2dogs
January 13, 2003, 07:59 AM
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/53118.htm
THE VIRTUES OF FEROCITY
By RALPH PETERS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 13, 2003 -- AS the United States military prepares for a war with Iraq, an essential question remains unasked: To what extent does the spirit of Bill Clinton still shape the Pentagon's approach to combat?
Given the bold rhetoric from the Bush administration and, not least, from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the question may seem surprising. Yet, as Saddam Hussein himself illustrates so well, boldness of rhetoric is not quite the same thing as clarity of vision.
The Bush administration has been forthright about its willingness to go to war in a just cause. But it remains unclear whether the administration is willing to do what it takes to prosecute a major war effectively.
The essential issue is targeting. Are we willing to kill, from the opening minutes of the war, those enemies who must be eliminated if we are to prevail? Or does our government remain crippled by the intellectual deformities of Clintonian warfare, in which attacks on empty buildings are expected to convince blood-soaked dictators to surrender?
Despite the daunting complexity of all military operations, one thing is clear about the pending war with Iraq: Any plan that is unwilling to inflict significant casualties on the most irreconcilable enemy units and organizations from the outset means a longer war, with ultimately greater numbers of casualties on both sides, more harm inflicted on the civilian population and far worse physical destruction.
The insidious nonsense about minimizing enemy casualties must stop if we are to prevail with the decisiveness and speed necessary to humanize the overall conflict while suitably impressing other potential enemies with our capabilities. In warfare, if you are unwilling to pay the butcher's bill up front, that bill will prove much higher in the end.
In our polarized political environment, it is impossible to have a rational, fact-based discussion of military matters across the ideological divide. The moment the issue of killing our enemies is raised, the reflexive response from those on the left is to accuse the speaker of bloodthirsty warmongering.
But the refusal to examine the mechanics of warfare honestly does not prevent war - it only exacerbates the confusion, destruction and danger to our own forces and purposes. In warfare, ignorance is the real weapon of mass destruction.
Swift wars are demonstrably less destructive of life, property, social structures and morality than prolonged wars. Unless those on the left truly believe that we need never fight another war, their concern should be war's effective prosecution in the most humane manner consonant with success. But the left's reflexive insistence that war is always wrong, no matter the guilt of our enemies, leads only to greater suffering on all sides.
It is time to recognize the virtues of ferocity.
We all have heard a great deal about the increases in the effectiveness of our precision weapons. But it hardly matters how precisely your weapons are guided if your targeting philosophy is misguided. The point of precision weapons is not to avoid killing, but to kill with greater effectiveness and discrimination.
The test of whether our government and military have abandoned the delusions of Clintonian warfare will come in the first 24 hours of the campaign of liberation inside Iraq. The correct initial target list would include, of course, Iraq's air-defense network, weapons of mass destruction and command, control, communications and intelligence links. But the most decisive targets for the war's outcome would be inhabited barracks, troop concentrations and fully-staffed headquarters.
We must kill thousands of Saddam's elite forces in surprise attacks during the first night of the war. Our targeting should focus on Saddam's Special Republican Guards, other praetorian military and paramilitary units, intelligence personnel - and the upper echelons of the Iraqi government. We must shock Saddam's power base into a paralysis from which it cannot recover.
If we do not do this - if we allow the wasps to flee their nests - it will be much harder to target Saddam's loyalists after they have dispersed into civilian neighborhoods, into the countryside, or into bunkers. If we are unwilling to begin the war by targeting Saddam's human means of enforcing his will, we will need to kill far greater numbers of draftees and other Iraqis who do not wish to fight - as we had to do in Desert Storm.
There has been a great deal of discussion, more ideology-based than informed, about Iraqi military leaders and their units jumping sides. If we wish to enable and encourage them to do so, we must break the physical links between them and Saddam's killers. If we allow Saddam to retain his Gestapo and SS equivalents in the opening days of the war, he will be able to use them against any military leaders and units that appear to be wavering. We cannot expect men to turn against Saddam if we are unwilling to help them by destroying Saddam's means of retaliation.
Saddam will never be impressed by our willingness to bomb empty barracks or motorpools full of inoperative tanks. Only the practical effects of killing those loyal to him - until we can kill Saddam himself - will make a meaningful difference. And the effect on his loyalists may be more important than the effect on Saddam. We need to panic Saddam's henchmen, not spare them. In any case, we need to eliminate Saddam's favorites from the political equation if post-Saddam Iraq is to have any chance of evolving into a rule of law state.
Many other issues demand objective consideration, from the dangers of over-empowering Iraqi exiles who have little support among the population they deserted, to the complexity of allowing all of Iraq's constituencies fair representation in a future government. But nothing matters more than a decisive victory achieved at minimum costs to our own forces, our allies, and the long-suffering Iraqi people. If we want to wage a humane war, we must be prepared to kill the agents of inhumanity.
