Will US hit Baghdad?

NINE killed and 40 wounded in one day is not unusual in traditional military operations. The Israelis, who have less than one-fortieth of America’s population, lost that many in a single day last week. The Afghans, who are outnumbered twenty-to-one by Americans, have probably lost that many people in war every day for the past 23 years. But Americans may have lost the knack.This is no criticism of Americans. Being willing to sacrifice your young men in huge numbers in war without flinching is no reason for pride.Old-fashioned societies can do it because they still have the warriorethic, but more importantly because they don’t actually have to watch thekids die. Television changes all that, and creates the phenomenon of“casualty aversion”.There is now a belief in Washington that this was a passing phenomenon, ended by popular outrage after the events of September 11. President George W. Bush is convinced of this, as witness his remarks after the US losses on Sunday in the Gardez operation in Afghanistan: “I thinkany time somebody loses their life, the American people will mourn andfeel sad — and I feel that way too. On the other hand, I am just asdetermined now as I was a week ago or three months ago to fulfill this mission....”The mission, as Bush has formulated it in the past couple of months, is not just to eliminate the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation, but also to achieve the unrelated goal of destroying the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. That task could not realistically be accomplished without committing several hundred thousand American ground troops, but at the Bush White House there is confidence that Americans are now willing to accept much higher levels of casualties because of their fear of “terrorism”.These first few American casualties in Afghanistan are therefore a kind of litmus test. If public and media concern about casualties at this level dies down after a few days, then you can at least argue that a military operation on the scale of Iraq is politically feasible in the US in 2002. If not, then not. My money is still on “not”. I continue to doubt that the Bush administration would launch its own mini-Vietnam.For the United States, the whole story of “casualty aversion” began with Vietnam: the public’s quite unforeseen rebellion at the waste of 55,000 American lives in that war has shaped American strategy for over a generation. By the Somalia intervention in 1993, when the killing of 19 American soldiers in a single day led to the hasty withdrawal of 30,000 UStroops, it led to the informal rule known as the “Mogadishu line”, whichstated that no future US military intervention overseas would be undertaken if it looked likely to involve even a few dozen American deaths.So ever since the Vietnam war, but with more emphasis since 1993, the US government has invested vast sums of money in developing weapons that would enable the country to fight and win wars without unacceptablecasualties — indeed, if possible, without any casualties at all. In recent years this techno-fix has seen some notable successes, though only against third-rate opponents.From Bosnia to Kosovo to Afghanistan (until last Sunday), the enemies crumbled under the twin assaults of American air-power plus local auxiliaries who did the actual fighting on the ground. But the localground troops (if they are even available, which they probably wouldn’t be in Iraq) have their own agendas, and don’t necessarily want to die forWashington’s. Which is why the US had to commit a thousand ground troops to the Gardez operation — and started losing people.“Boots on the ground” means body-bags. It can’t be helped: mortar rounds come in, people step on mines, they get sniped. But if you’re serious about taking down any reasonably competent regime — and “evil” isoften competent — then you must be able to take casualties. It is still not clear that the US can.The reason Saddam still rules Iraq today is that George Bush senior decided it was not worth the extra American casualties to go up to Baghdad and get him at the end of the Gulf war eleven years ago. Kuwait was liberated, the mobile forces of the Iraqi army were destroyed, andAmerican tanks were 16 hours from the Iraqi capital — but the city of Baghdad has six million people, and nobody knew which of 100 underground bunkers Saddam was in.Big cities swallow armies whole: no other environment produces such a high rate of combat casualties. The elder Bush had won the Kuwait war with only a couple of hundred American dead. Should he risk ten times that number, and the loss of the 1992 election, just to get Saddam, when the revolts underway in both the north and the south of Iraq were likely to get him anyway?Well, the revolts didn’t get Saddam, and George I lost the 1992 election anyway, and now George II faces the same choice. He says he won’t hesitate, and if it could all be done from the air, no doubt he wouldn’t.But if it has to be done on the ground, with a couple of hundred thousandAmerican troops involved, and no plausible link to September 11, andmounting public suspicion that this is just Celebrity Death Match (or rather, Re-Match) between the dynasties in Washington and Baghdad? And with lots and lots of young Americans dying on camera?Maybe the US will attack Iraq this spring, but my guess is that it won’t. There’s a lot of mileage in a good bluff. Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist