War Watch

by Joseph D. Douglass Jr., Washington D.C.

[Note: Take also a look at "War Watch #2" and "War Watch #3 - After Iraq, What?"]

We are now into the second week of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It began as a controlled campaign to win over the Iraqi people, motivate the military to lay down their arms, and achieve a relatively painless capitulation.

This has not happened. Defections have been less than hoped for. The civilian response has been mixed. The ‘shock and awe’ propagandizing has proved to be more embarrassment than benefit. Its main effect has been to further harden the positions of those who opposed the decision to invade Iraq.

President Bush believes the war is going well but that the campaign to remove Hussein is ‘far from over.’ He tells us we are ‘making good progress,’ and, as we ‘approach Baghdad, our fighting units are facing the most desperate elements of a doomed regime. We cannot know the duration of the war, but we are prepared for the battle ahead.’

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on several occasions has raised questions about Iraq’s showing photos of American POWs. What is his problem? I do not recall when he was Defense Secretary shortly after the Vietnam War his raising any complaints about the treatment of American Vietnam War POWs, the absence of any reasonable POW/MIA accounting after our withdraw, or about the thousands of POWs who were never returned. (See any of the dozens of books on this issue [1] or the most recent one, Betrayed, by this writer last year, summarized in ‘Remembering Those We Left Behind’  http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/douglass/121802.htm.)

Indications of serious intelligence shortcomings grow. We seem to be unaware of where Saddam and his staff are located, in the same sense that we never knew where bin Laden was. Will we rain devastation on Baghdad and still not capture Hussein, as happened in Afghanistan with bin Laden?

We evidently have been unable to cut Saddam’s command and control. Are we unaware of where his command centers are, or what communications they have? Are their communications impervious to electronic jamming? Logically, command and control would have been the first objective of several special forces operations.

U.S. special forces teams have been in Iraqi cities for nearly two weeks now hunting down Iraqi elite: Republican Guards commanders and Ba’ath Party officials. The teams ‘include snipers and demolition experts schooled in setting house and car bombs.’ So far, ‘more than a handful’ have been killed. [2]  Presumably top U.S. officials—White House, Defense, CIA, NSC, and Congress—are now fair game for Iraqi snipers and demolition expert terrorists.

If capturing or killing Hussein is so critical, the hardest part of the war is still ahead: capture and control of Baghdad. Yet there has been little recognition in the media and official statements of themagnitude of the problem and how it can be resolved without catastrophic damage. Ultimately, the trial of waging war against Iraqi top military forces in Baghdad—their Republican Guards—will have to be faced.

Baghdad has a population around 5 million, 97 percent Muslim. Hussein is reported to have 100,000 Republican Guards forces. One obvious strategy is for Hussein to have 50,000 of his Guards forces disguise themselves as civilians and position themselves in buildings at strategic locations and on roofs with rifles, grenades, bazookas, and mortars. Their instructions would be to conduct a guerrilla-type war against the U.S. military forces, similar to what the Viet Cong did in the Vietnam War or as bin Laden and his ‘bandit gangs’ did in Afghanistan. It was the unrelenting action of these ‘irregular’ forces or ‘mujahedin’ that defeated the Soviets in 1988.

Saddam could reward each of the Guards soldiers with a bounty of $20,000 for each U.S. soldier they shoot and $100000 for each tank or armored personnel vehicle they hit with a bazooka. Houses and buildings will be thoroughly mined, with trip wires and infra-red sensing detonators everywhere. The U.S. forces will have to go door to door, room by room, basement to rooftop in each building. And what do they do then—seal the building so that no one can get in?

This search becomes even more difficult because of the underground hidden tunnels and storage facilities that Saddam has constructed, including those beneath Mosques and lakes. This might well be where the most secure command facilities are located and/or weapons of mass destruction are stored. Will the U.S. start dropping bunker-busting bombs on all the Mosques in Baghdad?

It is hard to imagine a war in Baghdad being completed in less than several months and the problems such a war poses are enormous—even if your troops are ‘well prepared.’ Are we going to evacuate 5 million residents? How can our soldiers distinguish between military and civilians? Consider the toll this war will take on the residents, 97 percent of which are Muslims. They will harbor untold anger toward the United States by the time the war is over. As any veteran from World War II in Europe knows, there is nothing more difficult and dangerous than urban warfare. The invaders are at a tremendous disadvantage because the guerrillas will be embedded in a sea of innocent civilians. Casualties could easily go through the roof, and public support through the basement. How many Americans can 50,000 Iraqi guerrillas in civilian clothes hidden in buildings kill before they are all captured or killed? How will ‘humanitarian aid’ proceed after the first worker is killed by a gun shot or trip-wire mine. What good is a 70-ton Abrams tank in Baghdad? Do we plan to destroy Baghdad if necessary to ‘free the population’?

