August 31, 2003	Sunday	Rajab 2, 1424

WASHINGTON: “A swift, sudden military offensive usually by combined air and land force” is how the American Heritage Dictionary defines “blitzkrieg.” This can equally apply to Operation Iraqi Freedom, but it belies the claim of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his political colleagues that the campaign in Iraq was a new kind of war fought with “light and lean” forces.

However, the strategy of using small rapid forces operating closely with aircraft to attack an enemy’s vulnerable, critical points has been around since the invention of the tank about the time of World War I. And there is no guarantee that Rumsfeld’s techniques will succeed against an enemy that is both truly determined and capable of fighting.

During the invasion of Iraq earlier this year, it was not the size of the force that was important, but the way intelligence was handled. Special Forces personnel spotted targets and rapidly relayed the information back to bombers overhead. Furthermore, the Iraqis had no meaningful “command and control.” Those few enemy communications and leadership sites that were functioning were quickly destroyed at the war’s start.

According to Col. Christopher Langton, head of defence analysis at London’s International Institute of Strategic Studies, “it was possible to get inside the enemy’s decision- making cycle and disrupt it.”

This idea is not new, either. The architects of blitzkrieg, German Gen. Heinz Guderian and British strategist J.F.C. Fuller, emphasized the importance of using fast mechanized forces to disrupt the enemy’s “brain” and its communications rather than conducting a head-on strike. The fall of Iraq has been compared to the fall of France in 1940 — a similar, sudden shock attack that saw a rapid capitulation following raids on the enemy’s critical points.

These critical points can be fixed leadership headquarters or command and control sites. What the military calls “centres of gravity.” According to the 19th-century Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz: “a shock against the center of gravity always produces the greatest effect.”

This has been the holy grail of strategists for decades. In 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, the plans of Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf did stress the massive use of force, but also stressed destroying Saddam Hussein’s centres of gravity. For example, the famous “left hook” — the advance from Saudi Arabia northeastward into Iraq, was a surprise attack on the feared Republican Guard in the rear where they had fewer field defences.

Would Rumsfeld’s “light and lean” strategy have been as successful against a more motivated enemy? Maj. Gen. Julian Thompson, a Royal Marines commander during the 1982 Falklands War, says no. The Chinese or North Korean armies might lack the technological supremacy of the US armed forces, but they are not likely to be short of determination and aggressiveness. After all, the outgunned North Vietnamese were able to defeat the United States.

This year, the Iraqi army made several mistakes. According to Gal Luft, a retired Israeli colonel, the Iraqis were completely unprepared for the US-led attack. Operation Desert Storm in 1991 had savaged the Iraqi military. Iraqi military equipment was a tour-de-force in Soviet antiquity. Furthermore, when you buy Soviet equipment you usually buy Soviet military doctrine. According to Langton, such doctrine is “monolithic,” emphasizing head-on attack against the enemy and discouraging the innovative thinking taught in Western military academies.

Moreover, in the years following Desert Storm the technology gap increased. American military equipment was continually modernized while Iraqi gear decayed. Sanctions prevented Iraq’s purchasing of any meaningful quantities of contemporary weaponry and as Langton emphasizes: “The Iraqi army was a depleted adversary with no air power.”

While the coalition’s total air superiority allowed presidential palaces to be bombed, it also permitted transport planes to resupply troops; helicopter gunships to support the ground advance and electronic warfare aircraft to jam Iraqi communications.

Morale was almost nonexistent in the Iraqi army. The relentless bombing of Iraqi positions in 1991 persuaded many troops to surrender and this time droves of soldiers deserted, realizing that the superior firepower and tactics of the coalition rendered any resistance as futile.

Reports abound of discipline being enforced with an iron fist by Saddam’s execution squads. Several Iraqi generals had achieved their positions not by a penchant for field craft, but by patronage and nepotism. Opportunities were wasted by the Iraqis. For example, bridges were left intact, allowing the coalition to cross the Euphrates River with ease. Luft notes that the Iraqis had “no trenches, no barricades, no sniper positions, no booby traps and no mines.” The net result, according to Maj. Charles Heyman, editor of Jane’s World Armies, was that “they were the most incompetent army in the world.”

Perhaps Donald Rumsfeld’s thinking is not so revolutionary. Despite showcasing the “light and lean” American military doctrine, many of his ideas are not new. Further, while there was some fierce combat, the risk of a serious, organized Iraqi counterattack was minimal.

As Loren Thompson, chief operations officer at the Lexington Institute in Virginia, says, Rumsfeld’s “campaign plan will work real well if we fight another corrupt dictator with no air force, but if we face a technologically proficient adversary, we’ll be real sorry we took some of these chances.”—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post-Newsday.