Here is a really good post written by Volokh for his blog!Eugene Volokh, 5:36 AM]
SHOCK AND APPALL: The Ba'athists major tactic -- and the only one that seems even potentially successful -- seems to be to push the allies into doing things that would appall us (and, to some extent, appall other democracies and the Arab world). By shooting from ambulances, using hospitals as arms depots, using civilians as literal shields in firefights, using suicide bombers disguised as civilians, and so on, they hope to lead our soldiers to kill more civilians; this, their reasoning goes, would create such an outcry that we would back down from our attack.
This, in an odd way, is the flip side of the "shock and awe" campaign. Shock and appall is low-tech; shock and awe is high-tech. Shock and appall operates by bringing about the death of one's own civilians; shock and awe operates by bringing about the death of enemy leaders and military units. Shock and appall only works against Western democracies (imagine how the Chinese military, or even the Russian military, would react to such tactics); shock and awe would largely be practiced by Western democracies, because its principle of trying to inflict minimal enemy civilian deaths is largely one that's particularly appealing to those democracies.
But what they have in common is that they are in large part psychological warfare (as the very terms "awe" and "appall," and to some extent "shock," suggest), aimed at weakening enemy morale. Morale has always been a key part of warfare, but it seems to be especially critical to the two most noted features of both sides' tactics -- shock and awe, and shock and appall. Defeating the other side psychologically is the way that we can win the war on the terms that we want. Defeating us psychologically is the only way that the other side can win the war at all.
SHOCK AND APPALL: The Ba'athists major tactic -- and the only one that seems even potentially successful -- seems to be to push the allies into doing things that would appall us (and, to some extent, appall other democracies and the Arab world). By shooting from ambulances, using hospitals as arms depots, using civilians as literal shields in firefights, using suicide bombers disguised as civilians, and so on, they hope to lead our soldiers to kill more civilians; this, their reasoning goes, would create such an outcry that we would back down from our attack.
This, in an odd way, is the flip side of the "shock and awe" campaign. Shock and appall is low-tech; shock and awe is high-tech. Shock and appall operates by bringing about the death of one's own civilians; shock and awe operates by bringing about the death of enemy leaders and military units. Shock and appall only works against Western democracies (imagine how the Chinese military, or even the Russian military, would react to such tactics); shock and awe would largely be practiced by Western democracies, because its principle of trying to inflict minimal enemy civilian deaths is largely one that's particularly appealing to those democracies.
But what they have in common is that they are in large part psychological warfare (as the very terms "awe" and "appall," and to some extent "shock," suggest), aimed at weakening enemy morale. Morale has always been a key part of warfare, but it seems to be especially critical to the two most noted features of both sides' tactics -- shock and awe, and shock and appall. Defeating the other side psychologically is the way that we can win the war on the terms that we want. Defeating us psychologically is the only way that the other side can win the war at all.
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