Carrying by Theodore Weesner

Author:Theodore Weesner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Astor + Blue Editions
Published: 2015-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

October 1990

Iraq must get the word: It will lose. Longstanding bad habits in U.S. public discourse on military matters treat Saddam Hussein to a continuous stream of stories that deflate the military capabilities of the coalition and inflate those of Iraq. But there probably will be a war in early 1991, and Iraq will likely suffer a terrible defeat.

Although the coalition will be vastly superior militarily to Iraq, U.S. leaders have not found a way to explain this to Saddam Hussein. Absent such explanation, the media treat him to unreasonably high estimates of U.S. casualties, urgent concern about the lethal capability of Iraq’s Western-supplied military technologies, fragmentary tales of shortcomings in U.S. forces, and graphic descriptions of awesome Iraqi field fortifications. These misleading data are doubtless culled from the U.S. press by cowed functionaries too terrified to explain to Saddam Hussein what a rational military analysis suggests: In the event of war, Iraq’s forces in Kuwait are finished.

Media coverage of defense issues has for years been occupied by budgetary politics. Tales of cost overruns, unreliable weaponry, and shortage of parts and munitions are the bread and butter of peacetime defense journalism. Bad news gets attention. But why has the press not explained that the U.S. spends six times as much on defense each year as the entire Iraqi gross national product? And that the U.S. military has devoted decades to preparing to defeat a hundred Warsaw Pact armored divisions in mobile warfare on the plains of central Europe, and probably could have done so?

Second, U.S. military leaders have been educated and socialized with the values of a liberal society. Nothing could be more damaging to the peacetime process of the military than a reputation for bellicosity. Third, U.S. military leaders are unaccustomed to claiming credit for their capabilities. Most of the experience in public debate on defense matters has revolved around magnifying the Soviet threat and minimalizing U.S. capabilities to elicit appropriations from Congress.

Sadly, the best way to contribute to a peaceful solution now is for American political leaders, journalists, and commentators to tell Saddam Hussein and the people of Iraq the truth: Unless Iraq withdraws from Kuwait, the coalition will attack this spring, and when it does Iraq’s forces will suffer a catastrophic defeat.

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