Desert Sunrise

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

David Clark

February 2003

This alternate history considers what could have been a different course of events at the conclusion of the Gulf War in 1991. The point of divergence from our own time line is the conference in Washington, D.C. on February 27, 1991. In our real world the cease fire plan that was actually laid out by Colin Powell in this meeting set the course of events for the final hours of Operation Desert Storm. All events and quotations prior to that moment are genuine and taken from historical sources.

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Saddam Hussein’s invasion of neighboring Kuwait on August 2, 1990 brought an unexpectedly strong reaction from American President George Bush. Within days American forces were landing in Saudi Arabia beginning what would become Operation Desert Shield. Bush then set out to forge an international coalition to expel the Iraqi army from Kuwait. The coalition that President Bush built drew its authority from the United Nations and its strength from the armed forces of virtually every nation in the free world. In a speech in November he invoked the nation to a great moral crusade in the struggle of good versus evil. “I pledge to you: there will not be any murky ending. I will never, ever agree to a halfway effort.”

Behind this blunt language was a considerable ambiguity in American war aims. General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff argued for a clearly defined and achievable set of objectives. How could this be aligned with the President’s stated objective of enhancing the “security and stability of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf”? If Iraq left, or was driven from Kuwait, but Saddam remained in power, could this be achieved? The various Arab states seemed to want Saddam to be removed from power but preferred to wait for divine intervention rather than agree to the more messy alternatives. The specter of the Vietnam quagmire haunted many of these deliberations. As the shooting war began these questions remained largely unresolved.

On January 17, 1991 with the clock run out on the ultimatum for Iraq to withdraw peacefully from Kuwait and Operation Desert Shield gave way to Operation Desert Storm. Air units of the various nations that had joined the coalition against Iraq hammered targets inside Kuwait and Iraq around the clock. For five weeks, the campaign ground away the strength of the Iraqi army and slowly strangled its supply lines. Meanwhile, unseen by both Iraq and the rest of the world, the coalition ground forces began a massive redeployment in preparation for the ground war that would follow the air campaign if Iraq still failed to comply with the demands of the United Nations. Ultimately the coalition front line stretched out one hundred miles into the desert beyond the flank of the last defending Iraqi unit.

The ground war began on February 24, G Day, as forces from the 1^st and 2^nd Marine divisions and the Arab units in the Joint Forces Command crossed the border into Kuwait. The plan was for the flanking forces to wait a day before launching their own attack. But the advance broke through so rapidly that Schwarzkopf soon became concerned that the Marines were exposing their open flank to a counterattack. With a hasty improvisation the timing for the VII Corps attack was moved up by 15 hours. Late on G Day the advance into the Iraq along this front also began.

The VII Corps and, farther west, the XVIII Airborne Corps were also able to advance far more quickly than anyone had expected. Many Iraqi units simply crumbled under the first shock of combat and their soldiers began to surrender in huge numbers. By February 26, G Day + 2, the coalition forces were deep inside Kuwait and Iraq and pressing hard against the Republican Guard divisions that formed the remaining hard core of resistance.

At 8:42pm, local time, on the night of February 25 a Scud missile crashed through the roof of a warehouse at the Al Khobar airfield in Saudi Arabia that was being used as a barracks for U.S. Army Reserve units. The explosion killed 28 Americans and wounded 98 others. Because of a chain of technical glitches there was almost no warning of the incoming missile and the Patriot missile that was fired to intercept missed by a wide margin.

In the midafternoon of February 27, the President sat down with his circle of close advisors for the daily meeting on the progress of the war. General Colin Powell began the briefing and started to lay out the case for an imminent cessation of the fighting. With Kuwait now fully liberated and the Iraqi army broken, he suggested that it was time to end the bloodshed and offer Iraq a cease fire.

For the past several weeks the President had remained largely silent during these meetings, allowing his experts to direct the course of the war. Now he spoke with firm conviction, “I’ve been thinking a lot about the men and women who died in that Scud attack on Al Khobar. Saddam has proven again that he will try to kill our people at any time or place, even in circumstances that can not possibly affect the outcome of the fighting. If we allow a regime that believes in such wanton violence to remain in power what kind of a situation are we leaving ourselves for the future?”

“With respect Mr. President, our mandate from the United Nations is to force Iraq to leave Kuwait, not to bring about a change in the Iraqi government.”

“Colin, what do you imagine that history would have to say about Franklin Roosevelt today if he and Churchill and Stalin had declared a cease fire in 1945 when our boys first arrived on the Rhine? They had liberated Poland and France by then. Would that result have justified all the blood and sacrifice that it took to get there?”

“Continuing the war now is just going to prolong a pointless slaughter,” stated one of the other men at the table, “We have always expected that when Saddam is sufficiently weakened there will be elements in the army or elsewhere who will rise up and dispose of him.”

“Can any of you promise me that these dissident army officers, that we imagine to exist, or any of the other possible opposition groups are really going to be able to overthrow Saddam once we stop our own attacks?”

