Replies

I am always amazed at what poor generalship is shown by Arab military. Almost anyone can do better.

Recall that after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he placed most of his defenses along the shore of Kuwait and directly facing Saudia Arabia. Anyone looking at a map could see where the opportunity was for the allies: a sweep through empty deserts on our left (to the west), cutting between Kuwait and the Iraqi supply-lines, which also included water pipes to supply the Iragi troops. Many Iraqis surrended through thirst and dehydration, and hunger.

If even I could see this ahead of time (and I have NO practical military experience — only an amateur’s passing interest in history!), then why could Saddam not see it?

Now to Syria: they have supposedly “concentrated” their tanks on the Turkish border, defensively. Uh-huh! Every time you concentrate such forces, you inevitably do two things: you make a very rich target; and you deplete defenses elsewhere. One of both makes big opportunity for your opponents, in this case the Turks.

This also gives the Turks a choice among good alternatives. They can clobber the assembled tanks from the air, which will be easy and fun for their well equipped air force. Or, if they wish a ground campaign, they can sweep around the concentration in a Kesselschlacht, cutting off the concentrated Assad forces, and leaving them isolated for as long as they like, running out of supplies, and being picked at profitably by the Turks and rebels.

Or, the Turks can just let the Syrian concentration sit there, concentrated away from other areas, which might itself be a win.

We will see. Wars are rather fun to watch, if you are not actually in one.

Not sure that's a fair judgment. Generals are gamblers and Saddam's bet wasn't that he could resist a US-led main force invasion (he knew couldn't, not with any conceivable array of his resources), but that that there never would be a main-force US-led invasion.

He knew Saudi-led Arab forces forces certainly didn't have the equipment or ability to swing around the open desert -- indeed, the US only was able to do it because of very new capabilities (GPS and the robustness of the Abrams MBT).

Saddam's bet really wasn't a bad bet in the spring of 1990, given that the US had abandoned Vietnam less than 15 years earlier, and had only been willing to fight proxy wars since then (in Latin America, Afghanistant, etc.) It was far from certain that the Saudis would want an invasion, that Bush Sr. and Thatcher would agree to do it, that Gorbachev, Kohl, and Mitterand would tolerate it, and that the US Congress would go along. That every one of those pieces came together (and the US Congress by a quite narrow vote, recall), was quite unlikely.