President Bush sounded an alert to the American population, as well as to the military personnel assembled for his visit Wednesday to Central Command headquarters in Tampa. He said in closing, "The path we are taking is not easy, and it may be long," but promised that the United States would pursue it "all the way to victory."
He didn't offer a reason for why the road to victory is unlikely to be short or easy. No wonder: It's due, to some extent, to serious miscalculations in planning for the campaign. U.S. military leaders are quietly making it known that the campaign plan was imposed on them against their best judgment by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and other civilian officials.
They add that the miscalculations were based on intelligence provided by Iraqi exile and Israeli sources, which contradicted analysis provided by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Iraqi exiles have ambitions, an ax to grind and a sometimes out-of-date, distorted view of the country they left. The Israelis have contempt for Arabs as fighters, in spite of their unpleasant experiences with them in wars in 1948, 1973 and 1982.
There are seven mistaken assumptions that may put the United States into a much longer, harder war than anticipated:
1) The Iraqis as a people hate Saddam Hussein enough that they won't fight for his government. This has turned out to be wrong. Not only regular Iraqi military but also Baath party militia, other irregulars and Iraqi tribal fighters are resisting U.S. forces' advance toward Baghdad.
2) Americans would be treated as liberators. This, in general, turns out to be wrong, too. The Iraqis welcome humanitarian aid, but are not for sale to American rule. Put another way, Iraqi nationalism is apparently stronger than hatred of Saddam's regime and what it has brought down on their heads -- economic ruin as well as bombs.
3) For a 21st-century war, cast aside 20th-century military strategy. The concept of "overwhelming force" has been prominent in U.S. military planning for decades. It says that you send in more than enough troops to accomplish your objective. The U.S. and Britian have so far put 250,000 troops into the war theater to fight an Iraqi army of 350,000 -- considered not to be very good, based on the 1991 Gulf war, but numerous -- plus Baath militia, Saddam fedayeen and tribal forces.
Further, U.S. strategy was to drive straight for Baghdad, roughly 300 miles across the desert from Kuwait, not stopping to subjugate Iraqi forces along the road on the assumptions that the Iraqi population would welcome U.S. forces, and Iraqi forces wouldn't fight. The United States also assumed that some Iraqi elements, particularly the Shia Muslims in the south, would revolt. They haven't yet, having done so in 1991 and having been hung out to dry without U.S. support.
Normal military strategy says that you don't concentrate on places but instead seek to engage and destroy the enemy's forces. The U.S. campaign battle plan had us going straight to Baghdad to eliminate Saddam Hussein, assuming that general Iraqi resistance would collapse once that had been achieved. That could still be true, if and when we get that done.
4) U.S. forces would be pushing toward Baghdad from the north as well as from the south, east and west. That assumed that Turkey would grant the United States permission to stage forces out of Turkey in spite of overwhelming opposition from its population (99 percent Muslim). It was believed that Turkey would finally come around in return for a multibillion-dollar gift of aid, plus a green light for its troops to cross the border into into the Kurdish area of Iraq, a longtime goal.
Turkey did grant overflight clearance but not permission to stage troops. It has, nonetheless, put an estimated 3,000 troops into the Kurdish area of Iraq. America has now parachuted some 1,500 troops into northern Iraq. U.S. troops might join Kurdish irregular forces in the attack on Baghdad from the north. Engaging the Kurds in such an endeavor is to open Pandora's box, of course.
5) The road to Baghdad would be free and clear. The "straight to Baghdad" plan seems also to have forgotten that if the assumptions above turned out to be incorrect, U.S. armored forces would leave behind them a vulnerable 300-mile-long supply train, subject to Iraqi attack and even possible interdiction. U.S. armored forces use unbelievable amounts of fuel, ammunition, water, food and other supplies. Keeping the supply tail safe and functioning presents a formidable task -- not beyond U.S. capacities, but very hard.
6) "Shock and awe" would bring them to their senses. The "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad and elsewhere in the country has turned out to be both shocking and awesome. Substantial damage has been done to Saddam Hussein's forces and, in particular to systems of communications, command and control. At the same time, it seems to have been forgotten that the Iraqis are used to being bombed. Some of their forces, particularly the irregulars, are probably able to function effectively on a very low-tech basis.
7) Heavy weather could be overcome. No one ever assumed that weather would not be a factor. But the U.S. military couldn't back down from war on the basis of climate conditions. Ironically, the lengthy wrangling in the U.N. Security Council pushed the battle campaign into increasingly unfavorable weather conditions -- the sandstorm season, devilishly hot temperatures. In a way we got caught. The United States had to let the diplomatic process work out. Yet, every minute spent in New York pushed a battle campaign deeper into bad war-fighting weather.
American troops now find themselves coming up to Baghdad, preparing to surround a force that could be greater in number, with some of that enemy force still behind them, threatening their supply line.
Many efforts are now being made to compare the battle for Baghdad to other wars, some of them recent. Baghdad will not be Mogadishu -- it will be many times tougher. U.S. forces may be forced to fight street by street for control of the Iraqi capital in combat resembling that which took place briefly in the Somali capital in 1993. But no U.S. forces ever had to "take" Mogadishu.
Another possible parallel is the Israeli attack on Beirut in 1982. There again, the parallel doesn't hold. Beirut was a battlefield itself among different armed, competing elements, including the Palestinians. The Lebanese government had collapsed and was not a coherent opponent to the invading Israeli force. Wars in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait and the Balkans and the various Israeli-Arab conflicts offer no valid parallels to judge what the battle for Baghdad could be like.
Some military commentators are hearkening back to the battle between the Germans and the Russians for Stalingrad in 1942-43. There are some possible parallels. One disquieting piece of the analysis is that Saddam Hussein has since his student days in Cairo considered Stalin to be a model. It is almost certain that Saddam Hussein has studied the siege of Stalingrad.
In the end, the comparision is not that useful. The United States, along with Britain, is enormously superior to Iraq in military capacity. Our forces will take Baghdad, and will win the war. But President Bush was certainly right to underline the formidable task that lies ahead. We might as well be realistic about it.
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