[The author of the article below was Publisher and Editor of Earth Island
Journal, newsletter of the Earth Island Institute, for more than a decade.]

"Shock and Awe": Guernica Revisited
By Gar Smith

Forget Osama. Forget Saddam. The Pentagon's newest target is the city of
Baghdad.

US military strategists have announced a plan to pummel the Iraqi capital
with as many as 800 cruise missiles in the space of two days. If George W.
Bush gets the war he wants, Baghdad could become the 21st Century's
Guernica.

On April 26, 1937, 25 Nazi bombers dropped 100,000 pounds of bombs and
incendiaries on the peaceful Basque village. Seventy percent of the town was
destroyed and 1,500 people, a third of the population, were killed.

The Pentagon now predicts that its Baghdad blitzkrieg could approximate the
devastation of a nuclear explosion. "The sheer size of this has never
been... contemplated before," one Pentagon strategist boasted to CBS News.
"There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," a city of 5 million people.

A two-ton cruise missile can carry 1,000 pounds of high explosives. Twenty
cruise missiles can deliver the combined explosive impact of the atomic bomb
that devastated Hiroshima. The math is chilling: 800 cruise missiles equal
40 Hiroshima-scale explosions.

And some more math: A two-day salvo of 800 cruise missiles would subject the
population of Baghdad to a devastating new detonation every four minutes.
And, there is little comfort in the statement that these missiles are
"smart" weapons that strike their targets with pin-point accuracy for, as
Captain Ryan Henry, a Senior Fellow with the Center for Strategic &
International Studies observes: "Cruise missiles run normally 80% accuracy.
Four our of five usually explode on target."

In a bizarre combination of horror and admiration, the Pentagon has dubbed
its cold-blooded attack plan "Shock and Awe." Shock and Awe was the title of
a 1996 strategy book published by the Pentagon's national Defense
University. It was Harlan Ullman, one of the authors of the report, who
revealed the Pentagon's plan for "Rapid Dominance" to CBS News correspondent
David Martin.

S&A is not a new technique. It was employed extensively in Afghanistan,
particularly during Operation Anaconda, which involved massive aerial
bombing with thermobaric superbombs and conventional bombs weighing as much
as 10,000 pounds.

When the UN-backed coalition (lead by the US and Britain) attacked Iraq in
1991, the first volley included the launching of 100 cruise missiles in the
first 24 hours. As Christopher Hellman of the Washington-based, Center for
Defense Information noted, most of these missiles fell "in and around
Baghdad." The new attack plan would be even more deadly.

Ullman told CBS News that the effect of the planned attack would be "rather
like the nuclear weapons [sic] at Hiroshima." According to Ullman, this
airborne apocalypse would instantly vaporize "30 [Iraqi] division
headquarters." As a bonus, he added, "You also take the city down."

Shocking and Awful
In the book that he co-authored with James P. Wade, Ullman noted with
ghoulish appreciation, the effect that "total war" can have on the human
psyche. "One recalls from old photographs and movie or television screens,
the comatose and glazed expressions of survivors of the great bombardments
of World War I and the attendant horrors and death of trench warfare. These
images and expressions of shock transcend race, culture and history."

Shock and Awe tactics are intended to become "sufficiently intimidating and
compelling factors to force or otherwise convince an adversary to accept out
will," Ullman wrote. "Intimidation and compliance are the outputs we seek to
obtain by the threat of use or by the actual application of our alternative
force package." The "alternative force package" is a Pandora's box that also
contains cluster bombs, chemical weapons and nuclear explosives.

Shock and Awe may include the use of new experimental "electromagnetic"
weapons. In an article in the Economic Times, Ullman called for the use of
"Super tools and weapons - information-age equivalents of the atomic bomb."
Ullman specifically advocated the use of electromagnetic blasts to destroy
power and communications systems and permit the US invasion force to disrupt
human neurological systems, thereby allowing US forces "to control the will
and perception of adversaries.. It is about effecting behavior."

