Jay Bulworth: How America fights wars

["Jay Bulworth" <jay.bulworth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

HOW AMERICA FIGHTS WARS
D!SSENT MAGAZINE cover story
http://www.dissent.com.au
Jay Bulworth

?It was indispensable to annihilate armies and resources; to place every rebel 
force where it had no alternative but destruction or submission.?
Adam Badeau

Adam Badeau's use of the word "annihilate" is revealing.  Badeau was military 
secretary to Ulysses S. Grant during the US Civil War and the author of several 
books about Grant.  It is Grant's war-fighting style that has come to typify 
the way the US fights wars.  This style is exemplified by the strategy of 
annihilation, which is the seeking of decisive battle in a head-on collision of 
armed forces, and in which war is waged on both armies and civilian 
infrastructure.

The US has a historical and psychological affinity with the strategy of 
annihilation.  This war-fighting style was on display in the Gulf War of 1991, 
and it is instructive to examine certain aspects of that war for an insight 
into how the US intends to fight this time around.

The first aspect is the exaggeration of enemy capabilities.  Although it had 
had eight years of Western help, Iraq had been unable to defeat Iran - which 
was itself weakened after the post-Revolutionary purges of its officer corps.  
Despite this, Iraq was portrayed as an awesome force and Saddam Hussein as the 
next Hitler.   In Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, John 
MacArthur points to the US claim that by mid-September 1990 'there were 250,000 
Iraqi troops in Kuwait poised to invade Saudi Arabia.  By early January 1991, 
the number had allegedly grown to 540,000 in and around Kuwait, all formidably 
armed and eager to slaughter invading American troops'.  In reality, the Iraqis 
were mostly conscripts who posed little if any threat.  MacArthur goes on to 
note that many of the enemy prisoners of war taken in the first day of the 
ground invasion were 'ill-equipped, starving, and demoralized - in short, poor 
specimens of fighting men.  Among their number was
  an eleven-year-old boy, several soldiers with feet so swollen they had to 
have their boots cut off, and many who were carrying only blank ammunition'.

The exaggeration of Iraqi capabilities fits into a well-established US 
tradition, which is covered in John Thompson's The Exaggeration of American 
Vulnerability: The Anatomy of a Tradition.  In order to annihilate the Native 
Americans, it was first necessary to exaggerate their might and - especially - 
their savagery.  In fact, however, the Native Americans were a spent force by 
the time the War of Independence had concluded, and had been easily defeated as 
early as 1794 at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.  But this weakness did not stop 
the Native Americans being portrayed as powerful and fearsome warriors who 
deserved annihilation.  Thus we come to the second aspect of the US 
war-fighting strategy, which is the annihilation of the enemy.

In 1868, Major General Philip Sheridan waged a winter campaign against the 
Southern Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Kiowa and the Comanche.  As Weigley notes 
in The American Way of War, 'the Indians' grass-fed war ponies were weak from 
lack of sustenance and [their] mobility was at a low ebb'.  Sheridan struck 
'against the fixed camps in which the Indians huddled against the rigours of 
winter'.  If the camps did not submit, he would 'destroy the provisions they 
had accumulated for the winter and thus starve them into helplessness'.

Sheridan's immediate superior was General Sherman, who spoke approvingly of the 
strategy of annihilation: 'the more we can kill this year, the less will have 
to be killed the next war, for the more I see of these Indians, the more 
convinced I am that they all have to be killed or maintained as a species of 
paupers'.

Sherman had perfected the strategy of annihilation during the Civil War, when 
he attacked not just the enemy's armies but the enemy's resources - and the 
civilian population as well.  He was of the view that he was 'not only fighting 
hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and 
poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as the organized armies'.

In Iraq today, it is clearly the people who 'feel the hard hand of war'.  Years 
of sanctions have created a situation analogous to that of a medieval siege.  
In 1995, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation concluded that the embargo 
and the military attacks on Iraq had been responsible for the deaths of more 
than 560,000 children.  A UNICEF study reached a similar conclusion, finding 
that 500,000 children had died needlessly between 1991 and 1998.  Reporting 
from Baghdad, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times (4 October 2002) found 
that shortages of medicines, the bombing of water treatment plants and 11 years 
of difficulties in importing purification chemicals like chlorine had led to 
more than a doubling of infant mortality.

Iraq today remains as vulnerable and defenceless in the face of US military 
power as it was in 1991, when US warplanes and cruise missiles penetrated its 
air defences with near impunity.  As the US Air Force's official analysis, Gulf 
War Air Power Survey states, the US could 'strike Iraqi air defenses 
immediately, and they never recovered from these initial, stunning blows'.  The 
cruise missiles and the F-117 stealth fighters brought 'the reality of the war 
home to the residents of Baghdad'.

