America at War: Concise Histories of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexingtonto Afghanistan

by Terence T. Finn

  By April 3, McKiernan’s troops were closing in on Baghdad’s main airport, which lay to the west of the city. The next day, a fierce battle took place as the Iraqis attempted to repel the invaders. When the fight was over, thirty-four T-72 tanks had been destroyed and many Iraqis killed. The Americans controlled the airport and, with the marines approaching the Diyala, the encirclement of Baghdad had begun.

  To prevent Iraqi troops from either reinforcing or leaving the capital, McKiernan’s soldiers established five operating bases south and west of Baghdad. These also placed the Americans in position to take control of the city. Each of the five were named after an American professional football team. Thus, Objectives Bears, Lions, Texans, Ravens, and Saints ringed much of Baghdad. Objective Saints was an area where two key highways intersected. The Iraqis fought hard to keep the Americans from securing this pivotal location. Employing tanks and artillery as well as commandos, Saddam’s men attacked. But to no avail. The battle took place on April 3 and 4, and when it was over, Objective Saints was in American hands.

  Throughout the war the news media covered the Americans’ advance. To make possible more accurate and extensive coverage, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld permitted reporters to be embedded in U.S. combat units. These media personnel shared the hardships endured by the American troops. They also faced the dangers inherent when the shooting started. One of the embedded reporters was Michael Kelly of the Atlantic Monthly. He died during the attack on Baghdad’s airport, when the Humvee in which he was a passenger plunged into a canal, landing upside down.

  While the American public and others were kept informed of the war’s progress by these reporters, Iraqi citizens had to rely on information provided by Saddam’s government, particularly by the Ministry of Information. Heading up this organization was Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf. He gave numerous briefings to the many journalists still stationed in Baghdad. These always were upbeat, positive accounts of the war in which Iraqi forces were triumphant. That they were fanciful in the extreme al-Sahhaf seemed not to realize. In fact, the minister was living in a fantasy world. “Yes,” he stated as U.S. forces moved through the Karbala Gap, “the American troops have advanced further. This will only make it easier for us to defeat them.”

  The U.S. troops in Iraq nicknamed al-Sahhaf “Baghdad Bob.” To them, he was a source of amusement as he made pronouncements they knew to be untrue. But the minister and his comments also were an irritant. The words he spoke received attention worldwide. They challenged the American account of the war and gave heart to many in the Arab world who wished to see the United States defeated by one of their own.

  By April 5, with the marines at the Diyala and the army’s five operating bases secured, the Americans were poised to take control of Baghdad. Generals Franks and McKiernan believed that once the U.S. military controlled the city, Saddam and his regime would be finished. They also believed that the effort to seize Baghdad could lead to protracted urban warfare. This they wanted to avoid. Such combat would be extremely destructive and, more important, would result in numerous casualties, both American and Iraqi.

  The two generals knew that the number of troops they had available to assault Baghdad was not large. The capital, after all, was a city of six million people spread out over 440 square miles. How then would the Americans proceed? What was their plan of attack?

  They decided to act with caution. There would be no frontal assault, by either the marines or the army troops. Instead, like the British at Basra, the Americans planned a series of raids into the city. These would increase in scale and tempo, gradually wearing down the Iraqis. But before they were to begin, the U.S. Army conducted an operation that became one of the war’s most celebrated episodes.

  The operation was called “Thunder Run.” Carried out by a small armored task force, it was a mission of reconnaissance the purpose of which was to ascertain how the Iraqis would fight within the confines of Baghdad. But Thunder Run had more than one purpose. “The task,” said Colonel David Perkins, who commanded the unit to which the task force belonged, “is to enter Baghdad for the purpose of displaying combat power, to destroy enemy forces—and to simply show them that we can.”

  U.S. Army doctrine said tanks were not to operate in cities. Urban areas limited their maneuverability, restricted their lines of fire, and exposed tanks to attacks from above. Thunder Run proved the doctrine wrong.

