Cakewalk? Cakewalk. Cakewalk!

The other day, I asked What Happened to the War?

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....

Yesterday, I found the original "cakewalk" reference, along with a follow-up editorial published yesterday. (Sorry, I forget whom to thank.) The author is Ken Adelman, who indeed "was assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from 1975 to 1977, and arms control director under President Ronald Reagan".

Here is the original article, in The Washington Post, Feb. 13, 2002:

.... I agree that taking down Hussein would differ from taking down the Taliban. And no one favors "a casual march to war." This is serious business, to be treated seriously.

In fact, we took it seriously the last time such fear-mongering was heard from military analysts -- when we considered war against Iraq 11 years ago. Edward N. Luttwak cautioned on the eve of Desert Storm: "All those precision weapons and gadgets and gizmos and stealth fighters . . . are not going to make it possible to re-conquer Kuwait without many thousands of casualties." As it happened, our gizmos worked wonders. Luttwak's estimate of casualties was off by "many thousands," just as the current estimates are likely to be.

I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps....

Here is the follow-up article, in the same newspaper, Apr. 10, 2003:

.... On Feb. 13, 2002, I wrote a sleeper-cell op-ed for this page. It lay dormant, being virtually ignored, until springing to life more than a year later. Its title, "Cakewalk in Iraq," contained that "c" word (also found in the piece), which was scantly speakable one week ago.

Granted, that word carries a connotation that the piece itself explicitly dismissed: "No one favors a 'casual march to war.' This is serious business, to be treated seriously," I wrote then. Having served in the Pentagon and knowing full well that any loss of life is grave, I intended nothing but the most serious treatment of a serious matter.

Adelman later admits that even with his "cakewalk" scenario, he never dreamed that Baghdad could be taken in the short time it was:

Predicting that the next war in Iraq would be a "cw" -- for my sake, now think "crushing win" -- my early 2002 article established the baseline: "It was a cakewalk last time," during the first Gulf War. Granted, I'm an incurable optimist, but even I could never have envisioned the coalition controlling the enemy capital within three weeks -- less than half the time, with less than half the U.S. casualties, of the first Gulf War. And with none of the above disasters happening.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 04/11/03 07:18:06 AM
Categorized as War.