← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · edward gibbon
Thread ID: 6056 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2003-04-08
2003-04-08 20:17 | User Profile
In the Daily Telegraph Keegan wrote: [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/04/08/do0801.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/04/08/ixportal.html]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...8/ixportal.html[/url] > *Saddam's utter collapse shows this has not been a real war *** By John Keegan (Filed: 08/04/2003)
The war in Iraq seems to be drawing to a close in circumstances as mysterious as those that have surrounded its unfolding from the beginning. The chief mystery now is the whereabouts of Saddam and his entourage.
Saddam has disappeared. He may have fled the country. He may have left Baghdad to take refuge elsewhere in Iraq. He may be hiding underground in the city. He may - though the likelihood is now discounted - be dead.
Whatever his current situation, some of his supporters are still loyal and are fighting to defend what remains of his regime. Resistance cannot last long. Basra is now almost completely under British control.
The Americans are reducing the capital, district by district. In the outlying regions, the towns have either surrendered or are being occupied one by one. Saddam's Iraq has been defeated and will shortly have been purged of the Ba'ath Party apparatus.
[color=blue]Saddam's war plan, if he had one, must be reckoned one of the most inept ever designed. [/color]It made no use of the country's natural defences. All advantages the defence enjoyed were thrown away even before they could be utilised.
Iraq presents a considerable military problem to the invader, particularly one obliged to attack from the sea, as the British found in 1915-17. The point of entry, in the Gulf, is very narrow. Beyond, the terrain stretches away for 800 miles to the Turkish border and, although the central plain between the Tigris and Euphrates is almost as flat as a billiard table, the topography nevertheless presents major obstacles to an attacker making his way north at frequent intervals.
The key objectives are the cities, and most of them, Baghdad in particular, are protected by large water barriers. Saddam's correct strategy would have been to group his best forces in the south, to oppose the Anglo-Americans as far from the capital as possible, and then to conduct a fighting withdrawal up the valleys of the great rivers, leaving devastation behind.
The port facilities at Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deep-water harbour, should have been sabotaged at the outset. Then the bridges across the Tigris and Euphrates should have been blown in a step-by-step retreat, to keep the coalition out in the desert to slow its progress and to force it into the laborious and potentially costly procedure of emergency bridging.
The Americans had, presciently, brought several large bridging units with them, the best-equipped capable of constructing a ribbon bridge 800 metres wide, but they have not been required. Instead, the Iraqi defenders either abandoned the existing bridges intact or conducted the most feeble of efforts to deny them to the enemy.
Thus, instead of fighting to delay the American advance to Baghdad, Saddam allowed the two leading American formations, the 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Expedition Force, to arrive within striking distance of Baghdad very quickly indeed. Not only was space, the most valuable of all dimensions in an effective defence, surrendered without a fight.
So was the second most important, time. It is not only outside observers who have been bewildered by the Iraqis' military behaviour. So must also have been the coalition high command. The Iraqis have ignored every rule of defensive warfare.
They have also handled their troops in an illogical fashion. Saddam had on paper nearly 400,000 soldiers at his disposal, consisting, in descending order of quality, of his Republican Guard of six divisions, his regular army of 17 divisions and his paramilitaries, including the Fedayeen irregulars and the Ba'ath Party militia, totalling perhaps 30,000.
In orthodox military practice, the Republican Guard, less perhaps a portion held back for last-ditch defence, should have been committed first, to blunt the coalition onset. The regular army should then have been committed to reinforce the Republican Guard when and where it achieved success. The paramilitaries should have been kept out of battle, to harass the invaders if the regular defence collapsed.
Saddam has fought the battle the other way around. The regular army was committed first, south of Baghdad, and seems to have run away as soon as it saw that the fighting threatened to be serious. The Republican Guard was then brought forward to hold the approaches to Baghdad and has been devastated by American air attack, its armoured units in particular being offered up for pointless sacrifice.
The only serious resistance appears to have been offered by the units least capable of meeting the coalition troops on equal terms, the Ba'ath Party militia, effectively a sort of political Mafia equipped with nothing more effective than hand-held weapons.
Because the American and British units, but particularly the British, are concerned about how Iraq is to be reconstructed after Saddam's fall, they have shrunk from deploying their full firepower against the Ba'athists. They do not want to destroy urban districts or to cause casualties to innocent Iraqis, among whom the Ba'athists are sheltering. Hence a few thousand thugs have managed to sustain resistance long beyond the point that would be possible if the coalition had let rip.
