Joseph L. Galloway
is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and a nationally syndicated columnist.
One of America's preeminent war correspondents,
with more than four decades as a reporter
and writer, he recently concluded an assignment
as a special consultant to Gen. Colin Powell
at the State Department.
Galloway, a native of Refugio, Texas, spent
22 years as a foreign and war correspondent
and bureau chief for United Press International,
and nearly 20 years as a senior editor and
senior writer for U.S. News & World Report
magazine. His overseas postings include tours
in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Singapore
and three years as UPI bureau chief in Moscow
in the former Soviet Union. During the course
of 15 years of foreign postings Galloway served
four tours as a war correspondent in Vietnam
and also covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War
and half a dozen other combat operations.
In 1990-1991 Galloway covered Desert Shield/Desert
Storm, riding with the 24th Infantry Division
(Mech) in the assault into Iraq. General H.
Norman Schwarzkopf has called Galloway "The
finest combat correspondent of our generation
-- a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend."
We modern Americans are a people with a short attention span and a desire for instant gratification. Fast food. Instant coffee. One-hour photo shops. The Persian Gulf War, fought by the first George Bush, lasted 100 hours and then we went home. The Iraq war, fought by his son, lasted 19 days.
But what's followed the end of the blitzkrieg in which a splendid force captured Baghdad and toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in less than three weeks is a guerrilla war, and the sinking feeling that we're in for a long, hard, bloody slog in Iraq.
There will be no instant gratification there, maybe no gratification at all.
Our forces must defeat a shadowy band of hired killers, disgruntled former Republican Guard soldiers, Baath Party diehards and foreign Muslim holy warriors drawn to a place where they can kill Americans. Our enemy, on the other hand, has only to survive and wait for public opinion to turn against the war.
Consider this early and prescient analysis by Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap of the future course of his guerrilla war with the French:
"The enemy will pass slowly from the offensive to the defensive. The blitzkrieg will transform itself into a war of long duration. Thus the enemy will be caught in a dilemma: He has to drag out the war in order to win it and does not possess, on the other hand, the psychological and political means to fight a long-drawn-out war . . . . "
It worked for Giap against the French, and it worked for him again against the Americans. Patience and a willingness to accept heavy casualties are the guerrillas' two biggest weapons.
The clock is running on Iraq. Public opinion polls show approval ratings for President Bush's handling of Iraq are sagging. The war and its cost is a favorite debate topic for the large field of Democrats jousting for the right to run against Bush next year.
With the passage of the president's requested $87 billion appropriation to prosecute the war and rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure, the cost of this adventure is nearing $200 billion in less than one year.
There's another bill being paid. This week, the number of Americans killed in Iraq is nearing 400. Not very much, you say? Ask the widows, widowers and children, the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters of those young men and women how much it hurts. Visit the overcrowded Army and Veterans Administration hospitals tending to some of the 2,280 soldiers who've been wounded in Iraq.
American military commanders are working hard to adapt to the guerrilla tactics, and they say they're having success, even though for unfathomable reasons the successes are not publicized.
The military is killing five or six Iraqi guerrillas for each American who dies, according to one knowledgeable Army general. The Americans are finding and disarming, or prematurely exploding, an estimated 70 percent of the homemade radio- and command-detonated explosive devices the guerrillas plant along the routes of American convoys and patrols.
As clever as some of the triggering devices are -- cell phones, garage-door-opener transmitters, even toy racing car controls -- there are solutions. We Americans do technology pretty well, and the gear to counter these devices is being deployed swiftly.
The Army is preparing for a huge rotation of its forces in Iraq and Afghanistan early next spring. The 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas; the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii and the 1st Infantry Division (Big Red One) in Germany are all adapting and changing their mix of weapons and tactics in preparation.
The heavy divisions, the 1st Cavalry and the 1st Infantry, will leave most of their M1A2 tanks at home. They've been training hard to become light infantry for this upcoming mission. A battalion will consist of one company of Bradley fighting vehicles and two companies of mobile infantry riding in armored Humvees. They're training in what the Army calls military operations on urban terrain (MOUT).
What isn't clear is whether the Iraqi people, the guerrillas and the American public will wait for them to take the field in four or five months and test their new tactics of agility and lethality.
