--- Damon Agretto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gautam, > > I don't have the time to adress this in full (I just > got a teaching job on the side, and its proving more > challenging than I had anticipated), but let me ask > you this: what do you think would have happened if > the > Iraqi army proved to HAVE some spine, and decided to > turn their cities into fortresses and engage Allied > troops at every turn, and contest every shopfront, > every street intersection? While I don't > neccessarily > want to denigrate the achievements of our troops in > the field, but a big part of our success, and why > casualties during the actual offensive were so low, > is > in a certain extent because the Iraqis chose not to > challenge us so stiffly, and a large segment of > their > army abandoned their duty. > > Damon.
Hi Damon. Obviously you have far more expertise on this subject than I do. My sense is twofold. First, the Iraqi army could had shown some spine without fighting in the cities. Had it done so and attempted to fight in the open field, I think the results would have been essentially the same. The battles of the first Gulf War suggest that, to first order, the numerical ratio between American and Third World-caliber forces (like the Iraqis, who are probably much better than Third World average) is irrelevant to the outcome of the battle. And American forces now are far more capable than their counterparts in the first Gulf War. Second, I would say that the fact that the Iraqi army folded the way it did (and it did, after all, fight hard in several battles) was not an accident. The first reason for this is that American intelligence seems (for once!) to have been remarkably successful in persuading large sections of the Iraqi army to not fight. At least in the first Gulf War, they showed no lack of fighting spirit - not a lot of skill, but they didn't lack spirit. The second is that the sheer speed of the American advance seems to have stunned Iraqi forces. They might well have intended to drop back into the cities and fight - but we moved so fast that they didn't have time to do it. Finally, if neither of those two things had happened, many of the same factors that make us so effective in the open field might have helped in cities as well. The Israeli experience in Jenin suggests that First World caliber forces fighting Third World caliber ones in cities actually do quite well. Much of our mental model of city fighting is based on Western, Russian, and German forces fighting in the European Theatre in the Eastern Front. But all of those armies were extraordinary - well trained, well equipped, and highly experienced. The Iraqis were none of those. Meanwhile our soldiers (as you know, and were part of, of course) are better than any other such group since at least the pre-WW1 British Army, and quite possibly since the Roman Legions. So, if the opposition had fought more effectively, would there have been more casualties and would the war have taken longer? Of course there would have been. Would it have been any less decisive a victory? I doubt it. So that's my non-professional and unexpert opinion. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
