The Gulf War Myth of Invulnerability is Finally Laid to Rest

On 16 January, 1991, President George Bush announced the beginning of the New World Order which, in his words, would replace the “law of the jungle.” The NWO would bring about the end of nations, all of them subjugated and erased under a new system of global homogeneity (globohomo). But for such a “rules based world order” to reign supreme, it was necessary to have a military force that was equally supreme. Not just stronger than every other military force, but stronger than every other military force combined. Such a military force has never existed in all of human history – not even Alexander’s phalanxes, the Roman legions, or the Mongol Horde, could defeat everybody. Every conquering army, including all of the examples I just listed, eventually reached their limits and could expand no further. No military, no matter how large and powerful, is invincible, and certainly isn’t invincible everywhere. So the NWO did something different. They didn’t create an invincible military, they simply created the illusion that it was invincible. The NWO needed a victory that was so crushing and so one-sided, it would convince the entire world that any resistance against the NWO would end the same way.

And for that role, Saddam Hussein was the useful idiot who helpfully volunteered. He deployed his forces with mostly-Soviet equipment out in the open desert without proper anti-air defenses or ISR, and then mismanaged it so egregiously, the NWO stomped them with almost no effort at all. Huge Iraqi armored formations got annihilated in humiliatingly one-sided battles.

Back in January, I wrote this on my Quora page:

The M1 Abrams is a very good tank with a lot going for it. However, it is not a wunderwaffen. The Abrams is a tool, and like all tools, it is not perfect, and has roles it is unsuited for. The first major problem is that it is very expensive and has a huge logistical footprint. It is also a very heavy tank with comparatively low torque that might struggle with Ukraine’s deep mud, and be unable to pass over some of their bridges. Soviet and Russian tanks were built for combat in eastern Europe with these environmental considerations. The Abrams was not.

Perhaps a bigger reason is the Abram’s status as wunderwaffen. I did just say it isn’t actually a wunderwaffen, but that’s how it is portrayed in the media. In the first Gulf War, Abrams tanks chewed up obsolete export model T-72s with almost untrained Iraqi crews, and this easy victory has been propagandized in the American media ever since. It is absolutely vital to our government that Americans believe that wars can be fought “bloodlessly” with few or no casualties on our side, and there is no risk of being defeated.

But despite this reputation of being invulnerable, the Abrams is just like any other tank, it can be destroyed – even by low-tech weapons in the hands of insurgents. Quite a few Abrams tanks were torn to pieces in the Yemen war. And I do not mean that as an attack on the effectiveness of the Abrams, I’m just pointing out that, at the end oft he day, the Abrams is just another weapon.

Same goes for the Germans’ Leopard II, which suffered appalling losses in the Turks’ war in Syria.

However, American audiences are generally unaware of these “low-intensity conflicts” in the middle east, and our journalists can dismiss the losses as the fault of the untermenschen Turk and Saudi tank crews. But if we give our most advanced main battle tanks to the blonde blue eyed Aryan Ukrainians in their very high profile war against Russia, I’m not sure such losses will be so easy to dismiss.

An obvious counter-point to my statement would be the HIMARS. However, the HIMARS operates in very small numbers, and losses can be dismissed as “Russian disinformation.” That wouldn’t help the Abrams. A full-scale armored assault with MBTs would inevitably incur many destroyed tanks, and that would be impossible to cover up or dismiss as Kremlin propaganda. The Abrams’ status as an invincible super weapon would be forever tarnished.

My article provoked outrage, with many NATO trolls telling me I’m wrong.

I argue that, as Bush said, the Gulf War marked the birth of the NWO. Or more specifically, the birth of the armed forces of the NWO. At this point, the American armed forces would cease to exist as a military formation and become a brand. The USA was known to have good weapons, and that had been true for a long time already, but they were never seen as invincible weapons. For example, the M4 Sherman medium tank was arguably one of the best weapons in WWII, but no one considered it invincible, and it would be ridiculous to even suggest that. And the same goes for every other American weapon up until the 1990s. Everybody knew that if a conventional war broke out between NATO and the Soviet bloc in Europe, thousands of American tanks, IFVs, and aircraft would be destroyed in a grueling war of attrition and it would be delusional to think there would be any other outcome.

But after 1991, all of that changed. A new “alternative fact” entered the western public consciousness. NWO weapons aren’t just better than everyone else’s, they’re actually invincible. One M1 Abrams can defeat 100,000 T-72s. One F-16 can shoot down the entire combined air forces of Russia and China. One A-10 can destroy 1 million enemy BMPs in one attack run and is impossible to shoot down. One Patriot launcher can intercept Russia’s entire nuclear arsenal. #facts.

