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American Morning
Talk with National Security Expert Stephen Biddle
Aired November 14, 2002 - 08:06 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, if the effort to disarm Iraq comes to war, much of the battle plan could be modeled after the conflict in Afghanistan. That's according to the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute.
And joining us now from the Pentagon is Stephen Biddle of the Army War College.
Good morning.
STEPHEN BIDDLE, NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT: Good morning.
ZAHN: Welcome, Stephen.
BIDDLE: Thank you.
ZAHN: So I know you have studied our war on terror in Afghanistan, specifically the use of new precise weapons. What can we apply to a potential war in Iraq?
BIDDLE: Well, I think probably the most important lesson from Afghanistan for Iraq is that there may be fewer easy solutions available to us for waging a war there than we might like. In Afghanistan, we prevailed without major U.S. ground forces, in part because we had such high technology air strikes and such effective special forces to direct them, but also in part because we had an indigenous ally in the form of the Northern and later the Southern Alliances, who were capable of shouldering a significant burden of close combat.
Contrary to war is often portrayed in the public press, there was, in fact, a lot of old-fashioned up close and personal close combat in the war in Afghanistan. Within a few days of our first air strikes, al Qaeda appears to have figured out more or less what we were doing and start to adopt counter measures like dispersing their forces, covering and concealing, that even though we killed a lot of them with preliminary air strikes, enough of them survived and continued to resist that they had to be overrun the old-fashioned way, by our allies on the ground.
When you look forward into Iraq and you ask who are the allies on the ground in Iraq that might enable us to do that, it's not a pretty picture.
ZAHN: Well, let's talk about that. Obviously more hand to hand combat means more casualties for American troops and allies, right? BIDDLE: It could very well. It could very well. And if you're going to rely on somebody else to do the heavy lifting on the ground, as we were able to in Afghanistan, you have to have indigenous allies on the ground who are willing to incur potential casualties and who have the skills and motivation to conduct the war properly in order to exploit the kinds of advantages that our air strikes bring to bear.
If you look at Iraq, we have potentially the Iraqi National Congress to fight with us. They don't have an army at the moment. They're vapor ware. We have the Kurds as potential allies and the Kurds have dusted it up with the Republic Guard repeatedly over the last 10 to 20 years and have demonstrated to pretty much everybody's satisfaction, including their own, that they are not as good as the Republican Guard is even.
I think probably if the Iraqis fight, a critical wild card, somebody else is going to have to provide significant ground forces and that somebody else would presumably have to be us.
ZAHN: Well, I know as people listen to that, that sounds pretty chilling, because we've just seen the faint outlines of this plan being leaked to newspapers and news organizations. Let's talk about how much damage you think precise weapons can do against Saddam Hussein.
BIDDLE: Well, precision weapons are a tremendous capability and they'll do a lot of damage. They did a lot of damage in Afghanistan. They will do a lot of damage in Iraq. The question is how much and is it enough damage that precision weapons can succeed on their own without support from substantial ground forces?
Now, I think especially since public reporting suggests that Saddam may very well try to do this fight in the cities, in Baghdad and elsewhere, I think we have to assume that although precision weapons will do a lot of damage, they won't do enough damage to solve the problem in and of themselves if the Iraqis resist. Again, that's a critical wild card. And if that's the case, there's going to be ground combat. It's going to be up close and personal and it's going to necessarily involve casualties.
ZAHN: But you also said in Afghanistan the lesson to be learned was that close combat quickly lost its element of surprise, didn't it?
BIDDLE: Yes.
ZAHN: Isn't that likely to happen in Iraq, as well?
BIDDLE: Well, I think in terms of the methods we used in Afghanistan, the advantage of surprise is probably gone already. I mean we initially caught the Taliban flat-footed in Iraq -- or in Afghanistan. Everybody around the world, in Iraq and everywhere else, is studying very closely what we did in Afghanistan and is much less likely to be taken by surprise this time around. I think it would be a serious mistake to assume that somehow or another we're going to pull a rabbit out of the hat that no one expects and that we'll have a substantial advantage of surprise early on in a fight against the Iraqis.
ZAHN: Well, you've given us a wealth of information. I'm just trying to imagine how you study at night. What do you just have document after document that shows you what weapons are used and how much damage they did?
BIDDLE: Well, we use documentary evidence where it's available. Especially we make use of direct interviews with participants, people who actually fought this war, had their eyeballs on al Qaeda, could see what they were doing, knew what our indigenous allies were doing and could report to us exactly what happened there. So if you do extensive enough participant interviewing, you begin to get something like a ground truth picture of what actually happened and that's the essential first step, both in understanding what happened in Afghanistan but also in understanding what it means for either a future war in Iraq or future wars elsewhere and how we ought to do American defense policy in light of that.
ZAHN: Stephen Biddle, thank you again for dropping by.
Appreciate your perspective very much.
