Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War
By Rick Atkinson
Harper Collins, 1994. 504 pp. $39.95
Reviewed by Paul Hemphill
In the disturbing documentary The Panama Deception, one of the very few instances of wry humour related to "Allende's desk".
When President Allende went down fighting against Pinochet's thugs in 1973, much was made of his alleged desk, covered, it was claimed, with such incriminating items as books on Marxism, black magic and pornography. During the US invasion of Panama, the desk was recycled, with extra props, namely: drugs and the infamous red silk pyjamas. Not quite the same fixtures and fittings were brought out when US forces captured the Somali General Aideed's bedroom — books on Marxism, books in Italian(!), the Koran — but the effect was the same.
And if the victorious coalition had occupied Baghdad during the Gulf War, we can be sure that CNN and the spoon-fed media would once again have been presented with the late Chilean president's desk, demonstrating anew the US strategic axiom: those whom you wish to destroy, you first must demonise.
Needless to say, none of this is covered in this chronicle of Desert Storm.
There are detailed descriptions of the planning and the preparation for the 42-day war; detailed accounts of the air war and the brief ground war that followed; illuminating insights into the characters and temperaments of the leading personalities, particularly the two leading lights, Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell; fascinating accounts of the weaponry and the technology that foretold how people would kill one another in the 21st century. And there is plenty that we did not know already from the press and television coverage, the media having been kept on a very tight lead and fed a very controlled diet throughout.
For example, the inter-service rivalry rife in the US armed forces.
For example, the contempt that the US forces, and for that matter, the French and the British contingents, felt for the military capabilities of their Arab allies, particularly the Saudis and the Kuwaitis.
For example, the fear and loathing felt by many, including some in the very top positions, for Schwarzkopf: his imperial pretensions, his temper, his stubbornness.
For example, the shortcomings of the so-called wonder weapons: the not so smart bombs; the Patriot missiles that in most cases missed their target.
For example, the knife-edge of US-Israeli relations as the Scuds came down on Israel, and as the US desperately tried to keep Israel out of the war.
For example, the reality that most allied casualties were victims of friendly fire.
For example, the dilemmas of the planners: total war or limited war. Should the war aims be exclusively the expulsion of the Iraqis from Kuwait, or should the Allies go for broke and occupy Baghdad? The ghosts of Korea (limited goals and unfinished to this day) and Vietnam (total war and total defeat of the USA) haunted the planners throughout.
And the fact that the USA tremendously exaggerated the strength of the Iraqi military machine.
What of the exclusions from The Untold Story?
The ambivalent attitude of the US towards Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, including the provision of intelligence material to the Iraqis, and the covert provision of weaponry via the Saudis. There is a Contragate equivalent awaiting exposure.
The secret arming of Saudi Arabia throughout the '80s, ostensibly as a buffer against Iran, but more likely as a means of protecting the US oil supply, included the construction of air bases and ports throughout Saudi Arabia and stockpiling of materiel. With this infrastructure in place, it's no wonder the allies were able to mobilise such force in the Gulf at such short notice.
As a corollary to this, evidence has now emerged that the Saudis secretly funded that same nuclear industry that the US Air Force and frustrated United Nations inspectors have tried to dismantle since the onset of the air offensive. Not that this should come as a surprise; the French, the British and lord knows who else were flogging the hardware for a decade.
What did the allies get in return for restoring the emir and shoring up the house of Saud? Little is said of the oil-for-help deals that were struck, or the true extent of the Kuwaiti and Saudi bankrolling of the whole campaign.
Nothing is said of the free oil that the USA and the UK have received since. The US authorities tried to downplay the petroleum connection. They didn't want to be seen sending American servicemen to die for oil. But they couldn't present the war as being fought to usher in democracy and freedom either. The first reconstruction in the newly liberated but shattered Kuwait was the royal palace, including the installation of gold-plated bathroom fittings. Blessed are the meek, for they shall never inherit.
Atkinson comments on the overwhelmingly one-sided nature of the conflict. He regrets the civilian casualties, including the horrendous Al Firdos bunker strike, the infrastructural devastation that pushed Iraq back into the 19th century, and subsequently, caused tens of thousands of deaths from disease and starvation, the burying alive of Iraqi soldiers, the turkey shoot of the "Highway of Death", the later betrayal of the Kurds and the Shiites.
But he ignores other issues: the millions of mines that still maim and kill Iraqis and Kuwaitis alike; the Kuwaiti pogrom against Palestinian residents; the unknown, and only recently revealed, toll from the use of depleted uranium shells by Allied forces; the environmental damage from oil spills, deliberate and collateral damage (great word) and burning oil wells. The USA's terrible swift sword cast a long shadow.
Rick Atkinson is an insider. He has access to top policy makers and many of the personalities involved in the saga. Particularly, I feel, he had an "in" with George Bush's people and possibly those close to Colin Powell; hence his warm coverage of these men as opposed to his cool and critical appraisal of Schwarzkopf.
But generally, US soldiers can do little wrong. They had been preparing for this war since Vietnam, and here was their return to glory. Rick Atkinson has made his reputation writing about the US Army (The Thin Blue Line, an account of the officer corps, was his magnum opus.) He does not want to foul his pitch. He has been permitted to reveal so much and only so much.
Only now are we learning true story of the invasions of Grenada and Panama. We have still to learn the real agenda behind the US involvement in Somalia. If there is an untold story of the Persian Gulf War, we have yet to hear it. Maybe it is hiding in Allende's desk.