MILITARY MATTERS WAR BULLETIN #3

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

M I L I T A R Y     M A T T E R S
W A R    B U L L E T I N
no. 3

Doctrines & Developments
April 4, 2003
by Stan Goff

As this is written, mechanized Army and Marine units have closed to
within shouting distance of Southern Baghdad along the southern axes
of advance through the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. There are as
many accounts of actual disposition, composition, strength, location,
and morale of forces on both sides of this conflict as there are
reporters - with one exception. The US mainstream press is giving the
single monolithic account, since all their accounts are vetted by the
US Department of Defense, and most of their guest blatherers are now
retired US generals.

The one crack in this otherwise seamless connection between the
corporate press and the Pentagon is a crack within the Pentagon
itself, and that is the cat fight that has broken out between
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his ground force Generals
over doctrine.

It is important to understand what this quarrel is and what it isn't,
as well as understanding the overarching assumptions shared by both
sides - assumptions that, in my opinion, point to fundamental
weaknesses in US military doctrine that are social and political as
well as inescapable.

Vietnam was a formative experience for me. I was hardly more than an
adolescent there, barely able to sport a thin mustache. I have
struggled hard with the whole episode, and succeeded in many ways at
accepting the experience for what it was, accepting that I cannot
rewind and re-record, and getting beyond the morbid self-absorption
that characterizes much of the reflection and discourse (as well as a
lot of bullshit posturing by people who spent their tour in an air
conditioned hooch with Jimi Hendrix black light posters on the wall)
about that war.

Before I go any further, I want to say that this war in Iraq is not
the same as Vietnam, for reasons too numerous to count. I also want
to warn my comrades on the left not to fall into the trap that
Bushfeld has fallen into, and that is selective observation; seeing
what you want to see and hearing what you want to hear, and sifting
out the content that challenges your premises or explodes your
fantasies. Iraq does not have the logistical capacity, the political
leadership, or the battlefield experience of the National Liberation
Front of South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese Army in Vietnam, and
it is still highly probable that Iraq will be defeated militarily and
occupied by the United States.

The moral high ground does not substitute for? well, the high ground.

There are some who might have a hard time swallowing this bitter
pill, but socialists have no such excuse. Our distinct responsibility
for the interpretation of this war on the world is to connect the
material realities of the battlefield with the material realities
elsewhere, to describe the current conjuncture - and not merely
isolated aspects of it - as an evolving complex of interpenetrating
relationships, and to determine what this means politically.

People like Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Tommy Franks see
military action as something that can be hermetically sealed,
separate from political phenomena. This was the misconception that
led to the historical defeat in Vietnam. And it makes me wonder if
the defeat at the end of this road, probably a political one, won't
be as destructive to the foundations of the US ruling class as
Vietnam was. Maybe more.

One of the Vietnam flashbacks I seem to be getting these days is
language like "hearts and minds," which our military geniuses
apparently think can be won by blowing off arms and legs. Actually,
this is just one surface form of a deeper contradiction in US
military and political doctrine, now under revision by Bush,
Rumsfeld, et al. Of course, they don't really buy their own lies, but
that they have to tell such whopping lies is an indication of just
how big the political stakes are in this war.

That's Vietnam, baby!

We can begin to unpack this contradiction by looking back at Colin
Powell's Vietnam experience.

Powell's first real career test as a young Black major was as deputy
assistant chief of staff (public affairs) for the Americal Division.
He had done one hitch as a platoon leader in Vietnam some years
earlier, six months in the field, and six on staff.

With Americal, he was given the difficult and dubious task of damage
control after revelations about the My Lai massacre, where US
soldiers tortured, raped, and eventually slaughtered 347 unarmed
civilians in a remote Vietnamese hamlet. He performed brilliantly in
that role, showing a real talent for negotiating politically
sensitive bureaucratic and diplomatic mazes, and was noticed by one
Caspar Weinberger, who would eventually appoint him his deputy
security adviser, when Ronald Reagan appointed Weinberger Secretary
of Defense. Powell was then personally groomed to become the
youngest, and only Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Powell never forgot the "lessons" [he imagined] he'd learned from
Vietnam:

?that there needs to be some simple and clear criteria for "national
interest" that determines when military force will be used;

?that the full weight of government and press influence should be
mobilized to ensure public support of the military action;

?that there must be some clear "exit strategy;

?that overwhelming and devastating force must be employed against the
entire society, if necessary, with whom we are at war.

