perfidy

After three weeks, we have seen the complete destruction of all major Iraqi army formations, low casualties amongst both coalition forces and Iraqi civilians, minimal collateral damage to civilian infrastructure, including especially the oil fields in both north and south, and, once assured that Saddam was truly history, celebrations in the streets by joyous Iraqi civilians.

The doomsayers who cried quagmire on day five of the war, and those who predicted a Stalingrad (ve vill not haff much fun in Stalingrad, no.) when we moved into Baghdad were proved dramatically wrong. This war has, as much as any conflict in history, gone almost exactly according to plan, and met even the most optimistic goals of the planners.

A horrific regime has been extinguished, and without having to go through the trouble of annihilating the nation it rules in the process. The military has been talking about a revolution in military affairs for over a decade now, and it appears that they may be right. The advent of information age weaponry is transforming the way that the United States wages war. Our capabilities are increasing, even in an era when we are spending less, proportionally, on our military than we did throughout the course of the Cold War.

While the precision weapons that we have deployed have received the lion's share of media attention, it is important to remember what has really changed. The 2000 pond bombs that we drop our essentially the same as a 2000 pound blockbuster used in WWII - a metal casing surrounding a large lump of high explosive. What is different is the guidance package. The GPS guidance system used in the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) or Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW); or the laser guidance system that was first used back in the '91 war are the real change - the thing that allows us to thread a needle with a bomb dropped from 20,000 ft. We have even started using concrete bombs - "inert" bombs that, when dropped from fifty thousand feet will utterly destroy a tank while leaving everything around it untouched. (These and other weapons systems are described here, at the Federation of American Scientist's webpage.)

These guidance systems are a product of the advanced technologies that our nation produces with no thought for military applicability. The computer systems developed for the civilian world are being adopted by the military wholesale, and this is where the true revolution is occurring. It is the communications and networking technologies that are making our military so effective, and so lethal. These communications systems disseminate intelligence throughout the entire armed forces - allowing a sergeant in an armor unit to directly call on artillery in his own unit, bombs from Air Force or Naval fighters, and cruise missiles from Navy subs or destroyers. It allows the military to rapidly coordinate fire from all branches on one spot for maximum effect, or on a thousand points at once for maximum enemy confusion.

The army has installed the IVIS system on its armored vehicles. This Inter Vehicular Information System instantly transmits intelligence gained by one vehicle to every other vehicle in the unit. What one tank crew knows, every tank crew knows. Initial tests at the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin showed that units equipped with this system were five times more lethal than units equipped exactly the same in every other respect. This is because of the coordination that the system allows. No time is wasted by commanders explaining the situation - every one has the picture, and has probably already begun taking the correct action before the commander even gives the order.

This coordination and flexibility is what makes our military so effective. And over the next few years, similar systems, such as the Landwarrior system, will give the same capabilities to individual infantryman. New communication and reconnaissance systems will only increase the trend that we have seen in Iraq. The United States, without even really trying, is widening the gap between our military and the armed forces of even the other industrialized nations.

I think that this growing disparity between the effective combat power of the United States and that of the rest of the world will lead to more interventions. We will do it not only because we can, but because we can do it easily. This will no doubt bother many. But how many of those bothered are bothered by the application of American military power abroad itself, or rather because of who sits in the Oval Office? Many who complain about the current war had no problem with Kosovo, Serbia, Haiti, and any number of other interventions launched by the previous administration. Personally, I have no problem with America using its power to advance its interests in general, but in general we have used our power to bring freedom and democracy to other parts of the world. As long as we have an ethical basis for intervention, and the results of that intervention remain positive, I say keep going.

We can't bring peace, order and democracy to every nation on Earth. But for every one that we do, its that many millions more people who don't live in places where leaders personally feed dissidents into wood chippers feet first. This is a good thing to fight against. The nations that fall into this category are sadly numerous. But there is a subset of them that also pose a threat to us, personally. The top of that list is North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

Maybe I've gone off the deep end, but I think that eliminating these regimes in the same manner that we eliminated Saddam's would be good for us, and good for the citizens of those nations.