|
|
|
(April, 1999) "Excuse me," the man yelled to the bartender, "but since there's a war going on, could you switch off the golf and turn to CNN?" The bartender's reluctance was further proof the video-game pictures which thrilled us in Desert Storm have taken on a been-there, done-that feel. With this latest air war, we Americans have a vague sense it's for a good cause, even though we don't like it very much, and we have a sense the world needs a cop, but we don't want the job. Most of all, though, is this. We don't know much about it, so we don't want to say too much about it. We don't want to end up looking stupid. Well, I've never been afraid of looking stupid, and there's a few things somebody needs to explain. To nutshell it, every military planner worries about fighting the wrong war in the wrong place. We've compounded the problem by fighting the wrong kind of war in the wrong place. Which brings me to war for dummies... |
|
|
*** History shows if you have three soldiers operating one weapon, they will all pitch in and work the weapon -- even in the face of enemy fire -- because they do not want to publicly let their buddies down. The same three men under fire with just their individual rifles will individually duck for cover.History also shows that any time a unit takes more than one-third casualties it is pretty much finished as a fighting force; the shock of combat is just too severe. Parodoxically, history shows bombing civilians generally increases their resolve as opposed to crushing it. Such human factors are notable because in the world of TV analysts and talking heads, armies become blocks of wood or computer graphic arrows. Civilians become collateral damage, an Orwellian euphemism that actually became an accepted figure of speech. Air war is another euphemism, no, misnomer, because all the stuff launched from the air winds up killing people on the ground. Ground war is indeed a grim, muddy, nasty business, and it's a good thing American politicians understand that and fear that. The problem is ground war is exactly what was needed in Yugoslavia. Air war was no substitute, and in fact, made things far, far worse. Far from deterring the Serbs, the air war gave them cover. The idea of bombing into submission got perverted into bombing as permission, and the end result is a massive refugee crisis. And videotape of Clinton running the war from Golf Cart One. |
|
|
*** In terms of theories of war, here's the big insight the North Vietnamese gave the world: you don't have to win the war, you just have to make sure you don't lose it. That theory explains both Iraq and Yugoslavia. Another concept in the history and theory of war is the concept of total war, the scorched earth policy as practiced by William Tecumseh Sherman on his march to the sea. Nowdays, this is explained in more Harvard Business School terms: attack the capacity to field armies, not attack armies in the field. The best example of this comes from Allied bombing of Germany in World War II, when the allies used long-range bombers to knock out ball bearing plants and oil refineries and tank factories and the like. Truthfully, the decisive battle of that war never gets any ink. In the first three months of 1944, well before D-Day, new long-range American fighter planes shot down nearly 10,000 German planes. From that day forward, the Allies had control of the air in every land battle, and the tide was turned. Air power is crucial in supporting ground troops. In Yugoslavia we've worked from the same playbook, except there's no ground troops to support. Now that's a helluva strategy. |
|
|
|
*** Any military air operation begins with making the area safe for air operations. This includes the targeting of anti-aircraft batteries, and the demolition of the command and control structure in charge of those batteries. So NATO came charging in to take out all the anti-aircraft defenses so they could have a safer shot at the army. A key factor here is drawing fire, as the U.S. military is top-notch at tracking down where that fire came from, and then blasting that area to smithereens. But as Jane's Defence reports, the Yugoslavs held their fire and held to remarkable radio silence. NATO needed the activity to find the targets, and they weren't getting targets. In some cases, NATO planes returned to base without firing a shot. The first week of the war wound up a far cry from Desert Storm. Meanwhile, on the ground, the Serb Army was taking a page from the German Army in World War II. Often times, if the Allies were shelling them, the German response would be to attack, to move closer, because Allied gunners would stop shelling because of a fear of shelling their own troops. In this case, they moved closer to civilians because they knew NATO would be reluctant to hit civilians. And in many reported cases, the Serbs started rounding those civilians up for massacre or forced deportation. Poor, cold frightened masses of people needed a shield, a thin blue line, to protect them from genocide. What they got was a lot of bombs falling too far away to be of any use to them. What they got was a knock on the door, and orders to flee or die. What the world got was a refugee movement that under any stretch of the imagination will take billions of dollars and many, many years to address. |
|
|
|
*** As I post this on April 1st, I do not worry about having to update this article. I can safely predict how it will end -- Milosevic will finish his miserable task of ethnic cleansing before NATO can finish off him. He can declare victory, or defeat, or peace whenever he wishes. By the time we are ready to protect the Kosovars, there will be no Kosovars left to protect. I can also predict what kind of fallout we'll get in NATO capitals. I absolutely believe military leaders briefed civilian leaders on the impossibility of stopping this through air alone, and that civilian leaders overruled them for political reasons. The blood is on the politicians' hands, not the soldiers *** As a final point, consider the case of the downed U.S. Stealth Fighter. In the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Israeli Air Force shot down 88 enemy planes and lost only one plane of their own. The Israelis bombed the wreckage of that downed plane to keep the valuable electronics out of enemy hands. So why didn't the U.S. bomb this top-secret wreckage? My theory is the entire affair is a fake, a ruse to give all the spies who want a look at invincible American electronics something to look at. Something to give them a false sense of security the next time the U.S. comes a'bombing. Recent history -- four countries in a year -- suggests we'll come a'bombing once again, and probably sooner than we think. If there's only one superpower in the world, it's up to that superpower to keep itself in check. And so far, I'm not impressed.*** Military history buff G.L. Marshall is a most unlikely peacenik. |
|
|
|
|
(Top) | (Style Points) | (Disclaimers) | (E-Mail) |
|