  At 6:30 A.M. on April 5, twenty-nine Abrams tanks and several other combat vehicles drove into the city. They traveled up Highway 8, a modern roadway much like an American interstate. What followed, according to Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, was “the most bitterly contested moment of the war.” It ended two hours and twenty minutes later when the task force, as planned, arrived at the Baghdad airport. One American was dead and one Abrams was destroyed. Estimates of Iraqi losses vary, but at least a thousand men—many of them fedayeen—no longer were alive.

  One amusing event occurred during Thunder Run. An Iraqi brigadier general, a staff officer, was driving to work that morning, as he did every workday. Unaware that the Americans were nearby (apparently, he listened to al-Sahhaf’s broadcasts), he turned the corner and promptly drove his Volkswagen Passat into the side of an Abrams M1A1 tank. Needless to say, the car fared poorly and the general, one very surprised Iraqi, became a prisoner of war.

  Two days later, a second Thunder Run was conducted. But this was a different kind of mission. The tanks were to drive to the center of the city, a distance of eleven miles, and then remain in Baghdad. The tanks and Bradleys would deploy in a circle, in the middle of the city, and challenge the Iraqis to dislodge them.

  Whether the Americans, who reached the city center at 8 A.M. on April 7, would be able to stay in the city depended on the army’s ability to deliver supplies to the task force. This force consisted of 570 soldiers in sixty tanks and other vehicles, and their requirements were substantial. Food, ammunition, and fuel had to be trucked to them. The supply route was up a highway on which three overpasses gave the Iraqis strong positions from which to fire on the convoys. For the U.S. troops, these overpasses had to be taken and held. Given the names Larry, Moe, and Curly, they all saw ferocious firefights. The Americans prevailed, but at times, it was, as the British would say, “a near thing.”

  Within the city, firefights took place as well. For two days the Iraqis and the fedayeen tried to kill the Americans, who, having been resupplied, were able to respond in kind. The violence of the combat within Baghdad and at the three intersections, indeed throughout the campaign, can be seen in the following account of one incident as told by David Zucchino in his book about Thunder Run. Captain Stephen Barry was an American officer in Baghdad during the fighting. At one point, his unit sees a white sedan moving directly at it. Barry then gives the order to fire.

  Three tanks opened up. . . . The sedan caught fire and crashed. Two men climbed out and both went down, killed instantly. . . . Thirty seconds later, a white Jeep Cherokee sped down the bridge span. . . . 50 caliber rounds shattered the windshield. The Cherokee exploded. The fireball was huge—so big that Barry was certain the vehicle had been loaded with explosives. He knew the difference between a burning car and the detonation of explosives. This was a suicide car.

  And they kept coming—sedans, pickups, a Chevy Caprice, three cars in the first ten minutes, six more right after that. The tanks destroyed them all. It was incomprehensible. Barry kept thinking: What the hell is wrong with these people? They were trying to ram cars into tanks. It was futile—absolutely senseless. It was like they wanted to die. . . . Barry hated slaughtering them. And that’s what it was—slaughter.

  They were the enemy . . . but it gave Barry no pleasure to kill them.

  On April 10, just five days from when U.S. armored units had made their first foray into Baghdad, organized resistance ended. Within the city, the fighting had produced casualties—most of them Iraqi and fedayeen—but McKiernan�
�s troops now controlled the capital. Saddam had fled and his government had collapsed. Four days later, on April 14, the United States declared major combat operations to have ended.

  “Mission Accomplished” read a banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln, one of the aircraft carriers that had participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In just twenty-six days the Americans had taken control of Iraq. Little did they expect that the hard part was just beginning.

  ***

  The war against Saddam and his army had been a success. The occupation that followed was not. Throughout Iraq, especially in the cities, American troops first hailed as liberators soon came to be seen as foreigners occupying a country in which they did not belong and governing a people they did not understand.

  The immediate problem was one of looting. Once Saddam’s regime collapsed, law and order disappeared. Iraqis responded by breaking into stores and office buildings, and walking off with whatever they could take. U.S. soldiers and marines just looked on, unwilling to stop the thefts. “We did not come to Iraq,” said one American commander, “to shoot some fellow making off with a rug.”

