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The National Interest
Slogan or Strategy?
Harlan Ullman
Abstract
06.01.2006
While the phrase and concept for "shock and awe" were invented over a decade ago, it was not until the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom on March 19, 2003, that the term gained its veritable 15 minutes of fame. As the inventor of the phrase and the co-chairman of a group of retired senior military and former civilian defense officials responsible for creating the construct, the brief attention was both an interesting and frustrating moment. With bombs and Tomahawk cruise missiles raining down on Baghdad and other targets in Iraq, the Pentagon announced that a campaign of "shock and awe" was being waged against Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi army.
A day or so after the attacks began, London's Daily Telegraph ran, under a two-inch headline that trumpeted "Baghdad Blitz", a spectacular photo of an American bomb exploding somewhere in the Iraqi capital. The print and electronic media erroneously seized on the notion of shock and awe as a massive and therefore indiscriminate bombing campaign reminiscent of World War II, designed to cripple and incapacitate the entire country--not just destroy the regime. The Bush Administration recognized this public relations disaster in the making, and as suddenly as it had attracted attention, the phrase vanished without a trace.
Shock and awe, and the attendant concept of "rapid dominance", were meant to be the polar opposites of what was being portrayed in the press as akin to the massive bombing campaigns of World War II and the use of overwhelming force to defeat an enemy by literally destroying its army, navy and air force in a firepower-dominated, attrition style of warfare. Attrition-oriented warfare aims to wear out or destroy the enemy by wearing down his forces far more quickly and efficiently than our forces are degraded in combat.