Return of the Chapstick Syndrome - Iraq - Column

Byline: William M. Arkin

We should know the Iraqi mindset better by now. Recent news media stories and Iraqi statements suggest that the upcoming war with Baghdad is going to be a bloody battle in which Saddam places his military forces inside cities in hope of coaxing the United States into urban warfare.

Iraq, however, is as incapable of doing this as the United States is incapable of not being the world's number one military power.

Iraq threats are intended to scare fence sitters and opponents of a war in America and Europe with visions of Hell. It is a strategy that Iraq has successfully employed in the past to dissuade some in the international community from supporting military action. But journalists and commentators and the public should not be taken in by the Iraqi propaganda. Not only has Iraq failed since the invasion of Kuwait a decade ago to capitalize on any of its military threats, but giving voice to the Iraqi fantasy betrays a massive misunderstanding of the realities of modern war.

More than a decade ago, just 10 days after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, as U.S. forces were just landing on the ground in Saudi Arabia, a Baghdad newspaper carried a disparaging commentary on the American military. The U.S. media had reported that the first American soldiers were requesting Chapstick through supply channels.

"There is no army in the world that requests such supplies," Al-Jumhuriyah said. "This runs counter to the existing concept of ... toughness, rigor, manliness, and adaptability to conditions ..." the newspaper asserted. "What kind of soldier is this that puts cream on his lips? What is the difference between US soldiers and singers and dancers?"

This was clever Iraqi propaganda. Over the next five months as war loomed, Iraqi disinformation planted in the Arab press claimed that the U.S. military had shipped in Egyptian concubines, that it was shooting Moroccan soldiers, and that it was defiling Islamic Holy sites with alcohol and pornography. Other efforts were directed at U.S. soldiers themselves, treating them as if the they were the softies that Chapstick suggested. In its nightly "Baghdad Betty" radio broadcasts, U.S. troops were told that Bart Simpson was at home seducing wives while they were in the Gulf.

The constant theme coming from Baghdad was the United States would eventually have to meet up with the great Iraqi military and then the U.S. would sorry. Even at the end of January 1991, after 10 days of bombing, Saddam Hussein told CNN in his only interview of the war that there would be "blood ... lots of blood" still to come.

"Let not fickle politicians deceive you once again by dividing the battle into air and land parts -- war is war," he insisted.

By the end of the month, looking out from Baghdad, Saddam and Co. might have still believed that a ground war was their best bet. After all, Iraq had invaded and destroyed Kuwait, paraded coalition prisoners of war who had obviously been illegally beaten and tortured, and fired Scud missiles against not just Israel but also Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Iraq torched oil wells in Kuwait, it polluted the Gulf, it publicly threatened to use chemical weapons, and all of these acts did little to change the views of those opposed to "war" or sympathetic to Iraq.

In Washington, Iraqi propaganda, particularly about civilian casualties, was beginning to have troubling effect. On Feb. 11, almost one month after bombing had begun and 17 days before the ceasefire, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater conceded that Baghdad was winning the propaganda war. Iraq "has a very extensive PR effort and it's disturbing to find ... that somebody is buying it," he said.

Washington tried to counter Iraq, claiming that the regime had faked civilian damage, had placed its military assets inside civilian neighborhoods, even in ancient archeological ruins. The image conveyed was that the Iraqis were masters at parrying a more powerful foe; in fact they were paper tigers who had already been defeated by an entire new mode of warfare.

When the Iraqi army invaded Khafji, Saudi Arabia as Saddam was talking to CNN, he hoped to precipitate a premature start to the ground war. The Iraqis were soundly defeated by airpower but the act just made many, including Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, fret about what was to come.

Inside the Iraqi Army, however, something different was happening. Allied leaflets dropped on troop positions in the south conveyed a simple message of hopelessness for the soldiers, who had been relentlessly bombed like they had never experienced. On the first day of Desert Storm, the United States flew more air strikes than Iran flew in ten years of war against Iraq. Soon enough Iraqis started to desert in droves. By the time the ground war that Saddam wanted so badly had kicked off on Feb. 24, 1991, Iraqi soldiers, sans Chapstick, were surrendering to reporters and unmanned reconnaissance drones. Ultimately over 80,000 Iraqis were captured as prisoners of war in just four days.

Twelve years later, we are again being subjected to another avalanche of propaganda, with similar visions of apocalyptic war.

Writing in the New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristoff warns that an "invasion of Iraq may not be the cakewalk." American restraint will provide Iraq plenty of places to hide its army, he says. What is more, by hiding in the cities, the United States will be forced to fight the Iraqi way. "The Americans are good at bombing," an Iraqi official tells Kristoff, "but . . . they will have to come to the ground. And then we'll be waiting . . .let's see how the Americans do when they're fighting in our streets."

The Washington Post similarly reported from Baghdad last week (See "Baghdad Is Planning For Urban Warfare," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran) that Iraq will attempt to "lure American forces close to Baghdad and other large population centers."

"If they want to change the political system in Iraq," a senior Iraqi official warned, the United States will "have to come to Baghdad. We will be waiting for them here."

Why does anyone buy this nonsense? We have learned a great deal about U.S. military capabilities in the past decade. When U.S. intelligence finds a target worth attacking, the military can attack it with precision weaponry, pretty much regardless of location, and still minimize harm to surrounding civilians. What is more, if the target is indeed a weapon of mass destruction or Saddam himself, the law of war allows for attack even if there is danger to civilians, so long as the civilian harm is not disproportionate to the military gain. Does anyone doubt that President Bush is going to hold back this time?

Second, the Iraqis aren't prepared or capable to carry out their threats. Sure, the regime will hide behind the civilian population, but not the Iraqi military. Saddam's legions are not formed around Western military notions of leadership or decentralized decision-making. Such initiative and self-confidence is required for urban combat or guerilla warfare. There are special units and security organizations that are entrusted with survival of the regime, but most of the hundreds of thousands of normal Iraqi troops are conscripts assigned to regular army units intentionally formed into tightly controlled and widely dispersed organizations that are kept under close watch far away from Baghdad to ensure that they do not rise up against the central government. Military training in the sense of how we think about it, being able to maneuver on the ground, is non-existent.

What is more, it would be as much a disaster for Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime as it would be for the United States if these forces were placed inside Baghdad and other cities. There, they would either have to be supported as coherent military units--which would make them into a potential threat to the government--or they would have to be split up and sent out guerilla-style to defend the regime, an act that would put thousands of armed young men back into Iraqi society outside of the Stalinist command of the regime. Regime preservation stands in the way of Iraq implementing any urban war strategy.

The talk of urban warfare coming from Baghdad is thus amusing. More frightening though is the possibility that the gung-ho Bush administration might adopt a military strategy that would inadvertently give Iraq an opportunity to capitalize on their dream of inflicting a "Blackhawk Down"-style disaster in Mesopotamia. Certainly, it is important for the U.S. military to prepare for the possibility that it will have to enter urban areas in any Iraq war. But as soon as America moves on the ground, Saddam will likely use his draftees as cannon fodder for American airpower and for any mop-up ground war. He will probably sit in Baghdad with his security apparatus waiting for the U.S. military to come to him. He will dream that once again his magnificent forces will defeat our singers and dancers.

Saddam hasn't learned much from his own experience in 1991, or from U.S. wars in Yugoslavia in 1999 and even Afghanistan in 2001. This is no excuse though for commentators and journalists to continue to report on Iraq as if it is a formidable military foe or to believe that the U.S. military leaders are a bunch of ignoramuses champing at the bit to pursue a losing strategy.

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