The Iraq war has given a whole new meaning to the term ``armchair strategist''.
Until recently it meant an old, probably retired, military man with little or no battlefield experience, critiquing the terrible combat plans of today's young, upstart field commanders. The new meaning is some fellow in an armchair, feet up and watching television, analysing the war from pictures to anyone who will listen _ probably through a mouthful of corn crisps.
The incredible thing is not the wonderful technology that allows us to watch slices of the war, live, 24 hours a day. The incredible thing is that armchair analysts are not only taken seriously but have swayed the public, like the leaders of a lemming stampede.
Remember way, way back three weeks ago? The Iraqis wouldn't fight, the crowds would embrace the invading boys, and Saddam Hussein might even go into exile. Take a deep breath. Take another dive into the potato crisp bag. No one _ let's repeat that _ no one can tell you exactly what will happen this afternoon, next week or next month in the Iraq conflict.
In the incredibly short span of less than three weeks, the war has gone pretty much according to the American-British-Australian plan and, believe it or not, pretty much according to the Iraqi plan, although much faster than Baghdad probably envisioned.
That is still the case. And what you are seeing as you relax in front of the tube is decidedly not the war. The scenes are a series of incredibly thin, sharp slices of the war. The truth of war is that at any given moment, almost every soldier, sailor and airman is involved in an unexciting, possibly boring task.
Almost all are simply waiting _ to move, to stop, to go on guard duty, to burn drums of excrement, to get their mail from home, to eat, to sleep. A very tiny few of the roughly half a million coalition and Iraqi forces are engaged in sharp, intense and acutely focusing activity such as shooting, being shot at, dashing from one position to another under possible or real enemy sights.
That's what you, I and all the others see in our armchairs. The technology is incredibly changed in the 37 years since I first saw a battlefield, but one fact never has changed through more than 1,000 wars on five continents. One fact never has changed since a journalist described the US Civil War as ``long periods of drudgery and boredom punctuated by moments of extreme excitement''.
So the first thing is, what we see in the world's first war to be televised live are a few of the moments of extreme excitement or, as others have put it equally accurately, ``extreme terror''. And the second thing is that the long hours between these moments are filled with the boredom.
But the entertainment people who are staging this war are relieving the real boredom with graphics, maps, talking heads, repetition and replay, prognostication and real, old-style armchair analysis. (How do retired generals and colonels survive without a war to explain to laymen?) All of this is not native to war, but it is so you won't be too bored _ as bored as real soldiers in the real war, for example.
There have been huge shifts in public perception of the past several weeks. There was optimism the United Nations was getting a handle on the problem, then anger when it (supposedly) let us all down. There were predictions of the rapid fall of Baghdad, and later the hand-wringing over the ``stalled'' invasion and a rancorous coalition, not least the huge splits in the US Defence Department.
Presumably, when even the early histories of these turbulent weeks are written, we will learn and be embarrassed over how excitable and easily swayed we were. Probably, these microscopically eviscerated events of the past month were pretty much business as usual, with change coming as usual, slowly and somewhat ponderously.
This conclusion comes because while the new style of armchair analyst changes opinions, analysis and facts even faster than his hairstyle, the original type of armchair analyst is astounded at the impertinence.
The third thing is that the Iraq invasion is proceeding with a speed and string of successes seldom recorded in warfare, including the 43-day (yes, it lasted that long) campaign of the first Gulf war in 1991. And that was the model war for speed and success.
It is impossible to predict what will happen on a battlefield. Anyone who tells you otherwise is silly or uninformed, and probably both. No one who has served in the military during wartime will try to predict the course of a battle, let alone of a war. By all measures, though, this war has gone very well. The initial point forces rushed into Iraq, established beachheads and made contact with Iraqi forces.
Until now, the coalition forces have moved where they wanted, when they wanted and fought battles on their timetable and with total control of the air. The Australian SAS went deep into the interior of Iraq and blew up a command centre, which is what they do, and US and British marines set about capturing ports, which is their profession.
So far as is known, neither the Iraqi military nor any part of it has stopped a strategic advance of the invasion force and no missiles or bombs have been intercepted. Iraqi forces have put up defences at expected places, in expected ways and fighting proceeded, and is proceeding, pretty much as both field commanders and headquarters staff told journalists and the public it would. Still, what would have been a surprise in Iraq to anyone with military experience would be to have no surprise at all.
There have been unexpected events. Yet the slow capture of Umm Qasr didn't affect the advance on Basra, the uncontested rush across the Iraqi desert did not outrun the supply lines and the extremely slow start to the brutally misnamed ``shock and awe'' establishment of air superiority actually disappointed only the correspondents still standing by in Iraq to cover the huge civilian casualty toll.
Instant pundits have forgotten that the war began without four divisions of US troops on purpose _ a Bangkok Post analysis way back almost three weeks ago called it a ``rolling start'' strategy _ and those divisions were scheduled to move to Iraq after hostilities began. Things like that were known long before the war began. The lack of background to much of the wild-eyed optimism and painful hand-wringing of the past 10 days is stunning.
We live in times when marketers and even prime ministers feed our immoderate demands for excessive amounts of instant gratification. But could we all just take a moment and consider that this 24-hour telethon is not entertainment? Not only do thousands of lives hang in the balance if events proceed too quickly, too slowly or without due thought, so do immensely important affairs of state that touch us all.
The claim after nine days that the Iraq war was becoming a Vietnam-style quagmire was laughable, and war is nothing to laugh over. The attack on Iraq is impressive, as wars go, in strategy and _ so far _ in tactics. No circumstance suggests so far that it will fail in the objective of taking Baghdad and unseating the current regime.
It is unwise to predict the exact course of a war, but it is unwise at this point to suggest there is evidence that this one will fail in its military objective.
Alan Dawson has fought in one war and covered 11 as a journalist. Bangkok Post