Rolling Start -- The Idiot Prince Will Have His War
By Stan Goff
3-17-3
� Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness
Publications,
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(FTW asked retired U.S. Army Special Forces
Master Sergeant Stan
Goff to re-examine what we can expect on the
battlefield when the
United States begins its invasion. The former
instructor of military
science at West Point describes a scenario
that is vastly different from
what was expected last September before the
Bush administration
encountered effective economic and political
opposition. Now denied
the luxuries of a multi-front invasion from
Turkey and Saudi Arabia the
U.S. war strategy has changed. The bottom line
is that a great many
more innocent civilians are going to be
killed. And the first and possibly
crippling breakdown of U.S. plans will happen
in Kurdestan. - MCR)
(FTW) -- The full-scale, unilateral US
invasion of Iraq appears - to many
- to be imminent as this is written. In just
hours President Bush is
expected to give Saddam Hussein a 72-hour
ultimatum (it was actually
48 hours, ending Wednesday night) to leave the
country or else the
bombs start falling. I have a reservation or
two left about that, based
partly on hope, but partly on the even riskier
assumption that this
administration realizes that it has
miscalculated and that the
consequences of invasion may now outweigh the
risks - from their
standpoint - of no invasion.
The Bush regime seems to have a clear
understanding of what
desperate straits they were in well before
9-11. The empire is in decline,
and this means Americans will have to
reconcile themselves to a new
world in which their profligate lifestyle
becomes a thing of the past.
Americans do not understand that this is an
irremediable situation. That
is why we are witnessing the beginning of what
is possibly the most
dangerous period in human history.
If the administration decides miraculously in
the next few days not to
invade, the most unthinkable risks will recede
significantly. But this
Junta has repeatedly displayed a reckless
adventurist streak that alarms
even their own political allies, and it
appears that the hotter heads will
prevail.
The actual tactical situation, never terribly
auspicious because of the
Kurdish wild card that receives far too little
attention (and which I will
address later), has deteriorated for the US.
The denial of a ground front
from both Saudi Arabia and Turkey has
completely reshuffled the
tactical deck, and caused many a sleepless
night for harried
commanders from Task Force Headquarters all
the way down to lonely
infantry platoon leaders.
The ground attack will now go though Kuwait, a
single front across
which an unbelievable series of heavy,
expensive, high-maintenance
convoys will pass, many on long journeys to 18
provincial capitals, 19
military bases, 8 major oil fields, over 1,000
miles of pipeline, key terrain
along minority Shia and Kurdish regions, as
well as Baghdad. But
attacking forces are not the only mechanized
ground forces.
The huge logistical trains that must
consolidate objectives, set up
long-term lines of communication, and deliver
daily support, will also be
held up until airheads are seized within Iraq
to augment ground
transportation with airlifts of people and
equipment. This shifts a higher
emphasis onto airhead seizures (and therefore
Ranger units), and
forces the security of the airheads themselves
before they can become
fully functional.
Baghdad may require a siege, which has already
been planned, but
now that siege doesn't begin without a much
lengthier invasion timeline
that depends much more heavily on airborne and
airmobile forces that
can be dropped onto key facilities to hold
them until mechanized
reinforcement can arrive. At this writing, the
101st Airborne (which is
actually a helicopter division) has not even
completed its deployment
into the region. Sections of the 82nd Airborne
(a genuine paratroop
division) are still occupying Afghanistan.
The increased dependence on airlift is further
complicated by weather.
While extreme summer heat doesn't reach Iraq
until May, the
pre-summer sand storms have already begun. US
commanders have
pooh-poohed the effect of these storms, but
they are simply putting on a
brave face for the public. Sand can be a
terrible enemy. It clogs engine
intakes, just as it clogs eyes and noses,
gathers in the folds of skin, falls
in food, works its way into every conceivable
piece of equipment, and
takes a miserable toll on materiel, machinery
and troops. When air
operations become more critical to overall
mission accomplishment, and
when light forces (like airmobile and airborne
divisions) are operating
independent of heavier mechanized logistics,
weather like sand storms
matters a lot.
