WASHINGTON, March 29 (UPI) -- First of two parts.
While dilettantes believe the attack is the most difficult military art, most soldiers know better. Carrying out a successful retreat is usually far harder.
One of history's most successful retreats, and certainly its most famous, is the "Retreat of the 10,000." In 401 B.C., 10,000 Greek hoplites hired themselves out as mercenaries to a Persian prince, Cyrus the Younger, who was making a grab for the Peacock Throne. Inconveniently, after the Greeks were deep in Persia, Cyrus was killed. The hoplites' leader, Xenophon, the first gentleman of war, led his men on an epic retreat through Kurdish country to the coast and home. Surprisingly, most of them made it. Safely back in Athens, Xenophon wrote up his army's story, cleverly titling it the Anabasis, which means the advance. It was not the last retreat so labelled.
If the above scenario sounds familiar, it should. America now has an army, not of 10,000 but of more than 140,000, deep in the ancient territory of the Persian Empire, which effectively includes Shiite Iraq, despite the ethnic difference. We are propping up a shaky local regime in a civil war. Our local allies are of dubious loyalty, and the surrounding population is not friendly. Our lines of communication, supply and retreat all run south, to Kuwait, through Shiite militia country. They then extend on through the Persian Gulf, which is called that for a reason. If those lines are cut, many of our troops have only one way out, the same way Xenophon took, up through Kurdish country and Asia Minor (now Turkey) to the coast.
What is the chance that could happen? Higher than anyone in Washington or the senior U.S. military seems to think.
Two events, separately or combined, pose a credible threat of severing our forces lines of communication.
The first is an American or Israeli attack on Iran. Iran has publicly announced that it will respond to an Israeli attack as if the U.S. were also involved. Iran potentially could cut U.S. supply lines in Iraq by encouraging Iraqi Shiite militias to attack them, by infiltration into southern Iraq of the Revolutionary Guards, by attacking with the regular Iranian Army or by blocking the Persian Gulf with mines, coastal batteries and naval forces.
Regarding the first option, a British journalist asked Ayatollah Mohamad Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, or SCIRI, and the Badr Brigades and a recent White House guest, what his militia would do if America attacked Iran. "Then," he replied, "we would do our duty."
A second possible threat is a move to cut U.S. forces' lines of communication by the Shiite militias in response to events inside Iraq. At the moment, the Shiites are avoiding confrontations with American troops, not because they are afraid of them but because they are practicing good operational art. Their objective is to have the Americans fight the Sunnis for them. So long as U.S. forces are doing that, it makes no sense for them to get into a dust-up with American units.
However, loud voices in Washington want American forces in Iraq to start a two-front war, attacking the Shiite militias as well as the Sunni insurgents, on the grounds that both are threats to our puppet Iraqi government. Should those voices prevail, the Shiites would at some point have to respond, with Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Militia probably in the lead.
Next: Preparing for the worst
(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation.)
