TIME: Desert Storm - The War in the Persian Gulf/TIME: Desert Storm - The War in the Persian Gulf.iso/time2_04/cf040016.t01

Text File | 1991-06-27 | 11.3 KB | 244 lines

DATE: JAN. 24, 1991         05:21        REPORT: 1
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BUREAU: WASHINGTON
BY: DAN GOODGAME
IN: WASHINGTON
SLUG: WAR NARRATIVE

 Let's suppose George Bush were serious when he says, as
he does repeatedly, that U.S. forces will fight "all out"
against Iraq and not "with one hand tied behind their
back" as in Vietnam. Bush then would employ tactical
nuclear weapons against Iraqi forces in sparsely
populated parts of southern Iraq and Kuwait, and perhaps
even against Baghdad. Then Iraq could be evicted from
Kuwait with minimal U.S. casualties.

 Bush, however, has no thought of using nuclear or even
chemical weapons against Iraq -- even if Iraq uses
chemical or biological weapons first. And those are only
the most obvious of the weapons he is keeping behind his
back. For all of Bush's absolutist rhetoric, he and his
forces are fighting in a restrained and calibrated mannr
that, in the best tradition of Clausewitz, pursues
political objectives more numerous and nuanced than the
mere liberation of Kuwait.

 Remember a few weeks ago when generals, speaking on
background, described plans for a "combined" air, land
and sea assault against Iraq? Well those plans obviously
have been shelved, if they ever existed. This week, the
catchphrase is "patience with the air war." House
Republican Leader Bob Michel emerged from a White House
meeting with Bush and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney
and paraphrased Cheney as saying "We're not stupid; we're
not going to be rushing into a land war."

 Bush, Michel, Cheney and their colleagues emphasized
that the war is going to last "months" -- probably about
two months, ending before the onset of Ramadan -- rather
than days or weeks. Some of this is the expectations
game: if Iraq folds sooner than mid-March, the victory
will look all the greater. But the larger explanation is
that Bush was revealing his strategy a bit more publicly,
and his strategy is to give the air war plenty of time to
work. The hope is that the air war can obviate the need
for anything but minor mopping up on the ground, by
cutting supply lines to Iraqi troops in Kuwait and
southern Iraq, starving them of food, ammunition and --
especially -- water, and forcing them to retreat or
surrender. Already last week, U.S. and Saudi officials
reported that deserters from Iraq were describing
widespread hunger and low morale. In any event, the
longer the Iraqi forces can be deprived, the less
effective will be their resistance. "Saddam Hussein is
counting on us to grow impatient and fight a land war
while he's still able to fight," said a senior White
House official [this name and others available by phone.]
"That would not be smart on our part."

 One of Bush's closest advisers on the Gulf war added
that even Ramadan need not interrupt patient application
of the air war and the starve-em-out strategy. "There is
no particular constraint on how long the air war could go
on," he said. "We could reach the point of diminishing
returns, where each air strike produced less and less
damage to the enemy, but we could still go on almost
indefinitely."

 The reason for the starve-em-out strategy is not only
military -- to avoid U.S. and allied casualties -- but
also political -- to avoid massive casualties among the
young conscripts of the regular Iraqi army, whose
slaughter by U.S. warplanes might stir revulsion in the
Arab and Moslem worlds, and elsewhere. One White House
official pointed out that the Iraqi army now includes
almost all able-bodied men over age 17, saying "We don't
want all those men and their families to feel we tried to
destroy them. We want them to see that we're targeting
Saddam's power base in the Republican Guards."

 Those pressing for an earlier allied ground assault,
while in the minority, have their own political reasons.
Some commanders of army and marine corps ground forces
are eager to "get into the game." But Gen. Colin Powell,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and himself an army
man, addressed that argument head-on in meetings last
week with the President and his staff. One senior
official quoted Powell as telling him "I know you've
heard that we've got a bunch of crazy armor and infantry
generals running this thing who can't wait to start the
ground war, but that's not true. We won't go in on the
ground until we have to."

 Others argue that it is important that Arab members of
the U.S. alliance, who are represented mainly in the
ground forces, "share in the fighting and dying," said
one administration official, so that "this war not be
seen as nothing but U.S. pilots killing defenseless
Arabs." Senior Bush officials are confident, however,
that when it comes time for "mopping up" on the ground,
the Arab forces will take an active role.

 Still others argue that waiting many weeks or months for
the air war to work by itself will sap the will of the
U.S. public and coalition partners -- an argument similar
to the one used against continued economic sanctions.
Indeed, one of the challenges that the President and his
inner circle will face in the coming weeks is finding
some way to satisfy the public demand for progress and
momentum against an enemy who is hunkered down and not
moving. Bush found one such measure of progress last
week, when he declared that "our pin-point attacks have
put Saddam Hussein out of the nuclear bomb-building
business for a long time to come." Finding other such
measures may require targeting that is more motivated by
politics than by military necessity: for example, a
campaign to eliminate Iraq's chemical and biological
warfare plants sooner than is militarily necessary.

