IRAQ VERSUS THE USA: DAVID AND GOLIATH?

"At the forefront of the invasion, U.S. forces are conducting what their officers call "movement to contact" operations, charging northward toward Baghdad until they hit an enemy unit that fights. Unlike the campaign to oust the Iraqi military from Kuwait in 1991, however, Iraqi forces in this war have not been subjected to weeks of B-52 bombing raids in advance of the ground invasion. The reason is that the entire U.S. strategy is built around the premise that the senior Iraqi leadership, not the military, is the enemy."

The really, really, big, huge problem that I see here is that, in a war, you fight a military, not its leaders. The US won in 1991 by employing a clear, simple, systematic strategy, executed with overwhelming force. This time, as this Washington Post analysis states, the assault force is using only one third of the ground troops that were used then, and war planners are taking a lot of new risks--the most forward US forces are enabled by a mostly unguarded supply line; isn't this how the Germans ended up losing in Russia during WW II?. The fact is, the best way to win a war and to keep casualties at a minimum is to make sure that nothing goes wrong and to have several backup plans just in case something does: make sure you cannot lose. That's what succeeded in 1991. That's not what the US is doing now.

Link courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe.

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