[color=blue]Because the war has taken such a strange form, the media, particularly those at home, may be forgiven for their misinterpretation of how it has progressed. Checks have been described as defeats, minor firefights as major battles. In truth, there has been almost no check to the unimpeded onrush of the coalition, particularly the dramatic American advance to Baghdad; nor have there been any major battles. This has been a collapse, not a war.[/color]
Nevertheless, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, the British commander in the Gulf, has a point when he says the British media have lost the plot. He looks forward to a future stage of peacemaking when the young journalists who have been "embedded" in the coalition units will use that experience to propagate a new military reality for the benefit of the public at home.
The older media generation, particularly those covering the war from comfortable television studios, has not covered itself with glory. Deeply infected with anti-war feeling and Left-wing antipathy to the use of force as a means of doing good, it has once again sought to depict the achievements of the West's servicemen as a subject for disapproval.
The brave young American and British servicemen - and women - who have risked their lives to bring down Saddam have every reason to feel that there is something corrupt about their home-based media.**
2003-04-08 23:32 | User Profile
This is interesting. I wondered why Saddam had not destroyed the bridges over the Tigris and Euphrates at the first sign of the US forces approach, or made any attempt to sabotage the airport so we couldn't use it for a while. I thought there would be at least a desperate scorched-earth campaign. Perhaps US airpower was so overwhelming that any attempts to undertake a sizable mission were snuffed out.
Maybe the Iranians will take note, as they appear to be next.
2003-04-09 04:12 | User Profile
Keegan is a kosher military historian in the Ambrose mold, so of course he's going to paint this as a magnificent triumph. Still, he's undoutedly right that Saddam bungled his last hurrah, just like he bungled everything else. The much feared Battle of Baghdad has turned out to be a big joke. Instead of ordering his best troops to dig in inside the city, forcing the "coalition" to conduct a costly, al-Jazeera-covered MOUT opertation in residential neighborhoods & mosques, the stoopid bastid allowed them to be slaughtered on the outskirts by air power. Anyone with even half a brain knows that if American planes can target an enemy force on open ground, it will be annihilated, no matter how well dug in it might be.
Anyone except a tinpot camel jockey dictator, that is.
Well, things will get really interesting, now that the inevitable fall of his sordid regime appears at hand. We'll see which way the rags jump: will they continue smiling toothily and giving the thumbs-up sign in the weeks to come, or will they take a lesson from the only effective Iraqi resistance measures and start indiscriminate sniping, ambushing and suicide bombing?
I don't know, but I'd bet on the latter.
2003-04-09 04:23 | User Profile
Originally posted by N.B. Forrest@Apr 8 2003, 23:12 ** Well, things will get really interesting, now that the inevitable fall of his sordid regime appears at hand. We'll see which way the rags jump: will they continue smiling toothily and giving the thumbs-up sign in the weeks to come, or will they take a lesson from the only effective Iraqi resistance measures and start indiscriminate sniping, ambushing and suicide bombing?
I don't know, but I'd bet on the latter. **
Patience, long memories, hatred passed down through the centuries.
My kids are very young. Hello, Reykjavik.
2003-04-09 22:05 | User Profile
General N.B. Forrest John Keegan is infinitely superior to Stephen Ambrose. He would never write this type of drivel:> Ambrose thought setting up and running training camps, creating time tables and supervising training schedule for thousands of men in the United States would have enabled Eisenhower to avoid the caution of the British who remembered the blood of the battles of the Somme and Flanders. In addition Ambrose astutely pointed out that if Eisenhower had shipped out to Europe in 1917 he would not have had extensive, broadening experience with civilians, but that his time at war would have been confined to the professional military. Mr. Ambrose wrote that Eisenhower's military experience in World War I was excellent preparation for leadership in World War II. Such has been the viewpoint of much of American academia who write on war.
Keegan is a contributing editor to Zuckerman's US News and World Report, but never has been as firmly in the Israeli corner as Mort the Zhid would like. Ike was regarded as a military moron by those close to him.
2003-04-10 11:12 | User Profile
Patton, MacArthur & Montgomery all thought Eisenhower was no general. A Montgomery biographer strongly suggested that Ike (and Omar Bradley, another over-rated favorite of journalists like Ernie Pyle) were cowards who hid in panic during the Battle of the Bulge.
The real reason the judenpresse made heroes out of mediocrities like Eisenhower & Bradley wasn't their military genius, but because they perceived them to be "men of the people" - unlike MacArthur with his aristocratic bearing or the profane, hard-charging Patton. I'm reminded of Andy Rooney's hatred of Patton. He once hammered him for slapping the shellshocked soldier, saying that the man had faced the dangers of combat "which Patton never did". A damn lie - Patton led from the front - unlike Franks, or any other top general today. He scorned taking cover, even in the fiercest combat, saying that a commander must never show fear to his men.
