--- Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm not totally sure about this. Even discounting > the tendency of > expectations of people being too high, and the > tendency to look for > problems after only a few days into a campaign, it > appears to me that the > viewpoint at the highest level in the Defense > department was too > optimistic. I think that, no matter how good the > troops are, the enemy has > at least some say in how the battle unfolds (as I > know you know). The fact > that the Iraq defense did not simply fold, and > showed some intelligence in > planning a strategy that at least had a theoretical > chance to keep Hussein > in power makes me less sanguine about the outcome > than I was 2 weeks ago. > Are things on the schedule that you hoped for, or is > the ability of Iraq to > hold together as well as it did for the last two > weeks a bit troublesome. > > What is most worrisome to me is the ability of the > Bath party to keep power > in Basra and other southern cities. > > Dan M.
At the moment I would say that while things are not on the schedule I _hoped_ for, they are going about as well as I expected. Is that fair? I take some (I hope) justifiable pride in fairly accurately predicting the outlines of the early stages of the battle plan. I had hoped (with, I think, reason) that the dash to Baghdad that we just saw would cause the regime to collapse. I didn't really expect it, but I hoped it would happen. As it is, I think that things are, on the whole, going remarkably well. Let's put things in some historical perspective. 11 days into an attempt to conquer a nation the size of California using about 2 divisions worth of troops, we have: 1. Absolute air superiority - no Allied fixed wing aircraft have even been shot down by enemy fire, a record that vastly surpasses even that of the first Gulf War 2. American forces that have, virtually unimpeded, traveled more than 300 miles to within 50 miles of Baghdad 3. British forces that have caputed Iraq's only port (Umm Qasr) and isolated its second largest city (Basra). All of this for less than 100 allied soldiers killed. Allied forces have won _every_ engagement of the war. Most of the worst case scenarios (chemical weapons used against Israel, Iraqi oil fields put to the torch) have not, in fact, happened. In the most famous military collapse in modern history, France's against Germany, the French managed to hold out for 44 days. It's very, very early to make any outward determinations - I would say, though, most early indicators are positive. Where was I overoptimistic: 1. I underestimated the extent to which the fear Saddam had instilled in the population would maintain its hold. The Iraqi population is still (justifiably) not confident that we're going to stick around and get rid of Saddam - in that situation, they have very logically decided to stick tight. It's critical to remember that they _don't_ have access to the President's countless statements that we're going to stick this out, while they _do_ remember that we did nothing while Saddam's forces put down the 1991 uprising. Between the two, it's not surprising that they would do this. 2. I underestimated the extent to which Saddam's guerrillas would be able to take advantage of the 1st point to maintain a semi-functional resistance in the cities. 3. I underestimated the extent to which people are willing to fight for a totalitarian regime when driven by fear - see Stalin's Russia, for example. This was fairly dumb and something I should have taken into account. 4. I underestimated the extent of Saddam's Fedayeen guerrilla resistance. 5. I was unaware of the shipment of advanced Russian anti-tank missiles to Iraq, possibly via Syria. Of all of the developments of the war so far, this may be the most worrisome, and the most undercovered by the mainstream press. 6. I (stupidly) didn't take the effect of sandstorm season into account enough, falling for the press's line about heat and ignoring the far more salient climatological effect of changing seasons in the Gulf. That was, simply, dumb - there's no other word for it. Where was I insufficiently optimistic? 1. Iraq has shown exactly no ability to make coherent military maneuvers in the field. Isolated units are sometimes fighting (not very effectively) but no large-scale military operations seem to be taking place. 2. I did not guess that American anti-leadership operations would be so effective as to (probably) would Saddam (possibly) kill him and (certainly) remove him from effective contact with most of his military. 3. I overestimated the creativity (so far) of Iraqi forces in the extent to they would be willing to take advantage of American unwillingness to be involved with (not, note, cause) civilian casualties. 4. I (slightly) underestimated the American military's ability to maintain a logistical supply line over 300 largely unsecured miles, despite a guerrilla opposition. Guerrilla attacks on the supply lines are not nearly as important as the question of whether the supplies are getting through. They unquestionably are. I'm not sure where you see a theoretical chance of keeping Hussein in power - I'd like you to elaborate on that. So far as I can tell, he has no chance. The American forces around Baghdad are essentially going to play Pac Man with the Republican Guard units, gobbling them up one at a time. Meanwhile, 1000 American airborne troops have seized an airfield in Northern Iraq, and the Army is preparing to airmobile a mechanized brigade into the region, opening a Northern Front supported by tens of thousands of Kurdish troops and American air power. This will be quite a trick - supplying that force by air is something that can be done only with great difficulty - but the United States military has logistical abilities that boggle the mind. Meanwhile, I notice a remarkable lack of reports from the Western Iraqi desert. I have no information on anything about that, just my uninformed speculation. But the United States has a historical tendency to hit its enemies from surprising directions, and I sniff something suspicious going on to the west of Baghdad... So, what's my overall assessment? Things are pretty good. We're winning the war and winning decisively. We're not in a "best-case" scenario, but this is a pretty good middle case. The Republican Guard units outside Baghdad are being pounded from the air, and now that the sandstorms have cleared up tank-plinking can begin again in earnest. The troops on the ground are resting, repairing, refueling, and rearming. They may or may not wait for the two additional divisions currently deploying into the region to arrive. That question will be answered in a few days. My guess is that they will not, deciding instead to gamble and see if they can finish this quickly. The elimination of the remaining Republican Guard forces could very well cause the regime to fall - governments usually do when their last remaining army in the field has been destroyed, whether or not their capital has been occupied. If it doesn't, we'll have to deal with Baghdad, but I would expect Allied casualties in taking the city to be in the hundreds, not thousands. So, overall, despite the media's remarkable panic, I'd say we're doing pretty well. Gautam __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
