What Happened to the War?

Contrary to the claims of some, it has been pretty much a cakewalk.

A couple of weeks ago, the chattering classes started their caterwauling about a failed plan leading to disaster in the War Against Saddam Hussein; they cited the alleged prediction that it would be a "cakewalk". As I understand it, the term had been employed by a former government official. Once. It wasn't an official prediction, so to speak. Yet, the bad-plan-leading-to-disaster analysis was mostly predicated upon that one word, cakewalk.

Now, one need not have much in the way of military history to know that, in the long course of the history of the human race, a cakewalk among wars might take six or nine months. And one wouldn't be venturing too far out on a limb to assume that an editor's or reporter's idea of a cakewalk among wars is not likely to be based on trivialities like... oh... education and experience and reading and understanding.

But the war is turning out to be a cakewalk by most people's standards for warfare. Not that there hasn't been a lot of fighting; not that there haven't been a lot of deaths, some of them unintended; not that it's over and done with yet; not that a lot of work, and misery, will remain. But the end is in sight, surely, when the "Minister of Information" could deny to their own faces that American troops are taking over Baghdad, on a stroll down his front street.

How has it come about this way? One undeniable aspect is that Saddam's regime never for a moment put up a strategically respectable defense. Again, one need not have much military science to understand this. John Keegan has been writing some very interesting columns in The London Telegraph lately. Here is a bit of the latest, today:

.... It is not only outside observers who have been bewildered by the Iraqis' military behaviour. So must also have been the coalition high command. The Iraqis have ignored every rule of defensive warfare.

They have also handled their troops in an illogical fashion. Saddam had on paper nearly 400,000 soldiers at his disposal, consisting, in descending order of quality, of his Republican Guard of six divisions, his regular army of 17 divisions and his paramilitaries, including the Fedayeen irregulars and the Ba'ath Party militia, totalling perhaps 30,000.

In orthodox military practice, the Republican Guard, less perhaps a portion held back for last-ditch defence, should have been committed first, to blunt the coalition onset. The regular army should then have been committed to reinforce the Republican Guard when and where it achieved success. The paramilitaries should have been kept out of battle, to harass the invaders if the regular defence collapsed.

Saddam has fought the battle the other way around. The regular army was committed first, south of Baghdad, and seems to have run away as soon as it saw that the fighting threatened to be serious. The Republican Guard was then brought forward to hold the approaches to Baghdad and has been devastated by American air attack, its armoured units in particular being offered up for pointless sacrifice.

The only serious resistance appears to have been offered by the units least capable of meeting the coalition troops on equal terms, the Ba'ath Party militia, effectively a sort of political Mafia equipped with nothing more effective than hand-held weapons....

(Thanks, Kathryn.)

I think there are two explanations for this bewildering response to what was, perhaps, the most telegraphed-in-advance warfare in history. First, Saddam was pretty much convinced that the war would never come: the rising pro-Saddam "anti-war" movement in the rest of the world would have encouraged him to think so. Second, the regime was pretty much convinced that the coalition's will to war would collapse if enough casualties were inflicted early on; Bill Clinton's ignominious stint as commander-in-chief would have encouraged them to think so.

If those explanations are correct, to some degree, perhaps we ought to start to think a little differently about the treachery and incompetence of the past, realizing that the Saddamites got the very wrong message — and that redounded to our advantage in the end.

Another factor in the equation is the action of our special forces: I think they prevented the execution of a lot of Saddamite plans, such as setting afire hundreds of oil wells, or blowing up bridges.

A cakewalk it's been. Alas, some of our fighters have lost their lives, and others will live with injuries for the rest of their days. And their families suffer and will suffer. And many innocents have been harmed, too. But, as far as I can tell, a cakewalk-war it has been, indeed.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 04/08/03 09:04:49 AM
Categorized as War.