  The looting foreshadowed the violence that was to permeate postwar Iraq. Once Saddam’s hold on power ceased, Iraqis chose to seek vengeance on other Iraqis. Shiites killed Sunnis. Sunnis murdered Shiites. Revenge was sweet. Baghdad became a bloody city whose inhabitants were at war with one another. American troops were the only force potentially capable of freeing Iraq from violence. But they were too few in number. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had mandated a small military presence in Iraq, expecting the Iraqi army and police force to maintain order once the combat was over. Yet the army had disappeared. Soldiers simply had taken off their uniforms and gone home, while the police were incompetent, capable of little more than traffic control. So as spring turned to summer and summer gave way to fall, Iraq was home to a rampage of killings that the Americans were unable to prevent.

  Only in time and when President Bush ordered a surge in the number of troops stationed in Iraq did the violence recede. But for several years following the ouster of Saddam, Iraqis targeted American soldiers and workers. U.S. casualties were many, and constant. Extremists wanted either to destabilize the governing authorities or force the Americans to leave. Not surprisingly, back in the United States, the country’s citizens were angered by what they saw happening in Iraq. Bombs were exploding and people were dying. Opposition to the American presence in Iraq grew as many Americans came to believe that the war had been wrong and the occupation a failure.

  As the killing continued—often by suicide bombers—the United States was attempting to rebuild Iraq. Funneling literally billions and billions of dollars into the country, America hoped to create an infrastructure equal to that of any modern country. In this effort the success would be limited.

  The difficulties were threefold. The first was the task itself, which was much larger than the U.S. had expected. The second was the corruption that seemed to permeate Iraqi society. The third difficulty, and the most serious, was the lack of security. Workers attempting to rebuild the country’s infrastructure were the target of attack by Iraqis attempting to foil America’s reconstruction efforts.

  The result was that the rebuilding of Iraq was less successful, took longer, and cost more than the Americans expected. Iraqis, at least those without blood on their hands, were frustrated. While during the days of Saddam electric power had been limited, those in Baghdad could not now understand why it remained so. How, they asked, could a nation that had landed men on the moon not be able to provide ample electricity to Iraq’s capital?

  Despite the violence and the slow pace of rebuilding, the United States did enjoy a few successes in postwar Iraq. Preparations had been made in case food shortages emerged. They did not, but nonetheless, no Iraqi went hungry once American troops controlled the country. Iraqi currency, festooned with images of Saddam, was swiftly and successfully replaced. Much later, in 2005, the United States prodded the Iraqis into drafting a new constitution and holding free and open elections, activities then rarely seen in the Arab world.

  At first, the American effort to rebuild Iraq was given to the newly established Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. This was led by Jay Garner, a retired senior American army officer. One of his key staff members, David Nummy, wrote that Garner

  struck me as one of those people who had successfully made the transition from warrior to statesman. He was a natural leader and understood the differences between waging war and establishing peace. From my perspective, he had the correct vision for post-invasion Iraq—to get life back to normal as quickly as possible and turn the country back to the Iraqis.

  However, with insufficient resources and an environment marred by violence, Garner had no chance of succeeding and did not. He was replaced by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, who, reporting to Rumsfeld, essentially ruled the country. Bremer inherited an extremely difficult situation, made worse by two of his early decisions. He chose not to immediately reconstitute the Iraqi army, and he forbade most of Saddam’s Baathist Party members from participating in the rebuilding efforts. The former meant security forces were insufficient to keep order, while the latter deprived the effort of individuals capable of carrying it out.

  The occupation of Iraq can be said to have ended on August 18, 2010, when, at the direction of President Barack Obama, the last U.S. combat troops left the country. For the United States, the experience had been a painful one. After nearly nine years in Iraq, more than 4,480 American soldiers and marines were dead.

