Military Affairs Discussion Group
The Military Affairs Discussion (MAD)
Group, now in it’s third year, met for a roundtable discussion on 13 February
2003 hosted by Rich Gasperini in the conference room of the law firm of Wright
Robinson. The group discussed the very timely topic of a possible war with Iraq.
The first order of business was to do
some quick planning for future events. The group decided to change the tour of
the Wilderness & Spottsylvania battlefields previously planned for 12 April
2003 and move it to 20 September. A discussion meeting for 3 April was
substituted instead. The topic will be The War in Iraq. An alternate topic of
“West Point” will be substituted if events warrant a change.
The group then moved quickly into a discussion of a possible war in Iraq
beginning with comments concerning U.S. national strategy. Comments in this area
ranged from opinions concerning our doctrine of “preemptive strike” vs “containment”,
to the effect on UN, NATO, Allies, and ME countries, to world and U.S. opinion,
and finally to the cost of war and its geopolitical aftermath.
Mel Drisko brought up an interesting view saying that we need to “think
Constabulary”. Individual opinions were expressed, in turn, in true “roundtable”
fashion. Needless to say, all opinions did not agree.
The group next turned to a discussion
of military strategy and possible military operations. We pooled our knowledge
of which units had been alerted and where they were being deployed. We seemed to
agree that Turkey is a very key staging area for a possible attack but since
negotiations are still on going, we couldn’t be sure how many troops would be
able to assemble there. Sam Wilder (an old frustrated G-3) presented his “oplan”
for the attack. While it may look good on paper, who knows if it would ever
work?
Finally we examined possible Iraqi
weapons/tactics and U.S. weapons/tactics that would likely be different from
those of Desert Storm. We agreed that Iraqi tactics would likely be to fight
from urban areas and not in the open desert and that there is a high possibility
of the use of chem/bio weapons. Some of the new U.S. weapons mentioned included
UAVs, a much higher percentage of precision weapons, improved “bunker busters”,
B2 stealth bombers, and one (or two) fully digitized divisions.
Overall, it was a lively, enjoyable and
excellent discussion, which went well past the self-imposed time limit of two
hours.
Sam
Wilder ‘61
