War Progress
A couple of notes, mostly. The main thrust of these pieces is that setbacks in war are obviously to be expected, though we may forget that fact. Sentiments may cycle between wild optimism and dark despair daily, because the US hasn’t fought a particularly long war in a generation, because our news cycle grows shorter and shorter, and because there are now numerous forums in which to vent opinion.
Gregg Easterbrook’s blog-like series of articles talks about how expectactions for a swift victory had been built both by the Administration and by the media’s experience with the first few days of the invasion. Further, the Iraqi military has clearly learned from the last Gulf War, and is not opposing the initial entry into Iraq. The Iraqi military apparently believes they will prevail in the end — by inflicting sufficiently many casualties on American forces and Iraqi civilians — to become the first Arab army to do so since Saladin. But it’s hard to judge how things are going so soon: France in 1940 resisted fiercely until their morale suddenly broke. Easterbrook also takes a swipe at the notion still held by the unreconstructed left about how business loves war. The ups and downs of the stock market in the past few days should be sufficient proof demonstrating otherwise.
NPR mentioned this morning that one of the causes of the absence of a Shia revolt in southern Iraq is the lack of trust the Shia have towards Americans in this war. In the last war, the Shia rose up to fight Saddam, and were crushed while the Americans stood by, having brokered a cease-fire that would lead to their betrayal. If you were a Shia, would you be so quick to rise up, given what happened the last time? We will have to wait and see how the Iraqis react once Saddam is clearly defeated, and the shadow of his security forces are expelled from the country.
It should also be pointed out that an American foreign policy that so clearly betrays a people’s aspirations for freedom for the sake of power balances among despots in the last war will have problems in the next war. America should promote freedom, though that may sometimes require force.
Also clear from these past few days: air power doesn’t yet obviate the need to have “boots on the ground” as some of us may have naively hoped. Technological improvements will continue to come, and we will be able to hit specific targets with increasingly finer accuracy and increasingly smaller decision loops. However, air power alone cannot throw a skilled, resolute opponent out of complex terrain. Even in Afghanistan, this didn’t happen, as Stephen Biddle shows in this Foreign Affairs piece. Regular Taliban forces didn’t know how to fight properly, and were defeated quickly. Better trained and more determined Al Qaeda troops dug in, and had to be defeated by a classic combined arms approach, with infantry advancing under covering fire, and artillery blasting out the points of resistance they encounter. It appears the case that strategic air power doctrine a la Douhet can only still be achieved with nuclear weapons, which is something no one wants to do. Anyway, the strong resistance by Al Qaeda troops in the face of precision bombing will unfortunately mean heavy fighting against those in Saddam’s regime with nothing left to lose, especially in the cities.