December 12, 2003
A STRANGER TO FACTS:
The Limits of Shock and Awe (Michael Bellesiles, November 11, 2003, History New Service)
The United States began its war against Iraq with a campaign of "shock and awe." An overwhelming demonstration of American airpower was designed to persuade the Iraqis to throw down their arms and surrender even while rising in revolt against Saddam Hussein. Sadly, that expectation has been thwarted, as the war drags on and Americans and Iraqis continue to die.The term "shock and awe" is in keeping with a long-standing Anglo-American faith in technological quick fixes. Military techno-hype has frequently fed expectations of a "clean" victory. But we have found that the latest technology does not always shorten wars.
This doesn't seem an auspicious way to begin rehabilitating a career you sank by making up history. There's ample reason to be dubious about the doctrine of using airpower to score a decisive early victory, but in this case we forewent Shock and Awe in favor of the decapitation strike at Saddam and the war was over in three weeks, or something like that, anyway as the Iraqi military crumbled into nonexistence. How much shorter would the only partial application of Shock and Awe have had to have made the war before you could say it worked fairly well? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 12, 2003 11:48 PM
Bellesiles' brain is still ringing at the shock and awe of being outed as a liar.
Posted by: jim hamlen at December 13, 2003 9:28 AMThe US-UK-Australia defeated an army in less than three weeks with a minimal amount of casualties (we are up to approximately 500 troops KIA'ed??). I was reading one of my WWII book and a couple of weeks after D-Day, one of our P-51's dropped a bomb over some US troops and in an instant 500 soldiers were killed including a general.
Any historian has to say that the victory in Iraq has been mighty impressive in light of any other military campaign.
Posted by: pchuck at December 13, 2003 11:18 AMHow can someone who claims to be a historian get so much wrong in those two paragraphs for events that took place in this year?