FINALLY, a man with some sense: Anyone who would seek to understand Operation Iraqi Freedom beyond the hyperventilation of television rent-a-generals with their telestrators and other Hollywood production values should read Ralph Peters’s Shock, Awe and Overconfidence in today’s Washington Post. Two of his key points are well worth underlining.
One is the simple observation that “the best way to shock and awe an enemy is still to kill him.” This is the nature of war. As Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman put it, “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.” Mercy in war consists in winning quickly and fighting in a just manner for a just cause. The people of Iraq, and indeed the entire region, have known no other governance than repression and brutality. They have yet to experience the luxuries of peace and prosperity that make Westerners squeamish about killing. One reaction to the campaign we are waging in the Iraqi and larger Arab street has been to wonder at our weakness. Some of the decisions we are making for humanitarian reasons and to aid the post-war reconstruction effort–leaving the lights on and especially the television towers standing in Baghdad–are perversely reinforcing propaganda efforts to promulgate the belief that Saddam is surviving and perhaps winning.
A second simple, but profound, observation that Peters makes is that the small size of the invasion force places a huge burden on every individual soldier, sailor, airman, and marine, both in the U.S. and British forces. These men and women are getting tired–from back-to-back sorties, constant marching, the overall tension of their mission–just at the climactic moment. Sleep deprivation has compound effects, and in battle that means mistakes and casualties.
In particular, the reluctance and inability to deploy a larger heavy ground force may prove costly. The 4th Infantry Division, prevented from landing in Turkey, is racing down to Kuwait but cannot move quickly enough to join the battle for Baghdad. Nor can the division put any pressure on Tikrit, Saddam’s home-town redoubt, which might have been a secondary objective for the unit. To get a larger force into the fight from the south might prolong the war, but these are marginal trade-offs that are razor thin.
Taken together, these points emphasize that, although the conduct of war is undergoing a transformation, one continuity remains: size matters. The force fighting in Iraq today is proving itself large enough to rapidly remove a despotic regime that has run a country the size of California for more than two decades and, just a week ago, thought itself firmly entrenched in power. Overall, our military has also proved itself large enough to continue to prosecute the war in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda simultaneously. Yet very grave questions remain about our ability to stabilize Iraq–and defend the newly liberated state of Iraq in a violent neighborhood–over the longer term. Even more profound questions remain about our ability to stabilize and democratize the Islamic world, stretching from the Mediterranean to East Asia, while containing the rise of China and dealing with North Korea.
After this victory, it will be time to return to the larger question of the United States’ role in the world. Our presumptions about our allies must be reconsidered–Great Britain, Australia, Poland, and a few others have risen to the new challenges; Germany has not and France even more emphatically has not; China and Russia watch and wait; the Indians wish us well and have hopes to participate as a great force for democracy. But the post-Iraq world will rest ever more squarely on American shoulders and soldiers. President Bush has led us well through the first battles of the 21st century, but soon he must turn his attention and his talents to building the institutional basis for sustained American military primacy and a balance of power that continues to favor freedom.
Tom Donnelly is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
