[NYTr] "Operation Swarm"- War without End against Iran

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Tim Murphy - activ-l

Peace Palestine - Ocy 5, 2007
http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2007/10/fabio-mini-italian-general-operation.html

Writing for Italy's l'Espresso, Italian General Fabio Mini has
understood and explained the dangerous mechanisms of gaining consensus
to wage war against "Enemies", which are variable and flexible
according to the interests of hegemonic power. This enlightening
article explains the manner in which War against Iran has been promoted
in the West as well as the operative elements that will bring it about. 

A MUST READ! Translated from Italian by Diego Traversa and revised by
Mary Rizzo for Tlaxcala http://www.tlaxcala.es and peacepalestine. 


"Operation Swarm"- War without End against Iran

By Fabio Mini

Translated by Diego Traversa
Revised by Mary Rizzo

Anyone who thought that the green light for the Israeli-American attack
against Iran would come from the American Congress, was wrong. Equally
wrong were those who thought that a president like Bush, so frustrated
by the Iraqi chaos, the Afghan deadlock and the industrial lobbies'
pressures, would wind up making the decision on his own. The attack
against Iran will take place thanks to the newly-appointed French
Foreign Minister Kouchner. In these years of threats and
counter-threats, of pretexts to make war, the only "revealing" words
have been those from the laconic phrase "we must prepare ourselves for
the worst." Many have taken these words as a slip of the lip, others
have regarded them as a bad luck-dispelling provocation, others as an
instigation and still others as a submission to an ineluctable event.
It could be that the sentence contains all of this, but the profound
essence of Kouchner's words is different.

Strange connections and affinities have come into being in these last 15
years of worldwide military interventions of different kinds. Armies
have been integrated with private soldiers, visionaries with
mercenaries, business with ideology, and truth has gotten so imbued
with lies that the propaganda's logic can't account for either. And one
of the most unusual connections is the one that has been established
between military staff, humanitarian workers and foreign policy, to
such an extent that each of the three components can pass itself off as
the other two. The main cement of this union is the emergency concept.
Foreign politics has lost its nature of continuity in the relations
between states and in the sphere of international organizations. It has
been devoting itself for a while to running emergency relations,
meaning extemporaneous relations connected to temporary and changeable
interests or positions that are transitory and changeable to variable
geometries.

At the end of the day, emergency politics is the only kind that allows a
limited and selective commitment. Moreover, it can be done or undone at
one's will, since the dimension of the emergency can be manipulated or
interpreted. Following the same manner of reasoning, the armies of these
last 15 years have exclusively devoted themselves to emergency
situations, preferably abroad and for so-called humanitarian reasons,
in order to guarantee themselves consensus and support. There are no
longer any armies able to defend their own territories or to provide
defence in case of war. It's increasingly difficult to find a state
threatened with war by another state and today all the world's armies
rely on a minimum 12-month notice allowing them to mobilise the
resources for national defence. Therefore, they have become specialized
in emergency in the respect of both the kind and the timing of the
interventions. 

When Kouchner candidly states that we "must prepare ourselves for the
worst" he simply interprets a philosophy which doesn't have as its
objective the searching for the best, less traumatic solution, but
which instead calls on the political class to manage the emergency, the
military means and the humanitarian organizations which have by now
become inseparable. It's also about the recognition of the political
class's incapacity itself to think of and find enduring solutions. It
is about the military instruments and their incapacity in managing
conflict situations until their complete stabilization, and the
incapacity of the humanitarian organizations in settling the problems
of the people in more long-term perspective than the one offered by
emergency. Finally, Kouchner also admits that the summation of these
incapacities leads inevitably to war.

Then, war it will be.

It's obvious that, under these conditions, some exaggerations are
required in order to assure the accomplishment of the emergency and the
intervention of the various components: something has to happen: -what
the observers call the "trigger"- so that it may provoke the political
emergency, there has to be an immediate danger for the security of
everyone and a humanitarian catastrophe has to be in sight (the bigger,
the better). There has to be, in other words, a manageable apparatus
capable of "inventing" the emergency, as well inventing its conclusion
that will allow disengagement and the end of the commitment whether or
not there has been any solution of these problems. The attack against
Iran falls perfectly within this scenario and, looking at it carefully,
it's by now a nearly completed picture.

There are multiple pretexts available for the attack. The idea that Iran
intends upon developing a nuclear bomb and to destroy Israel is by now
widely recognized by everyone. What's missing are confirmations and
evidence beyond poor empty boasting, but in the past we have witnessed
terroristic boasting that has at any rate, come about and nobody is
willing to run the risk of underestimating it, not even for truth's
sake. An Iranian or Iranian-supported attack against the American
forces in Iraq, this too without a scrap of proof, has started to
persuade even the most sceptical people. Sooner or later, after much
speaking about it and evoking it, it will be taken as an invitation or
a challenge and it will really be carried out. The support Iran gives
to Hamas and Hezbollah makes Teheran extremely vulnerable. An excess or
mistake by one of these formations is sufficient to set off an
immediate military intervention.

The foreign policy of the most major nations, Europe included, is by now
used to the idea that a military intervention is able to bring Iran
back to the positions it was in 20 years ago. Moreover, what's starting
to be accepted is the idea that the purpose isn't only that of
preventing a nuclear power from rising but also that of terminating the
country as a regional player which embodies oil and strategic interests
in every part of south central Asia. Regarding the military planning
aspect, everything has already been prepared for a while. The plans for
the attack date back to 1979, at the time of the US embassy crisis, and
they have been updated with new technologies and strategies ever since.