The order of battle is widely available on the
web, and there's no reason
to recount it here. The reason is, even with
all these debilities and
setbacks, the results of the invasion are
certain. Iraq will be militarily
defeated and occupied. There will be no
sustained Iraqi guerrilla
resistance. There will be no Stalingrad in
Baghdad. We should not buy
into the US bluster about their invincibility,
but neither should we buy
into Iraqi bluster.
Last September retired Marine General Paul Van
Riper was selected to
play the Opposing Forces (OPFOR) Commander
named Saddam
Hussein for a 3-week-long, computer simulated
invasion of Iraq, called
Operation Millennium Challenge.
He defeated the entire multi-billion-dollar US
electronic warfare
intelligence apparatus by sending messages via
motorcycle-mounted
couriers to organize the preemptive
destruction of sixteen US ships,
using pleasure vessels. At that point, the
exercise controllers repeatedly
intervened and told him what to do; move these
defenders off the
beach. Stop giving out commands from mosque
loudspeakers. Turn on
your radar so our planes can see you. Because
every time Van Riper
was left to his own devices, he was defeating
the US.
While all this is surely amusing, does it
really mean the Iraqis will defeat
the US during an invasion?
Certainly not. It will, however, make it far
more expensive, slow, difficult,
and deadly for Iraqis.
The Iraqi military won't prevail because they
can't. They are weak,
under-resourced, poorly led, and demoralized.
What the delays mean is
that the US will depend on sustaining the
initiative and momentum
through brutal, incessant bombing designed to
destroy every soldier,
every installation, every vehicle, every field
kitchen in the Iraqi military.
War will inflict terrifying casualties on the
Iraqi military. There will be
collateral damage to civilians, even with
attempts to attenuate that
damage, and in case we fail to remember,
soldiers are like everyone
else. They have families and loved ones.
What is uncertain is the aftermath.
This is the variable that is never factored
into the thinking of our native
political lumpen-bourgeoisie; their deeds
plant the seeds of future and
furious resistance.
If half million Iraqi soldiers die, and
100,000 civilians are killed in
collateral damage, we have to remember that
there are at least (for the
sake of argument) five people who intensely
love each of the dead. And
if we think of the grief of millions after
this slaughter, and of the
conversion of that grief into rage, and
combine that with the organization
of the internecine struggles based on
historical ethnic fault lines (that
the Ba'ath Party has repressed), we begin to
appreciate the explosive
complexity of post-invasion Iraq.
This invasion will also ignite the fires of
Arab and Muslim humiliation and
anger throughout the region.
Most importantly, in my view, there are the
Kurds.
Anyone who has followed the news has heard
about "Saddam's"
gassing of the Kurds. That's how it is
portrayed. Nonetheless, few
people have bothered to find out what the
truth is, or even to investigate
this claim.
Stephen Pelletiere was the Central
Intelligence Agency's senior political
analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. He
was also a professor at the
Army War College from 1988 to 2000. In both
roles, he had access to
classified material from Washington related to
the Persian Gulf. In 1991,
he headed an Army investigation into Iraqi
military capability. That
classified report went into great detail on
Halabja.
Halabja is the Kurdish town where hundreds of
people were apparently
poisoned in a chemical weapons attack in March
1988. Few Americans
even knew that much. They only have the
article of religious faith,
"Saddam gassed his own people."
In fact, according to Pelletiere - an ex-CIA
analyst, and hardly a raging
leftist like yours truly - the gassing
occurred in the midst of a battle
between Iraqi and Iranian armed forces.
Pelletiere further notes that a "need to know"
document that circulated
around the US Defense Intelligence Agency
indicated that US
intelligence doesn't believe it was Iraqi
chemical munitions that killed
and aimed the Kurdish residents of Halabja. It
was Iranian. The
condition of the bodies indicated
cyanide-based poisoning. The Iraqis
were using mustard gas in that battle. The
Iranians used cyanide.
