Global Policy Forum

By Sandy Tolan*

The Pentagon's plan for these first 48 hours of strikes on Baghdad are expected to incorporate a military doctrine known as "Shock and Awe": an estimated 3000 bombs and missiles, nearly one every minute, streaking down on the Iraqi capital. The doctrine is fathered by Harlan Ullman, a veteran military strategist whose 1996 book, "Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance", recommends "nearly incomprehensible levels of massive destruction" to achieve an "overwhelming level of Shock and Awe against an adversary on an immediate or sufficiently timely basis to paralyse its will to carry on".

The impact of the current strikes can be better understood through a close reading of the book, which cites the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as successful past examples of "shock and awe". It suggests civilian casualties will be far higher than Pentagon officials had previously calculated. Moreover, it appears administration accusations against Saddam Hussein using "human shields" may be part of a campaign to shift the blame for a large civilian death toll in Iraq. And, it raises serious questions over the strategy of democracy by invasion: after such devastation, how would American troops be seen as liberators?

In their 1996 book, published by the National Defence University, Ullman and co-author J P Wade lay the groundwork for the current Pentagon thinking on Iraq. The paralysis of the enemy's will, they write, would render him "totally impotent and vulnerable" through "total mastery achieved at extraordinary speed and across tactical, strategic, and political levels", which would "destroy the will to resist".

Recent remarks by General Richard B Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, strongly indicate that Ullman's philosophy is at work in the current war planning: "If asked to go into conflict in Iraq, what you'd like to do is have it be a short conflict," the general said on 4 March. "The best way to do that would be to have such a shock on the system that the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on the end was inevitable."

The shock and awe doctrine, according to Ullman and Wade, is not new. They find inspiration in ancient Chinese warriors, in mushroom clouds, and in celluloid: "One recalls from old photographs and movie or television screens, the comatose and glazed expressions of survivors of the great bombardments of World War I and the attendant horrors and death of trench warfare," the authors reflect. "These images and expressions of shock transcend race, culture, and history...In our excursion, we seek to determine whether and how Shock and Awe can become sufficiently intimidating and compelling factors to force or otherwise convince an adversary to accept our will."

Ullman and Wade characterise their book as an "ambitious intellectual excursion". They journey back two and a half millennia, to the Chinese warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu, whose "Art of War" provides the authors with a lesson from the fifth century BC.: the beheading of two concubines who had laughed at Sun Tzu, thus shocking and awing the other concubines into silent submission.

Twenty-five centuries later, Ullman and Wade find inspiration in the atomic bomb: "Theoretically, the magnitude of Shock and Awe Rapid Dominance seeks to impose (in extreme cases) is [sic] the non-nuclear equivalent of the impact that the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese. The Japanese were prepared for suicidal resistance until both nuclear bombs were used. The impact of those weapons was sufficient to transform both the mindset of the average Japanese citizen and the outlook of the leadership through this condition of Shock and Awe. The Japanese simply could not comprehend the destructive power carried by a single airplane. This incomprehension produced a state of awe...."The intent here is to impose a regime of Shock and Awe through delivery of instant, nearly incomprehensible levels of massive destruction directed at influencing society writ large, meaning its leadership and public...The employment of this capability against society and its values...massively destructive strikes directly at the public will of the adversary to resist and, ideally or theoretically, would instantly or quickly incapacitate that will over the space of a few hours or days."

Ullman's ideas strike some as Strangelovean. But Secretary of State Colin Powell, a student of Ullman's at the National War College (NWC), says his teacher has "one of the best and most provocative minds I have ever encountered" -- a mind that "raised my vision on several levels". And Donald Rumsfeld, more than a year before he became defence secretary, went on CNN in support of Ullman's shock and awe doctrine. "There is always a risk in gradualism," Rumsfeld said in 1999. "It pacifies the hesitant and the tentative. What it doesn't do is shock, and awe, and alter the calculations of the people you're dealing with."

Rumsfeld's own calculations, made in the midst of Pentagon "shock and awe" planning, now clearly involve Iraqi civilian casualties and the press. Late last year, confidential UN reports voiced growing alarm over the coming "humanitarian emergency of exceptional scale and magnitude". And the centrist US think tank, the Brookings Institution, projected a possible 2000 "killed Americans" on the battlefield, with potential Iraqi civilian deaths in the "tens of thousands". On 19 February, Rumsfeld went on the offensive, standing before American television cameras to affix blame for future casualties on Saddam Hussein: "Deploying human shields is not a military strategy," said the defence secretary. "It's murder, a violation of the laws of armed conflict, and a crime against humanity, and it will be treated as such." Rumsfeld also claimed Saddam Hussein "deliberately constructs mosques near military facilities, uses schools, hospitals, orphanages and cultural treasures to shield military forces, thereby exposing helpless men, women and children to danger".

A week later, echoing his Pentagon chief, President Bush declared: "Iraq's generals should clearly understand that if they take innocent life, if they destroy infrastructure, they will be held to account as war criminals." The statements were taken at face value, rather than as part of a campaign to insulate the Pentagon and shift the blame for civilian deaths to the Iraqi dictator.

Responsibility for assessing the fallout from the campaign of shock and awe -- for putting a human face to the hell of war in a city where one out of every six residents is a child under five years old -- now falls to the press.

Recent conflicts do not provide encouragement. In the first months of the Afghanistan war, in the midst of a post 9/11 patriotic fever, many US journalists showed extreme reluctance to document civilian deaths. In one case, a major investigation was spiked; in another, an editor warned staffers against running stories on the casualties. Ten years earlier, at the outbreak of the last US-led war on Iraq, khaki-vested reporters, in virtual house arrest by the Pentagon, stood on hotel rooftops in Saudi Arabia, describing "successful" military strikes in a video-game war they couldn't get close to. The result was a series of sanitised images that well served the US military but did little to inform the American people of what was being done in their name. In the years since, figures gleaned from UNICEF indicate that 500,000 children perished -- either as direct casualties of the war or because of the sanctions and the public health crisis that followed. US news outlets have shown little inclination to document this. In the wake of the new war, even an aggressive press would face huge challenges in documenting the calamity. The 3000 bombs and missiles will, in 48 hours, dwarf the entire destructive output of the last Gulf War, leaving "nearly incomprehensible levels of massive destruction", in Ullman's words. Reporters would have a hard enough time simply making sense of the post-war confusion. Add to that the Pentagon's campaign to switch blame, and possible limits to journalistic access. The result could be a fog machine of war sufficient to obscure the devastating humanitarian effects.

Yet even if the Pentagon succeeds in minimising the witness to war, young American men and women, in uniform in Iraq, will inevitably face the survivors. The civilian architects of the Iraq war, many of whom have never served a day in the armed services, say the Iraqis will welcome the troops as liberators. But these are surreal imaginings. UN agencies, according to internal documents, are making plans to provide for up to 1.3 million refugees, and provide food and water for 5.4 million Iraqis. The UN expects that more than half the population will be without access to potable water.

These are the realities that await Iraqis, and American soldiers, after the war. In the wake of an "overwhelming level of Shock and Awe" -- a bombing equal to hundreds of Guernicas, dozens of Dresdens, exceeding even the destructive power of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- it is fantasy to believe Iraqi citizens will embrace American forces, and their commander-in-chief's ideas of democracy by invasion.

*About the Author: The writer is an American journalist with National Public Radio (NPR).

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