MILITARY MATTERS War Bulletin #2
Visions & Revisions March 28, 2003
Stan Goff
There have been two predictable aspects of Bush's war, one political and one related to the actual conduct of the war. These are not separable. The political destruction of Bush and his clique was stamped and waiting for delivery before the first tank rolled across the line of departure in Kuwait. And the Law of Unintended Consequences is operating with a vengeance on the ground.
The rest is unpredictable.
The junta's diplomatic vandalism had systematically alienated the masses around the world, a force they underestimated wholly, and the underlying intent of the Bush cabal - a military solution for economic war - was understood clearly by the northern capitalist metropoles, by Russia, and by China. The Latin American supra-colony, already in a process of break-up and rebellion, had inaugurated its second big wave of anti-colonial struggle, as others from the global south watched. The hegemon was breaking up, and war was seen by the Bush faction as its best, last chance. Even America's former multilateralist partners - stung by disrespect and alarmed by the bright-eyed bellicosity of Bush, et al - had begun to thirst for US humiliation.
Now they are being slaked.
The depth of US bourgeois (and therefore generalized cultural) decadence has been on display for months, as impunity and falsehood characterized political discourse, and the last crumbs of American journalism were lapped up into the maw of the media-military nexus. Half the US population had accepted one central and demonstrably idiotic assertion, that Iraqi leadership played some facilitative role in the September 11th attacks. Now enough of American-society-in-denial - especially white society - had its rationalization. The international legal framework that took six decades to assemble was ripped apart and shipped to the same landfill as the detritus of US bourgeois democracy - similarly cast off in 2000.
The entire adventure we are witnessing was conceived from a really-existing condition of weakness http://www.freedomroad.org/milmatters_5_overreach.html. I have said that for some time. Even progressive forces have been intimidated by the raw power of the US military machine and the demonstrated willingness to use it. There was the sense that it was a juggernaut. That's how bullies http://www.freedomroad.org/milmatters_4_victoriesover.html operate; through intimidation.
But they miscalculated.
I miscalculated, too.
We learn most from our errors, and it is through examining errors we refine our analysis and get closer to the truth of things. Now is a good time to critique what was written just as the war began in earnest. In "Rolling Start" http://www.freedomroad.org/milmatters_12_rollingstart.html , I identified several variables that would complicate the conduct of the war for the US; the loss of the Turkish front, the last minute changes in the plans growing out of that loss, the canalization of the ground attack along a single south-north axis and corresponding vulnerability of supply lines, and the terrific impact of weather. We are still waiting to see if my dire prognostications related to Kurdistan materialize.
But I made two very significant errors. I underestimated the quality of Iraqi resistance, and I overestimated the scope of the initial air campaign. I stated: "The Iraqi military won't prevail because they can't. They are weak, under-resourced, poorly led, and demoralized. What the delays mean is that the US will depend on sustaining the initiative and momentum through brutal, incessant bombing designed to destroy every soldier, every installation, every vehicle, every field kitchen in the Iraqi military." What I did not know, which is becoming very apparent, is that while Donald Rumsfeld was imposing his vaunted "Revolution in Military Affairs," his crackpot theory of "network centric warfare" that substitutes technology for leadership (against fierce resistance from the Army and Marines) on the US armed forces, there was another revolution in military affairs going on inside Iraq. The Iraqi military was reorganizing from the ground up for an agile, decentralized, urban-based warfighting capability, that abandoned Soviet-style conventional armor-centric doctrine for something more akin to doctrine that was taught but seldom practiced by Special Operations forces in the US during the Cold War, particularly "stay-behind" disruption of enemy lines of communications, once the primary mission of 10th Special Forces in the event of a general conflict with the Warsaw Pact.
And the massive bombing.
It remains to be seen, but it was not used as I thought it would be, probably for two reasons; political pressure to paint a humanitarian face on the invasion, and reluctance - given the ongoing economic crisis in the US - to impose too high a cost on post-invasion infrastructure repairs.
I am reminded now of T. S. Eliot's poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, where Prufrock's neurotic internal voice tells him there will be "time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions. In a minute there is time, For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
Surely, if we sent a copy of "Prufrock" to the Bush cabinet, they might weep with recognition.
Everything that could have gone wrong with the American invasion is going wrong, and the longer it goes, the wronger it gets. And with these reversals, the danger to everyone increases by orders of magnitude. Especially Iraqis.
The efficacy of Iraqi tactics is being met with revisions of the Rules of Engagement (ROE in military-speak). These are the rules related to when soldiers can and can not "engage" (that means attempt to kill) enemy soldiers and civilians. As the invasion began, the ROE was comparatively strict. Embedded reporters were pretty close to the action, after all, and there was the underwriting assumption that there would be no significant resistance. On Tuesday, March 25th, CENTCOM began openly saying they would change the ROE to reflect the "new reality."
With the end of the sandstorms, the US Air Force and Navy resumed its air assault, this time testing its 4,700 pound bunker busters on Baghdad. Army Apache helicopters and Air Force A-10's (the weapons platform that fires depleted uranium rounds) are hitting forward of the Army and Marine axis of advance, using the "new" ROE, and reports are already filtering out of Iraq of nightmarish scenes of scorched and shattered vehicles and bodies that include passenger cars, buses, and plenty of civilians.
It has become apparent, given the continued furious resistance of the Iraqis, including audacious attacks on both US supply lines and combat units, that Baghdad will be no cakewalk. Bush and his generals are now at a fork in the road, where they must choose either to wreck Baghdad or lay siege to it. House to house fighting in Baghdad will begin a televised file of military caskets returning to America. That will quickly become intolerable, and the administration will collapse. The other unthinkable option Bush has is to quit. Quit.
