And now: Syria

[Occhidiangela]

. . . except perhaps in the minds of the 'sliver bullet' crowd. Even the no-fly zone enforcements of the past few years were not bloodless: when the anti missile radar HARM missiles, and sometimtes bombs, came flying inbound, I suspect that a few Iraqi fire control techs lost some pints of blood, if not worse.

I have absolutely no sense of how many Iraqi soldiers died in the past month. I am actually pleased to see that the Pentagon is not indulging in body count math, even when goaded by the media. But the blood is, or at least has been, flowing out there in the desert sands.

When a Tomahawk missile hits a building, the folks in it tend to get hurt, horribly hurt or killed. When an infantry squad engages soldiers shooting RPG's at them, blood flows, bodies get dismembered, people die. When a sniper shoots your platoon sergeant in the head, the red stuff sprays everywhere. War is no more bloodless than it ever was. Maybe it is the image of war that has been a bit 'bleached.' Over a hundred dead, and some five hundred wounded, American soldiers, airmen, Marines, et al are probably very much aware of how bloody modern war is, as are their buddies who have been spilling other's blood.

The 'bloodless' coercive methods, like asset freezes, embargoes and blockades, only go so far in terms of changing anyone's behaviour. Most likely, it is because it is not, as you so succinctly put it Pete, for keeps.

Now, someone will argue that the last two campaigns in Iraq exploited the aim of 'overwhelming the foe so that his will to fight breaks.'

That is not a new idea, it worked very well in may past wars and campaigns. That methodology, when it can be applied, results in more surrenders, fewer casualties, and less aggregate death and destruction. It seems that in some cases, such an approach was successful in Iraq, where large groups of soldiers either surrendered or simply quit, whereas in others it did not work. It still took a lot of stuff, and some people inevitably, blowing up to get the psychic effect to manifest itself.

I am not as eloquent as some theorists regarding the 'psychological breakdown' concept, but to get morale to break, death, destruction, and physical defeat have to be palbable and real, and the feeling that 'there is no way out' has to be induced. Even so, the Brit Wing Commander there at Cent Com pointed out that some Iraqi small unit commanders still practiced auftragstaktik as in: 'OK, I have not heard from higher HQ recently, the enemy is there. Fight's on, consistent with such ordes as I have received to date.'

While any number of folks think that there are bloodless ways, to include psyops and such, to induce 'C & C and will to fight breakdown,' it never reaches one hundred percent. There are always some who choose to fight, who choose to go down swinging, as well as those who choose to go away so that they may fight another day.

Which keeps the blood flowing a bit longer.