Wow. This is the sort of news report that leaves me speechless; it more or less speaks for itself, and there's nothing left to be said.

The truly disturbing thing, for me, came when I did a Google News search on 'Shock and Awe'. This strategy was allegedly unveiled in a Pentagon briefing yesterday, so there should be some news reports, right? What I found was that there are a lot of reports in the English-language press outside of the US, and the only US media that covered it are places like Pacifica Radio and Alternet. The mainstream US media appears to have simply ignored the story.

Admittedly, this may be a result of falling between the cracks in news cycles, and it may be rectified later on. But it's still disturbing.

Okay, I may be showing a callous side of myself which may be surprising to those who know me as a fuzzy squishy bleeding heart liberal, but although I was initially appalled by the essay, upon reflection, it does seem a potentially effective military tactic. I wish that there had been some regret expressed for the murdering of civilians, however. Just hope they don't hit the Chinese embassy.

Also, CBS News, at least, covered the story on Friday.

Let me point out that this is a summary of a summary of a summary and may be disinformation as well, intended to scare the Iraqi--we don't know that it's true.

It is appalling--and the idea of giving a whole nation PTSD seems to me an amazing cruelty. It is strategically foolish as well--such a strategy is made to breed terrorists.

That said--it has always been true that wars are won when one side is disabled; this is a strategy to that end. Is this worse, say, than what was done to France, Germany, England, or Russia during World War II? It is faster, but that seems to me the main difference.

I. HATE. WAR.

This is not what you do to change a regime. This is not what you do to liberate an oppressed populace from a murderous, thieving overlord. This is not how you build the foundation for a thriving, prosperous nation, the cornerstone of a reinvigorated Middle East.

--Then, neither were the horrible and criminally misguided sanctions over the past 12 years.

I do not disagree that something must be done. This is not it. I know that sometimes the cure must be worse than the disease, if only for a short time. (A short, sharp shock?)

But this cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called a cure.

I saw a short report on the Shuck and Jive Shock & Awe theory on one of the TV networks the day of the briefing. I don't remember much about it beyond the basics of 300 to 400 cruise missiles and other ordnance raining down on the attacked an the cheerful note from the commentator that this was, "Intended to reduce casualties."

That would be, presumably, reducing casualties of professional, volunteer soldiers at the expense of "enemy" civilians. I have no desire for the death of soldiers, but would rather that those who were willing to offer their lives for a cause die in place of those who are just trying to live with as little offense to others as possible.

I was very much reminded of Mr Rumsfeld's cold "apology" to Afghan civilians killed in throwing down the Taliban, so much less heartfelt than his apology to people in the US for having slighted veteran and killed draftees -- not our fault you got killed, even though we killed you, go blame al Qaeda.

Presumably Shock & Awe will be good for "regime change" because Iraqis will know that they only have Saddam Hussein to blame for the death and destruction of their relatives, friends, children, and the places where they live.

Hey, I've got a crazy idea! Let's prosecute Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity under the purview of the International Criminal Court!

I know, I know, it's currently not a realistic suggestion. But if the current regime of FRYugoslavia could hand over Milosevic to the War Crimes Tribunal, maybe it's time to start introducing the idea of basic, trans-national laws (eg the right to not be tortured by police -- heck, anti-terrorist laws come under this heading as well) and their enforcement as being an alternative to war. After all, I like to think that society will have to evolve *some* time.

It is essential to the functioning of law that people should voluntarily submit to it, and believe themselves subject to it.

The current administration in the United States does not act in a way consistent with believing that its members are subject to the national laws of the United States; I cannot imagine any circumstance which would convince them that they were properly subject to any body of international law whatsoever.

Until that changed, people would regard any such international court as a stick to beat the relatively powerless with, and they would be right in this.

Unfortunately, I totally agree with you. The problem with an administration that believes that we are apart from the world and that seems to believe that the rest of the world is out to get us is that those beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecy.

