LONDON: The politics require a short, successful, low casualty war to conquer Iraq. The optimists are looking to start the post-Saddam reconstruction of Iraq six days after the military cross the start line. The pessimists remember the weary demoralizing years of Vietnam. Mixed messages emerge from Washington about the nature of the military plan, and the current unavailability of Turkey has reduced the options.
Civilian planners in the Pentagon claim the new technologies will allow them to win in very short order. They talk about a strategy of “shock and awe”. Precision weapons are cheap and available. Mass attacks on key targets from the air should be possible with minimal collateral damage.
Harlan Ullman, a Washington defence analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says an initial two day barrage by cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs will be on a scale never before seen. More cruise missiles will land in Baghdad in 48 hours than were used in the whole 1991 Gulf war. At the same time, the army and marines would secure key sites throughout the country. Some have drawn ill-judged comparison with the rapid surrender of Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Counter-proposals come from the military planners. General Buster Glosson, who was the chief air planner for the last Gulf war, has warned that simultaneous air and ground war is fraught with dangers. Air operations to soften up resistance make for a much easier subsequent ground campaign. Not for the first time has Gen Glosson had to make this case. In August 1990 he recorded in his journal “need air campaign for 15 rounds not three; six days is dumb”. Events proved him right. In the operation to free Kuwait, six weeks of air operations allowed a ground campaign to succeed in 100 hours. This time he predicts a 30-day campaign.
The military are always more cautious than their political masters, but the operational approach to an Iraq war is not the time for major divisions on strategy.
It is easy to forget how large Iraq is: nearly twice the size of Britain. For an invasion over the next few weeks, it now seems likely that, among neighbouring states, only Kuwait will be available as a launchpad. Iran and Syria will not come to the assistance of the US.
Last year one US analyst, William Lind, said: “My worst-case scenario is that we go in through Kuwait so we have a single port of entry and a single line of communication and supply as we go down the Gulf. We get well into Iraq with a small army, our line of communication is cut, and our army is essentially stranded.”
Only time will tell whether the Pentagon technocrats or the military win the argument, and in turn whether they are able to deliver on their promises.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