Air power was used to destroy or cripple Iraqi infrastructure and industry: 
electric power stations (92 percent of installed capacity destroyed), 
refineries (80 percent of production capacity), petrochemical complexes, 
telecommunications centers (including 135 telephone networks), bridges (more 
than 100), roads, highways, railroads, hundreds of locomotives and boxcars full 
of goods, radio and television broadcasting stations, cement plants, and 
factories producing aluminum, textiles, electric cables, and medical supplies.  
The losses were estimated by the Arab Monetary Fund to be $190 billion, and the 
most modern state in the Arab world was reduced to penury.

The use of air power to annihilate civilian infrastructure prefigured the air 
attack on Yugoslavia in 1999.  US warplanes handled up to 80 percent of the 
workload in 13,000 attack sorties over the course of a seventy-eight-day 
campaign.  The campaign destroyed or severely damaged most of Yugoslavia's 
industrial and communications infrastructure, wrecked its economy, inflicted 
thousands of casualties, and led to the toppling of Milosevic's government.

Annihilation as a war-fighting strategy has been in evidence in other theatres 
of war as well; the two World Wars and the war on the Korean peninsula saw the 
US's application of the weight of fire superiority.  The US attack on Vietnam 
was another example of the strategy of annihilation.  Even prior to the 
deployment of Australian troops to Vietnam, the US had escalated its air 
campaign by launching what became known as ?Rolling Thunder?.  By 1973, the US 
had dropped three times more bombs on North Vietnam than was dropped by all 
sides in the whole of World War II.  Hanoi was pounded into rubble and 
countless Vietnamese civilians were killed.  Tens of millions of people were 
displaced from their homes and large parts of the country were destroyed.  Crop 
destruction was used as a means of war from 1961; it took the form of chemicals 
dumped from the air, ground operations to destroy orchards and dikes, and 
land-clearing by giant tractors called "Rome plows".  This strategy of a
 nnihilation saw the destruction of agricultural lands and entire rural areas 
and farming hamlets, often including extensive systems of paddy dikes.  Eleven 
million gallons of the herbicide Agent Orange were dumped on Vietnam; its chief 
ingredient, Dioxin, was estimated to be a thousand times more destructive than 
thalidomide.  Blind and deformed babies were common in the areas sprayed during 
Operation Hades, later re-named Operation Ranch Hand.  This Carthaginian 
Solution was pursued to prevent Vietnam from becoming a successful model of 
economic and social development for the Third World.

In all cases, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the decimation of 
the armed forces were not regrettable side-effects of the campaign but an 
intrinsic part of the US war-fighting strategy of annihilation, in which 'old 
and young, rich and poor [must] feel the hard hand of war'.

This time around, the strategy of annihilation will once again be on display.  
If one moves from the _how_ to the _why_, it becomes apparent that the motives 
are the same as the last time: oil.

The National Energy Policy Report of May 2001 concluded that imported supplies 
accounted for half of US oil consumption in 2000 and assessed that they would 
account for two-thirds in 2020.  Given the increasing US dependence on imported 
supplies of oil, the Report recommended that a high priority be placed on 
control of petroleum resources in the Persian Gulf.  With estimated reserves of 
112.5 billion barrels, Iraq is second to only Saudi Arabia, the principal US 
supplier.  Iraq is the only country that can act as a substitute to Saudi 
Arabia, whose despotic and corrupt leaders are genuinely afraid, and for good 
reason - there is widespread dissatisfaction with the ruling authorities, and 
contempt for the effete and corrupt edicts of the House of Saud.  In addition, 
most of Saudi Arabia_s oilfields have already been explored and claimed.  Iraq, 
on the other hand, still contains perhaps the world_s largest areas of 
unexplored and unclaimed oilfields.

The fundamental US objective remains the same - control of Middle Eastern oil.  
During World War II, it established a firm hold over Saudi Arabian reserves, in 
accordance with standard policy. As the US State Department noted at the time, 
these reserves constitute _a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of 
the greatest material prizes in world history? probably the richest economic 
prize in the world in the field of foreign investment_.

