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War worries Through the Other End of the TelescopeBy Rick Horowitz
This is how devious the soldiers were: They fought from behind bushes. Not for them those long and orderly columns, those easily noticed uniforms. They were outmanned, outgunned, and they knew it. So they used their wits instead, turning their shortcomings into advantages. They'd strike from nowhere and disappear. They'd strike again, and disappear again. The enemy, accustomed to a more traditional clash of armies, simply didn't know how to respond. And that, said Mrs. Walowit, is how the colonies defeated the Redcoats. It's been a while -- trust me -- since I was in fifth grade, and what I remember from my American history classes are random fragments and scattered factoids at best. But I'm pretty sure I remember this: We didn't fight the Revolutionary War by the old rules, and the silly British were no match for our clever tactics. I remember how we all laughed at the silly British. We're not laughing now, not while we watch our troops coping with the deserts and swamps of Iraq, and with the unconventional tactics of the Iraqi armies. Hit-and-run attacks. Soldiers dressed like civilians. Ambushes. False surrenders. This isn't the kind of war we were expecting to fight. But I'm surprised we're surprised. Before we go any further, before the "How dare you?"s start flying off the keyboards, let me be clear about what I'm not saying: I'm not saying I accept or excuse, let alone applaud, Iraq's deceitful behavior on the battlefield. I'm not saying the Iraqi regime's desperate efforts to keep a brutal dictatorship in power are in any way comparable to our own struggle for independence all those years ago. I'm not saying "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," or even "What goes around, comes around." But I am saying I'm surprised we're surprised. (Just as I'm surprised we're surprised that when the water goes off in Basra and our aid convoys can't immediately get through, we have a major humanitarian crisis on our hands. Has the war gone so unpredictably so soon that this possibility hadn't even occurred to anyone?) The rules of war have certainly been codified (and, presumably, strengthened) since the days of Lexington and Concord, of Saratoga and Yorktown. But even so, if we already know that we don't trust Saddam Hussein even a little bit -- and we don't -- then why the sudden shock when he behaves -- again -- exactly the way we expect him to behave? "They're not playing fair," the anchorman whined to Wesley Clark on Wednesday night. And Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, told the anchorman, "'Fair' is the way you fight when your survival is not at stake." For a regime hanging by a thread, Clark made clear, there's very little that's out of bounds. Small comfort to our troops, needless to say, and to the millions and millions of people who care about them. But a useful dose of reality nonetheless: The enemy may not play by the same rules we do. And sometimes, of course, we're already so convinced of that that we don't even have to waste time thinking about it. Those Iraqi chemical suits, for instance; coalition forces recently discovered 3,000 of them, along with gas masks and injectors for nerve-gas antidote, in a hospital near Nasiriya. We know exactly what that means, don't we? It means the Iraqis are getting ready to use nerve gas. Which makes it a very good thing that our troops never go anywhere without their own chemical suits, and their own gas masks, and their own injectors. We wouldn't think of using such a horrible weapon ourselves, of course; we're carrying all that gear strictly to defend ourselves. Everybody knows that, except maybe the Iraqis. But they'll figure it out. Posted 3/27/03. For
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Rick Horowitz
