Gulf War 10th anniversary

By Jon R. Anderson
Stars and Stripes

The days leading up to the Feb. 24 ground assault against Iraq were dark ones for many who were to lead the assault.

Fears of chemical, biological and even nuclear attack were well-founded, and generals and pundits alike predicted high casualties as the coalition prepared to go toe-to-toe with Saddam Hussein’s battle-hardened Republican Guard.

In the end, however, only 299 U.S. troops died in the war, compared to an estimated 10,000-30,000 Iraqi dead.

After similar lopsided conflicts in Grenada and Panama, the American public learned through the Gulf War that even epic victory can come with little loss.

"Force protection" has been given such strong emphasis since the war that some commanders complain that preventing losses has become a mission unto itself, rather than just a function of good leadership.

Considering that 20 percent of the U.S. casualties during the Gulf War were self-inflicted, much of that focus has been on preventing "friendly fire."

"An obsession with preventing fratricide can inhibit a commander’s ability to fight by taking away his ability to be bold and aggressive," says Anthony Cordesman, author of a number of books about conflict and the Gulf War and a top analyst for the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"When you make preventing fratricide an objective in itself," says Cordesman, "you’re really raising the possibility of casualties by the enemy. It shouldn’t be a question of who kills Americans, but how many Americans get killed."

But even with losses to the enemy so low in the Gulf, the bar on what is now considered "acceptable losses" for the American public has been raised high.

Fears among Pentagon leaders of even a single loss in Kosovo was so intense, for example, that low-flying Army attack helicopters were kept out of the NATO air campaign.

In fact, the only allied losses during the 78-day war against Yugoslavia came when two Army aviators were killed in an AH-64 Apache crash during training in the mountains of northern Albania.

With the Gulf War’s six-week air campaign as preamble, high-flying bombers and pilotless cruise missiles safe from ground gunners did all of the dirty work in the Yugoslav conflict.

Media scrutiny in protecting the innocent has led to unprecedented attention in preventing "collateral damage" as well.

Long gone are the World War II tactics of fire bombing entire cities, replaced instead with the use of high-tech cruise missiles equally capable of turning off urban power grids for a few hours or knocking out a specific building.

While the Air Force and Navy have wowed CNN viewers with the surgical precision of laser-guided bombs and the pinpoint placement of cruise missiles, the Army is still seen more as butcher than surgeon, capable of getting the job done, but darn messy in doing it.

"There is no doubt the media has changed the way we do our job," says Maj. Bob Jones, an infantry platoon leader during the Gulf War, now a civil affairs specialist.

"That’s a good thing," he says. "There’s so much at stake, things should be done right. And being held accountable is always a good thing."

Again, though, it was the worry of collateral damage that kept Army rocket-launching crews standing by unused in Albania during the Yugoslavia campaign as well.

Indeed, while the Air Force and Navy have performed combat missions regularly since the Gulf War, whether it’s been bombing campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo or the almost perennial strikes against Iraq, the Army has not been ordered into combat since the war.

For a look at some of the weapons used in the Gulf War, click here.

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