The lack of public critical scrutiny of this
and virtually all current events
is also evident on the issue of the Kurds
themselves.
That issue will come out into the open, with
the vast area that is
Kurdistan, with its insurgent armed bodies,
overlaying Iraq, Iran, Turkey,
and even parts of Syria, which will realign
the politics and military of the
entire region in yet unpredictable ways.
As part of the effort to generate an Iraqi
opposition, the US has
permitted Northern Iraqi Kurdistan to exercise
a strong element of
national political autonomy since the 1991
war. This is a double-edged
sword for the US in its current war
preparations, particularly given this
administration's predisposition for pissing
all over its closest allies. Iraq's
Northern border is with Turkey, who has for
years favored the interests
of its own Turkmens in Southern Turkish
Kurdistan at the expense of
the Kurds, who have waged a guerrilla war for
self-determination
against the Turks since the 1970s.
The Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan or PKK)
(Kurdish Worker's Party),
Turkish Kurds fighting for an independent
Kurdish state in southeast
Turkey, was singled out on the US
international terrorist organization list
several years ago, in deference to fellow NATO
member, Turkey. PKK
leader Abdullah Ocalan is so popular with the
Kurds that Turkey was
forced to commute his death sentence,
subsequent to his capture, to life
imprisonment, for fear that his execution
would spark an uprising.
Other non-leftist Kurdish independence
organizations developed and
alternatively allied with and split with the
PKK and each other. Turkey
now claims that PKK bases are being
constructed in Iran, with Iranian
complicity, from which to launch strikes
against Southern Turkey.
Groups other than the PKK, more acceptable to
the US, predominantly
the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the
Kurdistan Patriotic Union
(PUK) have been administering Northern Iraqi
Kurdistan as an
autonomous zone under the protective umbrella
of the US no-fly zone.
The Turkish government fears the influence of
this section of Kurdistan
in the wake of a US military action that
topples Saddam Hussein's
Ba'ath government, because Kurds have declared
their intention of
declaring an independent Kurdish state there.
The Turks find this
absolutely unacceptable, and have declared
forthrightly they will invade
to prevent this happening. They have also
threatened to attack Kurds in
Iran, but this is a far less credible threat.
Kurdish nationalists have long experience with
betrayals and alliances
of convenience, and know American perfidy very
well. They have
declared at the outset that in the event of an
invasion, they will defend
themselves from Turkish incursions. They are
not willing to lose the
autonomy they have gained over the last eleven
years in Northern Iraq.
This not only puts them at odds with US ally
Turkey, it potentially puts
them at odds with the US itself, even with US
wishes that they
participate in indigenous actions against
Iraqi forces. The US does not
want that region destabilized in the
post-invasion period, because
Kirkuk in the East of Iraqi Kurdistan is a
huge oil producing zone.
The very first complication of post-invasion
Iraq will likely be the demand
that US commanders disarm the Kurds.
Northern Iraq could easily become contested
terrain involving partisan
warfare between Turks, Kurds of three
factions, the Iranians, and the
US, with the Syrians in a position to play the
silent interloper. This
would amount to the devolution of Northern
Iraq, a key strategic region,
into another Afghanistan or Somalia. It is
already straining relationships
between Turkey and the United States, NATO
allies, even as the NATO
alliance itself comes under severe strain,
with a Euro-American trade
war as a backdrop.
And the Kurds have the motivation, tenacity,
and fighting spirit to do
those kinds of things that General Van Riper
did to defeat the Rumsfeld
"Robo-Military" in Operation Millennium
Challenge.
We begin to see how the Bush Junta is the
equivalent of a mad bee
keeper, that no longer leaves the hive stable
and merely smokes it into
a stupor to harvest the honey. It now proposes
to simply start swatting
all the bees and taking the honey by brute
force.
We cannot see the war as an extricable,
external phenomenon. We
have to see it as it is embedded in the larger
complexities of the whole
period. When the cruise missiles fly at 400
per day, that is 400 times
$1.3 million in self-destructing technology.
