Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 20, 1993 TAG: 9309220319
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN F. HILLEN III
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At about 4 p.m. that day, my Bradley fighting vehicle and some 20 other Bradleys and tanks crested a slight rise and came face to face with the enemy's elite. In the ensuing battle, now known as the Battle of the 73 Easting, only one soldier was killed and several wounded as we destroyed an enemy battalion.
We kept our casualties to a minimum because our nation had asked us to fight a war with clear goals. Gen. Colin Powell told us to ``cut [the enemy] off and kill it.'' We knew what that meant and we did the job. We took full advantage of our aggressive doctrine, military proficiency, and overwhelming technological superiority, and completely overpowered the enemy.
Unfortunately, this emphasis on decisively achieving clear objectives is being ignored by the Clinton administration.
The president is committing U.S. troops to U.N. peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and Somalia in which their skills are handicapped and their objectives are uncertain. U.N. commanders usually have little experience using troops for decisive combat, and U.N. peacekeeping missions typically operate under self-imposed limits that endanger the force and limit its effectiveness.
By submitting to U.N. command, the United States can expect extended, dangerous and expensive operations that will steadily produce casualties and rarely produce results.
In analyzing their Vietnam failures, the services decided they should never again deprive themselves of the early effect of overwhelming force. They insisted they should be given clear, attainable goals. Most of all, they maintained they should not be forced to operate under self-imposed limits that cede most advantages to the enemy. These were the lessons of Vietnam.
The Gulf War dramatically vindicated these principles. President Bush set a goal that was clearly defined, decisive and militarily attainable: Defeat and expel the Iraqi forces from in and around Kuwait. There was no attempt to coordinate limited force with diplomatic initiatives to bring Saddam Hussein to the bargaining table. Once initiated, force was used to gain an overwhelming advantage, one that allowed us to sustain the lightest casualty rate in the history of warfare.
Today's U.N. missions bear little resemblance to decisive military operations. They aim not only to force peace on the belligerents, but, in the case of Somalia, also to rebuild whole nations. Refugee resettlement, civil administration, election setup and monitoring, civil defense and the rebuilding of national infrastructure are all to be accomplished in the middle of a civil war. And all of these goals are to be achieved with rules of engagement that limit the soldier to self-defense. For soldiers, this is a recipe for failure.
Peacekeeping is closer to police doctrine than military doctrine. A police force does not expect to eliminate crime altogether, but to hold crime to an acceptable level. So, too, a peacekeeping force seeks to enforce an acceptable level of compliance by belligerents with agreed-upon rules. Since 1948, more than 800 U.N. peacekeepers have died in the line of duty - and the number is rising exponentially. In Cambodia and the Balkans, the United Nations has deployed more than 40,000 troops in multi-faction civil wars, arming them with rules of engagement that cripple their effectiveness.
These are wars of attrition and stand in direct conflict with American war-fighting doctrine. The three American soldiers wounded Sept. 13 and the four soldiers killed in August in the United Nations' Somalia debacle are casualties of an operation with no clear definition of victory.
Meanwhile, the United States may soon encounter a different sort of danger in Macedonia. The U.N. contingent, with its 300 highly trained U.S. combat troops, is too small to defeat - and therefore too small to deter - a Serbian invasion. It is a typical use of troops for symbolic reasons: troops as trip wires. Indeed, the Danish commander of the U.N. operation has called the American contingent a ``signal'' to the Serbs. The last such U.S. signal was in Lebanon. This is not military strategy, it is foolhardiness.
America cannot expect all its military engagements to be conducted on as favorable terms as the Gulf War. But if U.S. military forces are involved in a U.N. operation, we must insist that they be used intelligently. Before the lives of American troops are put in jeopardy, political leaders must define attainable military objectives consistent with the training and doctrine of American forces. To deny our forces these advantages is not only to endanger their lives, but also to disgrace those who have already fallen.
John F. Hillen III, a former U.S. Army officer, wrote this article for Policy Review, the quarterly journal of The Heritage Foundation. Hillen was awarded the Bronze Star for his actions in combat in Operation Desert Storm.
Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service
by CNB