I have a dream that one day, we will be lead by statesmen and -women who create principles of policy based upon what will make the world a better place for all of humanity, not based upon a need to make a point or save face.

What a concept.

:P

There are things about this described strategy that confuse me. Consider: a cruise missile typically carries a 1,000 pound payload. So 800 cruise missiles is 400 tons of explosives hitting Baghdad. This is not the kind of tonnage you drop if you're trying to kill and terrorize huge numbers of civilians. (Compare the firebombing of Dresden, where 4,000 tons of explosives were dropped on the first day. Or Hiroshima, which was a 10-15 kiloton bomb.)

It's true that it constitutes more cruise missiles than were fired during the entire Gulf war, but that's only because missiles were a tiny fraction of the total 60,000 tons of explosive ordnance used.

If the goal were to kill as many civilians as possible, missiles seem like a lousy way to do it. Bombs would kill more people more cheaply. The sensible strategy to pursue with the cruise missiles would be to use them to take out military targets quickly and simultaneously. Why the Pentagon is trying to present this strategy in this swaggering and hyperbolic talk is a good question. Do they think this will intimidate the Iraqis, or are they *trying* for a public relations fiasco?

The thing that does really worry me is the stated intention to knock out the water supply. Far more civilians would be likely to die from disease and thirst than would die from the actual missile attacks.

The other thing that worries me is that if the information available to us before the war has even started is this confusing, is it going to be possible to get *any* coherent information once the war has started?

Since the CBS article seemed to make a big deal about most of these missiles being "smart"/guided rather than "dumb" missiles, it would appear that blowing up civilians is not the primary goal of the strike. They said we are aiming at specific targets: centers of command, communication, electricity, water supply, etc. So yes, they're going after military targets, but they're also going after the underlying infrastructure of the city as a whole as well.

Yeah, I think that releasing this info is a tactic of propaganda. Perhaps the administration hopes that The Iraqi People will rise up against Saddam in an effort to prevent the destruction -- as if The Iraqi People have any access to US news reports.

I'm beginning to think that release of the "Shock & Awe" plan was just dumping chum in the water so that anti-war outrage would be easier to channel, ridicule, and dismiss.

I think Bob Webber is exactly right.

I've stumbled across the book mentioned in that Common Dreams piece. Surprisingly, the full text appears to be online: Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade (NDU Press, December 1996, ASIN 1579060307).

It's scary stuff, full of references to the strategies behind Hiroshima and Blitzkrieg and Roman legions and the like. The authors refer to moral qualms and public will as minor impediments the way a marksmanship text might talk about crosswinds and glare. But I can't tell whether this really represents the main stream of Bush administration and DOD thinking, or the coverage of Ullman is just an instance of the curious symbiosis among different positions on the political fringe (dove pundits needing hawk pundits and vice versa). Or, as the Guardian suggests, maybe it's just a bit of propaganda, intentionally leaked to give Saddam the willies.

The book might be in the public domain, if its composition was funded with US government money. Source code for software written under DoD contract is generally not protected by copyright, though sometimes it is protected by security Classification.

I had been looking at Chapter 2 due to a link Sylvia Li posted in Making Light while commenting on the likelihood that the story about Sun Tzu beheading concubines, presented in that chapter as a reason for naming a version of "Shock & Awe" after him, was apocryphal. I found two other niggling things that bothered me in that chapter: the first was that the authors couldn't spell "Blitzkrieg" consistently, and mostly spelt it "Blitzkreig," which of course is incorrect.

What rather got my hackles up was the basis for naming a variant after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police because the Rack-'em-ups supposedly have an unofficial motto of, "Never send a man where you can send a bullet." That seemed very much unlike the RCMP image I grew up with in Canada, the image of a police force that would send a lone sergeant to negotiate with a mob of miners and lumberjacks or moderate between European settlers and people of the First Nations. Google found only an attributionto Samuel Colt, which seemed much more likely.

Those points are trivial, but somehow the apparent failure of research for these little things made the whole work seem even less likely to have a solid foundation, for me.