Was the leadership campaign successful?

No. It failed miserably.

American planners like to measure the enemy in numbers of tanks, ships, and aircraft, and shy away from measuring him in less certain terms, such as his morale, military training, or motivation. Yet—for good reasons—American planners endow adversaries with the same intelligence and efficiency as they themselves possess. They tend to attack enemies as though they were housed in some foreign version of Washington, D.C. They “mirror-image” the enemy.

The Iraqis are as intelligent as any people, but, as it turned out, when it came to Saddam’s system of maintaining political and physical control, intelligence and efficiency were beside the point. The Baathists maintained control of the country by creating an Orwellian climate of mistrust. Iraqis not only feared the president and the secret police, they feared each other. Husbands were careful what they told their wives, in case their thoughts were relayed to the secret police. Parents could not trust their children, since the young were raised to inform even on their own fathers and mothers. If a friend confided to you a criticism of Saddam Hussein, you immediately reported it to the secret police, in case the friend had been induced to test your reliability.

And so, all the leadership targets were struck, and the leader stayed in power. The American planners failed to change the government of Iraq, because they did not understand how that government operated, and therefore how to attack it. They did not understand that Saddam stayed in power by creating an aura of crisis that caused his people to need him more than they needed change. The fear that motivated the average Iraqi citizen’s loyalty to Saddam was beyond their comprehension, because they had never experienced life under a repressive regime. They did not understand that they needed to target the fear, and they did not have either the smarts or the intelligence analysis to destroy the hold of fear on the Iraqi people. They did not understand that the bombing of Iraq ensured that hold was increased and not decreased.

And yet, since Iraqi troops in the field had little reason to love their dictator, many were persuaded to surrender without a fight. Thus, the fear by which Saddam maintained control over his nation worked for rather than against the Coalition’s battlefield success. In other words, killing Saddam may have turned out to be a serious mistake.

Likewise, in his paranoia, Saddam often had his top generals executed. The threat of execution sometimes concentrates the mind, but more often it leads to paralysis. This weakening of his military leadership could only benefit the Coalition. And finally, as General Schwarzkopf pointed out after the war, Saddam was a lousy strategist, and thus a good man to have in charge of Iraqi armed forces, under the circumstances.

NBC