worse, they are formulated with an eye to the past, when armies maneuvered using flags, signal flares, or bugle calls.
LOOKING FORWARD
Meanwhile, new actors are appearing on and over the battle — unmanned aerial and land vehicles.
Imagine a war where one side’s soldiers, sailors, and airmen sit in air-conditioned buildings ten thousand miles from the battle. George Patton would curse such an ignominious situation, where troops need not suffer the hardships of the field, sea, or air; where fear and courage do not guide the actions of combatants; and where the warrior neither bleeds nor dies. Yet we are approaching such a state of affairs. Unmanned vehicles operating in the sea, on land, in the air, and in space are filling missions previously conducted by human beings. Precision munitions allow the combatant to attack and kill the enemy from distances measured in hundreds of miles… Not too long ago, a warrior’s ability to strike an enemy was limited to what he could reach with his sword or his spear.
Aerial reconnaissance is now almost exclusively the realm of unmanned aircraft. Battles for control of the sea will increasingly be fought using cruise missiles. The demand for robotic devices that can explore buildings and attack individuals hidden inside is increasing (a radical change from yesterday’s urban warfare, when the presence of an enemy was first known when he opened fire on you). Other battles will be fought using nonkinetic methods of attack.
Throughout history, psychological methods have been used to traumatize an enemy. The Mongols would slaughter all the inhabitants of a town that resisted their attacks to ensure the inhabitants of other towns would surrender when they arrived there. Today we use far more sophisticated psychological methods to achieve the same results.
Today computer viruses can disable vital utility, banking, or communications-control devices. The use of standoff weapons, unmanned vehicles, and nonkinetic attacks raises a number of moral considerations. To be sure, war — killing people and destroying things — is immoral. Yet using military force is often the question of the lesser evil: Do I kill my enemy before he or she kills me? Do I kill the enemy to halt the pillage, rape, and murder being inflicted on a helpless third party?
In the past, the battle — getting shot at — imparted some measure of emotional relief to those engaged in the killing and destruction. Now one can kill the enemy or destroy the target while drinking a cup of coffee, and then go to a nearby Taco Bell for lunch. What will be the effect of a war on such a warrior where only his low-tech enemy bleeds and dies? Will it make war a more acceptable alternative for the resolution of conflicting nations’ interests? Will it inflict long-lasting, perhaps debilitating, psychological scars on combatants who do not feel the fear and anger currently found in battle, yet still turn their opponents into piles of burnt and bloody flesh?
We are not yet at such a point, but with the advent of each new unmanned system and new nonkinetic weapon, and with the increasing range of precision munitions, we approach an age where the nature of warfare will pose many painful new dilemmas.
CHALLENGES AND DILEMMAS
The recent conflicts in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq have also posed unique dilemmas for military forces in what is commonly referred to as the postconflict or stabilization phase. Current military doctrine, training, equipment, and procedures do not adequately address the missions required by the war now being waged against radical Islamic terrorists and their state sponsors.
In 1991—even though the local populace welcomed our liberating forces, even though the Kuwaitis had large cash reserves that could be used to rehabilitate themselves, and even though Kuwait’s Arab neighbors, like Saudi Arabia, made great efforts to provide for the immediate needs of refugees and thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war — it was a struggle to stabilize postwar Kuwait. Our Air Force had to get the International Airport running as soon as possible to support the airlift bringing in emergency supplies, while our Navy did the same for the port and adjacent waters mined by the Iraqi Navy. Civilian contractors rushed to Kuwait to extinguish the fires burning fiercely in the oil fields. But the role of rehabilitation fell mainly on the U.S. Army, a force that was trained and configured to fight tank battles and capture territory. Our Army had to ensure adequate food, water, utilities, transportation, police protection, and security forces were available so the citizens of the razed and looted country did not suffer inordinately. Though Lieutenant General John Yeosock, Commander 3rd Army, took control, and his forces worked tirelessly to ensure the pain and suffering of Kuwaitis was minimized, it nevertheless took many months to bring normalcy to the nation that had suffered so horribly from seven months of Iraqi occupation.
The same tasks arose after Serbian military forces were driven out of Kosovo, after the Taliban and Al- Qaeda military were defeated in Afghanistan, and after Saddam Hussein’s rule over Iraq was broken. But in those countries we faced a very different situation. There the populace had mixed views about our postconflict presence, capabilities available to restore basic services were limited, and in many locations the security situation was tenuous. Though the international community supported the postconflict efforts, in each case the chief responsibility fell once again on the U.S. military — primarily on its Army.
It was recognized early in the planning for the second war against Iraq that the postconflict tasks would be huge. Our experience in postwar Germany in 1945 provided a model for ensuring that members of the former regime, who had directly participated in Saddam’s reign of suppression and terror, would not escape judgment nor be placed in new positions of authority. Our military police had the doctrine and training to handle large numbers of prisoners of war. Our logistics teams, engineering battalions, and medical cadres knew how to quickly bring support to a country ravaged by war. What we lacked was an appreciation of the extent our efforts would be frustrated by terrorists who saw postwar Iraq as their battleground, by former regime members who fought fiercely to seize back control of the country, and by a people traumatized by an evil dictator’s decades of rule.
Our efforts were often also hampered by a lack of cooperation and coordination among various U.S. government and international agencies. Many turf battles in Washington, Europe, and the United Nations migrated to Iraq. Though valiant efforts were made, all soon learned that postconflict is the most difficult phase in this type of war. Serious mistakes were made, which made the job even more difficult.
The most notable problem was the handling of prisoners in facilities where it is impossible to separate the military prisoner from a terrorist from a common criminal from an innocent person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Pictures of the shameful abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the American-run Abu Ghraib prison made sensational news, and were used to castigate our country by everyone opposed to our interests, to our efforts in Iraq, or to the war there.
There is no excuse for the actions of those who abused the prisoners. But their criminal behavior was investigated fully, and those charged were tried and punished in accordance with the Code of Military Justice.
The larger question is: How could this have happened? The answer: We as a military are ill-prepared to conduct the missions thrust upon us after the battles have been won. Abu Ghraib is a sterling example of how the military needs to change to meet the demands of postconflict stabilization.
The prison at Abu Ghraib was filled to capacity. The inmates were mixed with legitimate prisoners of war, terrorists, common criminals, and innocent citizens (including women and children). Our Military Police are trained to process and contain those prisoners of war who bring with them standards of conduct, a chain of command, and protections under the Geneva Convention. Undertrained for the task they were sent to perform, they guarded murderous individuals and vile sexual deviants, along with innocent men, women, and children. To further complicate this explosive environment, there was a need to interrogate the prisoners in order to assist in the fight to provide security to the countryside outside the prison walls, as well as to identify those individuals who should be released immediately. Meanwhile, the internal organization of our Military Police and Military Intelligence hampered the coordination and cooperation between these two disciplines, while long tours of duty in the region led to rotation policies that resulted in a lack of unit cohesion, inexperienced or weak leadership, and inconsistent procedures. All of this blew up after those Military Police at Abu Ghraib, who were responsible for the criminal