Over the past several days, our Administration leaders, from the top down, have told us that all of them agree with the war plan, that it is on schedule or ahead of schedule, and that it is a good plan. Yet, in the past day or two, we have begun reading reports of concerns within the U.S. military that the war is likely to last longer than hoped—months rather than weeks—and require considerably more people than are now on hand or en route. What effect will the horrendous sand storm have on fighting equipment and gear to say nothing about the lungs and eyes of our soldiers? Another 30,000 ‘reinforcements’ are headed over and should arrive in a week or two.

What is the plan for the war in Baghdad? Is there a plan that details how our soldiers are to go house by house, building by building in a search for Guards guerrillas, mines and booby-traps, and weapons of mass destruction? What other way is there? And yet, how can it succeed? How can they distinguish 50,000 guerrillas from 5 million civilians when they are all dressed alike? Will it take more than one or two ‘gas’ alarms to cause the American soldiers into protective gear? What then? They can hardly tell the identity of a close friend a few yards away while wearing gas masks. How many guerrillas will elude capture and be able to continue their ‘shoot and run’ game? Are we prepared for a long, drawn out, painful search lasting many months and with no certainty that Hussein will be found and captured in the end and not elude us like bin Laden evidently has done?

Why would Hussein or those in his command staff quit or leave voluntarily? For nine months now the U.S. administration, particularly President Bush, has made it quite clear that it does not matter what they do. They are to be killed or, short of that, rounded up and sent off to stand trial for a massive assortment of atrocities and war crimes.

Perhaps the greatest flaw in the U.S. grand strategy is the Administration’s notion about spreading a ‘distinctly American internationalism’ (whatever that is) and using this war-on-terrorism ‘opportunity’ (as it is referred to in the National Security Strategy) toeliminate repressive regimes and spread democracy around the globe. Consider just a few of the repressive countries—Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, China, North Korea, Russia and its former republics. These people have been subjected to totalitarian regimes for centuries. They do not understand Western concepts of freedom, honesty, truth-telling, or democracy. Ingrained in the character of those who have only known repressive totalitarian regimes over many generations is fear, survival, deception, lying, power, and, in the Middle East, kitman, a sophisticated combination of all these. It’s specific use is in thwarting the objectives of a stronger adversary.

InThrough Our Enemies’ Eyes [3]we read: ‘It is vital to recall that, next to the Soviets, the biggest losers in Afghanistan were the Muslim world’s Western-minded scholars, politicians, and intellectuals who had worked to build democracy and political pluralism in the Muslim world. These people had long ignored what Tarik Massoud has said is the basic political fact, that “there is no grassroots movement for democracy in the Arab world, largely because democracy does not resonate with the average Arab.”’

To make matters worse, the U.S. administration in its documents and pronouncements has emphasized U.S. intentions to implement its policy around the globe. Iraq is not the end, it is just the start.Who is next, Iran, Syria, or North Korea? All three countries have been mentioned and are good candidates. Especially ominous are recent reports on Iranians, and Saudi irregulars now in Basra and other parts of Iraq and assistance being provided by Syria. Could the war in Iraq spread? If so, where does it stop? Can it be contained in the Middle East? If Syria and Iran become more aggressive in their support to Iraq, for how long will the United States continue the war?

Will this war in Iraq serve as an example to other repressive countries and motivate them to change their intentions and destroy their weapons of mass destruction and their capabilities for making such weapons? Or will the example of Iraq serve to bring them together in an effort to bring down the infidels? If Iran really intends to go ahead with its plans to produce nuclear weapons, they might see this as a good time for them to preserve this option by joining with Iraq to drive back the United States. As indicated above, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia—and Russia as well—already seem to be ‘interfering’ and ‘complicating’ the U.S. war effort. [4]

The United States has been fortunate not to have been struck by terrorists and unknowns (as in the case of the anthrax incident) since November 2001, notwithstanding the Iraq invasion. In part, the absence of terrorist activities may be the result of greatly increased U.S. alertness, internal security, and the effect of the war on Al-Qaeda around the globe. For this, we are most thankful.

