by Austin Bay
March 19, 2003 Forty-eight hours. By the time this essay hits print, the
countdown President Bush began on March 17 will be history.
The calendar tells the real story, however, not the stopwatch.
Twelve years, seven months. That's the proper time metric for gauging The
Saddam War, which began on Aug. 2, 1990 when Saddam's Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Desert Storm, unleashed in January 1991, smashed Saddam's
military and temporarily thwarted his expansive ambitions. Key U.N.
resolutions forbade using coalition troops to topple Saddam's fascist Baath
regime. The United States kept that bargain, though the bloodbath in Kurd
and Shia communities as the Republican Guard returned to murder Iraqis
revolting against Saddam morally stains the United Nations' deal.
Subsequent Security Council resolutions had implicit clocks.
Saddam had to rid himself of weapons of mass destruction or suffer
consequences.
But the United Nations has failed. Its countdown never quite
concludes. Another tick, another minute, another hour, another decade. The
U.N. clock, all wound up with the lingo of collective security, ultimately
lacks the steel spring of collective will.
Hence the devastating line in Bush's speech: "The United Nations
Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities. So we will rise
to ours."
I've written this before, and every second makes it more
certain: The formula for Hell in the 21st century, weapons of mass
destruction plus rogue states plus terrorists, must be broken. Breaking the
fatal linkage -- stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,
eliminating terrorists and reforming rogue states -- should be the civilized
world's common goal.
America, with staunch allies, has accepted the necessary burden.
The biggest burden now falls on U.S. and British soldiers. Make
no mistake -- in wartime, the toughest job in a democracy is that of a
private taking a machine-gun nest. A democracy's soldiers are the real human
shields -- shields against chaos and tyranny. Bush said it well: "We are now
acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater. In one year or
five years, the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be
multiplied many times over. With these capabilities, Saddam and his
terrorist allies could choose the moment of deadly conflict when the two are
strongest. We choose to meet that threat now, where it arises, before it can
appear suddenly in our skies and cities."
What happens if Saddam and his clique do not leave Iraq as Bush
demanded?
U.S. commanders have characterized their battle plans as relying
on "shock and awe." The tyrant's battle plans appear to rely on "Shias and
alleys." "Shock and awe" versus "Shias (refugees) and alleys" represent a
battle for control of time. The United States intends to fight on "fast war
time" and Saddam hopes for slow.
"Shock and awe" means "smart" precision munitions dropped on
Iraqi military headquarters, on air defenses, on elite Iraqi combat units,
on any resistance. As the "hard and smart" rain pins and destroys Iraqi
units, U.S. and British tanks and armored infantry strike. Helicopters move
infantry (airmobile assault in Pentagonese) to seize key road junctions,
weapons depots and neighborhoods. Special operations forces (SOF, e.g.,
Green Berets), already positioned in Iraq, relay intelligence and direct
bombs using lasers. In concept, an overwhelming "fast" wave of power and
maneuvering forces breaks the will to resist of all but Saddam's worst
thugs.
Saddam believes "slow time" gives him a chance. He wants waves
of refugees (in the south, most would be "Shia" Arabs) to vex advancing U.S.
armor. Chemical weapons could also slow the allied attack. Saddam hopes the
alleys of Baghdad are slow and costly. (Holding his own people as hostages
may further stall allied city operations.) If Saddam's "slow gambit"
succeeds, he could ask the U.N. Security Council for a ceasefire resolution.
Which time scheme will dominate the battlefield?
The U.S. military is an around-the-clock organization. Saddam's
units are not. As for the alleys? Defending alleys requires a large cadre of
hard-core Iraqi fascists. When the rest of Iraq is liberated, even those
criminals will realize their time is past.
