Shock and Awe Redux: 'The Largest Air Assault Operation'

Simultaneous with the third anniversary of the war in Iraq, the United States military has launched Operation Swarmer in Samarra, billed as the “largest air assault” since the war began. We can perhaps measure something of the status of the war through this latest effort. Here is how the event is described on the Operation Iraqi Freedom website:

“Operation Swarmer included more than 1,500 troops from the Iraqi Army’s 4th Division, the U.S. 101st Airborne Division and 101st Combat Aviation Brigade. The Soldiers isolated the objective area in a combined air and ground assault. More than 50 Attack and assault aircraft and 200 tactical vehicles participated in the operation. Troops from the Iraqi Army’s 4th Division… assaulted multiple objectives. Forces from the Iraqi 2nd Commando Brigade then completed a ground infiltration to secure numerous structures in the area. Initial reports indicate a number of weapons caches were captured, containing artillery shells, IED-making materials and military uniforms. Iraqi and Coalition troops also detained 41 suspected insurgents.”

One would be forgiven for thinking that through the impressive list above, the military is conveying a message of actual combat. In fact, the true meaning of “air assault” is the transportation of troops from one area to another, and does not imply any fighting. As Christopher Allbritton notes over at Back to Iraq, the entire operation was entirely overblown from the moment it began. For the duration, not a single shot has been fired, nor has any resistance been encountered. While 48 people have been detained, 17 were immediately released, and by the second day, the 1,500-strong force was reduced to 900.

All told, Operation Swarmer is entirely routine, and, depending on how you measure such affairs, is certainly not larger than the operations in Fallujah in 2004 nor others that have taken place along the Syrian border. As the BBC notes, it is merely the next in a long line of regular maneuvers, and is, in fact, a continuation of one already begun earlier in the month. It is, therefore, nothing more than a PR stunt. From the first moment, there was a gaggle of press along to snap photos of multiple helicopters taking off at once and troops running out of transports in all directions. Brian Bennett, who was along on one of the rides for Time Magazine, gives a good account of the aimlessness of the whole affair.

But however empty the experience might have been, the primary domestic goal was achieved. The fourth estate’s 24-hour news programs were all abuzz with a major development in Iraq, and this in the city whose name nearly became the label for descent into civil war. And here, at the dawn of the fourth year, we can detect a remarkable feature of the conflict:

The military, no longer able to sell the prospect of victory, has begun to sell itself. Large operations are proof that things are happening, and there is a certain confidence that momentum can inspire. That no insurgents were engaged hardly seems to matter, for it is no longer the results, but the operation itself that holds the promise of progress in Iraq. This is the talking point for the Administration. When they mention the progress being made, what they mean is that they are still capable of synchronizing a flight of 50 aircraft. Operation Swarmer is as much a display of hardware as anything else. And the hardware is evidence that the military is still there. From the mainstream response, that is all that is required to keep the war drums beating.

None of this alters the fact that the war is going nowhere. The oblique and ever-contracting criteria for victory will not surmount the problems involved. The position of the United States is untenable, and no amount of air assaults will alter that - least of all fabricated assaults.