2003-04-10 12:18 | User Profile
Forrest is correct in pointing out Patton's leadership as that of leading from the front. The man's personal courage can not be denied, and was a wonder to those around him as he failed to flinch as rounds exploaded close to him. Ike and Bradley were not great field commanders, true enough, but that was not really their role. Both had to take care of the mass organizational and political problems that beset the ETO. In hindsite, they could have done a better job of running the Euro. campaign, but fault can be found in abundance the next day. An example of a really over-rated General is the eccentric field marshall, Mongomery. His Market Garden campaign is an example of how not to plan and wage a campaign. Patton's plans were much better as have been shown in careful postwar analysis, and his reputation as risen as Monty's has fallen. No matter what plan of battle Saddam and his staff organized, it was doomed and soldiers would have been destroyed by air power and all its high-tech adjuncts. Besides, Saddam did not have a Joan of Arc appeal to the average soldier.
2003-04-10 12:55 | User Profile
Patton, MacArthur & Montgomery all thought Eisenhower was no general.
I doubt if these 3 egomaniacs held anybody but themselves in high esteem. Montgomery and the rest of the Brits like Alan Brooke were contempuous of both American officers and enisted men. Brooke considered GI's on a par with Italy's troops and insisted in his memoirs that captured German officers shared his opinion.
MacArthur didn't cover himself with glory in the Phillipines. He skedaddled to Australia and left Wainwright behind to fend. Wainwright ends up spending the war as a POW and freakin MacArthur gets the Medal of Honor.
The day Mac got the Medal, Ike noted it in his diary with the comment "...... and Wainwright did all the fighting".
There are few people who remember that MacArthur was on the payroll of the Phillipine government during his stay there and that congress allowed him to accept and keep a final paycheck of approximately half a million as a going away present when hostilities broke out.
2003-04-11 19:58 | User Profile
MacArthur didn't cover himself with glory in the Phillipines. He skedaddled to Australia and left Wainwright behind to fend. Wainwright ends up spending the war as a POW and freakin MacArthur gets the Medal of Honor.
I agree that he had an unbecomingly huge ego, stealing credit that rightfully belonged to others, and that he failed in the Phillipines. The fact that the Japs nailed the planes on the the ground is inexcusable. But MacArthur was about as far from being a coward as you can get. He used to leave the Corregidor tunnels during Jap bombing raids and carried a .38 in his back pocket, planning to kill Japs with the first five shots when they stormed the island, then snuff himself with the last one. His doctor told of their ship being attacked by kamikazes later in the war. When one barely missed the ship, exploding with a tremendous concussion in the water next to it, he decided to go below to check on MacArthur. When he entered his cabin, he found him sprawled out on the bed. Thinking him dead, he went over to check his pulse: it was 70. He was asleep.
The old "Dug Out Doug" myth (that many of his own men believed in) just won't wash.
As for the British, they did indeed have nothing but contempt for Americans of all ranks. For the snob Alan Brooke, the Kasserine Pass debacle confirmed all of his prejudices vis-a-vis the American fighting man. Subsequent victories would do nothing to change his views. Screw him and Monty.
2003-04-14 18:48 | User Profile
General N.B. ForrestYou wrote:> **I'm reminded of Andy Rooney's hatred of Patton. He once hammered him for slapping the shellshocked soldier, saying that the man had faced the dangers of combat "which Patton never did". A damn lie - Patton led from the front - unlike Franks, or any other top general today. He scorned taking cover, even in the fiercest combat, saying that a commander must never show fear to his men. **
From my book: War, Money and American Memory: Myths of Virtue, Valor and Patriotism [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0788184792/qid%3D1022776139/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F0%5F1/102-9675860-7271313]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/078...9675860-7271313[/url] 1-800-782-3833
**When Americans reflect on war in Europe the man most often thought of is George Patton, and most regrettably this Patton has been George Scott's caricature in the motion picture of the same name. Recent books purporting to be serious history of war have made reference to the movie rather than to the man. Perhaps the most grievous assault on Patton was perpetrated by Andy Rooney, the odious troll of 60 Minutes, a highly rated news entertainment show. On a purported documentary reviewing the war in Europe and while sitting next to retired General H. Norman Schwartzkopf, television personality Mr. Rooney sulked and accused Patton of not knowing what it was to be shot at and not knowing what it was like in the front lines. That Patton of all the senior American officers had the most experience in fighting war did not seem to concern Mr. Rooney. [color=blue]The Patton of World War I led his men into combat and was wounded[/color]. This violent invasion of the human body cannot be forgotten by those who were maimed. What became apparent was that Mr. Rooney was criticizing the Patton of the movie. In his memoir of World War II he admitted to having nothing but contempt for General Patton. Mr. Rooney had worked for the GI newspaper, The Stars and Stripes, and obviously was one of those who could be around a battlefield for a hundred years and not know what it was like. Unlike the mules of Hannibal of two thousand years ago, Mr. Rooney has not known enough to shut his mouth.