  During the time when U.S. soldiers and marines were on patrol in a postwar Iraq, when combat with Iraqi army units had ended, many Americans questioned the wisdom of the war itself, especially as body bags kept arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. These Americans viewed the conflict as a grave mistake. After all, they pointed out, no nuclear weapons were ever discovered. And Saddam’s alleged possession of such devices had been a primary justification for the invasion.

  Others disagreed. They noted that Iraq became, if slowly, a land with a much reduced level of violence. And they pointed out that the country’s leaders had come to power via free and open elections. Regardless of how history judges Operation Iraqi Freedom, there is no doubt that the United States military, spearheaded by American armored forces, performed extremely well. George Patton would have approved.

  Did Saddam have any realistic hope of defeating the American and British forces that invaded Iraq?

  No, he did not. In equipment, training, tactics, and leadership, the British and Americans outclassed the Iraqis, who, at times, fought courageously, but never in a manner that would result in victory.

  Did President Bush rush into war with Iraq?

  His critics certainly think so. But Mr. Bush gave Saddam ample opportunity to comply with the United Nations resolutions and thus to avoid armed conflict. Moreover, well before the March 2003 invasion, the American president went to the U.N. and secured a resolution that he and others believed authorized the use of force.

  Did Saddam’s government possess nuclear weapons?

  American and other intelligence services had told President Bush that a very strong case could be made that Iraq had nuclear weapons. However, postwar searches failed to discover any. To be sure, Iraq had the capability to develop such devices. But, in fact, Saddam did not have these weapons in his military arsenal.

  In what other way did the American government miscalculate?

  Incredibly, the Department of Defense, having made and executed extensive plans for the defeat of the Iraqi military, made few plans for the administration of Iraq once combat had ended. Secretary Rumsfeld and his colleagues incorrectly assumed that American troops would be able to leave Iraq soon after Saddam’s regime had been ousted. “There is no plan,” said Richard Perle, one of these colleagues, “for an extended occupation in Iraq.” But Secretary of State Colin Powell had warned President Bush
that once the United States “broke” Iraq, it would “own” the country. Having done the former, America became responsible for Iraq, at least for maintaining order and for helping to rebuild the country. In the event, both tasks proved difficult and expensive. The U.S. Treasury would send bundles of dollars to Iraq. More importantly, coffins containing the bodies of dead American soldiers would be flown home from Iraq for years after the fall of Saddam.

  What happened to Saddam Hussein?

  As American armored units entered Baghdad, Saddam went into hiding. Not until December of that year, 2003, was he found, in an underground hole near Tikrit, north of the capital. The Americans who located him interrogated the former ruler and then turned him over to the Iraqis. They brought him to trial and, not surprisingly, found him guilty. On December 30, 2006, they hung Saddam Hussein.

  12

  AFGHANISTAN

  2001–2014

  On Christmas Eve of 1979, the Soviet Union, intent on establishing a more pliable regime, invaded Afghanistan, its neighbor to the south. Ten years later Soviet forces departed. Their efforts to subjugate this strategically located country had failed. Wrecked Soviet tanks and helicopters littered the countryside, while more than fourteen thousand dead Russian soldiers testified to the fiasco. Native Afghan forces, financed by the Saudis and armed by both the Americans and the Pakistanis, had defeated a much larger, more powerful invader.

  What followed was a period of political instability and armed conflict. Afghanistan was (and is) a hyperbolic mixture of tribal loyalties, religious fervor, and incompetent central governments. Yet, by 1996, when the capital city of Kabul fell, a new political-religious movement had gained control. This was the Taliban. They were Islamic fundamentalists full of hatred for anyone who did not share their beliefs. By Western standards, their values were primitive. They forbade women to work or to be educated. They closed movie theaters and banned music. They forced men to grow beards and punished theft by amputating hands. In general, they created a civic society few admired. Among the Taliban’s more reprehensible actions was the deliberate destruction of one of the world’s great archaeological treasures, two 115-foot-high sandstone statues of Buddha in the city of Bamiyan. At least this action killed no one, unlike the massacre of the ethnic Hazaras who died by the thousands.