A new kind of war? Our infatuation with military power
Bacevich, Andrew J
Andrew J. Bacevich A NEW KIND OF WAR? Lessons from Iraq Ho the surprise of many if not most Americans, Operation Iraqi Freedom turned out to be, in many respects, an old-fashioned war. Just when...
...A decade of increasingly unreal military activities ensued...
...His forces would deploy "across the breadth and depth of Iraq, in some cases simultaneously and in some cases sequentially," implementing a plan that offered Franks the "latitude to build [a] mosaic...
...In these images, we saw weary, grime-encrusted GIs collapsed on their cots in the middle of sandstorms...
...Just when we had bought into the notion that for U.S...
...As a result, in the aftermath of Desert Storm, illusions about the nature and effectiveness of the use of force spread...
...Diplomacy (Harvard University Press...
...They rejected suggestions that one development or another had caught coalition forces by surprise...
...Progress was being made every day...
...Clausewitz's fog and friction continue to haunt the battlefield...
...The theater commander's reassuring vision meshed neatly with Washington's political requirements...
...We witnessed heavily laden infantrymen crouching under fire, peering warily around corners, kicking in doors, and carrying wounded comrades to the rear...
...Beyond that, these tangible reminders of war's true face will pose an obstacle to those yearning to use U.S...
...At the operation's outset, General Tommy Franks had promised a war "unlike any other in history, a campaign characterized by shock, by surprise, by flexibility, by the employment of precise munitions on a scale never before seen, and by the application of overwhelming force...
...Violence is anything but antiseptic...
...Back in 1991, these images, combined with limited direct access to the battlefield, had dazzled-and to a degree misled-reporters and the public alike...
...One episode of genuine combat did occur during the 1990s-the famous firefight in Mogadishu...
...By the second week of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the images of high-tech weapons had long since lost their novelty...
...So, in the days and weeks that followed, for the most part, the war plan became a script...
...What made the fuzzy, all but unidentifiable objects targets was not always apparent, but the unerring accuracy of the precision bombs or missiles striking them couldn't be questioned...
...military supremacy as the basis for creating a global Pax Americana...
...The subtext was obvious: this was indeed a new kind of war, defined by the technology we alone had mastered, and thus it was being fought "on our terms...
...We contemplated the fear in the eyes of a nineteen-year-old POW...
...They will be collected in commemorative volumes that celebrate the liberation of Iraq and remember those who gave their lives in that cause...
...In some quarters, large ambitions of capitalizing on America's unmistakable military supremacy to create a benign global imperium began to germinate...
...Americans barely glimpsed these events...
...We saw perplexed field commanders grappling with the unexpected...
...As such, these images will constitute a permanent warning against reviving the illusions about war that flourished since the last time the United States unleashed its forces against Saddam Hussein...
...Even in a high-tech age, war remains the province of chance and uncertainty...
...More important, for the first time since Vietnam, other images were available and suggested a strikingly different narrative...
...But Americans did not see it in full, at least until a Hollywood version appeared years later...
...Moreover, long after the torrent of spoken and written commentary offered by officials, journalists, and talking heads is forgotten, these images will remain...
...And that will be all to the good...
...forces were busier than ever-bombing Bosnian Serbs, bombing Belgrade, enforcing the "no-fly zones" and occasionally bombing Baghdad, and bombing Afghanistan-but all of this took place in the distance...
...As a byproduct, the first war against Iraq had given rise to expectations of future wars that would be antiseptic, impersonal, and risk free...
...Their message is unmistakable: for all the claims of flexibility, precision, and "shock and awe," the true nature of war remains immutable...
...To see the war as depicted by the Pentagon or at Central Command Headquarters in Qatar was, of course, to miss that collision...
...As a consequence, they also lost their persuasive power...
...The impact of these images was-and is-profoundly subversive...
...forces, at least, old-fashioned wars, fraught with waste, carnage, miscalculation, and massive destruction, had become obsolete, we watched our soldiers marching on Baghdad run smack up against the past...
...We watched marines dashing across a sandy expanse that could be mistaken for the beach at Iwo Jima...
...They will fill scrapbooks and Web sites...
...To prop up this narrative, briefers in Qatar and at the Pentagon revived a practice first used during the famous press conferences of Operation Desert Storm...
...We were gratified-and came to take for granted-that American soldiers emerged unscathed...
...Henceforth, with its high-tech warriors flying high above the battlefield or cruising swiftly across it, the United States would vanquish its foes effortlessly...
...These images of American soldiers at the front, which appeared on television and in newspapers, directly contradicted the claims made in Qatar and in Washington...
...They punctuated their presentations with photographs and video footage demonstrating the capabilities of high-tech U.S...
...Events, they doggedly insisted, were on or ahead of schedule...
...weaponry...
...They may well puncture a decade-long national infatuation with military power...
...All that we saw of "combat" was more flickering images of precision weapons and their now fully-to-be-expected accuracy...
...Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of international relations at Boston University and the author of American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S...
...We seldom knew what the bombs hit (and seldom bothered to inquire...
...Many in Washington, liberals no less than conservatives, found this to be an alluring prospect...
...Everything had been anticipated in advance...
...At daily press conferences, officials announced that all was proceeding precisely as expected...
...in a way that provides flexibility so that we can attack the enemy on our terms...
Vol. 130 • April 2003 • No. 8