“Of course not Mr. President. Nothing is ever certain in this kind of thing but we can expect …”

“The Germans tried to over throw Hitler and failed,” Bush cut in, “General Powell, can you promise me that our troops can get to Baghdad in less than a week?”

“Yes sir. I can, but I can’t promise you what our losses will be.”

“I’ll take the responsibility for that. We’re going to put an end to Saddam here and now. Get on the line with Norm and find out which of our assets are ready to move. I’ll talk to Majors. As far as the press and the rest of the world are concerned, our forces are still engaged in the liberation of Kuwait and the pursuit of the Iraqi army. We’ll worry about what the Arabs think when somebody notices.”

A flurry of activity erupted in General Norman Schwarzkopf’s Central Command headquarters. “We have new orders to engage surviving Iraqi assets westwards from our current positions along both the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. Who can we turn around the fastest and send that way?” For those few in the know it was too soon yet to utter the B word. It was now G Day + 3 and resistance in Kuwait was at an end with Arab units gleefully handling the cleanup of Iraqi stragglers. The 2^nd Armored Cavalry Regiment and 3^rd Armored Division were turned around in their tracks and given new march orders heading northwest. Third Armored would advance to the Euphrates and then sweep upstream along the south bank of the river. Second Cavalry would cross the Euphrates and direct its advance upstream between the two rivers. The 24^th Infantry Division was already on the Euphrates. It was ordered to cross both rivers to the north bank of the Tigris, pause long enough to ensure that VII Corps had completely sealed the Basra pocket, and then begin advancing upstream. The 101^st Airborne, sitting unmolested in the middle of the Iraqi desert, was given 24 hours to get two of its battalions ready to mount up on choppers and move to a new undisclosed location. Having arrived at their current location only three days before with no combat so far, much of their gear had never even been unpacked and was ready to go.

February 28, G Day + 4, found VII Corps advancing steadily eastwards towards Basra against collapsing resistance from the Republican Guard divisions. Other arrows on the big map marked units that had moved rapidly north and were now swinging to the northwest. Behind them the British 1^st Armored Division was also redirecting its axis of advance as quickly as fuel could be gotten to the thirsty vehicles. Fuel in the theater as a whole was never an issue. Stocks had been built up in anticipation of a two week ground war with ample reserves above that. Getting the fuel and other supplies to the front line units required an intricate dance of trucks moving back and forth in both directions. Despite some moments of confusion and temporary local shortages the supply corps proved themselves to be up to the job.

Late in the afternoon the 101^st Airborne swooped down to establish a new base, Forward Operating Base (FOB) Tiger, sixty miles southeast of Baghdad. Their mission was to interdict Iraqi forces moving in either direction and to establish a new fueling base for helicopters and advancing ground units. No resistance was encountered on the ground. During the night ground elements of the 2^nd Cavalry passed through FOB Tiger heading north. Their helicopters began using the new base as their point of replenishment.

In Washington the President and his advisers were alternately conferring and working the phones. Gorbachev inquired again to offer his services at mediating a peace agreement. Prime Minister Majors called and was briefed on the progress of the advance.

And then, “The Saudi ambassador is inquiring as to our intentions in Iraq. He wishes to know how much longer the fighting is going to continue and hopes that we are not considering exceeding the mandate for the liberation of Kuwait.”

“Remind him that there were ten Scud launches last night. Four of them targeted on Saudi Arabia. As long as Saddam wants to continue the fight, the war isn’t over.”

“The ambassador suggests that circumstances could conceivably arise where the Saudi government would have to ask the United States government to cease their use of bases in the Kingdom for the supply of units that were conducting aggressive operations against an Arab state.”

“Please convey to the ambassador that so long as fighting continues, the United States would consider any interruption to our supply lines as a direct threat to the safety and well being of our soldiers in the field. We would deeply regret if any sort of misunderstandings in this area could mar the cordial relations that exist between our two countries.”

March 1, G Day + 5, brought the mass surrender of the surviving Republican Guard units in the Basra pocket. The 2^nd Cavalry and 24^th Infantry advanced to the outskirts of Baghdad crushing scattered points of resistance as a few die-hard Iraqi units tried to make a stand. They then set about dismantling, by fire and overrun, the enormous air defense system that surrounded the city. As coalition air assets continued to make pinpoint strikes into the city any element of the air defenses that was still manned was systematically destroyed.

On the night of March 1, reconnaissance assets spotted numerous convoys of Iraqi vehicles moving northwest from Baghdad on the road to Tikrit. The Iraqi command had finally been flushed into the open. Apache helicopters descended on the column with Hellfire missiles, working in from the ends to trap as many vehicles as possible. Aircraft added their bomb loads and cannon fire into the maelstrom. Days later ground forces would identify the bodies of Saddam Hussein and a number of his senior generals and entourage amongst the wreckage.

