Review the mother of all battles, Saddam Hussein’s Strategic Plan For The Persian Gulf War

Woods, Kevin, the mother of all battles, Saddam Hussein’s Strategic Plan For The Persian Gulf War, Naval Institute Press, 2008

 

the mother of all battles, Saddam Hussein’s Strategic Plan For The Persian Gulf War was the first book in the Iraqi Perspectives Project. Using captured Baath documents Kevin Woods attempted to give the Iraqi side of the Gulf War. He showed how Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership had a completely different mindset than their Western opponents. This explains how Saddam believed that he won the Gulf War.

 

The book begins with the Battle of al-Khafaji to lay out how the Iraqis saw the conflict. In January 1991 the Iraqis launched a multi-division attack upon the Saudi border town of Khafaji. There was a diversionary attack to draw the Coalition’s attention which went off well while the main thrust took Khafaji. The Iraqis were eventually pushed out with heavy losses.

 

This completely confused the Coalition because it couldn’t understand why Iraq assaulted the town. Khafaji was not important and the Iraqi army was mauled. The Iraqi papers highlight that Saddam and his commanders wanted to carry out an operation before they were on the defensive. The attack showed that the Iraqi military could carry off a large operation against the superior Coalition. It was also considered a sign of strength and Saddam’s leadership. Finally, they believed that it disrupted the Coalition’s plans for retaking Kuwait. The casualties did not matter at all to Saddam and his military.

 

This was a microcosm of how Iraq saw the entire Gulf War. To the Coalition they had expelled Iraq from Kuwait and inflicted massive losses upon the Iraqi military and the country overall. It was an overwhelming victory. On the Iraqi side however Saddam believed that the ultimate goal of the war was to remove him and yet he remained in power. The simple fact that the Iraqi military had put up a fight and was still intact was also seen as a win. Those were far more important than losing Kuwait. Ultimately surviving was what mattered the most.

 

the mother of all battles provides some other interesting points. For instance, it gives insight into why Saddam invaded Kuwait. After the Iran-Iraq War he wanted to establish himself as the leader of the Arab world. He also believed the U.S. and Israel were plotting against him using his southern neighbor. He thought taking Kuwait would rally people behind him and show how powerful Iraq was. Another time it quotes Iraqi officials such as Ali Hassan al-Majid who was governor of Kuwait. He thought the Kuwaitis needed to be abused because they were inferior to Iraqis. The country itself was to be stripped of its resources to enrich Iraq. Saddam bought trucks from Jordan just to load up Kuwaiti goods and take them to Iraq.

 

Of the three Iraqi Perspectives books this might be the best one. It shows how the two sides had completely different world views. As Woods points out Western histories only contain the Coalition’s thoughts and therefore are just providing half the picture. Not only that but they often get Iraq’s motivations wrong because they think Saddam thought the same way as the West when he did not. Now both sides of the coin can be described via the Baath documents. the mother of all battles is doubly important because the Gulf War set up the entire relationship between Iraq and the U.S. until 2003. Neither side understood the other which led to the decade plus of confrontation and eventually a second war.

 

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