That must be our demand. Out of Iraq, now!
But they won't. They are now caught in the same deadly trap they have built for Iraq.
The sad truth seems to be, we are witnessing the certain political self-destruction of Bush & Co., but it will come at a cost paid for with many Iraqi lives. I expect a renewed American assault before the weekend is past, and this one with a shattering display of air power.
It is costing American lives now, too. More than we know.
On Thursday, the 27th, during a CENTCOM briefing, the charming and affable Brigadier General Vincent Brooks became short with reporters and flatly stated that CENTCOM would not release US casualty figures any longer.
The night prior, an embedded CNN reporter had broadcast in real-time that Marines near Nasiriyah were engaged in a firefight with Iraqis that wounded 21 Marines within one hour. Eleven from Camp Lejuene, NC, near where I live, are dead.
Things are gong very badly for troops on the long northbound column. Vehicles are deadlined from the sand. People are frightened, underslept, and they stink. The tempo that exhilarated them three days ago is now turning to deep muscular and psychological fatigue. Many are now wondering what they have gotten into. Thoughts of dying in a state of discomfort are popping up, thoughts of being maimed for life. Tempers are flaring. The food is all starting to taste the same. The mosquitoes and sand flies are thick at night. Supply disruptions have created a tobacco shortage. Home is unreachable. People are crying silently in the dark. A goodly number of these people haven't yet reached their 20th birthday.
These are the lads who will be driven forward soon in the next assault. An image on the television. a Marine Amtrack rolled over, upended in a swamp; literally, a quagmire.
Donald Rumsfeld has taken to threatening Iranians and Syrians, excoriating the press for their "mood swings." Rumsfeld is living to regret his Orwellian propaganda ploy of "embedding" the press. Now many will become witnesses.
His "revolution in military affairs" has become a "revolution in rationalizations."
The conventional Generals, steeped in their own orthodoxies, are saying Rumsfeld's mistake was trying to "do it on the cheap," that he didn't put enough forces on the ground. He stretched them thin along their primary avenue of approach to Baghdad and exposed their supply lines. This is all true, but it's very incomplete.
My outgoing Battalion commander when I first reported in the 2nd Ranger Battalion in 1979 was then-Colonel Wayne Downing. Downing is a retired General now, and a pundit working for MSNBC. He had a different take.
"These are people who love their country," he said, "and apparently they're willing to fight to defend it from an invader."
When Downing and I were assigned to the early Rangers, we trained incessantly on the same kinds of tactics that are now being employed by the Iraqis. Reconnaissance, ambush, and raid.
Rumsfeld's error is not only the size of his forces. What the media has failed to recognize is the role technology plays not only in projecting violence onto the battlefield, but in replacing the intuition of field commanders for making decisions. I predict that some day, when the dust settles and someone takes a serious look at what happened militarily in Iraq in 2003, this subordination of thinking to technology - along with the small unit decentralization of Iraqi forces, forces who were willing to fight an invader - will be identified as the decisive factors in what is shaping up to be a very Pyrrhic victory for the US, and a world historic turning point in relations between the global north and south.
For the first time, I am slightly less than 100 percent sure there will be a victory at all. That is a hugely qualified statement, but the improbable can become the real as abruptly as an accident. Another enormous sandstorm, new variables from outside the country, an open outbreak of guerrilla war in Afghanistan, a colossal act of American stupidity. these are the stuff of catalysts.
The administration has impressed the whole chain of command into the service of lies. The US kills civilians in a marketplace. The Iraqis did it. The Iraqis are "forcing their own people to wage suicide attacks". What began with an insipid conversation about whether or not Saddam was dead has progressed through a chemical factory that wasn't operational, a Basra uprising that didn't exist, thousands of phantom Iraqi prisoners of war, the miraculous rediscovery of the Geneva Convention, to this lurid tale retold by Washington Post reporter Walter Lippman on March 28th:
"As U.S. warplanes pounded Iraqi defenders with bombs and missiles, several Army and Marine units engaged in close combat with Iraqi paramilitary forces and regular army units. Brooks said they 'conducted active security operations to eliminate identified terrorist death squads,' a reference to Iraqi cadres who U.S. and British officials say are threatening Iraqi civilians to compel the men in their families to fight.
"Rumsfeld said these 'death squads' take orders directly from Hussein's family, and he denounced them in some of the strongest language he has used since the war began.
"'Their ranks are populated with criminals released from Iraqi prisons,' he said. 'They dress in civilian clothes and operate from private homes confiscated from innocent people and try to blend in with the civilian population. They conduct sadistic executions on sidewalks and public squares, cutting the tongues out of those accused of disloyalty and beheading people with swords. They put on American and British uniforms to try to fool regular Iraqi soldiers into surrendering to them, and then execute them as an example for others who might contemplate defection or capitulation.'"
Cutting out tongues. They have finally outdone the Kuwaiti incubator story. Other rumors suggest "the Fedayeen also run after dogs in the capitol, capture them, tear their limbs one by one, and sink their teeth into them."
Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace of the US Army had a moment of clarity when he spoke the real truth: "The enemy that we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed."
Saddam Hussein has become the embodiment of a resurgent Arab pride. Bush as been reduced to one of those dolls with a string on its back that you pull to hear "Iraq will be free, Iraq will be free, Iraq will be free."
It might be funny if it weren't for the grim truth that the price of admission to this farce shall be a river of blood.
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