Top officers say they need to restart the war; Fighting could last into the summer
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thestar.com
Strategy: Back to the drawing board?
Top officers say they need to restart the war; Fighting could last into the summer
RICK ATKINSON AND THOMAS E. RICKS
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
KIFL, Iraq—Ten days into the invasion of Iraq, the political imperative of waging a short and decisive campaign is increasingly at odds with the military necessity of preparing for a protracted, more violent and costly war, according to senior U.S. military officials.
Top army officers in Iraq say they now believe that they effectively need to restart the war. Before launching a major ground attack on Iraq's Republican Guard, they want to secure their supply lines and build up their own combat power. Some timelines for the likely duration of the war now extend well into the summer, they say.
This revised view of the war plan, a major departure from the blitzkrieg approach developed over the past year, threatens to undercut early Bush administration hopes for a quick triumph over the government of President Saddam Hussein.
In an apparent change of strategy in Iraq yesterday, Saddam reportedly sacked his cousin, Musahim Saab al-Tikriti, from his post as Baghdad's air defence chief and replaced him with Gen. Shahin Yasin Muhammad al-Tikriti. The change was reported by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesperson in London.
Pressed on whether stray Iraqi missiles might explain heavy casualties at two Baghdad markets this week — at least 70 civilians killed, according to the Iraqi information minister — Blair's spokesperson said: "We are not saying definitively that these explosions were caused by Iraqi missiles (but) a large number of Iraqi surface-to-air missiles have malfunctioned. Many failed to hit their targets and have fallen back onto Baghdad before exploding."
The Blair government assessment came as former foreign minister Robin Cook, the most senior official to quit Blair's government over the war, said in an interview with today's Sunday Mirror that the war risks stoking a "long term legacy of hatred" against the West.
"I have already had my fill of this bloody and unnecessary war," Cook said. "I want our troops home and I want them home before more of them are killed."
Wars often bring a divergence between political and military leaders. But in the U.S. campaign in Iraq, that point of tension came surprisingly soon, after just a week of fighting, perhaps because an unusually lean launch helped the U.S. force advance so quickly.
Carrying out the original aim of a quick war with minimal civilian casualties would require taking chances that officers here now deem imprudent. In the past week, they found the Iraqi resistance tougher and more widespread than expected, and the planned charge to Baghdad stopped short of the city, with Saddam still in place.
The U.S. Army, which has little more than two divisions here, soon will have three brigades — the rough equivalent of one division — devoted just to the protection of the vulnerable supply lines from Kuwait to Najaf.
And Iraq's best troops — the Republican Guard and the elite Special Republican Guard — haven't yet been engaged in large numbers on the ground.
To some commanders in the field, that adds up to a need for longer timelines for the war. They are discussing a more conventional approach that would resemble the 1991 Persian Gulf War. It would mean several weeks of air strikes aimed at Republican Guard units ringing Baghdad, and resuming major ground attacks after that.
At the same time, commanders say the first 10 days of fighting reaped many successes. An initial plan last year predicted that it would take 47 days for U.S. troops to get within 80 kilometres of the outskirts of Baghdad, noted a senior army commander. Instead, the 3rd Infantry Division got that far in less than a week.
In the process, Iraq's oil fields were not destroyed, and no missiles laden with chemical or biological weapons were fired. U.S. casualties, while painful, were relatively light.
"Look at the big picture," said Paul Van Riper, a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant-general who helped review the war plan. "Three hundred miles, relatively few casualties, and almost no armoured vehicles lost."
There also remains hope for a "silver bullet" outcome that could bring an abrupt change in fortunes. The possibilities are a coup, a bomb that kills Saddam, or any one of several other scenarios that "tip the regime," as U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has put it in White House meetings.
But when the U.S. ground attack resumes, it will probably look very different from the first week of fighting.
"You adjust the plan," said an army general in Iraq. "The initial strategy was to get to Baghdad as rapidly as you can, change the regime, bring in humanitarian aid and declare victory. Now it's going to take longer."
Retired Col. Benjamin Covington said the initial approach was unrealistic.
"No country and no military force in recorded history has ever attempted to simultaneously fight and win a war, preserve the resources and infrastructure of the country, reduce non-combatant deaths to the absolute minimum within their capability and conduct a major humanitarian effort," he said.
Rumsfeld, in comments Friday, seemed to reject the notion of broadening the air campaign in a way that would cause more civilian deaths. "We do not need to kill thousands of innocent civilians to remove Saddam Hussein from power," he said at a Pentagon news conference. "At least, that's our belief."
Other officials in Washington were discussing reinterpreting the rules of engagement to place less emphasis on minimizing civilian casualties and more on destroying the enemy, even if Iraqi tanks and other weapons are intermingled with civilians.
When large-scale ground fighting does intensify, the geographical goals will change. Instead of rushing to Baghdad, several other tasks now face the U.S. military. First, Najaf will have to be taken, because commanders don't want to attack the Republican Guard south of Baghdad with a hostile force potentially in their rear. Capturing that town, where a suicide bombing killed four U.S. soldiers yesterday, could take weeks. Then would come the attack on the Republican Guard, and finally, if the Iraqi government hasn't collapsed by then, a fighting entry into Baghdad. So, an army source concluded, the war may last into summer or later.
However, a war that lasts months may also leave a vacuum that could encourage trouble elsewhere around the globe.
If the Pentagon deploys into Iraq all the troops currently scheduled to go, about half the combat power of both the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps will be in Iraq. One senior general at the Pentagon said he is concerned that North Korea, which has been locked in a confrontation with Washington over its nuclear program, will attempt to capitalize on the situation.
"Tote up the ground forces, naval forces and air assets in or en route to the war zone," said retired army Col. Andrew Bacevich, now a professor of international relations at Boston University. "Could the U.S. respond to a second major contingency — like Korea, for example?" His answer: The Pentagon may say it can, but he disagrees.
Getting bogged down for months could also cause trouble for the United States elsewhere in the Mideast. "It's one thing to reach a relatively quick, antiseptic victory," said retired army Lt.-Col. Andrew Krepinevich, an expert on global military strategy. "But the longer this goes on ...the more willing states in the region will be to challenge us."
He worried that a long, drawn-out fight "winds up being a kind of heroic defeat for the Iraqis."
WASHINGTON POST, Reuters |