In an insurance policy of sorts, Saddam Hussein has commenced awarding 
exploration contracts to Russian, European and Chinese oil firms.  For 
instance, Lukoil, which is Russia's largest oil company, holds 68% of the 
Western Qurna project, itself worth more than $20 billion.  Zarubezhneft, which 
is a Russian state-controlled company specialising in overseas projects, is 
negotiating for rights to the 3.3 billion barrel Bin Umar oil field, and has a 
15% interest in the Western Qurna project.  It also has upstream contracts at 
the Bai Hassan, Saddam and Kirkuk fields.  Rosneft, the largest Russian 
state-owned oil firm, has an agreement to develop the oilfields of West Qurna.

These contracts, and others like them, will be cancelled by US puppets in a 
future Iraqi government, and awarded instead to US oil firms.  The value of 
these contracts is significant indeed.  The contracts already awarded have an 
estimated potential of 44 billion barrels of oil, which is equal to the total 
combined reserves of the United States, Canada and Norway (the largest European 
producer).  With the price of oil stabilising at US$25 per barrel after the war 
is over, the contracts have a value of US$1.1 trillion.  It is no secret that 
many senior US officials are linked to US oil firms, which would profit 
immensely after a US-led war.

Russian agreement to a war on Iraq will be predicated on the security of these 
oil contracts in a post-Saddam scenario.

Given the US's military superiority and its strategy of annihilation, the 
biggest obstacle to a US war is not the Iraqi military.  The latter will face 
annihilation should a war start.  Nor is it the reluctance of the other 
Permanent Members of the UN Security Council.  The US will simply disregard 
them and act unilaterally if it has to.  The major obstacle is Western public 
opinion in general and US public opinion in particular.  And it is here that 
the US is at its weakest.  There has been a change for the better in the 
Western public's attitude to wars waged in its name.  A major achievement of 
Western activists and dissidents in the last thirty years has been to increase 
the Western public's understanding of what is being done in its name by state 
and corporate leaders.  As a result, the public is increasingly unwilling to 
support wars of aggression.  This reluctance has been evident in the last year, 
during which the leaders of the US, the UK and Australia have tried lon
 g and hard to convince a sceptical public of the ?threat? posed by Saddam 
Hussein.  But public opinion has barely moved, with many people unwilling to 
support the slaughter of faraway Arabs. This is in contrast to previous wars of 
conquest, which the public enthusiastically supported.

Two factors have been most responsible for this change.  The first is the 
democratic uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s, which embedded within public 
opinion a sense of ethics and justice that has never been shaken off.  Today's 
progressive movements have been able to build on these victories.  For example, 
the Kennedy Administration's attacks on South Vietnam, Cuba and elsewhere were 
overt, and met little serious domestic resistance.  It was years before a 
credible peace movement could put a halt to these atrocities.  Twenty years 
later, the Reagan Administration was unable to act overtly.  It met immediate 
resistance from a small but well-organised domestic opposition.  As a result, 
it was forced to use covert and clandestine means, because it was scared of 
public opinion.  Thousands of activists and dissidents in the West, working in 
relative anonymity and without fanfare or publicity, were responsible for 
bringing about this change.  But the Bush Administration is facing ev
 en more serious obstacles, and here we come to the second factor, which is 
technology.  The internet has been used very effectively by a new generation of 
activists, who have managed - however feebly - to get their message across.  
This technological change has historical parallels of great significance.  The 
first use of Gutenberg's printing press (c. 1450) was probably for printing a 
letter of indulgence issued by Nicholas V, dated 1451.  Sixty-six years later 
it was Luther's printed attack against indulgences, distributed throughout 
Europe, which sparked the Reformation.  Similarly, the internet was developed 
at public expense through the US Department of Defense.  But now the internet 
is being used to challenge imperial power.  Today's activists have found 
themselves shut out of the mainstream media, just as activists of previous 
generations were, but they have been able to reach sections of the public by 
creating their own circuits of power.  This challenge is viewed wi
 th alarm by elite sectors, who know that more and more people !
find a huge discrepancy between what they see and what they are told they are 
seeing.  In order to make sense of the discrepancy, many members of the public 
turn to the internet for information - and eventually find dissenting reports 
and analyses.  This is why the drums of war are being beaten with 
ever-increasing hysteria - to scare the public into supporting an oil war.

It remains to be seen whether the US will achieve all its war aims.  But one 
thing is clear - the war-fighting strategy of annihilation will be on display.


Further reading:

Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, Henry 
Holt and Company, New York, 2002.

John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, New 
York: Hill and Wang, 1992

John Thompson, The Exaggeration of American Vulnerability: The Anatomy of a 
Tradition, Diplomatic History, Winter 1992

Russell Weigley, The American Way of War, MacMillan, New York, 1973.



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