There was the Patton who was a serious student of international politics and warfare and had the best historical sense of any of the American high command. There was also the Patton parading his patriotic sense of the duty of the citizenry to be a soldier and to be a good one: "The highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one's country". Perhaps, Mr. Rooney was upset with Patton's statement that "battle is much more exigent than football" and believed otherwise. Perhaps, the coarseness of Patton's observations on Sicilians offended Mr. Rooney. Patton thought the Sicilian's life-style of spending most of their time sitting would have encouraged them to have developed comfortable seats over the millennia. But no, the Sicilian would sit on mud, boxes, rocks or anything, but chairs. The most sharply worded of his insights was noting the extreme good nature of the Sicilians and their contentment with their filth. A cultural imperialist Patton thought it would be a mistake to raise them to American standards which "they would never appreciate or enjoy". What should be borne in mind was that shortly after the end of the war there was a movement in Sicily to petition the United States Congress to be admitted as a state.
Above all was the accolade afforded George Patton by his foremost adversary, Field Marshal von Rundstedt. After the war von Rundstedt told the British historian, Liddell Hart, that the two best battlefield commanders the Allies had were Patton and Montgomery. One would like to think that the German military professional was a far superior judge of things military than the pouting pansy of American entertainment, Mr. Rooney. **
Just for my curiousity? Have you read my book?
solutrian> Ike and Bradley were not great field commanders, true enough, but that was not really their role. Both had to take care of the mass organizational and political problems that beset the ETO. In hindsite, they could have done a better job of running the Euro. campaign, but fault can be found in abundance the next day.
Bradley regarded Ike as an amateur:> Of great interest was the observation of Omar Bradley, who was Eisenhower's classmate at West Point and favorite. Bradley commented that "Ike led an extraordinarily charmed life", and he thought the British who had elevated Ike into the stratosphere at Casablanca and brought Alexander into his command were trapped by their precipitous action. Bradley professionally critiqued the campaign: "I feel certain that after Kasserine Pass he (Eisenhower) would have been fired. Ike was a political general of rare and valuable gifts, but as his African record clearly demonstrates, he did not know how to manage a battlefield**". Bradley thought of Alexander as the outstanding General's General of the European war with his shrewd tactical judgment and his ability to bear the nationally minded and jealous Allied commanders of his command. In each successive Mediterranean campaign he won the adulation of his American subordinates. **
**Mr. Ambrose wrote that Eisenhower's military experience in World War I was excellent preparation for leadership in World War II. Such has been the viewpoint of much of American academia who write on war.
The British were apoplectic over Kasserine. Alexander had cabled Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, with a note for Churchill's eye: "...My main anxiety is the poor fighting quality of the Americans" and later in a further letter to Alanbrooke: "...I have only the American II Corps. There are millions of them elsewhere who must be living in a fool's paradise. If this handful of divisions here are their best, the value of the remainder of the rest may be imagined".**
Mac and the Philippinses> **Hopelessly outnumbered, and under-equipped as no American Army would be again, they exacted losses from the enemy that left no doubt in any mind of the quality of the American soldier. Even more heartening was the loyalty of the Filipinos." One tries to counter this impression at personal risk in many parts of this country. What should be known when assessing the behavior of MacArthur in the Philippines were the contents of Executive Order Number 1 of the President of the Philippines which was issued on January 3, 1942 when the Japanese were entering Manila. For services between November 1935 and December 31, 1941 Douglas MacArthur received $500,000 from the depleted treasury of the Philippines. That the money could have been used by the wretchedly poor country and that it was against United States Army regulations to accept such substantial financial gifts did not bother MacArthur or Stimson who approved it. This money was not sufficient for MacArthur as on December 28, 1941 he submitted a bill for $35,000 in expenses to a deputy of President Quezon. These monies were paid to MacArthur in New York. Stocks purchased at prices driven down by Japanese military successes rebounded and at war's end made him a millionaire. The American government awarded General MacArthur the Medal of Honor for his conduct. Dwight Eisenhower remarked that his former superior had lost his nerve and had to be kept fighting by any means. Later Ike spoke of how the American public had built a hero out of its imagination.([color=red]As a matter of fact, Ike wanted to leave MacArthur on the islands. We outnumbered the Japanese at 2 to 1. The West Point history of World War II cited Yamashita's defensive tactics against invading Americans to be superior to MacArthur's.[/color])
Stimson, as ever magnanimous and considerate with his praise, did not forget to thank President Quezon of the Philippines for leading a gallant ally. This Filipino had visited Japan in 1938 when out of power and had been so impressed with Japanese militarism he thought Japan would be the deserved master of Asia. As president during World War II he wanted to be granted independence from the United States so he could surrender the Philippines to the Japanese. **