The Army’s chief of staff used Sadr City, a one-mile square section of Baghdad near the Green Zone with a million people tightly packed together, as an example of the challenges for the United States armed forces in carrying out today’s and future missions.
Speaking June 10 at the 25th anniversary dinner of the Army Historical Foundation in suburban Washington, Gen. George W. Casey said, “We’re going to be fighting among the people [in urban areas] where we don’t have a home court advantage.”
This kind of conflict also means “We are going to have to operate with indigenous forces” and employ economic and political elements to succeed in counterinsurgency operations. “What it all boils down to is a hugely complicated environment for our leaders to operate in. That’s the central challenge we have.”
Citing the publication of a new operations manual that takes a broad look at military power in these kinds of missions, “We have been working very hard to learn from what we have been doing for almost seven years,” in “fighting a ruthless enemy that is not going to give up and go home, he said.
Casey predicted that the future would be one of “persistent conflict.”
In that future, economic globalization becomes a double-edged sword, as does technology. Casey said that the trends in demographics are “really pointing in the wrong direction” as more and more of the world’s population gravitates to cities.
“The two things that really worry me the most are weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists and safe havens” where terrorists can plan, stage and operate from.
Casey said that what happened in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006 where 3,000 members of Hezbollah fought 30,000 well-trained and well-equipped members of the Israeli defense force to a standstill also could be an appropriate example of what future conflict may look like.
“Hezbollah, a non-state actor, started that war with over 14,000 rockets and not small rockets, big rockets with warheads of 200 kilograms. They channeled Israeli armored forces into ambushes … with modern anti-tank missiles. They shot down helicopters with anti-aircraft missiles. They shot a cruise missile and hit an Israeli ship in the Persian Gulf. They used unmanned aerial vehicles for intelligence gathering and to attack Israeli targets. They used encrypted cell phones for command and control and they had their command posts hard wired with encrypted computers. And oh by the way, they got their message out on local television.”
Casey cited the work of his predecessors, Gens. Eric Shinseki and Pete Schoomaker, in beginning the largest transformation of the Army since World War II. “We’re about 70 percent there” in achieving the modular brigade-centered force.
He said that he expected the Army to be back in balance in three or four years as it continues to grow the active force and the dwell time between deployment increases.
In his visits to different installations when he first took office, Casey said it was clear that “families were the most brittle part of the force.” In response, he said the Army has doubled its spending on family and soldier programs.
Casey’s appearance at the dinner was one of a number of events the Army scheduled in Washington leading up to its 233rd birthday celebration on June 14. Casey said that in marking the Army’s birthday he “was struck … how lucky the United States of America is” in having such an institution and the nation was “celebrating the service, the sacrifice and successes of 14 generations of Americans.”