smartly and honestly. But it's very important that the military doesn't lose sight of the true facts of the situation. It's very easy to delude oneself and tendencies in that direction have to be resisted. if they are not, reality will eventually bite you in the ass.
One of the worst failings of the current administration has been its willingness to not only spin, but apparently believe it's own spin. This can only lead to a disaster in wartime. We made a lot of fun of Baghdad Bob and his ilk during the first part of the war. Not only did he spout nonsense, but there's every indication he believed it. There was a case of an Iraqi general who was captured in his personal car by U.S. troops during that initial campaign who had no idea the Americans were in the city. Unfortunately, it's not so funny now, as evidence mounts that our side is doing the same thing.

From Obsidian Wings/Andrew Sullivan we find out that the military's accounting of Iraqi civilian deaths is getting funky:

UPDATE: IraqSlogger has a useful story on changes in the Pentagon's figures. A graph from the story, courtesy of Ilan Goldberg of the National Security Network:



And an explanation:
"Goldberg explains the abnormalities as best he can:
Abnormality A: Between August and November 2006, DOD started reclassifying “casualties” as “deaths by execution” and suddenly you see a dramatic drop in killings. For example, in March 2006 right after the Samarra Mosque bombings you go from 1,750 “casualties” to 750 “deaths by execution.” Between November 2006 and March 2007 “Deaths by Execution” becomes “Sectarian Murders” but the numbers remain the same.
Abnormality B: Between the March 2007 report and the June 2007 report there was a dramatic change in the number of killings that were reported for the second half of 2006. In both cases the numbers were described as “sectarian murders.” The impact here is that it makes the “pre surge” situation look extraordinarily dire and therefore signals progress thereafter.
Abnormality C: Somehow the reclassification that occurred between the March and June 2007 reports caused the violence numbers in April and May of 2006 to drop dramatically. This was in the months following the Sammara bombings in February 2006 when sectarian violence was escalating."