Civil Hawks, Military Doves?

Why the US military is opposed to the Iraq war being pushed by George W. Bush

by Jürgen Rose, Lieutenant Colonel (*)

Shortly after former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright moved into the State Department in December 1996 there was a fierce quarrel with General Colin S. Powell, the then US Chief of Staff. The reasons for this were her pronounced bellicose rhetoric as well as her predilection for military interventions. She accused her opponent from the Pentagon of weakness and asked him what the use the US superb military was if he was now against using it. Powell had to tell Albright that American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board.

Powell's argument illustrates very well that among modern military forces thinking now dominates that is characterized by a culture of restraint, even more so than among politicians. In particular, professional soldiers know only too well what war means and they are thus by no means eager to experience war themselves. Therefore professional soldiers are no mere craftsmen of war but cautious people, in contrast to what many think. This is the foundation of their reliability. The current conflict in the US between civilian political decision makers in the Pentagon and the White House and leading members of the military on the question of a war of aggression against Iraq illustrates this once again. A phalanx of desk warriors recruited from the neo-conservative circles of the Republicans - mostly without any personal experience within the military - accuses the military of a fatal tendency to be overcautious. They also claim that the military exerts too much influence on American foreign policy. Evidently the bellicose circles within the political decision-making elites overwhelmingly subscribe to the proposition that soldier is just an acronym for someone who should do everything without thinking much about it - including dying for the fatherland.

In the meantime, many active and retired soldiers join the long list of the critics of George W. Bush's war policy. Especially important are the illustrious group of distinguished generals,

• US Secretary of State, Colin Powell
  
• the former National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft
  
• the Middle East Special Envoy, Anthony C. Zinni
  
• the former NATO Commander-in-chief in Europe, Wesley Clark
  
• the former Chief of Staff, John Shalikashvili
  
• the former Commander-in-chief of the U.S. central command, Joseph Hoar.
  

In addition one should mention among the opponents to war the former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, officer of the U.S. Marines, the Democratic senator John Kerry, naval officer and veteran of the Vietnam war, as well as Chuck Hagel, infantryman of the U. S. army and also a Vietnam war veteran. All these people are renowned and war-experienced people. And they all warn against a precipitate strike without coordination with and support from the allies. They pose questions about the exit strategy, they warn against a mission creep or voice doubts about the validity of an acute threat by Saddam Hussein.

Even the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U. S. forces, based on calculations by their planning staff, argue that there are important reasons not to attack Saddam Hussein:

It might prove fatally wrong that the Iraqi military power is no more than a paper tiger. Saddam Hussein's forces were drastically reduced in the Gulf War in 1991 and because of the permanent American and British air attacks. And they are no longer technologically up to date. However, the Iraqis will fight--not because they love Hussein but because they want to defend their home country as well as the Muslim world against the unbelieving invaders from the West. Historical experience shows that military pressure form the outside together with the demand for unconditional surrender are not appropriate means to drive a wedge between a dictator and his tyrannized people. On the contrary, such a procedure regularly leads to a kind of uniting of a nation against the aggressor. The best example for this is the declaration of the 'Great Patriotic War' by the communist dictator Stalin when the Soviet Union was attacked by the German Wehrmacht. Another example is the fanatical resistance of Hitler's regime to the far superior military forces of the Allies until the final collapse of the German Reich. An invasion of Iraq could thus prove to be lengthy, extremely bloody and costly for the 'new Rome.'

Two main concerns emerged in the process of the development of operational concepts for a war aiming at overthrowing the dictator of Baghdad. Firstly, any reasons Saddam Hussein might have had, as was the case in the Gulf War, for exercising restraint concerning the use of those weapons of mass destruction he still has might no longer apply. The invasion forces of the U.S. army would very likely have to fight in an area that is contaminated by radioactive material as well as by poisons. This would mean difficulties for military operations that could be extremely difficult to overcome. The so-called Gulf War syndrome affecting many U.S. soldiers after the war of 1991 is probably of minor importance compared to what lies in store for U.S. forces (as well as the Iraqi civilian population) this time. Likewise, it is obvious that Saddam Hussein will try to attack Israel with his weapons of mass destruction. Already in 1991 the Israeli government unequivocally threatened to respond with nuclear weapons in this eventuality. This time the likelihood is extremely high that things will not stop at threats, but that Baghdad will actually perish in nuclear heat.

Then second concern of the U.S. military is the fact that the Iraqi dictator will probably entrench himself together with 80,000 battle-tried soldiers of his Republican Guard in the metropolis on the Tigris. This would mean that the U.S. forces would have to accept the extremely difficult and highly risky battle on an urban battlefield. In such a scenario every house, every basement, every ruin presents a small battlefield that would have to be fought piecemeal. This reminds one of Stalingrad. Or, to use a more recent example: think of the disaster of the Russian Army in Grosny at Christmas in 1994, when dozens of modern battle tanks and hundreds of armored personal carriers were destroyed in the ruins of the Chechnyan capital, not to mention the countless dead and wounded in the ranks of the attacking soldiers.

The advantages of military technological superiority are undoubted on such a battlefield. There is no doubt the U.S. forces would ultimately win the war-- but what price would have to be paid? The former General of the U.S. Marines, the legendary elite corps of the U.S. forces, General Anthony C. Zinni, remarked recently: 'I don't want to be sucked into the cities. We would have all kinds of losses on our side, we would have to kill large numbers of civilians and destroy most parts of the infrastructure, and especially unhelpful would be the pictures on al-Jazeera.'

The list of the concerns voiced by members of the U.S. military as well the arguments against the Iraq war pushed by the political leaders could be increased almost infinitely, but the reflections presented here should suffice to orient politics towards multilateral solutions of the conflict by means of steadfast diplomacy, not by means of short-term unilateral use of military force. One of the decisive lessons from the decades of the Cold War is the following: a security policy based on a prudent mixture of deterrence and dŽtente secures peace in the long run and makes it possible for political change to occur. There is not the slightest reason why such a policy should not lead to success in the case of Iraq.

* Jürgen Rose is lieutenant colonel in the German Bundeswehr. The opinions expressed in this article are his personal opinions.