The Pause

It is clear that many journalists and commentators believe that the pause in our advance from the south toward Baghdad is a bad thing. It is also pretty clear that they have no idea why this is so.

Many times a pause in the advance does help the defense and hurt the offensive. This happened to the Germans in 1914 after the battle of the Marne and to the Allies in the autumn of 1944 when we could not supply our divisions in France and were unable to finish the German armies in the West. In these two cases, the retreating forces were able to stop, resupply, integrate reinforcements into their order of battle, build new defensive works, and restore command and control.

But this is not some law of nature. Clausewitz warned of the "culminating point of victory" beyond which the attacker becomes weak and vulnerable to a counter-stroke. There are circumstances when a pause is preferable to continuing the pursuit. For example, many historians believe that the Germans would have been much better off in 1941 to stop well short of Moscow. That would have allowed them to dig-in, build up their supplies for the winter, and choose the ground where the Russians would have to begin their counter-offensives.

The key question is this: whose side is time on?

The RG is already in defensive lines of their choosing. Each day of bombing weakens those lines.

Each day our troops receive more supplies. I doubt that there is very much moving out of Baghdad in the face of our air interdiction.

Each day more Iraqi soldiers grasp Saddam's strategic poverty and realize the hopelessness of their situation.