The latter - devastating force - is opposed to "proportionality", the
bugaboo that many-including Powell-incorrectly hold responsible for
the US defeat in Vietnam. It's the notion that is taught as a
Principle of War, called "Economy of Force" in one context, but for
Powell and his ilk it means the unwillingness to unleash overwhelming
destructive force to destroy an enemy.

Proportionality was resurrected to explain the defeat of Task Force
Ranger in Somalia. It is now being called "war on the cheap" to
critique Rumsfeld's military weird-science.

Rummy better watch his back. When this critique gets deployed, a goat
gets slaughtered to shrive us of our sins.

Implicit in the Powell Doctrine, with its heavy public relations
emphasis, is obsessive minimization of US casualties. It is called
"force protection" and it can make or break an officer's career.

This casualty minimization is part of Powell's (and the
bourgeoisie's) ahistorical interpretation of the political side of
war. (The bourgeoisie hates history, so it substitutes myths for it.)
US civilians don't have the stomach for sacrificing their children.
Civilians are seen as meddlers. Their role is to sign the checks,
watch the Ken & Barbie news, slap a flag decal on their cars, and let
the experts handle it, even though now that the military's greatest
minds are nightly displaying a primitive hucksterism that should make
us all tremble. It made me tremble aplenty when I was on active duty,
I can tell you.

The upshot of the Powell Doctrine - one that is left unarticulated
for pretty obvious reasons - is not to get involved in combat that
requires decisive ground action. There are two ways to accomplish
this; avoid engagements where the opposing force has any real
capacity to fight, or if they do, devastate the whole society -
including civilian infrastructure - from afar with air strikes and
missiles.

Things didn't go according to plan in Iraq, that is, the perverse
Iraqis reorganized for a fight, and the US ruling class is saying,
"Oh shit! Tar baby!" They anticipated a Powell Doctrine fight, using
Rumsfeld Doctrine methods, with Iraq as a kind of testing ground for
his Network Centric Warfare, and now that the Iraqis have torn up
their script, the thieves are falling out.

 From a strictly military perspective in Iraq right now, there is a
way for US forces to regain the initiative: audacious, aggressive,
and sustained ground actions. What we have had are cautious advances
supported by overwhelming air superiority and weapons technology even
at the grunt level that is advanced over the Iraqis' by three decades
of very expensive R&D.

The argument between Rumsfeld and his officers - many of whom are
Powell Doctrine devotees - is not an argument about the "force
protection" fetish of the Powell Doctrine. Casualty minimization and
spin control, Powell Doctrine stand-bys, are also part and parcel of
Rumsfeld's Doctrine.

Aside from the setbacks related to the ability to open a Northern
Front, delays in the UN, Iraqi combativeness, and weather, the loss
of initiative by the US forces in Iraq, which will be regained
through the immensity of force over a protracted period, is not a
consequence of Rumsfeld's goofy affinity for cyber-warfare. Had
Powell been the Secretary of Defense, the same situation would exist,
in my opinion.

Powell is as big a fan of "modernizing the force" as Rumsfeld is. If
there is a difference that matters, it is not the modernization of
weapons systems, but Rumsfeld's decision-making software, that is
replacing human leadership on the ground. The whole operation was
programmed with a cyber-Saddam, but the real one seems not to have
consented to play by the rules. This is having a real effect, and I
don't want to minimize it. In fact, I have said before that this may
be a decisive problem for the US, if not in Iraq, someday soon.

In a sense, then, the generals are pointing their finger at the right
guy for the wrong thing.

But part of the problem remains Powell-Rumsfeld Doctrine, which is
really a political phenomenon, and one the generals haven't even
questioned.

The US has adequate combat power on the ground right now to bring the
whole military matter to a quick resolution. US soldiers are better
equipped, better fed, better trained, better paid, better everything
than the Iraqi military. US air power is unmatched anywhere and at
any time in history.

Audacious, aggressive, sustained offensive operations against the
Iraqi military would yield rapid tactical victories, but it would
inevitably cost "friendly" lives, and thereby risks losing the unseen
but essential element in all military operations-the support of the
civilian population at home.

Bush has his eye on the 2004 elections, and anything that slows the
pace of the Iraq occupation is a profound and direct threat to the
little frat fuck's political future.

