Re: Historic Military Victory?
KB: Your exuberance and joy and American pride at the events in Bagdad today were well expressed and I share those emotions and most of the opinions.
But I can't agree that in the strictly military sense that this campaign has any historical significance.
The disparities were only too obvious: wealth, population, military technology, air forces, lack of air defense, etc. No rational observer on either side ever doubted the outcome and that brought into play a morale advantage before the first shot was fired. Every war has a few romantics who believe that faith, elan, religion or magic will pull them through, but these always die in the initial clashes.
The Israelis faced and defeated large Arab armies in 1956, 1967 and 1972 and did so in less time with less of a technological and aerial advantage. But then I don't rate these three wars as militarily significant either: they were fought against conscript "slave" armies of despotic regimes and like Herodotus' view of the Persians I don't believe these can ever produce "real" warriors.
About the best modern comparison I can think of to this war is the German invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941. Yugoslavia had a million man army and was about the same size as Iraq though with more defensible mountains and rivers. Its army's core of Serbians had a credible reputation having bloodied the Austrians in 1914 and defeated the Turks and Bulgarians in 1912. Hitler ordered the attack within days of an English-engineered coup that produced an anti-German government. Using blitzkreig ("shock and awe"?) tactics with modern armor and total air supremacy, the Germans overran the country in 7 days with something like 55 fatalities. The German General Staff considered the operation as all in a day's work; nothing special.
I don't want American generals - or, more importantly, the American public - to develop a swelled head with respect to their military prowess. American soldiers are superbly trained and their precision weapons are awesome. But it may not be long before these same weapons spread to many other nations, some of whom may someday have warriors who would be capable of giving us a real contest.
Bruce |
