Christopher Ruddy
Friday, March 28, 2003

Such a conclusion may be premature.

But still, the war effort seems stalled and the U.S. is entering the most dangerous phase of the war as we approach Baghdad.

Confidence has been replaced with uncertainty, and a cloud of worry looms with the possibility the Iraqis may use weapons of mass destruction.

I am not in the anti-war crowd or among the naysayers who want to see doom and gloom. I do believe in straight shooting. I believe an honest understanding of our situation is not bad news. It is good news – only if we have a realistic appraisal can we win quickly.

Some talking points about my concerns with the war thus far:

The U.S. military is weak. Our military is populated with heroic men and women. But that can’t compensate for the fact that our force strength is way down from the ’91 Gulf War. Bill Clinton oversaw sweeping cuts in every branch of the armed forces, by about 40 percent. In the Gulf War we used a 500,000-man army in the Gulf to simply expel Saddam from little Kuwait.

U.S. forces are overstretched. With almost half the force strength, our military is also overstretched globally. Our global commitments haven’t diminished. Arguably, they have increased with the peacekeeping and non-military tasks to which they have been assigned, i.e., drug interdiction. Also, close to 50,000 troops sit on the DMZ in Korea.

The U.S. military is led by Clinton-Gore favorites. One shortcoming of the Bush administration has been its failure to fill out the government with political appointees who share the President’s agenda. Top Clinton officials still run the highest level of the U.S. government. At the Pentagon, military officials are not political appointees. After eight years of Clinton-Gore, you can bet Clintonites are still influential.

The U.S. began its ground invasion early. U.S. military planning must have been predicated on the idea that we would be greeted as liberators. Typically, the military “softens up” the enemy with a lengthy aerial and/or ground bombardment before committing and risking ground troops. Remember Desert Storm when the U.S. air war with intense bombing carried on for over a month – before the ground invasion had begun.

So far, political considerations have been a priority. The U.S. government waited a week before Iraqi TV was bombed because they didn’t want to build a new TV network once we won. This showed the strange thinking at work in the Pentagon.

Additionally, when the U.S. decided to wait a full week before targeting Iraq’s civilian infrastructure – fearing it would make life difficult for Iraqis, be bad PR for America around the globe, and make it difficult for us to rebuild once we win – demonstrated how State Department thinking has permeated the Pentagon. If we are at war against an enemy executing our troops and prepping for chemical weapons, why would we wait to bomb their phone lines, electric grid, food and water supplies, etc.?

The U.S. made a mistake by acquiescing to human shields. The U.S. has put itself in an immediate inferior and dangerous position by indicating that Saddam’s human shields work: We won’t fire upon Iraqi troops and targets that Iraq protects with human shields. This is war and if Saddam wants to commit war crimes, that is not our fault.

Since the Iraqis see we waver in the face of human shields, they have been using them more. If it was OK after 9/11 for the U.S. government to say any hijacked civilian airliner would be shot down – the same should apply to hijacked Iraq civilians.

Air power and ground power are not enough. Because of the rush to Baghdad, we have not softened up the Republican Guards. They are strong and resolved. They are dug in.

Just because we may have stronger firepower and air superiority does not mean we will win without great sacrifice. Ask the GIs who hit Normandy and consider the months it took to break through German lines. Ask the Israelis, who, even with superior weapons and complete air superiority, could not dislodge the Egyptian army from the Sinai desert in the ’73 war.

America would be in a much stronger position today if the new war was prosecuted like old ones. We need to drop the political considerations. We need to adopt sound military strategies. We need to honestly admit to ourselves that we are in a difficult war, and that our primary goal is to destroy and defeat the enemy as quickly as possible. Any other thinking is foolhardy.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Saddam Hussein/Iraq

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