The human impact of the Pentagon's proposed "Hiroshima effect" was estimated
in a confidential document prepared by the UN World Health Organization,
which projected that "as many as 500,000 people could require treatment as a
result of direct and indirect injuries." Since half the population of
Baghdad is under the age of 14, it would be fair to say that the US is
prepared to murder and maim as many as a quarter million children.

'Total War' Equals Total Immorality
Shock and awe were the very emotions that Americans experienced on Sept. 11,
2001. Now, like the 9/11 terrorists, Bush and Co. are planning a similar act
of almost unparalleled ferocity - a devastating premeditated attack on a
civilian urban population.

Bush seems determined to follow in the footsteps of Hulagu Khan and
Tamerlane, the Mongol warlords who lay bloody waste to Baghdad in 1258 and
1401.

But destroying Baghdad will not uncover hidden chemical, biological or
nuclear weapons (if, in fact, any exist). Destroying Baghdad will not
capture, topple or kill Saddam Hussein. According to Ullman. The goal of the
Shock and Awe attack is to destroy the Iraqi people "physically, emotionally
and psychologically."

Ironically, this was also the goal of the Nazi strategists who destroyed
Guernica. The town had no strategic value as a military target, but - like
Baghdad - it was a cultural and religious center. Guernica was devastated to
terrorize the population and break the spirit of the Basque resistance.

Surely cruise missiles have been programmed to demolish the Baath Party
Headquarters, presidential palaces and Republican Guard compounds. But have
missiles also been preset to obliterate the al-Qadiriya Shrine, the Tomb of
Imam al-A'dham and the Mosque of Sheik Abdul Qadir al-Ghailani?

We now know that there was no military need to drop atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The detonations were intended to demonstrate to the
world - and to the Soviet Union, especially - that the US had a functioning
super-weapon. Having sole possession of "The Bomb" gave Washington the power
to dominate post-war world politics.

Similarly, the destruction of Baghdad seems designed to underscore Bush's
belligerent warning to the rest of the world: "You're either with us or
you're against us."

Washington's new National Security Strategy describes an America dominating
the world militarily, politically and economically.

In a report published a month before the US presidential elections, the
conservative Project for the New American Century insisted on instituting a
"global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and
shaping the international security order in line with American principles
and interests." This ringing endorsement of hyper-imperialism was
co-authored by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby and
Jeb Bush - none of whom (except for Rumsfeld) ever volunteered for military
service.

Crimes against Humanity
It is a violation of international law for any country to mount an attack on
another country that has not attacked it first. It is a violation of
international law to wage ware on civilians. Shock and Awe is, by admission,
an illegal strategy that puts the US in violation of signed treaty
obligations under the United Nations. An attack on Iraq with civilian deaths
counted in the tens (and possibly) hundreds of thousands would constitute a
"crime against humanity."

Today, thousands of citizen volunteers from around the world are converging
in Iraq to stand as nonviolent "human shields" in hopes of forestalling a US
assault. The brave men and women in this international "Peace Army" include
Muslims from South Africa, legislators from Italy, musicians from Germany
and scholars from America. Volunteers have come from Britain, Turkey,
Ireland, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Spain, and Denmark. Some have
traveled from as far as New Zealand. Activist in Jordan expect to field a
force of 100,000 human shields.

They include Muslims from South Africa, legislators from Italy, musicians
from Germany and scholars from America. The American volunteers include
anti-war activists, religious witnesses, retirees, US military veterans and
members of families who lost loved ones in the September 11 attack.

The US groups that have sent human shields to Iraq include Conscience
International, Voices in the Wilderness and Peaceful Tomorrow. The
Washington Post explained that their goal is to "act as human shields,
hunkering down in hospitals, water-treatment plants and other civilian
installations to dissuade US commanders from targeting those facilities."

Mr. Bush repeatedly complains that Saddam Hussein deserves to be removed
from office because "he killed his own people."

If Mr. Bush fails to promptly court martial the officials who came up with
the Shock and Awe atrocity, he may soon find himself standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with Mr. Hussein and facing history's judgement as
another ruthless leader who "killed his own people" in a mad bid for power.

This is an expanded version of an essay that appeared on the AlterNet
(www.alternet.org) syndication service on January 27, 2003.