30 days of this is $15.6 billion
in Cruise missiles alone. This is great news
for Raytheon and
Lockheed-Martin, but it is bad news for public
schools. At the antiwar
demonstration in Washington DC, March 15th, I
met many more
teachers, now wearing buttons that said "money
for education not war."
This is a reflection of the deepening
consciousness of the American
people, but one that has not yet grasped the
depth of the crisis that
drives the war. Nor does it measure how every
missile's impact
increases the rage of the Southwestern Asian
masses and the justifiable
anxieties of Africa and East Asia.
The real bet that Bush & Co. make on this war
is that it can secure oil at
$15 a barrel, rescue dollar hegemony, gain the
ability to wage its
economic war on China and Europe, and
inaugurate a fresh upwave of
real profit. That will not happen.
When the invasion goes, we will certainly see
plenty of images of
cheering "liberated" Iraqis. This is common
after any successful military
incursion, a combination of real relief in
some cases, as we saw in the
first stage of the 1994 Haiti invasion, but
also of self-defense and
opportunism.
The costs incurred by the war, combined with
the insane Bush tax cuts
for the rich, will deepen the Bush regime's
economic conundrums. The
coming social crisis in the US will emerge
against a backdrop of
elevated public expectations. The hyperbole
employed by this
administration to justify this war, against
rapidly strengthening
resistance and a corresponding loss of
credibility outside the
indoctrinated and gullible United States, led
them to warn the public
about perpetual "war on terror," but with the
sugar coating that there
would be no domestic economic sacrifice. The
mountain of personal and
institutional debt in the US, the threat of
deflation, the trade deficit, the
overcapacity, the rising unemployment and
insecurity, all these factors
will be worsened by the Bush doctrines. And
Bush, like his father before
him, will go down. Along with him, Tony Blair
and Jose Maria Aznar will
go down in political flames, and it will be a
long time indeed before
anyone can align themselves with the US as an
ally. As in the last
elections for the Republic of Korea,
candidates will find that election
victory depends on now independent one can
prove oneself of the
United States.
We have had our course charted now, and the
military option is all the
US ruling class really has to maintain its
dominance. After Iraq, there will
certainly be increased asymmetric warfare,
"terrorism," if you will,
directed at Americans, American institutions,
American targets. And
when the rest of the world recognizes how
thinly spread the US military
is, thinly spread physically, but also
economically because it is not a
sustainable institution in its current
incarnation, rebellions will occur.
They have already started. Then the response
of the weakening US will
be to lash out, often with totally
unforeseeable consequences, just as
the consequences of this impending invasion
are unforeseeable.
Our military might is no longer a sign of
strength, and the US military is
not invincible. Its use as both first and last
resort is a sign of profound
systemic weakness. That its employment could
destabilize the world,
and cause us to stumble into a Third World War
is a real possibility.
We in the antiwar movement have struggled to
protect the Iraqi people.
We may fail in that. But as resistance
fighters in WWII or national
liberation fighters in the post-colonial era,
we must differentiate setbacks
from defeat, when we suffer those setbacks we
can not be demoralized
and demobilized. We will keep our eyes on the
fact that the system itself
is failing and this adventure is a symptom of
that failure, and continue to
work for the political destruction of our
current regime as a tactical
necessity. The perfect storm is coming. It's
in the genetic code of the
system right now and inevitable. And while we
don't know how it will
look, we have to keep our eyes on the prize -
emancipation from the
whole system, and let that be our lodestar.
Never quit. Never. We are in
the stream of history, and we have been given
a grave and momentous
responsibility. Every day we delayed them was
a victory.
There is a long struggle ahead, and it will
become more terrible. But just
as those before us fought slavery, apartheid,
fascism, and colonialism,
we will take up our historical task with
confidence and determination,
and assert our humanity against these
gangsters.
Freedom is the recognition of necessity.
http://www.rense.com
