The Circle of American Vulnerability - Column

Byline: William M. Arkin

Last week, one U.S. Marine was killed and snipers wounded another during the "Eager Mace" military training exercise in Kuwait. The death was tragic, but the incident can also easily be misinterpreted. The significance of the exercise is not that that was "cover" for America secretly putting forces in place for war on Iraq. Instead, the terrorist attack on Failaka Island should serve as yet another reminder that the American war against terrorism is pursued by an unaccountable and over-confident U.S. military.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the uniformed armed services have declared "force protection" of American soldiers to be their number one priority. But do we think that anyone in the administration, the U.S. government, or the U.S. military is going to admit that they made an error or failed to carry out their duty as a result of the death on Failaka Island? As we have learned since September 11, 2001, no one in a position of decision-making authority is like to take responsibility.

What were the Marines doing in Kuwait in the first place? Although a war looms with Iraq, they really were just carrying out routine training. Every year since the first Eager Mace exercise was held in Kuwait in 1992 after the Gulf War, Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit returned to Failaka Island in the Persian Gulf to practice amphibious landings from ships and to conduct what they call "Military Operations in Urban Terrain." Sure there is speculation that the 11th Marines will stick around for the war in Iraq. There is also the suggestion that the Army troops brought in for another exercise, "Internal Look," are just pasing through on their way to Baghdad.

All that can be said with certainly is that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf is so vast, and its normal schedules so rich, that you can find a military exercise going on there at just about any time. If evidence is sought for an impending attack, there is be plenty to be found.

The urban warfare focus of Eager Mace feeds the arguments of those who oppose war with Iraq. They say urban warfare is too bloody, that U.S. forces are too unprepared, and that there will be thousands of civilian casualties, if the U.S. has to fight in Iraqi cities. But would war opponents drop their opposition if these concerns were adequately addressed if, say, the United States had crack urban warfare troops or if Saddam's Guards moved out into the countryside to protect the capital? That is unlikely. Most critics aren't really concerned about, or knowledgeable about urban warfare. They are just looking for sage reasons to oppose something they oppose anyhow.

The truth of the matter is that no one in the U.S. military is seeking urban warfare in Baghdad. If the preferred strategy of airpower and special operations doesn't work a la Desert Storm in 1991; if Saddam himself and his inner circle aren't killed or so weakened by air and special operations attacks;if warfare doesn't create the expected split between regular conscript Army, and Saddah Hussein's security apparatus thereby provoking internal unrest; if Iraqi conventional forces aren't utterly defeated in battle defending their country, then the United States might have to engage in some form of urban warfare. That's a lot of "ifs." Predicting that urban warfare will be a disaster for the United States requires assuming Iraqi competence and cohesion, two elements pretty much absent the last time it faced U.S. forces.

The Failaka Island death does speak volumes about the military culture, and the predisposition of the Bush war party. Post-September 11, the vast American military force has been spread out across the globe in new locations from the Philippines to the "stans" of Asia, to the Persian Gulf, to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The image is of special forces, intelligence agents, covert operators and gumshoes fighting the terror war at its source.

Mostly though, our boys and girls are computer network and communications operators, base engineers, cooks, drivers, refuelers, storekeepers, clerks, and guards, lots of guards. They are hostages to a 20th century military establishment that pursues only a tiny sliver of a 21st century war.

In the war on terrorism, even in war with an organized state like Iraq, the enemy is not only a conventional army. As the Failaka Island attack demonstrates, the enemy is also a random pop-up assassin, a video game style ninja to be found as each corner is turned, as each dark alley is entered. There seems no way for the administration to both fight the known enemy and follow its preemptive new doctrine without having to fight video game style: shoot first and ask questions later. We put our troops out there on Failaka Islands all over the globe and then our intelligence and law enforcement apparatus fails to detect a threat. The guards -- as guards are always likely to do -- fail to detect determined infiltrators. Our men out there are not sufficiently armored or prepared to foil the ninjas. So shoot first.

Most important, the attack itself confirms to those in the White House and the Pentagon who are overseeing the war on terror that the threat is exactly what they thought it was, requiring U.S. forces everywhere. In this way, the logic of the war against terror has become completely circular.

The incident of Failaka Island is a snapshot of what is going wrong in our terror war. Basic security procedures break down or are non-existent, a la September 11. The custodians of our security once again fail to identify, detect, or thwart a terrorist attack, even one against armed soldiers in a completely controlled environment on a remote island in a supposedly friendly country, and the Bush administration concludes that it must pursue the anti-terrorism war ever more fiercely. All the while the pickup snipers join the Lackawanna crew and the "guests" of Guantanamo, the shoe bomber and the anthrax mailer, in a cast that provides license for national security policymakers to pursue a questionable strategy overseas while chipping away at American liberties at home -- all in the name of a war that will allegedly make Americans safer.

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