Bush’s Blitzkrieg

Pundits love to say that Generals always fight every new war as if it were the last, but the current US invasion strategy harkens back to the Wermacht’s Blitzkrieg strategy more than any other recent innovation. The deliberate destruction of all civilian infrastructure and sanitary facilities coupled with the rapid, deep penetration to the edge of urban centres by the US ground forces – who then pause to enable the city’s resistance to collapse as they are doing at Basra – is reminiscent of the initial drive by the Germans through France, Poland, and Russia. Of course, if the “enemy” doesn’t crumple within a couple of weeks then you’ve got a more mundane and costly campaign of urban attrition. It worked well on France, where the Government quickly collapsed and its successor regime sued for peace. It didn’t work so well on the Russians, who simply retreated and stretched the German supply lines to breaking point.