Upon being informed of this unprovoked assault on a peaceful ally, I immediately summoned the National Security Council. We were unanimous in our belief that an immediate military response was necessary. As I mentioned before, while we hoped that diplomacy would cause tensions to ease, we also made preparations if they did not. This morning I gave orders to begin Operation Kurdish Dawn, a military defense of Kurdistan. This operation has been underway for several hours now. We began with a massive bombardment of Iraqi military and government targets from ship and submarine launched Tomahawk missiles, followed by air raids from American carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from land based fighters and bombers operating from bases in Kuwait and Turkey. Further bombardment will continue, and strategic bombers from here in America and other bases are also targeting Iraqi bases.
This will not be sufficient. Earlier today I ordered the 82nd Airborne to deploy to Kurdistan, along with elements of the U.S. Army Rangers, and the Special Forces. The 4th Fighter Wing has been surged forward to Turkey, and armored and air mobile elements are being brought in from Europe and here at home. Additionally, I have received assurances from several of our European and Middle Eastern allies that they will commit troops and support to the cause of Kurdish freedom and defense.
This aggression will be countered. Kurdistan will be defended, and an ally in this region will be strengthened. A previous President once said, 'Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.' Liberty is the birthright of all people, and in defending Kurdish liberty, we defend our own. The defense of liberty is never easy, and the price involves more than simply cost. Regardless, we are a nation and a people willing to pay such a price.
Thank you for your time, and God bless our nation and our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. Thank you."
Chapter 162: Going to War
It is very tempting to bury yourself in a single cause once you are in the White House. The stuff that lands on your desk is really important, life and death matters in many cases, and you can spend every waking hour micromanaging pieces of the job. Obviously war is the most important thing, and it is very tempting to put all your time in on this.
Not all Presidents can keep from doing this. Roosevelt lined one of the downstairs rooms with maps, giving it the still current name of the Map Room, and would spend hours in there every day following troop movements and how the front changed. At least he managed to win his war. Johnson would spend hours every night wandering the hallways in his pajamas and bathrobe, and would haunt the Situation Room. Worst of all, telecommunications had advanced to the point that he could actually pick up a telephone and be connected to a platoon leader in the Mekong Delta on a search and destroy mission, and give him tactical advice and orders. He did that several times.
What a REMF Navy Reserve Lieutenant Commander thought he knew about infantry tactics was questionable at best. Johnson and McNamara thought they were smarter than all the generals and admirals around them, and didn't mind firing them. However, after that, the Pentagon went out of its way to keep the President from exercising tactical control, and the post-Viet Nam generation wasn't above telling us to behave ourselves. That generation was pretty much gone now, but we had learned that lesson. The problem now was that a lot of the current military leaders came of age during Desert Storm, and thought that war was a video game. I wasn't sure how that was going to work out, but my own low level experience said that it was a whole lot dirtier than that.
Not much happened until the afternoon of the 14th, as we began lining up assets and preparing a response. At that time, shortly before I spoke to the nation, the Navy launched over 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraqi targets from ships and submarines. The initial targets covered air bases, air defense sites, military bases, and anything that anybody could imagine might be harboring chemical weapons stockpiles. Other targets covered most of the country's infrastructure, including bridges, power plants, chemical factories, canal locks, and dams. Shortly after that, we had F-15s and F-16s flying combat air patrols and interdiction runs out of Incirlik and Kuwait, and F-18s doing the same thing off carriers in the Gulf. Then the heavies showed up, B-1s and B-2s and B-52s, to destroy anything the cruise missiles might have missed.
Back in the 1920s, an Italian general named Giulio Douhet came up with the theory that by massively bombing an enemy, you could win a war without troops. His theory, which was refined into the concept of strategic bombing, was that by bombing the enemy, especially his deep targets – infrastructure and cities – you would inflict massive damage and destroy their will to fight. It certainly sounded like a good idea, and for most of the Twentieth Century that was what we tried to do. It didn't work in Germany or Japan, it didn't work in Korea or Viet Nam or Serbia, and it didn't work in Iraq the first time. In every case it became necessary to send in the troops. Fortunately, by the time we got to Desert Storm, everybody knew that this was going to be necessary. Bombing could still be extraordinarily useful, but it was not going to help the Kurds on its own.
By Wednesday afternoon we were beginning to develop a pretty good feel for what was going on and the Iraqi strategy. Saddam Hussein had two corps of Republican Guards armored and mechanized troops in the field. This worked out to about six divisions, though they were all considerably smaller than an equivalent American division. Still, that was about 75,000 troops, and 1,000 T-72 tanks, and lots of other older tanks, armored personnel carriers, and trucks. They were split into two groups, and were trying to pincer Kirkuk between them, so as to envelope it. Chemical weapons were being used in isolated Kurdish towns and cities, but not in areas the Guard planned to move forward through. It was standard Russian doctrine, because that was where they got most of their equipment and training from.
By the morning of the 16th some of the real horror began becoming known to the rest of the world, as Iraqi civilians began arriving after fleeing the areas which had been hit with mustard gas. The chemical burns and blisters were so horrible that most of the media refused to show it. Not all, however, and some of the tabloids ran front page pictures in full color, which was enough to make you vomit. After that, the others started showing them also. We also started getting reports of American casualties along with Peshmerga troops caught by the mustard gas, and found out that Bismarck Myrick, our Special Envoy, was one of those who had died. Condi Rice told me that, and I promised her that we would do right by his family.
It took a full day to fly the lead elements of the 82nd to Incirlik in C-17s, where they then transferred to smaller and handier C-130s for the flight to Erbil. Erbil was far enough from the front that it wasn't in danger of being immediately overrun. They were offloaded there, and then carried on whatever local transportation they could beg, borrow, or steal in order to get to the front. The Peshmerga were fighting valiantly, but Kalashnikovs and RPGs were not going to cut it against T-72s, and they were falling back. The battle plan was that the infantry forces we were sending in first would be able to stabilize the front lines long enough that our armored and airmobile stuff coming in from Europe would be able to break the Iraqis.