TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/031191/0311995.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 124 lines

                                                                                THE GULF WAR, Page 34

MILITARY TACTICS

Could Saddam Have Done Better?


Though Iraq might not have prevailed, the war would have been
far more ferocious if Baghdad had shifted its strategy

By BRUCE W. NELAN -- Reported by Frank Melville/London and Bruce
van Voorst/Washington


    When General Norman Schwarzkopf was asked to evaluate Saddam
Hussein as a military leader last week, the allied commander
telegraphed his answer with a derisive "Ha!" Then, with studied
scorn, Schwarzkopf elaborated, "He is neither a strategist, nor
is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician,
nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's
a great military man."

    Because of the huge number of men and weapons Saddam poured
into Kuwait, many military observers expected him to fight more
effectively and inflict many more casualties than he did. As
Schwarzkopf recounted at his wrap-up briefing, Iraqi combat
forces outnumbered the coalition's 2 to 1 on the battlefield.
In addition, the Iraqis had many more tanks and artillery
pieces and had carefully dug them in.

    The general's detailed account of the campaign was a pointed
reminder that simple comparisons of numbers are of limited use
in predicting a war's outcome. Much more important in this
battle was a series of strategic mistakes that proved Saddam's
military ineptitude.

    The first, analysts now agree, was his failure to press
ahead last Aug. 3 after his Republican Guard overran Kuwait.
If Iraq's million-man army had gone on to invade Saudi Arabia
and the gulf states, the whole shape of the struggle could have
been different. "At that time there were no American forces in
the area," says Andrew Duncan, assistant director of London's
International Institute of Strategic Studies. "Saddam's troops
could have swept down the gulf, toppling one state after
another."

    Says a senior Pentagon officer: "Had Iraq occupied Saudi
ports and airfields, the [allied] buildup as we know it would
have been impossible." If Saddam had seized control of so much
of the region's oil, fears of devastating price rises or of
losing supplies altogether might have deterred the allies from
even considering the use of force against Iraq.

    Having stopped at the Saudi border, however, Saddam
developed a strategic fixation on keeping Kuwait. He declared
it the 19th province of Iraq and concentrated more and more of
his troops -- 535,000 eventually -- on its soil or just north
of the Kuwait-Iraq frontier. Apparently he hoped to refight his
past war, the eight-year contest of attrition with Iran,
battling from behind elaborate fortifications and minefields,
with armored reserves quickly deployable to seal off enemy
breakthroughs.

    Saddam was so preoccupied with the defense of Kuwait that
he did not extend his defensive line of berms, razor wire and
mines more than a few miles west of the Kuwait frontier that
faces Saudi Arabia. The struggle for Kuwait, he said in
January, would finally depend on "the soldier who comes with
rifle and bayonet to fight the soldier in the battle trench."
In that, he boasted, "we are people with experience."

    The coalition did not give the Iraqis a chance to apply it.
Once the air offensive began on Jan. 16, it became obvious that
for the first time air power was going to play a decisive role
in war. Again Saddam made a misstep: after losing 36 fighters
to allied aircraft, fighters he sent aloft, he grounded his
800-plane air force and eventually dispatched 137 of his
top-of-the-line combat and transport aircraft to sanctuary in
Iran. Allied planes then flew 80,000 sorties virtually
unhindered and lost only 36, dramatically fewer than the 200 the
coalition command had braced for. Asked how Saddam might have
made better use of his multibillion-dollar air force, a U.S.
Air Force general says, "Could have flown 'em."

    Iraq's field army, committed to the static defense of
Kuwait, simply had to dig in and take the pounding. That
commitment only intensified after Saddam fell for allied bluffs
that a seaborne invasion was coming. After six weeks of
bombing, frontline units were isolated, mostly unable to
communicate with Baghdad or one another, short of food and
water. Many divisions had lost half of their equipment and,
more important, their will to fight.

    Victory in this war, as in all others, depended not so much
on the weapons employed -- although the allies on the whole had
more sophisticated equipment than Iraq had -- as on the
determination of the men who had to use them. Dwight D.
Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World
War II, said that "morale is the greatest single factor in
successful war." In the course of unrelenting bombing, weeks
of hunger and Baghdad's dickering with Moscow about a
withdrawal, Iraqi morale evaporated. The Saudi commander,
Lieut. General Khalid bin Sultan, said Iraq's soldiers were
competent enough, but "they don't believe in what they are
fighting for."

    The ground war proved this. While the coalition achieved
victory with a wide, flanking sweep to the west, U.S., Saudi,
Egyptian and Syrian divisions struck north from Saudi Arabia.
They pushed directly into the Iraqi fortifications where Saddam
had wanted to see them. Even there, Iraqi forces put up little
resistance.

    "They surprised me by not fighting harder," says Marine
General Walt Boomer of the Iraqi forces. "But if they had
fought for every bunker, the outcome would have been the same."
There is little doubt of that, but allied casualties would have
been much higher. The coalition's commanders and troops can say
they did, in the end, play Saddam's game -- and beat him at it.