The Military and The Media Minute 6

---

James Baker and the Desert Storm Legacy

on Strategypage.com

by Austin Bay  November 15, 2006

Iraqis haven't forgotten the aftermath of Desert Storm.  Shia Arabs and Kurds throughout Iraq rose up against Saddam's tyranny anticipating liberation. Instead, they got a dose of so-called Realpolitik -- mass murder and a return to dictatorship.

Pity any American military commander tasked with overseeing a post-Saddam Baghdad.  U.S. and allied forces liberating Iraq will attempt -- more or less simultaneously -- to end combat operations, cork public passions, disarm Iraqi battalions, bury the dead, generate electricity, pump potable water, bring law out of embittering lawlessness, empty jails of political prisoners, pack jails with criminals, turn armed partisans into peaceful citizens, re-arm local cops who were once enemy infantry, shoot terrorists, thwart chiselers, carpetbaggers and black-marketeers, fix sewers, feed refugees, patch potholes and get trash trucks rolling, and accomplish all this under the lidless gaze of Peter Jennings and Al-Jazeera.

Read COL Bay's articles at austinbay.com.