 As the air war entered its second week, U.S. warplanes
continued to concentrate on targets within Iraq, though
more of them shifted toward Kuwait. The U.S. and its
allies were determined not to kick Iraq out of Kuwait
//too soon,// lest Saddam bring pressure on the coalition
to stop fighting and to leave him with much of his
military intact. But that danger seemed increasingly
remote by week's end.

 At the same time, the U.S. and its allies intend to
leave Iraq with enough military hardware and personnel to
defend itself from Iran and Syria and to maintain
internal stability once the war is over -- a fine balance
that seems unlikely in so uncertain an enterprise as war.
Says Geoffrey Kemp, a former NSC official, "I'm not sure
we're going to be capable of this degree of fine-
tuning."

 The coalition's intensive search-and-destroy efforts
aimed at Iraq's Scud missiles constituted a prime example
of political targeting. As every U.S. and Israeli
spokesman has emphasized, the Scuds pose little military
threat. Yet they have been made a priority target,
attracting enormous air and intelligence resources, all
to achieve the political purpose of keeping Israel out of
the conflict. The success of that effort, aided by U.S.
promises of some $13 billion in new aid to Israel, was a
major satisfaction to the President and his men. They
continued to hope that Israel would refrain from
retaliation against Iraq, but felt that even if it did
so, the damage to the coalition would be minimal. Egypt,
Syria and Saudi Arabia took the highly unusual step of
stating in advance that an Israeli retaliation would not
drive them from the coalitoin. A Saudi official even
offered use of the kingdom's airspace (a courtesy the
Israelis did not require when they launched their last
air raid against Iraq in 19TK.)

 Some saw the new U.S. aid to Israel, and the generally
closer ties between the two countries, as evidence that
Bush had sold out the Palestinians' interests in the
medium and long-term in pursuit of the short-term need to
keep Israel from breaking up the anti-Iraq coalition. The
Bush administration saw things differently. As it told
its Arab partners, U.S. dispatch of Patriot missiles and
their U.S. crews to Israel, along with U.S. efforts to
kill remaining Scud launchers and to generally de-fang
Israel's old enemy Iraq should strengthen the
longstanding U.S. argument that it is a reliable friend
of Israel and that Israel must be willing to take risks
for peace when such a friend insists.

 The remaining question mark last week was Jordan, whose
Parliament publicly incited terrorists to strike U.S.
interests and whose King Hussein last Saturday threatened
to challenge any Israeli aircraft that might violate his
airspace -- an act that might spark a war, however
short-lived, between Israel and Jordan, and perhaps
involving Syria. Bush, weekending at Camp David, watched
King Hussein's press conference on CNN, then sent to
Amman one Richard Armitage, a burly former Pentagon
official and "designated hitter" who has delivered tough
messages to the likes of a Manuel Noriega and the
negotiatiors of U.S. bases treaties in the Phillipines.
Armitage told King Hussein that when the war against Iraq
was over, Bush would be willing to forgive Jordan's
support for Iraq -- provided Jordan behaved itself and
stopped inciting violence against the U.S.. Armitage
added, according to White House officials, that if the
King was truly neutral as he claimed to be, he should
overlook any Israeli use of his airspace to retaliate
against Iraq, just as he had overlooked Iraq's use of
Jordan's airspace to hurl Scuds against Israel. Said
Fitzwater, "We asked him to observe the neutrality that
he said he was observing."

 Bush last week addressed another potential source of
tension within the coalition, and even more in U.S.
public and congresional opinion: the sticky question of
burden-sharing. Two famous shirkers, Germany and Japan,
made major new promises of aid to the coalition and to
Israel. Bush had lobbied both countries hard, and one
argument that seemed influential was that the coalition,
including its Arab members, were "even stronger after
launching the war than before," said a senior White House
official. There was no massive upwelling of support for
Saddam in the Arab street and no epidemic of terrorism
against coalitoin members.


 Bush and his top advisers consider it unlikely that
Saddam can pose as the new Nasser, an Arab hero plucking
political victory from the teeth of military defeat, but
they believe that Saddam still thinks it possible. They
think he also believes he can husband his military
resources, while withstanding the allied air
 war, waiting for the coalition to lose patience and
plotting a dramatic surprise or surprises to break the
coalition's -- and the American public's -- will to
fight. "Saddam's strategy seems imminently sensible,"
says one of Bush's closest advisers on the Gulf war. "He
is hunkering down and not fighting an air war that he
can't win. The trouble, though, is that we know how to
keep most of his aircraft from taking off, and when they
do, they get picked off one-by-one."

 Saddam's likeliest surprises:

 -- "A mass air raid" against U.S. warships or against
Saudi oil platforms in the Gulf, probably using the
Exocet missile already proven deadly against U.S. ships.

 -- Mass firing of Scuds at Saudi Arabia and/or Israel,
as opposed to the smaller groups fired so far.

 -- An attack on Israel, Saudi Arabia, A U.S. base or
U.S. ships by Iraq's stealthy Sukhoi bombers.

 -- A massive chemical and/or biological attack against
allied ground forces.

ENDIT