Buying Time - As the

Buying Time - As the fog of war descends over our view of the situation in Iraq, a conversation last night with a friend brought out this idea:

In 1945 - hopelessly late in World War II in Europe - the US and British militaries were rolling forward across a broad front. The end of the Battle of the Bulge had cut the heart out of much of the German army in the west. But the front was punctuated by short, sharp, fierce firefights and occasionally intense pockets of ferocious resistance.

It was demoralizing to GIs, and to some extent on the home front as well; everyone knew that the war was drawing to a close, that the Russians were closing in on Berlin, that someone would have the distinction of being the last GI to die in Europe.

So these small but intense pockets of resistance were troublesome. And eventually, we figured out that many of them happened for a reason. Sometimes the reason was simple; the rolling advance caught up with a hard-core SS or Hitler Youth unit.

Sometimes, though, the resistance stiffened because they were protecting something; a concentration camp where the guards hadn't finished off the inmates or burned the records; a V2 rocket plant whose staff hadn't evacuated yet; in the East, pockets of German refugees trying to escape from the Russians.

So if what we've heard is anywhere close to correct (my standard disclaimer to all things, these days), the situation looks like this:

• Most regular Iraqi units are dissolving into the general population, leaving stacks of unmanned equipment for the Coalition to roll past.
• Irregulars - Iraqis and foreigners - are putting up fierce resistance in certain locations - Karbala, An Nasiriah, An Najaf, Basra, Umm Qasr - and what I think is a particularly illustrative example, this battle in the town of Kifl

Read about the types of things the Iraqis are doing:

A crimson sunset painted the street red and visibility fell to less than 15 feet as a swirling sand and dust storm kicked up when the guerrilla units attacked.

U.S. officers said fighters in minivans, pick-up trucks and cars drove straight at the oncoming tanks. Others took to canoes, rowing down the river and trying to fix explosives to the main bridge.

But the guerrilla-style forces were vastly outgunned by the tanks of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, and hundreds of Iraqis have died in this town over the last four days.

The officers said the tank unit fired two 120 mm high velocity depleted uranium rounds straight down the main road, creating a powerful vacuum that literally sucked guerrillas out from their hideaways into the street, where they were shot down by small arms fire or run over by the tanks.

"It was mad chaos like you cannot imagine," said the tank unit's commander, who identified himself as "Cobra 6" as he did not want friends and neighbors back home to know what he had been through.

"We took a lot of fire, and we gave a lot of fire," he said.

So you had what we coudl call "spirited resistance" - but in the end:

Some U.S. soldiers estimate that at least 1,000 Iraqis were killed here since the fighting began at dusk on Wednesday, and everyone puts the number in the hundreds.

Officers say just one U.S. soldier has died...

Wave after wave of Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries had set up mortar positions at an old brick factory on the edge of town, getting dropped off from civilian vehicles at a large tree that U.S. forces here now call the "Gateway to Hell."

U.S. officers said they had destroyed up to 50 vehicles making drop-offs there, adding the brick factory, like much of Kifl, was now virtually abandoned.

So we have fierce, nearly suicidal resistance - reminiscent of the SS or Hitler Youth's fanatical zeal - accompanied by horrendous, crippling casualties.

Is there a parallel between the desperate spasms of the final days of the Third Reich - or for that matter, Stalin's desperate thrashing at Stalingrad, where cadres of party fanatics "strengthened" the regular troops' resistance by firing machine guns at those trying to withdraw from attacks? It's too early to say.

But some parts of the pattern seem to be there.

What are they defending? WMD installations that they don't want Unblixed? Or buying time for Hussein to reinforce the defenses of Baghdad?

Time will tell, of course. But totalitarians historically display a limited range of tools, and I wonder if this isn't one to think about?

Posted by Mitch at March 31, 2003 07:14 AM