An Assessment of the Invasion of Iraq

by John Thompson

March 24, 2004

The Coalition invasion of Iraq will have been underway for around 100 hours by the end of Monday, March 24^th (EST). How do things stand compared to the 100 hours spent in on the Liberation of Kuwait in 1991?

In 1991, after six weeks of aerial bombing and 100 hours of ground combat, Iraq’s ground forces had been driven out of Kuwait by 490,000 Coalition ground troops organized into about 17 divisions and supported by 1,850 combat aircraft. The Coalition had suffered about 95 killed (mostly through accidents and friendly fire incidents), 368 wounded and about 20 aviators and soldiers were taken prisoner.

Iraqi losses were hard to assess, but at least 60,000 of the 550,000 Iraqi troops in Kuwait and southern Iraq were captured, their hospitals had some 50,000 wounded in them and anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 Iraqis had been killed.

It was a short, easy, and one-sided war. However, Coalition troops never crossed the Euphrates River (about 200km from their start lines), only nosed into a couple of Iraqi towns, and managed to avoid having to fight inside Kuwait City itself.

How are things going this time?

The Coalition has so far managed to feed about just over four divisions into the fray (say about 120,000 ground troops) and the leading troops have closed within 100 km of Baghdad in less than four days. This has meant some hard marching — including seizing crossings over Iraq’s major internal barrier, the Euphrates River. Iraq’s second largest city is encircled, and their only deepwater port is captured, as have been four of their major airfields.

About 50 Coalition personnel have been killed (again, mostly due to accidents) and seven seem to have been captured — the majority of them being rear-echelon mechanics, not frontline soldiers or aircrew. Again, Iraq’s casualties cannot be estimated, but it seems reasonable to conclude that thousands of their soldiers and party militia are dead — which is to be expected when under-trained men with old equipment encounter skilled well-armed professionals. The Coalition is holding on to a mere 2,000 or so POWs — having disarmed thousands of other soldiers before releasing them.

In short, fewer American and British troops have come much further, captured much more, and with less loss than had been the case in 1991. The Republican Guard is concentrating to fight on the outskirts of Baghdad, under circumstances in which the main pillar of Saddam’s rule can be savaged by Coalition firepower. In sum, things are going well… almost.

There are problems, most of which present some difficulties and one of which is potentially fatal. There are a lot of Iraqi troops who have been left stranded in the rear of the Coalition’s advances, and many have been ‘stiffened’ by the presence of the Special Republican Guard (a force that serves a role like that of an NKVD guard company in the Soviet Army of the WW II — letting an Iraqi conclude that the Coalition troops might kill him if he fights, whereas these minders will assuredly kill him if he does not). A tactic like this can work until things become too unraveled. The liberal use of civilian ‘shields" and stay-behind parties will be annoying too, but also provide ample illustration of the contemptuous nature of Saddam’s regime.

The deadly problem for the war effort, however, does not lie with the Iraqis, but with the media. The rich and ample access to the war effort provided by the ‘embedded’ journalists provides many benefits, but few journalists have been soldiers and so often lack their perspectives. Worse, television often has no sense of perspective at all.

With instant coverage potentially available for every minor skirmish at a roadblock, salvo of artillery or outpost squabble, trivial episodes have become exalted beyond their importance as they are fed into the World’s TV networks, and important developments get overlooked when they lack the drama to feed this rapacious beast. As was seen on Sunday, a trio of minor news items somehow conveyed a message that the war was not going well — and the World’s financial markets have got all twitchy again.

This is a war. Some Coalition troops will be (regrettably) captured or killed, some Coalition aircraft will be downed, mistakes will be made, and some of Saddam’s soldiers won’t have the sense to come out of the steel rain. Get used to it; but more importantly, fixing on the small picture means ignoring the larger picture — and that is a dangerous mistake to make.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca