The Pause and the Political

The decision to pause operations on the Euphrates front makes perfect military sense. An advance of the magnitude experienced in the first five days of war is punishing and requires an equivalent pause in operations. Men and machines cannot continue to operate without rest, maintenance and resupply. Moreover, the current strategic situation makes further advances on the Euphrates undesirable for a number of reasons.

1. Advancing further without air preparation of the battlefield is risky and unnecessary.
2. The Basra battle has not resolved itself, and shifting British forces dealing with that battle is highly desirable before resuming the advance.
3. The Northern front is just being created and will either draw off forces from the Iraqi south or will become the major line of attack. Waiting for that to mature makes sense.
4. Given lessons learned in the first week, waiting for reinforcements is logical and prudent.

The "pause" does not mean a freeze is in place. Semantic wars now are raging between Washington and Doha, with U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) denying that there is a pause. That is technically true. For example, Apaches flown by 101st Division pilots who are part of the Euphrates front are attacking Iraqi forces around Karbala. Similarly, patrolling, probes, rationalization of lines and opportunistic advances will all take place along the front. There is no pause in operations. There is a pause in the strategic advance.

The semantic war points to the biggest problem for the United States, and it is not a military but a political one. As Plan C unfolds, it has a much slower tempo of operations than are contained in either Plan A or Plan B. The slower tempo is imposed by the recourse to an intense air campaign against Iraqi ground troops. U.S. forces cannot simply advance into the battle box being bombarded by coalition aircraft nor does it make any sense to. The entire point of the air campaign is to severely weaken the Iraqi forces BEFORE there is further contact.

Now, that air campaign depends on two variables. First, there is the number of aircraft available to carry out the mission. Second, there is the number of formations that need to be attacked. This is a mission in which precision-guided munitions have a role -- as in Hellfires attacking tanks -- but in which attacks on personnel require more conventional area suppression munitions. In other words, lots of sorties have to be flown, and lots of time has to be taken.

If Desert Storm and Kosovo are the guides, we are about to enter the wild and wonderful world of Battle Damage Assessment -- BDA. BDA is conducted after every mission to try to determine what damage was done. The air campaign is built around quantitative expectations -- this percentage of armor destroyed, that percentage of soldiers killed. The assumption is that at a certain percentage of attrition, entire units become inoperative and will not fight when attacked. What that percentage is actually is fairly well known. What is not known as clearly is what the battle damage has been. Huge debates always take place, with the Air Force taking an expansive view and the Army being much more cautious.

In this case, given the magnitude of the mission and the probability that the United States will err on the side of caution, it is likely that the pause in strategic ground operations in the Euphrates will continue for quite a while. The military will wait not only for the BDA assessments to hit the right numbers, but for the reinforcements that are heading for the theater now. In addition, it will wait for the northern front to mature into a significant operation. In our view, this could take a month, give or take a week.

From a military standpoint, this is not significant, unless the Iraqis counterattack, which could potentially solve a host of problems. From a political point, this is going to cause serious problems. It is not just a matter of expectations any longer. It has to do with what will be seen happening during the halt. First, the bombing campaign will cause substantial civilian casualties. There is simply no way around that. Those casualties will appear on television around the world, night after night. Second, the pause will appear in the media as paralysis and then the dreaded word "quagmire" will appear. The media will see soldiers standing in place, constantly being attacked by Iraqi special forces, taking casualties without being able to strike back effectively -- and "quagmire" will be joined by "Vietnam." The fact that this is all moving toward a predictable military conclusion will be emphasized by CENTCOM chief Gen. Tommy Franks, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and U.S. President George W. Bush, but that will not be the major theme conveyed by the media. Finally, the Iraqis will simultaneously claim victimization from the air attacks and victory in resisting and surviving.

Divergence is taking place between the military reality and the political reality. The military reality is fairly well defined and has nothing in common with Vietnam. However, as weeks roll by -- and all that is seen is a distant air campaign, dead children, guerrilla attacks on U.S. troops and hapless search and destroy missions -- the political reality will begin to take over.

The U.S. military now has less a military problem than a perception problem and the military, from Rumsfeld on down, has not yet worked out a coherent explanation that will contain the problem. They are technically correct when they say that the war is on plan. But that is simply missing the point, which is that the planning process is opaque and the public has to take their word for it. That will work for a while, but not forever.