The next morning Peter Arnett was making his regular report from Baghdad when the sound of an armored column was heard advancing down the main boulevard. CNN broadcasts immediately cut to the live coverage of the 2^nd Armored Cavalry Regiment entering the city. “This is Peter Arnett for CNN in Baghdad. I am watching before me a column of American armored vehicles moving towards the center of the city. There are no shots being fired but the American vehicles are buttoned up and none of the soldiers are visible. The streets this morning are almost deserted. I see a few civilians standing and watching this unbelievable sight. Their faces are almost expressionless. Whether they are too shocked and stunned to react or whether they are just wary of showing any signs of emotion I can not say.”

The formal cease fire came into affect at 12 noon, local time, on March 2, 1991. The central government in Iraq had by now collapsed but a remnant of the army staff remained to sign the agreement and radio orders to the surviving units in the field.

The speed and overwhelming success of the military campaign sent shock waves through certain parts of the world. Both China and Russia, whose armed forces had been the model for Iraq’s own, were completely stunned by the speed at which Iraq had crumbled. Iran also became the most quiet and inoffensive neighbor possible while looking across its border at the coalition forces massed in Basra.

Inevitably some of the coalition partners objected to the unilateral way in which the United States had expanded upon the more limited original objectives of the war. These objections began to melt away as the occupiers uncovered the full scope of Iraq’s weapons programs and the depths of its crimes against its own people. To the Arab states Bush gave a serious of promises and reassurances that the case of Iraq had been absolutely unique and none of them need ever fear a similar interference in their sovereignty. Provided of course that they continued to respect their neighbors.

With the end of hostilities the various ethnic groups that had been so badly suppressed by the Saddam regime began to surface and demand their place in the new government. Most prominent amongst these were the Kurds in the northern part of the country and the Shi’ites in the south. The United States, having created the power vacuum, deftly side stepped the responsibility by passing it back to the United Nations and the Arab League. President Bush, ever the coalition builder, began to mend his fences with the Arab states by drawing them into the partnership for the reconstruction of Iraq. This soon began to be referred to as Operation Desert Sunrise. Matters did not often progress easily or in a straight line. The desire of the United States for a freely elected government in Iraq stumbled against the obstinately anti-democratic traditions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There was also a certain lack of viable candidates amongst the different factions vying for power and the desire of some of these factions to split off into separate countries. Only over the course of years did a stable and legitimate government gradually emerge in Iraq.

One area that quickly ceased to be a concern was the cost of the rebuilding. Iraq’s oilfields had fallen into the hands of the coalition forces largely intact. It was only a matter of weeks before Iraq was able to begin “selling” this oil again on the world market. The funds themselves went into a trust account managed by a committee of the United Nations. Some of the proceeds went into the costs of repairing damages in Kuwait, particularly the lost production of Kuwait’s own oil fields. Much of the rest was turned back into the rebuilding of infrastructure in Iraq. The output of Iraqi oil was kept at the prewar level of Iraqi plus Kuwaiti production. This served to stabilize the price of oil on the world market, which in turn kept Saudi Arabia content. It was also hinted to the Saudis, in a very circumspect way, that the coalition could just as easily flood the world market with Iraqi oil if Saudi Arabia acted upon any of its misgivings about the outcome of the war. The oil industry executives in the United States were quietly ecstatic about the whole arrangement.

Much later, Bush admitted privately that his one great fear, after deciding on the advance to Baghdad, had been that the forces involved might suffer such heavy casualties that he would be hard pressed to justify the action to the nation. “I never worried much about how our allies would react to our deposing Saddam. It would be obvious enough after the fact that we had chosen the right course. But I worried about how I would be able to explain a great loss of life to the American people and whether they would understand that it was for the sake of our future. Fortunately the casualties during the final three days of fighting were very light.”

The world moved on. Arkansas governor Bill Clinton ran for and won the 1992 Democratic Presidential nomination in a campaign many other possible candidates watched from the sidelines. President Bush’s reelection was widely considered to be inevitable.

The President’s decisions during the Gulf War came up repeatedly during the campaign. His widely quoted remark in a Fargo, South Dakota classroom, “I decided that the United States was not going to do the wimp thing”, summed up the case for many people. In the first Presidential debate he was somewhat more eloquent, “I alone made the decision that we would not stop the war halfway to our goal. It took great courage to make that decision and there were those who thought that we should not run the risk. However, even I had underestimated the depths of evil in Saddam’s regime until we were able to sift through the captured files of his secret police in the prisons of Baghdad. Anyone who questions our achievement in the cause of freedom should begin first by speaking with the Iraqi people. And I can assure you that the world is a better place today because of the sacrifices of our fine men and women in the armed forces.”

Despite a lackluster economy and discontent over his decision to raise taxes, Bush was able to ride his successes in the Gulf War to a landslide victory at the polls. On November 3, 1992 he received an overwhelming 62 percent of the popular vote and carried every state except Arkansas and the District of Columbia. Bill Clinton returned to Arkansas from his defeat to complete his term as governor. After one final bid for the U.S. Senate he followed the trail of fellow Democratic challengers Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis into political obscurity.