If President Bush orders U.S. troops to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, the best option is a war involving intricate troop maneuvers, not a direct charge across miles of enemy-held territory and a bloody campaign of attrition, according to a number of military experts.
The heavy concentration of ground forces in the latest list of units ordered to Saudi Arabia-about five additional divisions when the separate brigades and amphibious forces are added up-reflects the stark fact that if it comes down to a military operation, it will not be done with bombs alone.
The U.S. is massing a ground force that will total roughly 10 combat divisions by the time the next wave of forces completes its deployment in January. A division can total 12,000 to 18,000 or more soldiers, depending upon how it is organized.
These U.S. forces would not be sent to retake Kuwait by themselves. The British have sent a mechanized brigade supported by tactical jets, about 8,000 troops in all, who will operate under U.S. Marine Corps command.
The French, Syrians, Egyptians and the Saudis all have sizable forces on the ground.
Even so, the sheer size of the U.S. contingent dwarfs all the other players, and it is likely that American forces would carry the brunt of any war against Iraq.
If ground troops are used to retake Kuwait, several active-duty and retired military officers interviewed are divided over how far north U.S. troops would need to drive to bring a shooting war to a decisive and rapid conclusion. But they are united in the view that any operation entails enormous risks and uncertainties. Nobody with combat experience suggests a direct frontal assault.
”It`s damn stupid to try to punch through Iraqi defenses (in Kuwait), which we know consist of large sand walls, interlocking anti-tank fire, overhead cover and all that,” said retired British army Col. Andrew Duncan.
The multinational force, Duncan said, ”should take advantage of its mobility” and cross the Saudi-Iraqi border west of Kuwait, driving to a position north of Basra. This move would block off the entire Iraqi army of about 430,000 troops, those occupying Kuwait as well as the mechanized divisions of the elite Republican Guards, which are located just north of the Iraq-Kuwait border.
An Army colonel at the Pentagon, who agrees with this approach, said it would have the added benefit of cutting off Iraqi oil fields south of Basra.
”Pushing slowly into Kuwait is just begging for a chemical-weapons attack and a great big war of attrition,” this colonel said. ”What you do is attack their main supply route.”
That is the rationale behind a mobile thrust around Kuwait and deep into Iraq, north of Basra. It would force the Republican Guards units to about-face, head north and fight on Iraqi soil.
”Let them attack; when they come out of their holes and into the open they`re going to be dogmeat for our M-1 tanks and A-10 ground-attack jets,”
said another Pentagon officer. ”If you eliminate the (Republican Guards)
divisions, think of the impact on those draftees on the front in Kuwait as 500-pound bombs are falling on them from B-52s.”
Duncan said, ”You`d keep those U.S. Marine forces at sea in the Persian Gulf. They threaten the entire coastline of Kuwait and would keep thousands of Iraqi troops tied down in coastal defenses.”
He estimated that the mobile campaign inland could be done in two weeks with the collapse of Iraqi forces south of Basra.
Another Pentagon officer sees an even bolder thrust, directly north from a position farther west in Saudi Arabia, all the way to Baghdad to encircle the capital.
”You need to threaten something he (Saddam Hussein) really holds dear, and all wars are stopped by negotiations,” he said, suggesting that encirclement of the Iraqi capital would ”result in a trade: Baghdad for Kuwait.”
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Richard Lawrence, who in the early 1980s commanded the 1st Cavalry Division, elements of which are now in Saudi Arabia, said he is horrified at thoughts of pushing deep into Iraq.
”We`d be making a terrible mistake to go beyond the Kuwaiti border,” he declared. ”Sure, we should prevent the Republican Guards units from coming south. We can interdict them with air power. But a ground operation in Iraq goes beyond the mission of removing the Iraqis from Kuwait.”
Lawrence envisions a rapid penetration through front-line Iraqi defenses to ”cut off and encircle the Iraqi forces on the (Saudi-Kuwait) border. I`d complete the encirclement just south of Kuwait City by having the ground forces link up with a Marine landing.
”We should then bypass the city and press the rest of their forces north,” he said. ”If the Republican Guards units crank up their tanks to come south, we should pound them all the way from the air.”
Lawrence gives such an operation a good chance of success.
”It won`t be like their war with Iran,” he said. ”The Iraqis cannot dream of the combat power we`ll put in. The shock effect will literally stun them.”
Lawrence added, ”If we use all our land, sea and air power, I don`t think there`ll be tens of thousands of casualties.”
Air Force and Army officers say air power alone cannot force Iraq to abandon Kuwait.
”I`m not aware of any campaign that`s been won by air power alone,”
said Lawrence. ”Air power can enhance an operation. It can increase your chances of success, it can shorten the fighting, but ejecting the Iraqis from Kuwait will take troops on the ground.”
There are other, less obvious, problems with an air campaign. One is that the U.S. Air Force is the only one in the region capable of mounting a serious offensive. The Royal Saudi Air Force, for example, is equipped primarily with air defense interceptors, not long-range fighter-bombers.
An offensive air campaign would have to be mounted almost exclusively by the U.S. Air Force. Such an assault would present the specter of Western pilots raining bombs on Arabs, a prospect that could undermine the
multinational force that President Bush has taken such pains to assemble.
Moreover, such a campaign might be less effective than promised and more costly than expected. In recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak conceded, ”We do not have a great deal in the way of stand-off munitions,” which are missiles and bombs designed to strike targets from aircraft that stay outside the range of enemy air defenses.
Thus, after the first few sorties using the ”preferred” stand-off munitions, strike aircraft then would be armed with plain old iron bombs, which would force pilots to fly through enemy air defenses to get close enough to drop bombs on their targets.
John Collins, a retired Army colonel and senior national defense specialist at the Library of Congress, also cautioned against an emphasis on air power.
”Remember,” he said, ”an isolated air campaign is not our decision alone to make. Hussein could come back with missile attacks on Saudi cities, or attacks on offshore oil facilities. A huge burning oil slick in the Persian Gulf moving south could be awesome.”
Russel Stolfi, a Marine reserve colonel who just returned from a tour with U.S. units in Saudi Arabia, said a ground campaign in the desert is more like war at sea, in which the object is to sink enemy ships, not necessarily to traverse vast reaches of water.
”A big, heavy and mobile force can destroy the Iraqis with concentric attacks,” that is, with simultaneous attacks from more than one direction, Stolfi said.
Collins noted that ”the most favorable landing sites are on the Kuwaiti coast” for the kind of concentric air-sea attacks that Lawrence and Stolfi envision.
On the other hand, he said, ”There`s another option to war: a negotiated settlement.”
”Why have the shows-of-force and the posturing gone on this long?”
Collins asked. Then he offered the answer to his own question:
”Both sides understand that there may not be any real winners. You`ll trash cities on both sides. The Iraqis have wired Kuwaiti oil installations with explosives. You can`t avoid non-combatant casualties, and there`s the possible collapse of the world economy” as oil prices skyrocket because of the uncertainty of supplies.