However, there is another side to the coin. It is possible that the terrorists are not fixed to a particular schedule. They have a quality we seem to lack: patience. Moreover, as explained by Osama bin Laden, they are after strategic effects, not just tactical headlines. This suggests they are carefully studying their enemy (now the United States, Great Britain, and Israel) to determine how to achieve truly strategic effects at minimal cost and when. Right now, they may feel it is most important to defeat the U.S. effort in the Middle East. They have unlimited patience, understand how important timing can be, and may not want to waste time and talents on second rate harassing strikes. Their objectives may have become sharpened over the past year. First, they may want to drive the infidels out of Arab land. The primary targets they are now considering are likely more than just ‘symbolic.’ Bin Laden has stated he intends to hit us where it really hurts: in our economy, the U.S. dollar, and those responsible for U.S. policy.

In reporting on the war’s progress, several journalists have observed that Saddam seems to have learned from the Gulf War in 1991. As a result, the situation is being increasingly perceived as serious, perhaps approaching grim. Hopefully, it will end before many more lives on both sides are lost. Either way, the war could be tremendously useful if it could motivate all of us, and through us, Congress, to raise serious questions respecting the role America has been playing as the world’s policeman over the past 50 years. Just what has been accomplished in the process and at what costs? What costs await us in the future if we do not rein in our arrogant attitude that might makes right?

Our Founding Fathers warned against interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. They gave the responsibility for going to war to Congress, not the Executive except in emergency situations, and certainly not some international body. Our first President strongly advised against entangling foreign alliances which the U.S. has completely ignored over the past fifty years and, more often than not, with expensive and dire consequences.

These departures from the principles that formed the bedrock of our founding need to be critically reassessed. We are indeed living in a new world, as recognized in the National Security Strategy, in which weapons of mass destruction have taken on new meaning. They are getting cheaper, more destructive, and easier to make every year. They can be used selectively without physical damage or massively. They can be used covertly. They are now available to individuals and shadowy networks of terrorists. In trying to track down the source of the October 2001 anthrax dissemination, the FBI evidently concentrated its search on one individual as the culprit! We know that many terrorist states already have them and more are acquiring them. Does not this by itself tell us something about our ‘non-proliferation’ policy? Perhaps it is time to reflect. We might be well advised to tend to our own ills, which are greatly in need of attention, and begin learning how to build productive two-way relationships with other nations that are not based on money or bullying. 

[1] For a start, see
Missing In Action: Trail of Deceit by Larry J. O’Daniel,
‘Robert Garwood Says Vietnam Didn’t Return Some American POWs’ by Bill Paul in Wall Street Journal, 60 Minutes,
‘Dead or Alive’ produced by Monica Jensen-Stevenson,
We Can Keep You Forever produced by Ted Landreth,
A Chain of Prisoners: From Yalta to Vietnam by John M. G. Brown and Thomas G. Ashworth,
Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POWs in Vietnam by Monica Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson,
An Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs by Foreign Relations Republican Staff,
The Bamboo Cage: The Full Story of the American Servicemen still held hostage in South-East Asia by Nigel Cawthorne,
After the Hero’s Welcome: A POW Wife’s Story of the Battle Against a New Enemy by Dorothy McDaniel,
Missing in Action: The Soviet Connection produced by Ted Landreth,
Americans Abandoned produced by Red McDaniel,
Numerous Newsday articles by Sydney H. Schanberg,
Soldiers of Misfortune: Washington’s Secret Betrayal of American POWs in the Soviet Union by James D. Sanders,
Mark A. Sauter, and Cort Kirkwood, Moscow Bound: Policy,
Politics and the POW/MIA Dilemma by John M. G. Brown,
The Men We Left Behind: Henry Kissinger, the Politics of Deceit and the Tragic Fate of POWs After the Vietnam War by Mark Sauter and Jim Sanders,
Last Seen Alive: The Search for Missing POWs from the Korean War by Laurence Jolidon,
Left Behind and One Returned radio interview tapes produced by Dr. Stanley Monteith,
The Medusa File by Craig Roberts,
Leading the Way and Everything We Had by Al Santoli,
Why Didn’t You Get Me Out by Frank Anton,
Spite House: The Last Secret of the War in Vietnam by Monika Jensen-Stevenson,
Code-Name Bright Light George J. Veith,: One Day Too Long: Top Secret Site 85 and the Bombing of North Vietnam by Timothy N. Castle,
Trails of Deceit by Larry O’Daniel, Korean Atrocity: Forgotten War Crimes by Philip D. Chinnery,
Left Behind and One Returned radio interview tapes produced by Dr. Stanley Monteith,
and Betrayed by Joseph D. Douglass, Jr.

[2] Dana Priest, ‘U.S. Teams Seek to Kill Iraqi Elite,’ Washington Post, March 29, 2003.

[3] Anonymous, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes (Brassey’s, 2002, pp. 105-106).

[4] Peter Slevin, ‘U.S. Warns of Interference in Iraq’ Washington Post, March 29, 2003.