Ralph Peters is a retired military intelligence officer and the author, most recently, of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."
THE VIRTUES OF FEROCITY
By RALPH PETERS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 13, 2003 -- AS the United States military prepares for a war with Iraq, an essential question remains unasked: To what extent does the spirit of Bill Clinton still shape the Pentagon's approach to combat?
Given the bold rhetoric from the Bush administration and, not least, from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the question may seem surprising. Yet, as Saddam Hussein himself illustrates so well, boldness of rhetoric is not quite the same thing as clarity of vision.
The Bush administration has been forthright about its willingness to go to war in a just cause. But it remains unclear whether the administration is willing to do what it takes to prosecute a major war effectively.
The essential issue is targeting. Are we willing to kill, from the opening minutes of the war, those enemies who must be eliminated if we are to prevail? Or does our government remain crippled by the intellectual deformities of Clintonian warfare, in which attacks on empty buildings are expected to convince blood-soaked dictators to surrender?
Despite the daunting complexity of all military operations, one thing is clear about the pending war with Iraq: Any plan that is unwilling to inflict significant casualties on the most irreconcilable enemy units and organizations from the outset means a longer war, with ultimately greater numbers of casualties on both sides, more harm inflicted on the civilian population and far worse physical destruction.
The insidious nonsense about minimizing enemy casualties must stop if we are to prevail with the decisiveness and speed necessary to humanize the overall conflict while suitably impressing other potential enemies with our capabilities. In warfare, if you are unwilling to pay the butcher's bill up front, that bill will prove much higher in the end.
In our polarized political environment, it is impossible to have a rational, fact-based discussion of military matters across the ideological divide. The moment the issue of killing our enemies is raised, the reflexive response from those on the left is to accuse the speaker of bloodthirsty warmongering.
But the refusal to examine the mechanics of warfare honestly does not prevent war - it only exacerbates the confusion, destruction and danger to our own forces and purposes. In warfare, ignorance is the real weapon of mass destruction.
Swift wars are demonstrably less destructive of life, property, social structures and morality than prolonged wars. Unless those on the left truly believe that we need never fight another war, their concern should be war's effective prosecution in the most humane manner consonant with success. But the left's reflexive insistence that war is always wrong, no matter the guilt of our enemies, leads only to greater suffering on all sides.
It is time to recognize the virtues of ferocity.
We all have heard a great deal about the increases in the effectiveness of our precision weapons. But it hardly matters how precisely your weapons are guided if your targeting philosophy is misguided. The point of precision weapons is not to avoid killing, but to kill with greater effectiveness and discrimination.
The test of whether our government and military have abandoned the delusions of Clintonian warfare will come in the first 24 hours of the campaign of liberation inside Iraq. The correct initial target list would include, of course, Iraq's air-defense network, weapons of mass destruction and command, control, communications and intelligence links. But the most decisive targets for the war's outcome would be inhabited barracks, troop concentrations and fully-staffed headquarters.
We must kill thousands of Saddam's elite forces in surprise attacks during the first night of the war. Our targeting should focus on Saddam's Special Republican Guards, other praetorian military and paramilitary units, intelligence personnel - and the upper echelons of the Iraqi government. We must shock Saddam's power base into a paralysis from which it cannot recover.
If we do not do this - if we allow the wasps to flee their nests - it will be much harder to target Saddam's loyalists after they have dispersed into civilian neighborhoods, into the countryside, or into bunkers. If we are unwilling to begin the war by targeting Saddam's human means of enforcing his will, we will need to kill far greater numbers of draftees and other Iraqis who do not wish to fight - as we had to do in Desert Storm.
There has been a great deal of discussion, more ideology-based than informed, about Iraqi military leaders and their units jumping sides. If we wish to enable and encourage them to do so, we must break the physical links between them and Saddam's killers. If we allow Saddam to retain his Gestapo and SS equivalents in the opening days of the war, he will be able to use them against any military leaders and units that appear to be wavering. We cannot expect men to turn against Saddam if we are unwilling to help them by destroying Saddam's means of retaliation.
Saddam will never be impressed by our willingness to bomb empty barracks or motorpools full of inoperative tanks. Only the practical effects of killing those loyal to him - until we can kill Saddam himself - will make a meaningful difference. And the effect on his loyalists may be more important than the effect on Saddam. We need to panic Saddam's henchmen, not spare them. In any case, we need to eliminate Saddam's favorites from the political equation if post-Saddam Iraq is to have any chance of evolving into a rule of law state.
Many other issues demand objective consideration, from the dangers of over-empowering Iraqi exiles who have little support among the population they deserted, to the complexity of allowing all of Iraq's constituencies fair representation in a future government. But nothing matters more than a decisive victory achieved at minimum costs to our own forces, our allies, and the long-suffering Iraqi people. If we want to wage a humane war, we must be prepared to kill the agents of inhumanity.
Ralph Peters is a retired military intelligence officer and the author, most recently, of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."