Hi all; Time's new article on urban warfare in Iraq:
Iraq: Going Door to Door
Mark Thompson, Time, September 13, 2002
Saddam Hussein hopes to engage Americans in street fighting in Baghdad, a scenario the U.S. wants to avoid
Corporal Abraham Hernandez remembers his death as "humbling." It happened during a Pentagon war game last month at an abandoned Air Force base in the California high desert. Hernandez was hit while he and his Marine platoon were trying to secure a landing zone for a helicopter that was bringing in troops to help take the "city." The enemy, masked by surrounding buildings and sandbag bunkers, fired on the group. The laser-activated beeper on Hernandez's belt went off, signaling that he had been killed in action; 22 of his 27 fellow platoon members suffered the same fate. All in all, it was a rough day for the Marines. "It was very difficult to find a place to hide," says Hernandez. "If this had been real life, this would have been as far as I'd have gotten."
The mock battle, conducted amid 1,000 buildings in the biggest urban-war exercise the U.S. has ever held, confirmed what the Pentagon already knew: America may have the world's most fearsome military, but it is ill equipped to wage war in cities. The nation's recent triumphs—in Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Persian Gulf—were mostly air wars, carried out by American pilots far above the tangle of gritty city streets. On the ground, the Americans face enemies with the home-field advantage and lose their edge in state-of-the-art weaponry. In last month's exercises, for example, the Marines were unpleasantly surprised to learn that their high-tech, heat-seeking sights don't work through glass, meaning they can't peer through windows and into rooms where the enemy lurks. "There is no technological magic wand you can wave over these problems to make them go away," says Marine Major Dan Sullivan, who is leading the corps's efforts to improve its ability to conduct urban warfare.
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U.S. military leaders say 30% of street-fighting combatants tend to end up as casualties. The Pentagon wants to drive that figure down to 10%.
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There is also an entirely different tactic the U.S. could adopt in taking on Baghdad. Robert Scales, a retired major general who used to run the U.S. Army War College, says the Americans should avoid door-to-door battles and instead cordon off the capital with a loose chain of tanks and armored vehicles. This porous ring would allow civilians to flee the city center, where Saddam's soldiers—and perhaps the Iraqi leader himself—would be holed up, anxiously waiting for a "mother of all battles" that would never materialize. "You can be patient, with a minimum loss of life," says Scales, "or you can rush in and kill a lot of people on both sides."
Baghdad would seem particularly vulnerable to such a wait-it-out strategy. It is not even close to being self-sufficient. If U.S. troops cut off the supply of water, food, electricity and communications, civilians would no doubt quickly begin fleeing to the safety of refugee camps set up outside the cordon. The U.S. military could wait for the white flag of surrender to flutter outside the range of most of Saddam's weapons. Armed with intelligence gleaned from fleeing refugees, the Americans could attack key targets inside the city with long-range weapons. Such a siege could help nurture one prized U.S. goal: Saddam's falling at the hands of his own people. "Baghdad is one of those classic cities that happen to contain all the kindling necessary to spark a revolt," says Scales. "You'd have the ruling élite and the army cheek by jowl with the people, who despise both the élite and the army."
time.com
-- Carl
P.S. If it were that easy to capture cities by starvation and blockade the world's history would be rather radically different from what it is. |