BIDDLE: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired November 14, 2002 - 08:06 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, if the effort to disarm Iraq comes to war, much of the battle plan could be modeled after the conflict in Afghanistan. That's according to the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute.
And joining us now from the Pentagon is Stephen Biddle of the Army War College.
Good morning.
STEPHEN BIDDLE, NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT: Good morning.
ZAHN: Welcome, Stephen.
BIDDLE: Thank you.
ZAHN: So I know you have studied our war on terror in Afghanistan, specifically the use of new precise weapons. What can we apply to a potential war in Iraq?
BIDDLE: Well, I think probably the most important lesson from Afghanistan for Iraq is that there may be fewer easy solutions available to us for waging a war there than we might like. In Afghanistan, we prevailed without major U.S. ground forces, in part because we had such high technology air strikes and such effective special forces to direct them, but also in part because we had an indigenous ally in the form of the Northern and later the Southern Alliances, who were capable of shouldering a significant burden of close combat.
Contrary to war is often portrayed in the public press, there was, in fact, a lot of old-fashioned up close and personal close combat in the war in Afghanistan. Within a few days of our first air strikes, al Qaeda appears to have figured out more or less what we were doing and start to adopt counter measures like dispersing their forces, covering and concealing, that even though we killed a lot of them with preliminary air strikes, enough of them survived and continued to resist that they had to be overrun the old-fashioned way, by our allies on the ground.
When you look forward into Iraq and you ask who are the allies on the ground in Iraq that might enable us to do that, it's not a pretty picture.
ZAHN: Well, let's talk about that. Obviously more hand to hand combat means more casualties for American troops and allies, right? BIDDLE: It could very well. It could very well. And if you're going to rely on somebody else to do the heavy lifting on the ground, as we were able to in Afghanistan, you have to have indigenous allies on the ground who are willing to incur potential casualties and who have the skills and motivation to conduct the war properly in order to exploit the kinds of advantages that our air strikes bring to bear.
If you look at Iraq, we have potentially the Iraqi National Congress to fight with us. They don't have an army at the moment. They're vapor ware. We have the Kurds as potential allies and the Kurds have dusted it up with the Republic Guard repeatedly over the last 10 to 20 years and have demonstrated to pretty much everybody's satisfaction, including their own, that they are not as good as the Republican Guard is even.
I think probably if the Iraqis fight, a critical wild card, somebody else is going to have to provide significant ground forces and that somebody else would presumably have to be us.
ZAHN: Well, I know as people listen to that, that sounds pretty chilling, because we've just seen the faint outlines of this plan being leaked to newspapers and news organizations. Let's talk about how much damage you think precise weapons can do against Saddam Hussein.
BIDDLE: Well, precision weapons are a tremendous capability and they'll do a lot of damage. They did a lot of damage in Afghanistan. They will do a lot of damage in Iraq. The question is how much and is it enough damage that precision weapons can succeed on their own without support from substantial ground forces?
Now, I think especially since public reporting suggests that Saddam may very well try to do this fight in the cities, in Baghdad and elsewhere, I think we have to assume that although precision weapons will do a lot of damage, they won't do enough damage to solve the problem in and of themselves if the Iraqis resist. Again, that's a critical wild card. And if that's the case, there's going to be ground combat. It's going to be up close and personal and it's going to necessarily involve casualties.
ZAHN: But you also said in Afghanistan the lesson to be learned was that close combat quickly lost its element of surprise, didn't it?
BIDDLE: Yes.
ZAHN: Isn't that likely to happen in Iraq, as well?
BIDDLE: Well, I think in terms of the methods we used in Afghanistan, the advantage of surprise is probably gone already. I mean we initially caught the Taliban flat-footed in Iraq -- or in Afghanistan. Everybody around the world, in Iraq and everywhere else, is studying very closely what we did in Afghanistan and is much less likely to be taken by surprise this time around. I think it would be a serious mistake to assume that somehow or another we're going to pull a rabbit out of the hat that no one expects and that we'll have a substantial advantage of surprise early on in a fight against the Iraqis.
ZAHN: Well, you've given us a wealth of information. I'm just trying to imagine how you study at night. What do you just have document after document that shows you what weapons are used and how much damage they did?
BIDDLE: Well, we use documentary evidence where it's available. Especially we make use of direct interviews with participants, people who actually fought this war, had their eyeballs on al Qaeda, could see what they were doing, knew what our indigenous allies were doing and could report to us exactly what happened there. So if you do extensive enough participant interviewing, you begin to get something like a ground truth picture of what actually happened and that's the essential first step, both in understanding what happened in Afghanistan but also in understanding what it means for either a future war in Iraq or future wars elsewhere and how we ought to do American defense policy in light of that.
ZAHN: Stephen Biddle, thank you again for dropping by.
Appreciate your perspective very much.
BIDDLE: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
