Support the Troops reduxe...

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun Mar 23 12:41:00 PST 2003


On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, Marvin Gandall wrote:


> The current air and missile assault on Baghdad can't properly be
> described as the application of "shock and awe" tactics. The doctrine
> propounds the obliteration of the civilian infrastructure to break the
> will to resist of a war-weary population.

That might be how the original author used the term in a paper in 1996. But that's now a footnote. The military and state broadcasting system applied explicitly it to what they did in Baghdad. So that's what actually existing Shock and Awe means.

What you describe is exactly what we did in Gulf War I and the Kosovo war. It wouldn't represent a strategic or tactical shift. What happened in Baghdad, though, as you point out, clearly is one, meritting a new name.

Out of curiousity, if the original paper described the Shock and Awe strategy as you describe, how did it differentiate itself from the GWI and Kosovo strategies?

Michael



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