The New American Way of War

Max Boot

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2003

Summary:  "The American way of war" refers to the grinding strategy of attrition that U.S. generals traditionally employed to prevail in combat. But that was then. Spurred by dramatic advances in information technology, the new American way of war relies on speed, maneuver, flexibility, and surprise. This approach was put on display in the invasion of Iraq and should reshape what the military looks like.

Max Boot is Olin Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.

Coalition commanders had anticipated that Basra, a heavily Shi'ite city that had rebelled against Saddam in 1991, would rise up this time as well. Yet no such rebellion was forthcoming, in part because Basra's citizens did not want to risk being slaughtered by Baathist security forces, as they had been in 1991. Following the first Gulf War, Saddam had formed the paramilitary Fedayeen to stiffen resistance and prevent any further revolts. Their cruel efficiency ensured that there were no massive uprisings or defections from the Iraqi armed forces in the early days of the second Gulf War.

The coalition's response to this setback was to loosely cordon off Basra. The British First Armored Division would spend the next three weeks patiently chipping away at Iraqi defenses, all the while being careful to avoid the kind of street fighting that Saddam clearly hoped to trigger. Leaving the British behind, the rest of the coalition forces raced north toward Baghdad along two parallel axes. The Third ID took to the largely empty deserts west of the Euphrates River. The First MEF advanced to its right, along the heavily populated east bank of the Euphrates. The initial speed of the advance was breathtaking, with the Third ID sprinting some 200 miles in three days -- far faster than its predecessor, the 24th ID, had traveled during the first Gulf War.

This bold dash toward the enemy capital left the U.S. lines of communication temporarily exposed. In normal army doctrine, an armored cavalry regiment would have been deployed to secure the flanks, but Franks relied on airpower alone. The price of this gamble was revealed when the Fedayeen and other Iraqi security forces began attacking supply convoys. Things quickly turned ugly. On Sunday, March 23, a convoy of the 507th Maintenance Company was ambushed in Nasiriyah, and 12 soldiers were captured or killed. The next day, more than 30 ah-64d Apache Longbows tried to attack Republican Guard positions south of Karbala -- only to run into a wall of small-arms fire that downed one helicopter and damaged the rest. This was a humiliating setback for the most advanced attack helicopters in the world. To top things off, on March 24, much of southern Iraq was enveloped in a blinding sandstorm. Helicopters could not fly and supply convoys had to be delayed, leaving some forward units perilously short on food and other necessities.

Senior commanders made a decision to slow down temporarily the advance to allow their forces to get rested, regrouped, and resupplied -- and to secure rear areas. The 101st Airborne, which initially had been slated to lead the charge into Baghdad, was instead used to secure Najaf, Hillah, Karbala, and other towns along the route. The marines undertook a week of hard street fighting to clear out Nasiriyah. One brigade of the Third ID -- a third of its strength -- was sent back to secure lines of communication.

On March 27, Lieutenant General William Wallace, commander of the army's V Corps, which was in charge of all army units in Iraq, said in an interview that "the enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against." Unfortunately, when The Washington Post reported his comment the next morning, it dropped "a bit," giving the impression that U.S. forces had suffered a serious setback. (The New York Times rendered the quote accurately in one story but flubbed it in another.) A media frenzy ensued, with numerous stories suggesting that the offensive was bogged down and that the war could last months and result in thousands of casualties. Leading the charge was a platoon of retired generals who suggested that Rumsfeld had placed the invasion in jeopardy by not sending enough troops.

This criticism vastly exaggerated the difficulties encountered by U.S. forces. The Fedayeen turned out to be more of a nuisance than a serious military menace. Many of their attacks were reckless to the point of being suicidal. They would charge m1a1 Abrams tanks and m2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles in pickup trucks mounted with machine guns. Sometimes the tanks would not even bother to open fire; they would simply roll over the attacking vehicles. The "dead-enders" died by the thousands; few U.S. troops were killed.

Although this fighting was going on in full view of the world's press, an even more critical aspect of the campaign was taking place outside the glare of television cameras: navy, air force, and marine aircraft, along with army helicopters, artillery, and rockets, were pounding Republican Guard divisions dug in south of Baghdad. Some of their fire was directed by aerial surveillance, some by special operations forces on the ground. The assault took an especially devastating toll on the Iraqis during the heavy sandstorm, when they mistakenly believed they could move around freely and instead became easy targets for precision-guided munitions.

On March 29, the most important meeting of the war was convened at Camp David. In a teleconference, the administration's "war cabinet" considered whether to stop the advance and wait for reinforcements, as many armchair strategists were suggesting. President Bush wisely rejected this advice and directed that the focus be kept on Baghdad.

Senior ground commanders wanted to wait to advance until the Republican Guard divisions south of Baghdad were judged to be at least half strength. It took only a few days for intelligence officers to report that the Medina Division was just 20 percent effective, and the other units were not far behind. On the morning of April 1, the army and the marines began their final dash for Baghdad. U.S. soldiers were surprised to find that the supposedly formidable Republican Guard put up almost no resistance. The guard divisions had all but ceased to exist as coherent fighting forces. Those not killed simply threw off their uniforms and ran away.

The only remaining question was how much of a fight the coalition would face in Baghdad. Right up until the last moment, a chorus of gloomy commentators warned that the United States risked another Stalingrad. That was apparently Saddam's expectation too. U.S. intelligence believes he distributed copies of the movie Black Hawk Down to give his commanders hints on what to do.