The thesis that it's about an attack basically aimed at the atomic
installations with no collateral damage for the civil population is
only a miserable fantasy from those who have by now become used to
telling lies. Even the idea that it may be restricted to Iranian soil
is suspicious to say the least, since the end of the stubbornness and
the boastfulness of the Ayatollahs, on one side, and by the
Israeli-Americans, on the other, has to do with interests and ambitions
which go far beyond the Persian Gulf.

Whatever the kind of attack it may be, it will produce heavy military
and civil casualties regardless of whether or not a nuclear emergency
fall-out or a radiation leak is triggered. Any kind of attack must have
as its premise the destruction of defence structures: air and missile
bases, deposits, mobile ramps, military ports, naval units, radars and
anti-aircraft artilleries, land and armoured units, communication and
command headquarters will have to be eliminated before or during the
attack against the nuclear installations. 

Many of these structures are located near the most densely populated
areas. Even taking into account the most sophisticated cruise missiles,
the "intelligent" bombs directed against the targets by the Israeli and
American commandos, who have already been operative for some time in
Iran, a quite high margin of collateral effects remains. Were mini
nuclear fission bombs or neutron bombs to be used instead of the
conventional "bunker busting" bombs, the damage percentage might rise,
even thought not as greatly as many expect.

Also the thesis that precise attacks may be carried out with only one
component, the aerial and missile one, is a deception. A complex
operation, as they say they want to realize, that aims at bringing the
Iranian bellicose potential back to the stone age, requires multiple
attack actions, with many forces, from many directions and in short
lapses of time in order to prevent, as colonel Boyd used to say, any
capability of decision, reaction and counter-strategy by the enemy. The
multiple action has to also prevent the direct retaliation by the
Iranian air and naval forces against the oil installations and cargos
in the Persian and Oman Gulfs. It has to neutralise the missile threats
against the American military bases in Central Asia and the Middle
East. It has to prevent indirect Iranian strategic operations in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, the Caucasus area and
anywhere else a Shia may represent trouble. Moreover, Teheran controls
the northern coast of the Hormuz Straits and closing this seaway to oil
cargos might cause oil prices to skyrocket to levels between 200 and
400 dollars per barrel.

The same would happen if Iran turned sabotage actions and bombings
against the oil installations of other countries in the area. The
military strategy of the attack against Iran can't therefore be
entrusted to a surgical attack or to one single component. It can be
nothing but that of "Swarm Warfare" (or Horde Warfare), unearthed by
Arquilla and Ronfeld after the unmatchable realization by Gengis Khan.
In modern terms, this strategy makes all the components of war-land
operative, naval, air, missile, space, virtual and information ones- on
multiple settings and levels. To achieve all this, it's necessary that
the "swarm" of the various components and actions, which develop by
focusing on one place and then by spreading to other directions and
places, be are at least sufficient enough in order to prevent any sort
of reaction. The hordes entrusted with destroying the targets
materially have to get integrated and to focus on targets along with
the virtual hordes of diplomatic actions, of psychological warfare and
with those of the manipulation of information.

The military actions have to be aimed at creating a humanitarian
emergency that allows the international organizations to intervene in
Iranian territory. Obviously, the responsibility for the catastrophe
must be pinned on the Iranians themselves. Even in this respect,
everything is ready or practically ready, not least after Kouchner's
exhortation. International agencies and NGOs are already looking
forward to going to Iran to set women free from their chadors. If they
are given the chance to intervene so as to gather refugees, to treat
the wounded, to do the counts of the dead and to call elections every
month, there will be a rush to bring democracy to Iran.

This scenario's complexity shouldn't lead one to think that it's
necessary to deploy a huge amount of forces. The Israeli and American
flight formations' bombing capacities are so high that they can cover
multiple targets with a limited amount of jets. The naval missiles are
by now technological weapons that don't require mass interventions to
carry out precise or wide-scale destruction. If anything, the variety
of the plans and the kinds of intervention will bring about
coordination, command and control problems, yet nothing out of the
ordinary. The US and Israel have been cooperating for half a century
and the matters of pseudo-authorizations from third countries about
flying over or troops' transit are by now overcome both by political
accords with concerned countries and by the two powers' inclination to
ignore any objections.

What remains is the serious and important unknown of the
post-emergency. The doubt about the future of a state which retains
imperial origins and outlooks and which finds itself being turned from
"rogue state" into "loser state" and being regarded as a political and
strategic black hole after having been considered as aspiring to the
role of regional power. Deep uncertainty remains not so much for the
reaction to the defeat or the reduction of its aspirations but for the
reaction to the humiliation. What can't be ruled out is just what they
want to avoid, that is, Iran's nuclearization, still to be proved and
implemented, which might instead be favoured with the help of foreign
powers as a reaction to the humiliation. 


[Fabio Mini is an Italian General, 
former commander of the NATO forces in Kosovo.]

Italian original:
http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/Operazione-sciame-di-fuoco/1796788 

Also by Fabio Mini: "Even Escape is an Art," 
about the impossible disengagement from Iraq.
http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2005/08/even-escape-is-art-fabio-mini.html