From the beginning, the military had introduced the concept of "Information Warfare," which was primarily directed against the Iraqis as an offensive weapon. The Iraqis have also been conducting Information Warfare at the world and global public. They have done quite well. The Department of Defense has an offensive Information Warfare doctrine, but seems to lack a defensive one. More precisely, they do not seem to have a plan for making the war-fighting reality and public perception coherent. The operational pause makes military sense. It has to be crafted so that it is understood and makes political sense. Quibbling over semantics is no solution.

Stratfor has been a mixed bag but this seems right on.

Divergence is taking place between the military reality and the political reality.

In todays climate this is a continuing tension. The military (Bush administration) desires victory but the political (left/media/Democrats) desires defeat. The fifth column political wing of the left, as described above, is more difficult to overcome than the terrorists. Military victory is assured if we can overcome the domestic enemies.

Very interesting analysis. I have a few thoughts on this too...but I imagine it's all in the Battle Plan (even Plan A and B?):

1) The advance from the south has drawn the RG troops and armament out to Karbala, Nawaj and Kut. They can now be pounded away from the big city, and the roads leading to them can be controlled using air power.

2) We don't know if there are significant RG resources to the north of Baghdad. There may not be, since we couldn't open the northern front due to Turkey's objections. So now is the time to insert our resources into the north. The problem is that they won't have tanks and Bradleys since they are still en route.

3) A pause will give our troops time to rest, be resupplied, and watch the air fireworks - thereby keeping the targets awake and hunkered down.

Even if this is Plan C, it's a good one. Now they need to come up with a way to have checkpoints without military casualties, to search urban areas without military or civilian casualties, and to find the Iraqi leadership in the underground bunkers and tunnels in Baghdad. Those are the challenges of this war.

"From the beginning, the military had introduced the concept of "Information Warfare," which was primarily directed against the Iraqis as an offensive weapon. The Iraqis have also been conducting Information Warfare at the world and global public. They have done quite well. The Department of Defense has an offensive Information Warfare doctrine, but seems to lack a defensive one. More precisely, they do not seem to have a plan for making the war-fighting reality and public perception coherent. The operational pause makes military sense. It has to be crafted so that it is understood and makes political sense. Quibbling over semantics is no solution."
STRATFOR is discussing the wrong concept here. The word they should use is political warfare. It is in that that the Iraqis have excelled. Although they share shady borders, the US Military's Information Warfare concept is aimed at shaping the operational reality of the battlefield. It would be a mistake to think that CENTCOM has a plan to influence public opinion in France or the policy of Turkey. That is the realm of political warfare and the US Armed Forces are prohibited, by tradition and law, from even participating in it.

The weapons of political warfare are foreign ministries, giant media networks and party activity. No one can expect a handful of Commando Solos and scratchy clandestine transmitters to outshout the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera. That task was expect of -- what?

The State Department for one and our elected politicians for another. They were expected to win the Battle for Turkey and the skirmishes for NATO. Our politicians were expected to explain to their constituents, at least, and hopefully also to our allies, why our cause is just; why sacrifice is necessary. It is currently fashionable to deride Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks for a delay of a few days, but who, pray tell, is responsible for events in the Turkish Parliament?

Yet in one key arena of political warfare, the United States has no counterpart to the enemy's. The Arab World has Al Jazeera and the Left has the BBC and America has -- what? The US news networks tread so lightly upon political issues that they are almost bereft of content. No graphic images. No strong emotions. Nothing that might disturb the children. Anyone who watches Al Jazeera will learn to hate. Anyone who watches MSNBC will learn nothing.

Let's begin by using the right word. Not the "information warfare" word used by STRATFOR, but "political warfare" as used by Winston Churchill. In the context of the Second World War, the object of "political warfare", which included every appliance of information and persuasion, was to "to completely destroy the German war machine, the National Socialists and the type of state it had founded". Let us continue from there, into our own time, on a battlefield that we have until now ceded to our enemy.

"The word they should use is political warfare. It is in that that the Iraqis have excelled."

The Iraqis are no better at political warfare than Bill Clinton is at lying. In both cases, the near-universal collaboration of the press is essential. A "normal" adversarial press would have demolished Clinton's career before he ran for governor of Arkansas. The Iraqi regime would be an international pariah if the press were to simply publicize readily available information.

By the way, thanks for your superb commentaries on the battlefield situation. I do a User search for 'wretchard' every day!!!

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