I preface this by saying that I am a muslim. Yet I view Saddam as a tyrant who is worthy of ousting. "President" Husein is a popular figure in Iraq only to the extent that we make him so. He is not popular for doing well by his people (they starve while he eats). He is not popular with the imams (He stands for western law not sharia law). He is not popular with the Kurds in the north or the Marsh Arabs in the south. He is not a great war leader (He has lost every war he has started). He was not really ellected, he came to power in a coup. He has a loyal army. That's all...but unfortunately that is enough. We make him popular with his people when we bomb Iraq because there is no way we can kill him personally. As long as he survived each attack he only has to stand up in front of the TV camara and puff his chest and say "I the leader of Dar al Islam (ie the house of peace, the muslim world) defy the Satan of the house of war (ie the US and Britain) just like GOD told me to do in the Quran!" He says it and all the people shake their heads yes. This is what a muslim leader is suppose to do. He keys into cultural rivalry between Europe and the Muslim world that dates back at least to the crusades. It puts the people behind him, the imams behind him and even his rivals in the Middle East behind him. But they still secretly hate him. There is an old tradition in Islamic politics of political assasination. If a leader looks like he is not behaving justly, the accepted practice to change policy is to slide a knife in his back (or wrap a bow cord around his neck, or shoot him full of wholes, or blow him and his entire family up with a gunpowder mine!) Which is why Saddam never sleeps in the same place twice and only decides where to sleep at the last minute. So here is the strategy. Saddam is in power due to his military, the Republican Guard. They are the only people who are well fed and who have money to spend. They are also the only people in the country who count to Husein. They should be the target. Bombing that is targeted not to destroy factories or equipment but which is instead targeted to kill Republican Guardsmen will force them to disperce their troops. This will weaken Saddams military hold on the state, but don't expect uprisings. Neither the Kurds or the Marsh Arabs have the organization or material to carry off a coup. No, the bombs send a message to the only people who count, the Republican Guard. When the bombing continues - admittedly killing fewer and few guards men as it goes on - it sends a message "All of you will die unless you get rid of Saddam." It seperates him from his troops. We will not have to kill Saddam, or even capture him. His own military will kill him to preserve their position! Down Sides Now here are the down sides of this strategy. It means targeting people, not things. This means bloody pictures, lots of them. There are 100,000 Republican Guardsmen. I would estimate 30,000 of them would have to die before they would turn on Saddam. It would take at least a six month air war. Our allies would not favor it, and it would make bad TV. But it would work. Now the other down side. Strange though it may seem, Saddam may be the sanest leader in Iraq. He wants to be a regional leader but he leads a westernized country, with western law, a vaguely capitalist economy and is not overly religious (in fact the Baathist party is a secular party). With Saddam gone, the army will throw up another representative of the Baghdad economic elite (this is where all the good farm land is). The new leader will be a Sunni muslim and a military man. In twenty years he will look just like Saddam. If we allow the south and the north to break off then the world gets a second Shiite State (right next to the oil fields) and a Kurdish State. The Shiite state will likely follow Iran culturally. The Kurdish state would give implicite support to Kurds in Turkey that they might someday join this new state (which screws our allies in Ankara). Net result, a Kurdish state and a Shiite Marsh Arab state WILL destabilize the area. So, there you have it - we can get rid of Saddam at the cost of our allies but to do so gains us nothing. Hummmm? Looks like Saddam wins. Another Take on an Iraqi Air Strategy Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #1 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com