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How Saddam Plans to Win
The United States has seven strategic aims. Iraq has one. Stratfor.com has produced a
series of studies on the Iraq War. One study focuses on Saddam's war plan. With a UN vote on an additional resolution
seemingly postponed or perhaps even eliminated, it might be a good time to assess the Iraqi war strategy and see
how Saddam plans to win.
There are seven major war goals Stratfor assigns to the United States and its allies.
- Replace Saddam Hussein with a liberated regime supportive of U.S. interests
- Maintain a unified Iraq as a counterweight to Iran and a gesture to Turkey
- Eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction
- Alter the paper tiger perception of the U.S. in the Arab world.
- Destroy the ability of Iraq to fund and collaborate with terrorist groups, such as al Qaeda and deny terrorists
support coming from oil profits.
- Conduct warfare that minimizes U.S. casualties and collateral damage
- Establish bases for future power projection in the region
However, Saddam has just one goal - the survival of his regime. Even if he loses personnel and territory, Saddam
believes that if he retains sovereignty a cease fire will have to be negotiated with him. If he survives a second
American onslaught, his power and reputation in the Arab world will be enhanced. A regime that is party to another
cease fire may regain its lost territory and over the long term rebuild. In short, Saddam believes he can endure,
taking the "shock" without the "awe."
On the other hand, Saddam believes that the United States does not have the resolve to accept casualties to its
own forces or defy citizen outrage at television coverage of civilian destruction blamed on the allies. Based on
American behavior in Beirut and Somalia, where the United States withdrew after sustaining light casualties; in
Desert Storm, where Saddam believes the allies stopped for fear of chemical casualties when they approached Baghdad
and Afghanistan where allied forces remain garrisoned in large enclaves but do not seek major unit engagements,
Saddam's judgment is that when the U.S. is faced with the prospect of casualties it limits the attack, seeks a
cease fire or withdraws.
On the diplomatic front, the French and others seem to concur with Saddam's appraisal. The French ruling elite,
says the Wall Street Journal, are using Iraq to weaken the United States because they believe they can get away
with it. They do not believe that there is any commercial, diplomatic or political price to pay for creating more
anti-Americanism. Neither the French nor the Arabs believe that the United States is serious. That is, they do
not believe that the United States has the resolve to see this war through to victory nor to punish the countries
that impede its goals.
Saddam's first objective is the avoidance of war. We have seen for 12 years how "cheat and retreat" works.
However, there is a price Saddam won't pay. That is a proper and complete search and destroy mission that eliminates
his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. To Saddam, a half-hearted war offers a better chance of regime survival
than a full inspection. His authority, inherently fragile, rests on preserving WMD capabilities that create fear,
both within and without the country. He has already said that the S'hia south would revolt if it weren't for their
fear of his chemical weapons, for example.
By signing current and future contracts with Germany, China, Russia and France that heavily favor them, by making
them creditors of his regime to an incredible degree and by holding evidence of their complicity in violating U.N.
sanctions and aiding his smuggling efforts, Saddam believes that his suppliers will lead the delaying tactics that
will prevent the initial attack all together or at least postpone it until battle conditions for the allies are
worse and therefore casualties higher. His goal is to have the allies postpone any military action until fall with
the idea that no American President will fight a war in an election year for fear of losing the election and the
war at the same time.
A fan of Stalin and an admirer of the defense of Stalingrad, Saddam has devised a strategy with three parts - extend
the battlefield, extend the war, extend the casualties. The primary battlefield is not in Iraq, it is in the minds
of television watchers around the world. As reported by Stratfor, Saddam's war plan has these key elements.
- Delay the start of the war as long as possible to erode the political foundation of the coalition and allow
for maximum preparations.
- Delay coalition advances and impose maximum casualties. This means stand and fight in unfavorable terrain or
force the battle into urban areas. The plan is to retreat where mobility is required and fight where it is not,
thereby reducing the effectiveness of heavy armor and air power.
- Employ tactical deception to limit the effects of air power. (See Bosnia and its canvas and wood tanks for
an example.)
- Use chemical weapons and the threat of chemical weapons to inflict dramatic visual casualties, undermine morale,
prevent force concentration and create delay.
- Use low-tech environmental tactics to defeat high-tech systems. For example, placing military assets among
civilians in urban settings, setting fires to create smoke and taking advantage of terrain and weather such as
dust storms.
- Create international pressure for a cease-fire through the successful execution of conventional or WMD terrorist
attacks on nations that side with the United States, economic disruptions in the oil pipelines of the West, attacks
by disguised military on Iraqi civilians, provoke atrocities by agents and suicide bombers mixing in with fleeing
civilians headed towards allied lines and mutilating prisoners of war and then have "civilians" drag
them in front of television reporters. Saddam has been offering bounties for P.O.W.s and even higher bounties for
military females.
If conquering Baghdad proves to take a week longer than expected and costs more than 500 allied casualties,
Saddam believes he will have achieved his goals. At that point, he expects his French and German allies to create
enormous pressure for a cease-fire. The sense of coalition invincibility will be challenged through the U.N. If
the coalition's will is greater than Saddam's, he will lose. If not, the war will terminate in a cease-fire rather
than unconditional surrender and Saddam will have preserved his WMD capacities and the opportunity to rebuild.
For Saddam to succeed, his forces must hold and his general's fight even when they cannot communicate with central
command while they are under intense bombardment. Some cooperating terrorist attacks in some countries must be
successful, even if they are just conventional explosives. Allied air-mobile and airborne operations must fail.
Iraq's bought and not yet paid for business partners must not abandon him and continue their protection by stirring
civil unrest. Turkey must prevent a serious northern front from opening. After Baghdad, Saddam's retreat route
is north.
In 1978, the Russian Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave the commencement address at Harvard University.
Columnist Hugh Hewitt reminds us of what he said.
"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.
The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government,
in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline of courage is particularly noticeable
among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. … Political
and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and their statements,
and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, intellectually and even morally
justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice."
We shall see if Solzhenitsyn is correct. Soon.
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