"Force protection" severely restricts and stifles tactical initiative
at every level of command, and by default centralizes operations, not
through doctrine, but through career pressure. For the ground
tactical commander, ever mindful of the priorities of his or her
superiors, the standing order for "force protection" translates into
a powerful reluctance to engage in decisive combat, or to even risk
combat, and timidity at every level of command.

The US population is fed "information" not to inform, but to gain
their acquiescence for military action. They tend to remain quiet
until American bodies begin to be flown home, then they start to ask
questions. They will also ask questions when George and Don's
Excellent Adventure drags out too long.

Regaining the tactical initiative depends on a type of action-one
with a higher probability of "friendly" casualties-that could
threaten domestic acceptance of the military action.

It is important to note that a key and integral part of the Powell
Doctrine-one of the predominant thrusts of current military doctrine
in the US-is this information/spin control. Controlling the public's
perceptions of operations is as important a part of military
operations, under this doctrine as logistics or intelligence. One of
the primary difficulties for the US military, for example, in Haiti,
was that Haiti's porous borders allowed swarms of uncontrolled
international reporters loose across the country. Not so in Iraq, and
not so in Afghanistan.

I don't want to overstate this. There are independent reports coming
out of Iraq, and there are also propaganda reports coming out on
behalf of the Iraqis. I strongly suspect the GRU reports that are now
being translated from Russian almost in real time and widely
disseminated across the Internet are designed as propaganda to
undercut the US government, and that they overstate US casualties on
a regular basis.

(Leftist conspiracy theorists are constantly contending these days
that there are vast numbers of unreported US casualties in Iraq and
even in Afghanistan.

My contention that there are no secret mass American casualties is
based on the fundamental impossibility - in the US, circa 2003 - of
containing such information. The government quite simply doesn't have
the capacity to silence the families and friends of these masses of
secret KIAs and WIAs. And the vast majority of GIs, alas, have never
been able to keep secrets.)

In fact, the low US casualty rate is part of the reason for the
snail's pace of the war. And given the outrageous disparity of
forces, it is a snail's pace. The US is now involved in slow,
incremental murder.

I do not intend to disparage the courage or prowess of fighters on
either side of this war. The Iraqis are defending their nation from
an aggressor, tenaciously, and it matters. The GIs are being used as
pawns in the big game of the big bourgeoisie.

This is doctrine we are talking about, and how it is failing to
correspond to the political development of the war.

Now that troops are pulling up outside Baghdad, the political
pressure will begin to mount on the Bush regime. That political
pressure will translate directly onto the battlefield. Political
pressure will increase from within through a combination of war
weariness, eroded official credibility, and the economic tidal wave
that is hitting. Internationally, the political crisis is already
afoot. The US is an international pariah.

For now, on the battlefield, the three main courses of action that
exist for US commanders are all fraught with political danger.

The US forces could attempt a siege, which would vastly protract the
war, as well as give Iraqi forces an opportunity to regroup, refit,
or even begin to infiltrate/exfiltrate to switch strategies. US
static positions would be subjected to reconnaissance, and in short
order, pinprick attacks would be waged against them from maximum
standoff. Meanwhile, the veritable cascade of daily lies from the
administration will begin to break down, and with it their
legitimacy, and finally the support for the war.

The US forces could attempt to clear Baghdad house to house. Let's
review the bidding on that option. Baghdad, population 5 million,
sprawling across the valleys between two great rivers. A division is
less than 18,000 soldiers. Three divisions, then, less than 54,000
troops, and not all combat arms. Home court advantage to the
defenders. Neutralization of much air cover in close quarter battle.
Everyone in the city becomes sniper bait. This is, in my humble
opinion, not even on the table. And this is in addition to the many
cities, like Basra, which they have yet to control along the
principal line of communication, all the way back to Kuwait.

Finally. Powell's preferred solution. Bomb 'til they scream.
Rumsfeld's little cyber-experiment is history.

Death from above!

The US military will have to reduce Baghdad from the air. Holy
collateral damage, Batman! We had to destroy Baghdad to liberate it.

General Westmoreland, is that you?



Stan Goff's expertise is derived from over two decades in Special
Forces in the US military, from Viet Nam to Haiti. He is the author
of Hideous Dream, a penetrating first-hand account of the 1994 US
intervention in Haiti which contains rich lessons about the operation
of US imperialism, the culture of the armed forces, questions of
military doctrine, and the resistance of the Haitian people. It is
available from Soft Skull Press.

All of Stan's Military Matters columns can be found at
http://freedomroad.org/milmatters.html



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