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War has changed, at least in the way that the United States goes about it. It's no longer simply a matter of bigger guns, more aircraft and more powerful ships. These are all involved but the new mix is much more than the simple sum of its parts.
Politically, we worked at forging a coalition of nations who were willing to help with the goals that we had set. Over forty nations eventually signed on with us, and at least four sent troops of some type. Much has been made of the unilateral action of the U.S. but that unilateralism has been a myth. The policies were set by the U.S., with some input from those nations who provided the most support, but those policies were independently supported by all the nations who supported us. Trying to claim that our actions were unilateral is to brazenly claim that the people of over forty nations are not 'real'. Additionally, our political actions were focused on trying to have the United Nations, individually and collectively, actually enforce Resolution 1441 instead of ignoring it. The failure of these efforts is not so much evidence of our diplomatic shortfalls as it is evidence that other governments had no desire to enforce the resolution. Their failure to keep their word is a failure on their part, not ours. We apparently began mobilizing native Iraqi forces inside the country quite some time before actual hostilities began. (Actual hostilities not meaning the twelve years of no fly patrols and strikes, but only the time from Saddam's headache bomb on March 19th forward.) These forces gave us critical information on all aspects of life inside Iraq before any conventional forces entered the country. They allowed us to focus our plans and maximize our effect when we did strike. We were able to 'get inside' the enemy's mind to some extent. Our Special Forces were apparently used for more missions than anyone outside of the SpecOps community is aware. Missions may have included locating and destroying mobile Scud launchers, disarming sabotage charges in oilfields, bridges and other targets, training and organizing local units and calling in air attacks, to name a few. Their actions helped to secure/immobilize strategic targets for both the war and the peace. The war started with a 'simple' bombing. If you're going to fight a war and want to minimize casualties on both sides, you don't slug it out with the enemy's main forces. In reality, you don't have any real beef with the enemy troops, (unless they insist on starting one). Your grievance is against the enemy leaders and killing them will frequently make the subsequent war shorter and less bloody. We made the pragmatic decision to kill Saddam and his sons, and, when the opportunity arose, we took the gift and shortened the war. Dead, wounded or simply scared silly, the net result was the same: Saddam no longer controlled anything after the bombs fell on his bunker.
The copyright of the article THE NEW AMERICAN WAY OF WAR in Military is owned by . Permission to republish THE NEW AMERICAN WAY OF WAR in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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