The Hindu : The harsh realities of the war

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 25, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

The harsh realities of the war

THE UNITED STATES and its main ally, the U.K., appear to have come face to face with the harsh realities of the war much sooner than they or even the rest of the world would have anticipated. Four days into their universally condemned invasion of Iraq, they have enough cause to revise their much proclaimed notion, based on the foundation of their technological superiority, that this war will be easy and cost free. There have been far too many reverses and negative consequences for the complacency to remain. In fact, Americans whose trigger-happy administration launched a "shock and awe" strike against Iraq on Wednesday must be in deep shock seeing the images that have been coming home from the battlefields in the last few days. Never since the 1993 conflict in Somalia on the Horn of Africa has the American public been exposed in such manner to the cruelties of a war. The experience in Mogadishu when the corpses of soldiers were dragged through the streets ensured that the military engagements in other arenas, including Kosovo in the Balkans, were confined to aerial bombardments with few risks to American personnel. Public opinion therefore was unprepared for the inevitable consequences of the ground invasion of Iraq. Compounding the shock of these images of prisoners of war have been the reports, filed by handpicked "embedded" correspondents, of the surprising degree of resistance being put up by Iraq's beleaguered armed forces. If these are a reflection of Saddam Hussein's popularity rather than a vice like grip on his nation, Washington's military top brass may be forced to rethink some of the dates on their calendar for Iraq.

The most startling of the series of developments during the weekend was perhaps the lethal fight inside an American military camp in Kuwait when an American soldier hurled grenades into an officers' tent. It capped a day of perplexing accidents, the most inexplicable ones being the crash of helicopters and the bizarre downing of a Royal Air Force Tornado jet by an American Patriot missile in so-called friendly fire. Similar misidentification of targets in the heat of the battle during the 1991 Gulf war, with the same actors, had raised a public outcry in Britain and promises were made by both sides to ensure against a recurrence. The weekend accident is a measure of the dangers of excessive reliance on technology, best exemplified by the blitzkrieg warfare of "shock and awe".

With another vintage ally of NATO descent, Turkey, displaying a readiness to safeguard its own national interests if they came in conflict with American objectives, the picture is far from encouraging for the planners in Washington and their proxies in London. Turkey's decision not to allow American ground troops to pass through its territory on their way into northern Iraq raised the worrying possibility that the U.S. may not have enough forces and armoury on the ground for the task of coordinating the fight in conjunction with the Kurds whom it trained and armed for the eventual fight against Saddam Hussein. At this hour of action, there are also nagging doubts about the role that Turkey itself may play in trying to consolidate its position along the nebulous border with Iraq. Against the background of the bitterness of the haggling over the price of Turkish military support there are genuine apprehensions that the U.S. may be unable to exercise any control over the actions of the Turks, whose anxiety about the rising influence of the Kurds in the region may force them into actions running counter to Washington's interests. Not the most optimistic of scenarios for George Bush and his allies as they complete a week of warfare.

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