WI: War in Iraq Without Ground Invasion and Occupation

What if instead of US forces moving into Iraq for a ground invasion, the Bush administration takes purely an aerial offensive to eliminate Saddam's government and also weapons of mass destruction, which they supposedly had locations for?
 
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BooNZ

Banned
What if instead of US forces moving into Iraq for a ground invasion, the Bush administration takes purely an aerial offensive to eliminate Saddam's government and also weapons of mass destruction?

What weapons of mass destruction? What happened in '91'?
 
What if instead of US forces moving into Iraq for a ground invasion, the Bush administration takes purely an aerial offensive to eliminate Saddam's government and also weapons of mass destruction?

You don't eliminate a government that has built deep bunkers all around Iraq with air power alone. Well, we could have in 1991 when there were hundreds of thousands of Shia and Kurds fighting him, but that is a very different story.

Honestly Bush keeps bombing Iraq in 2003 to cause regime change its apt to cause a civil war that bogs down in and around Baghdad as short of leveling the city air power as we have seen in the current war has major limits without spotters on the ground and if you aren't willing to risk heavy civilian deaths. You would likely have Zarqawi's rise among the Sunnis once again in time as Saddam and his sons start looking incompetent and the whole mess would look like Syria on super steroids.

The time to remove Saddam with a light footprint or just bombing was 1991-1993. By 2003 too many Iraqi Sunnis had just been too religiously radicalized for there to be any kind of easy regime change in Iraq.
 
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Doesn't work like that. Air power can do a lot of damage but can't topple regime without boots on the ground. Those boots can be locals but they need to exist.
 

jahenders

Banned
Generally true. Air power could potentially do so much damage that it causes instability (especially in a dictatorship) and weakens the government to the point that local opposition deposes it, but someone eventually has to walk into his palace/bunker.

That being said, I think that what we COULD have done that would achieve a similar effect would be a slash, burn, grab, and go ground campaign. We bust in, race for Baghdad, destroy anything in our way, destroy every military facility of consequence, take all the key government buildings and political leaders, get Saddam, and leave with an ominous warning about how bad it'll be if we ever have to come back. The occupation stemmed from a political concept that "if you break it, you've got to fix it" -- that's not necessarily true -- we could just break and leave.

If we wanted, we could even create a US-controlled region in the extreme south, controlling some of the oil and all of the ports. Once they get some decent government in place, we can work with them on exporting oil, but until then we "manage" the Southern oil for them.

Doesn't work like that. Air power can do a lot of damage but can't topple regime without boots on the ground. Those boots can be locals but they need to exist.
 
What if instead of US forces moving into Iraq for a ground invasion, the Bush administration takes purely an aerial offensive to eliminate Saddam's government and also weapons of mass destruction, which they supposedly had locations for?

Errr.... Which Bush, which Iraq War?

Bush Senior didn't invade Iraq.

Bush Junior didn't have locations for WMDs, 'cause there weren't any.

So. ????
 
So essentially an extended repeat of Desert Fox. At best, very little changes. At worst, revolution and civil war ensues, Iraq ends up a failed state a la Syria, Iran gets caught red handed meddling, and Bush uses it as an excuse for a war with Iran.
 
That being said, I think that what we COULD have done that would achieve a similar effect would be a slash, burn, grab, and go ground campaign. We bust in, race for Baghdad, destroy anything in our way, destroy every military facility of consequence, take all the key government buildings and political leaders, get Saddam, and leave with an ominous warning about how bad it'll be if we ever have to come back. The occupation stemmed from a political concept that "if you break it, you've got to fix it" -- that's not necessarily true -- we could just break and leave.
As a historical matter, what you are describing here is basically the old concept of the 'punitive campaign'. Kipling has the Colonel's son threaten one in 'The Ballad of East and West', and the Romans used to do it too. It would, however, probably be politically impossible in the context of 2003.
 

CalBear

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Can't be done.

Air power simply isn't capable of that level of success, at least not if the attacker pays anything above lip service to the Laws of Land Warfare. The days were you could, legally and morally, firebomb Tokyo or Coventry or Dresden are gone. Today's Geneva Conventions specifically limit the indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations, and the only way you manage to totally defeat an opponent with air power is to break them (which, BTW, could actually be done these days, unlike WW II, if it wasn't a war crime in most circumstances).

You need boots on the ground. It still come down to the guys with the rifles.
 

jahenders

Banned
I don't think so. The lead up to invasion could have been similar. The stated purposes were to 1) remove Saddam, 2) allow inspections of key sites, 3) remove any WMD threat, and 4) weaken Al Qaeda. A smash and grab approach would achieve #1, would destroy the sites of #2, could argue that #3 is at least partially met by destroying key sites and investigating some on the way to the grab, and could somewhat meet #4 by removing key leaders along the way.

There might be some recriminations afterwards about limited presence of WMD, but one reasonable response could be,
"We had good reason to believe they were a real WMD / Al Qaeda threat -- we removed a dictator, destroyed potential WMD sites, killed/captured lots of Al Qaeda, and searched for WMD. We found chemical weapons, but less WMD than expected. We destroyed any ready capability and consider the present mission complete. If the UN establishes an international mission and requests our participation, we will assess how much we can participate."

As a historical matter, what you are describing here is basically the old concept of the 'punitive campaign'. Kipling has the Colonel's son threaten one in 'The Ballad of East and West', and the Romans used to do it too. It would, however, probably be politically impossible in the context of 2003.
 
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