Regards, Ivan
Posted on 03/24/2003 5:19:06 PM PST by MadIvan
Gloom-mongers are already complaining that the campaign in Iraq is "bogging down", apparently because of the appearance of Iraqi irregulars in the rear areas and the resumption of fighting in towns described as having fallen.
It is far too early to talk of the campaign bogging down or even faltering. Doom-mongers should remember that the allied attack started only four days ago. They have been spoilt by memories of the briefness of the Gulf war of 1991 and the rapidity of the recent Northern Alliance victory in Afghanistan.
Wars do not usually obey Hollywood timetables. Progress can be slow and setbacks frequent. The Falklands, a short war by historical standards, lasted a month from the first landings to the Argentine surrender.
In Iraq the allies have done astonishingly well, having advanced nearly 300 miles since crossing the start line. This is one of the fastest advances ever achieved, surpassing that of the British liberation army in the dash from the Seine to Brussels in 1944. They have also secured the vital bridges at Nasiriyah, taken the Faw peninsula, captured Umm Qasr and isolated Basra.
What happens next is the question, in more senses than one. Gen Tommy Franks's difficulty is that he is fighting a one-front war but rapidly approaching his main objective. His task would be far easier had he troops on a northern front as well, allowing him to encircle Baghdad.
The nearer he gets to Baghdad the more urgent will it become to make correct decisions. He certainly does not want to commit troops to entering the city, because street fighting would cause serious casualties.
He does not want to drive the defenders back into the city either, not at least in the initial stage. What would suit him best is if the Republican Guards came forward and offered battle in the open country short of Baghdad.
There, under the plentiful close support the air force provides, the American armoured forces could win a decisive engagement, which would do both material and moral damage to the regime.
If the Iraqis will not fight outside Baghdad, and it is one of the simplest military principles not to do what the enemy wants, then Gen Franks may have to organise a siege of the city. His object would be to deprive the defenders of electricity and water, food and other commodities.
The trouble is that a close blockade would inevitably inflict hardship on the civilians as well as the soldiers. Indeed, Saddam would certainly make sure that his troops got the lion's share of whatever was going.
It may prove to be a difficulty in organising a siege that there is a shortage of troops. The breakneck speed of the advance has disguised thus far how thin on the ground the allies are. Almost the whole of the British force, amounting to a light division, is engaged in the south around Basra.
The drive on Baghdad has been conducted by only two American formations, the 3rd Mechanised Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, a reinforced division. The 101st Air Assault Division is making its way forward, largely by helicopter lift. However, the 101st has no tanks, while the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is largely infantry.
The formations that Gen Franks expected to have received via Turkey by this stage, the 4th Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Division, effectively an armoured force, are in transit and in unsatisfactory fashion, with the equipment aboard ships proceeding through the Suez Canal and the personnel arriving by air, mostly from the United States.
The anxiety must be, therefore, that if Saddam's best troops are not committed to battle outside Baghdad and defeated, but retire into the city, the Americans may find themselves forced to impose a siege but without sufficient troops to form an impermeable cordon.
A siege that leaks is not an effective siege at all. Meanwhile, if the main campaign is seen to be running into difficulty, pro-Saddam elements may begin to mount irregular operations against the lines of communication from the south, in the countryside which General Franks lacks the forces to garrison.
None of this could have happened in the Gulf war of 1991 because the Iraqis were isolated in the desert, the allies had only to defeat them in their positions and civilians were not involved.
Moreover, Gen Norman Schwarzkopf commanded nearly twice the number of troops that Gen Franks has. It may be the French who have won the most hostility in America but it is the Turks who have thrown the spanner in the works. No doubt the Americans will remove that spanner but they could have done without it in the first place.
Regards, Ivan
this would give time for the 4 mec to get inplace (Redirected from Turkey)
Thanks to the Turks the Ba'thists face only one front and can run to the north without confronting heavy armor or many ground troops for that matter.
Regardless of American air power or the useful but underarmed Kurds, the Turks have indeed placed a substantial obsticle in the path of the coalition.
The combination of the weather and the long trip around the Baghdad city limits could result in substantially more coalition casualties.
The big question is were we arrogant to assume the cooperation of the Turks or did our old allies simply stab us in the back during the eleventh hour.
So far, nothing has happened that hasn't been plan for. They will be using this campaign in the military schools as an example of how to fight the next war for generations to come.
And don't forget that the ground attack in 1991 was preceded by SIX weeks of intensive bombing. We're not even near storming Baghdad yet.
EMP to take out all electronics, BLU-82 Daisy Cutters & M.O.A.B.s to "Recreate the firebombing of Dresden" by a factor of 10 to the....fill in the blank power. Throw in Spectre and Spooky guships and it becomes a turky shoot...or is that fish in a barrel?
You're right, we don't nee no steenkeen nukes.
It's too bad they didn't abandon Saddam and surrender. It's too bad they didn't welcome us as liberators. It seems they and the A-Rab world consider us as "invading Crusaders".
On another note, have the Syrians arrived in their busses from Syria to help Saddam? Better now than later...Allah awaits you and we'll be sure you meet him as soon as can it be arraigned.
Would it be possible to back up the siege with round-the-clock air patrols to kill anything trying to enter the city?
I estimate 2-3 weeks to get the 4th mec into the fight. They should have (I don't know that they haven't) brought some of the M-1's into the north on C-17's, one at a time. I expect the Apaches were handicapped in the battle today due to lack of heavy armor.
1) Not enough troops. We are trying to conquer all of Iraq with fewer troops than the first Gulf War..which had a far more limited objective.
2) We are by-passing towns which still have enemy garrisons. This leaves enemy formations are our rear, which can carry out attacks on our more lightly armed support units. We have also moved so quickly that our supply lines are over-extended...which could leave our front-line units vulnerable should the rear support be disrupted.
3) No clear end-game for Baghdad. It seems a though we went into this thing crossing our fingers that the regime would collapse before we got to Baghdad. Crossing your fingers is bad strategy. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. If we arrive at Baghdad and the Rep Guard entrench in the city center or break up into small, civilian clothed irregulars...we could be in for a heap big scrap.
4) We misjudged the Iraqi people. As crazy as it seems to us, there is a fair number of Arabs in Iraq who prefer living under their own barbaric dictator than under "foreign, infidel occupation".
We need a few things to break our way or things could get dicey.
One front? I don't think so...
A siege certainly wouldn't work. The Iraqis would just take the civilian population hostage and start killing them. And I have absolutely no doubt they'll be using chemical weapons. They're not gonna worry about their reputation with their capital at stake, Blix's opinion of Saddam notwithstanding. If Saddam, or whoever's in charge, were worried about reputation, they wouldn't have executed our people and then rubbed it in our faces.
I think Chirac was involved in the Turkey situation from the very beginning. He dangled the carrot of EU membership if Turkey threw a wrench into our plans. There had to be a lot more behind that ridiculous daily flip-flopping than haggling.
Yup. It's what NASA did with Columbia. But I don't think that's the case here.
We were naive.
Turkey has many good people and many people who want to be members of a modern state that can be depended upon to act rationally (not that the French and the Russians are doing so, but the general principle still holds true).
Nonetheless, Turkey was, is, and I suspect, always shall be the "Sick Man of Europe." In other words, don't trust Turkey, ever.
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