Sun Tzu, “The Art of War,” III.4: “Thus, what is of supreme importance is to attack the enemy’s strategy.”  Tu Mu comments, ‘He who excels at resolving difficulties does so before they arise.  He who excels at conquering enemies triumphs before threats materialize.’

The Iraq-Iran border was a problem from before the war began.  Michael Rubin noted with some dismay the lack of U.S. responsiveness to the huge influx of fighters, Iranian intelligence assets, and cash that came from Iran into Iraq before the war.  I noted that the border is still problematic, with a flow of traffic so significant that the Iraqi border guards cannot keep up with it or adequately inspect all traffic.

Turning west to the Anbar Province, discussing Michael Fumento’s reporting on Combat Operation Posts, we saw that there was a well-worn path into Iraq in use by foreign fighers:

The impact of the FOB system was shown to me on a map. The foreigners who come into this area do so along a mini-Ho Chi Minh trail from the west, namely Jordan and Syria. And the foreigners tend to be better trained. Certainly any good sniper will come from that route, because Iraqis are terrible shots and hence crummy snipers.

I mentioned that the U.S. would see success in the war in the al Anbar Province by turning this trail into a shooting gallery.  The fighers would die or turn around at the border.  This might have been wishful thinking.  In the continuing theme of inadequate force projection, the Washington Post has an enlightening article on the porous Iraq-Syria border.

U.S. troops in the area are concerned that controls are too loose. For instance, the passport office is sparse and includes a single officer sitting at a desk behind a barred window where travelers line up to show their passports. The officer simply enters the information from each passport into a small ledger.

“The only thing he’s really doing is nothing more than creating a historical log,” said 1st Sgt. Richard DeLeon, 40, of Shafter, Calif., also a member of Apache Troop. “We can’t scan your passport to find out if it’s fake, we can’t scan your photo. You can come in if you have a legitimate passport or a good fake. The weapons are already in Iraq. All you really need to do is bring money.”

Turning our attention for a moment towards the proliferation of weapons, in an interesting finding by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, we have learned that there are many missing U.S. weapons in Iraq:

The Pentagon cannot account for 14,030 weapons - almost 4 percent of the semiautomatic pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons it began supplying to Iraq since the end of 2003, according to a report from the office of the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

The missing weapons will not be tracked easily: The Defense Department registered the serial numbers of only about 10,000 of the 370,251 weapons it provided - less than 3 percent.

1st Sgt. Richard DeLeon isn’t the only one who is concerned about the presence of weapons in Iraq.  Speaking of the U.S. plan to arm the Sunni tribes who have allegedly sided with the government to hunt down al-Qaeda, Iraqi authorities have expressed deep concern over the final disposition of the weapons:

New Iraqi Army Brigadier-General Jassim Rashid al-Dulaimi, from Anbar province, said: “I cannot imagine 30,000 more guns in the Iraqi field. I hope they will reject the idea. Iraq needs more engineers and clean politicians to solve the dilemma of the existing militias rather than recruiting new ones to kill more Iraqis. The idea sounds to me [like] turning the country into a mercenary-recruitment center.�

Shi’ite leader Jaafar al-Assadi said the move would bring more violence. “Al-Anbar will fight even more now with the guns given to those fools,� he said. “They are surely going to sell their weapons to the terrorists or surrender to them sooner or later.�

I recall from reading Ernie Pyle’s “Here is Your War” that he remarked on his astonishment at the huge waste associated with the conduct of war.  War leaves military materiel behind in the country in which it is waged.  This might be an unintended consequence of war, but in the case of arms, more forethought and care should have marked U.S. entry into Iraq, and more caution should mark border security with Iraq at the present.  Iraq is a heavily armed country, with fully automatic weapons in the homes (one per home).  As if this isn’t enough, the U.S. has brought more arms into the country, and even lost some of what was brought.  If for no other reason, this fact alone would make the Anbar Province a highly dangerous place to be, whether you are Sunni, al-Qaeda or U.S.

The requirements to conduct Jihad in Iraq are cash and a fake passport.  The weapons are already there.  There aren’t enough troops to secure the border, and whether it is a mini-Ho Chi Minh trail or a border crossing where fake passport information is logged, the threat from poor border control is too high to ignore.

Perhaps the U.S. and Iraq suffer from the same problem in this instance.