A LATE DISPATCH FROM THE GULF WAR
The battles you didn't see on your TV
By E.W. Chamberlain. Retired Army Col. E.W. Chamberlain is a Pentagon strategy consultant and was a mechanized infantry battalion commander in the Persian Gulf War
Published December 8, 2002
The Chicago Tribune
War, like fall, puts a smell in the air. I sniff, and I can ever so faintly pick up the odor of war. As I sniff again, memories of my war come flooding back and I reflect for perhaps the 10,000th time on how lucky we were. Lucky? you say. But we're the United States of America, the most technologically advanced nation in the world. What could luck possibly have to do with advanced warfare?
The answer is simple. Even with all the glitz and hype about technology and a few dramatic clips of missiles striking stationary targets in the open, warfare has stayed basically the same for the last century or so. We learned in Somalia yet again that people with small arms in an urban environment can quickly inflict significant casualties on our forces. We learned from Kosovo that airplanes are good at blowing up embassies and power grids but still appallingly bad at blowing up tanks, despite kill claims that turned out to be 97 percent incorrect. Warfare between nations still is about meeting and killing armies on the ground, and technology only goes so far in determining the outcomes.
I commanded a mechanized infantry battalion in the gulf war, and I'm living proof that we were extremely lucky. My battalion (which actually was a task force, because we had a company of tanks, a company of heavy engineers and other arms and attachments that doubled the size of the unit) led the far western arm of the famous Schwarzkopf "Hail Mary" attack into the Euphrates River Valley. We attacked 350 miles into enemy territory with no viable intelligence and no flanks.
I'm living proof that we were lucky because we attacked a unit that was two or three times our size and won. That unit was the 3rd Special Forces Brigade, Saddam Hussein's premier fighting unit, the one that took down Kuwait City and one that had more than enough combat power to defeat us. So why didn't they?
I've heard some people postulate that the reason we won was because our equipment was better. As far as tanks went, that was true. The M1 Abrams tank is still the best tank in the world. The M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle for our infantry is among the best in the world.
Iraqis were well-armed
Our M109 Howitzer is among the best for rapid fire but only reaches about 18 kilometers; the Iraqi guns could shoot 45 kilometers. (The Crusader Gun System would have resolved that artillery gap, but it has been canceled by people who have never been under artillery fire.)
The Iraqi AT-5 anti-tank missile was among the best in the world, and their small arms--they included the best the Soviet bloc had to offer as well as the best the West had to offer--were in some ways better than ours.
So it was not equipment that won the last gulf war. Gen. Barry McCaffrey said we could have used their equipment and they ours, and we still would have beaten them. He was right.
I've heard too many people say that our technology made the difference: We had Global Positioning Systems, satellite photos of Iraqi positions, perfect intelligence from signal intercepts, cruise missiles, smart bombs and many other minor modern miracles.
Now for the truth of all that.
I never saw a satellite photo of my objective area. You can take photos of only so many things, and the needs of a lowly infantry battalion were not even considered against the needs of staff planners, generals and media briefers.
We did have GPS, but satellite coverage in those days in that part of the world was good only for a few hours a day during the day. Unfortunately, it is infinitely easier to get lost in the dark. We overcame this problem with old-fashioned magnetic compasses, dead reckoning and paper maps.
Air power did not win war
My Air Force brothers ad nauseam claim that air power won the gulf war. I can categorically state that air power did not win the gulf war or any war since flying's inception in 1903. I never saw a cruise missile but did hear them going overhead--very impressive but no effect on the rascals I was fighting.
The same is true with the Air Force. I heard jets go overhead, but I never came across a single Iraqi combat vehicle, bunker, trench or soldier killed by air power.
I did see all of the above things killed by Apache helicopters and direct-fire weapons on the ground, and they damn sure made an impression on the Iraqis. (To be absolutely fair, I did see a hole in one highway overpass in the Euphrates Valley. It was a perfectly round hole and quite nice, but the overpass was still usable although reported as "destroyed" by the Air Force.)
My own personal experience of "close" air support was a 500-pound dumb bomb dropped from an F-16 flying at more than 23,000 feet. The pilot claimed he hit the target, about a kilometer away, but we were staring at it and saw nothing and heard nothing. When he asked whether we wanted another bomb, I graciously refused because we had absolutely no idea where the first bomb landed. The whole thing still raises the hair on the back of my neck.
The direct-fire fight on the ground was the key to the whole war. When the ground forces closed vigorously on the Iraqis with shock action and firepower, they surrendered in droves. They lost all will to fight.
I guess that's the end point of all wars: the fight on the ground. That's the decisive part, the hard part, the part where technology helps but does not decide the issue.
Good leaders, good soldiers and Marines, good equipment, good training and a good will to fight will make the difference.
We certainly had all of that in the last gulf war, and it was obvious that the other side did not. Napoleon said that the moral is to the physical as 10 is to one. So will, or "moral," is ever important, as we discovered to our national sorrow in the Vietnam War.
So what about will in this impending war?
So our will to fight this fellow is because he might have weapons of mass destruction? And that he is hiding them? And that he may use them against us or our allies?
He does have chemical weapons. We've known that for more than 20 years. (Of course, every nation with a fertilizer plant, chemical plant or even a chemistry set has the potential for chemical weapons.)
He might be developing nuclear weapons? (He and India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, France, China, Russia, Ukraine, England, the U.S., South Africa . . . ) Or there might be an as-yet-unidentified link to terrorists?
OK, the will thing remains a little fuzzy. We do know that we do not like Saddam Hussein and would rather he not be in power, but to remove him for that reason alone would be the act of a bully and hugely un-American.
No, we need a good and just cause because that's our way. It's not a question of can we beat these folks, but why are we beating these folks?
In my war, I could tell my troops we were fighting to free Kuwait from a dictator and to ensure the flow of oil to the world markets. I'm not sure what I could tell them today. I could say, "Well, because the president said so," which counts for something in the short term but begins to ring hollow when the body bags come in to Dover.
As an old soldier and like any soldier, I will "obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me," but I do much better with a cause. I need to feel that being away from my loved ones and my home and killing people I don't know has some higher moral reason to it.
Not liking Hussein is not enough.
I do smell war in the air. As I said, in our gulf war, we were lucky. We had a cause.
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