The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
The Impossible Dream in Iraq
by James Dunnigan
June 28, 2003
Saddam Hussein in particular, and the Baath
Party he led in general, were quite good at playing the local and Western media.
Now out of power, captured documents and prisoner interrogations make it clear
that Baath had a "worst case" plan. If Baath lost power, the Sunni Arabs who
comprise most of the Baath Party, would engage in economic sabotage to increase
popular unrest. Attacks on coalition troops, encouraged by cash bounties, would
encourage the coalition to engage in reprisal measures that would further
increase hatred for the foreigners. Baath always projected itself as the
champion of Arab nationalism (despite the fact that Baath was actually a
criminal conspiracy to loot Iraq's oil wealth and tyrannize most of its
population.) But Baaths past propaganda efforts have worked and non-Iraqi Arab
nationalists are coming to Iraq to fight. Baath is also taking advantage of the
fact that Iraqis don't know how to deal with anything but a police state and
tightly controlled media (which is all they've had for the past four decades.)
So rumors, the more bizarre the better, spread quickly and are believed by many.
The Baath party activists leading the fight use terror against Iraqis working
for the coalition, and spread rumors that Baath is a lot more powerful than it
actually is. So far, this is working. How do you fight back to something
like this? It's nothing new, and the approach that works is to compete with the
resistance for the allegiance of the people. Remember that Baath has lots of
disadvantages. For one thing, Baath is intensely unpopular in north and south
Iraq, and only about 20 percent of the Iraqi population (the Sunni Arabs) are
inclined to work with Baath at all. But many Sunnis don't care for Baath, as
Saddam's approach was to terrorize anyone who appeared to oppose him and this
included many Sunnis, as well as most of the Kurds and Shia Arabs. But in
central Iraq, especially in Baghdad, Baath is strong. Baath believes that if
they can create an atmosphere of general unrest, more Iraqis will join them and
they will be able to take over Iraq again. This is absurd. The Kurds and Shia
comprise 80 percent of the population and have suffered much at the hands of
Baath and the Sunni Arabs since the 1960s. The idea of these Iraqis flocking to
Baath's banner is a non-starter. But in central Iraq, Baath has followers. These
are the people who ran Saddam's police state and face grim economic prospects in
a post-Saddam Iraq. They are fighting for their future, and to avoid having to
pay for their past.
So the coalition is using the unpopularity of Baath to
develop a network of informers. This has led to a series of raids, the arrest of
hundreds of Baath activists and foreign volunteers, the seizure of weapons and
explosives, millions of dollars in cash and all those Baath party documents
detailing how to recover from a coalition conquest. The big battle is over the
power supply. Without electricity, the coalition cannot get the mass media
working and counteract the Baath rumor campaign. Without electricity, Baghdad
becomes very uncomfortable in the Summer heat. The battle against Baath
will go on until Baath runs out of activists and money. This could take a while,
for Baath had over a hundreds thousand core members. Most of these were
opportunists, willing to serve Baath for a price. But at its core, Baath was run
by some ruthless men who killed on a large scale to sustain their power. They
are still willing to kill, and terrorize Iraqis into supporting them, and are
expert at playing the media. The opposition is staffed by former members of
Saddam's secret police, Republican Guard and Baath party leadership. These are
the men who committed uncounted atrocities against the Iraqi people for two
generations. Iraq won't be at peace until these butchers are out of business.
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