- Have your heard of Harlan Ullman? Everyone in the White
House and the Pentagon has. They may very well follow his plan for war
in Iraq. He wants to do to Baghdad what we did to Hiroshima.
-
- Ullman is what they call a ãdefense intellectual.ä
He was the Navy's ãhead of extended planningä and taught at
the National War College. One of his students was Secretary of State Colin
Powell, who says he ãraised my vision several levels.ä
-
- What Powell and everyone in the Bush administration sees
now is Ullmanâs vision for high-tech war. He calls it ãrapid
dominance,ä or ãshock and awe.ä The idea is to scare the
enemy to death. To win, you donât need to inflict physical pain and
destruction. Just the fear of pain, and the massive confusion it creates,
is enough.
-
- Ullman wants the U.S. to (in his words) ãdeter
and overpower an adversary through the adversaryâs perception and
fear of his vulnerability and our own invincibility.ä ãThis
ability to impose massive shock and awe, in essence to be able to 'turn
the lights on and off' of an adversary as we choose, will so overload the
perception, knowledge and understanding of that adversary that there will
be no choice except to cease and desist or risk complete and total destruction."
-
- Ullman is ready to use every kind of weapon to create
shock and awe. He once said it might be a good idea to use electromagnetic
waves that attack peoplesâ neurological systems, ãto control
the will and perception of adversaries, by applying a regime of shock and
awe. It is about effecting behavior."
-
- When it comes to Iraq, Ullman likes the idea of cruise
missiles -- lots of them, right away. CBS News reports that Ullmanâs
ideas are the basis for the Pentagonâs war plan. The U.S. will smash
Baghdad with up to 800 cruise missiles in the first two days of the war.
Thatâs about one every four minutes, day and night, for 48 hours.
-
- The missiles will hit far more than just military targets.
They will destroy everything that makes life in Baghdad livable. "We
want them to quit. We want them not to fight," Ullman told CBS reporter
David Martin. So ãyou take the city down. You get rid of their power,
water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically
exhausted."
-
- Ullman is sure it will work as well in 2003 as it did
in 1945: ãYou have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear
weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes." "Super
tools and weapons -- information-age equivalents of the atomic bomb --
have to be invented," he wrote in the Economic Times. "As the
atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki finally convinced the Japanese
Emperor and High Command that even suicidal resistance was futile, these
tools must be directed towards a similar outcome.ä
-
- When he first invented ãrapid dominance,ä
Ullman talked about an ãeight-level hierarchy of shock and awe,ä
with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the top. Now, it
seems, thatâs where he wants to start.
-
- Is the Hiroshima model just a metaphor? Ullman recently
wrote that one way to ãshock and aweä Saddam is to remind him
that the U.S. has ãcertain weaponsä that can destroy deeply
buried facilities. Thatâs a not-even-thinly-veiled reference to the
newest kind of nuclear weapons, the B-61 ãbunker-busters.ä
L.A. Times columnist William Arkin <http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0126-01.htm>has
confirmed that the U.S. is preparing to use ãbunker-bustersä
against Iraq. That would ãbreak down the firewall separating nuclear
weapons from everything else,ä Arkin warns, and ãforever pit
the Arab and Islamic world against us.ä
-
- Suppose we drop the nuke in the wrong place? Even Harlan
Ullman admits it could easily happen: ãOf course, there will always
be intelligence gaps, and no solution is perfect.ä But thatâs
just the point. ãThe threat would be a Damoclean sword that might
or might not descend.ä In other words, the fear of nukes falling who-knows-where
would scare them into surrendering without a fight. Let other Islamic nations
get as angry as they like. Weâll just shock and awe them too.
-
- And why not North Korea, while weâre at it? Ullman
wants a nuclear threat there, if North Korean leaders donât heel
to U.S. commands: ãTo remind the North of its vulnerability, one
or more Trident ballistic submarines could be permanently assigned to target
North Korea.ä Tridents carry 240 nuclear warheads each. One Trident
might not be enough, it seems. When you use shock and awe, you use it big-time.
-
- So here we are, preparing to destroy a huge modern city,
kill tens of thousands, and threaten nuclear attack -- all against people
who have not fired a single bullet at us. Yes, itâs about oil. But
itâs also about shock and awe, putting on a terrifying show for the
whole world to see.
-
- If all this leaves you in shock and awe, you have had
your vision raised several levels too. You see what Ullman, Powell, and
all the Bushies see: the U.S. frightening the whole world so badly that
no one will dare fire a single bullet at us. Let them be as angry as they
like, just so they know who is the meanest, toughest son of a bitch on
the global block.
-
- That is now becoming the essence of U.S. foreign policy.
And they seriously believe it will put an end to war. I suppose the Romans
believed it too.
-
- Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the
University of Colorado at Boulder.
- <mailto:chernus@spot.colorado.edu>chernus@spot.colorado.edu
-
- ###
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