In short, declaring NWO weapons to be invincible because of the Gulf War is like me claiming that I’m a world MMA champion because I kicked a lame duck. The so-called “Global War on Terror” further entrenched this illusion that NWO weapons are invincible, but cracks started to appear in the facade. Not only did NWO forces have vastly more equipment and firepower than their guerrilla enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan, they had significant, often absurd, numerical superiority. We’re talking about thousands of troops trying to root out a few dozen Taliban fighters, and completely failing at it. And in both countries, NWO-trained troops, “trained to the NATO standard” as they love to say, failed miserably in combat against technologically and numerically inferior foes.

The harsh reality is that the NWO and its imperial predecessors have an extremely pedestrian track record when it comes to fighting and winning conventional battles. I said as much last year after the Ukrainian offensive failed to encircle significant numbers of Russian troops and vehicles. Like in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, an American-trained and controlled army was too ponderous and uncoordinated to pin down the enemy and defeat him.

Now, to address some of the commonly repeated excuses for Ukraine losing so much NWO equipment so quickly. The most frequently repeated excuse I have seen lately is that NWO weapons like the Bradley IFV and Leopard II are meant for “combined arms” warfare. When people say this, they are clearly invoking the Gulf War, that famous “combined arms” maneuver. But really, what these commentators actually mean is “our weapons work, but only when the enemy doesn’t do anything to stop us.” The reason, the only reason, the Gulf War was such a success is because Saddam Hussein was under the impression that his allies in Washington weren’t going to attack him, and was totally astonished when they did. In real wars, you know, wars in which the enemy is actually expecting you to attack them and prepares for it, winning is much harder.

Case in point, the much celebrated preemptive strike to preserve western democracy, Operation Barbarossa. 3.8 million NATO Axis troops inflicted about 4.5 million military casualties on the Soviets, while suffering a little over 1 million casualties themselves. At first glance, this seems like a great victory, but was actually disastrous. 1 million is a lot less than 4.5 million, but this 1 million was concentrated in Hitler’s first echelon combat units, and reflects an enormous loss of life, vehicles, and equipment. Worse still, they failed to achieve their objectives. Just to see by how much they failed, to reach their objectives, consider this map from Wikipedia:

Axis troops were supposed to reach the Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan (A-A) line by the end of their advance. Their advance stalled long before they got even close, which is understandable considering their casualties. The West achieved tactical surprise, but did not have strategic surprise like in the Gulf War. The Soviet defense, both from a military and economic perspective, had been prepared, and it succeeded.

German planners in 1940-41, like NWO planners in Ukraine now, made all their plans on the assumption that they would encounter no effective reason. That’s the only way their plans would work, so it should come as no surprise that they failed.

I’ve already covered what I think of the offensive so far:

If you’re curious what happens to unsupported infantry, well, here’s a video from my YouTube channel:

From talking to people on social media, even military veterans from the GWOT, it’s easy to understand why the early Ukrainian attacks starting on 4 June failed so disastrously. I very often see some retired infantry guy on Facebook or Quora insisting that tanks are effective if they have an “infantry screen.” Whenever I see one of these guys, I ask him how this “infantry screen” protects from ATGM launchers or helicopters 5-8 kilometers away; this always make them mad and they accuse me of being a Russian-paid troll. The problem is that these guys, even guys who have seen actual combat in a western military, are used to fighting teenagers hiding behind a window with a 1970s RPG. They literally can’t even imagine the idea of fighting an equal enemy who also has long range weapons. It’s not even in their mental universe and it’s amazing to contemplate. I’ve seen Apache and Super Cobra helicopters at work, both in training ranges and in combat, so it’s easy for me to understand what happens to an armored column when it’s not adequately protected. But apparently, I’m in the minority. The NWO sent columns of Ukrainian vehicles straight into Russian defenses like a patrol in Iraq. It’s impossible to even comprehend how they could make such a stupid mistake unless you realize that these military planners believe their own bullshit about being invincible.

A while back, before this Ukrainian offensive started, I wrote a review of a War on the Rocks article by an American SF officer. I basically dismissed his story as deliberate disinformation. The reason I dismissed his claims because his claims were so divorced from reality I refused to believe he was actually being serious.

Apparently… I was wrong. The author stated that the Ukrainian leadership is too “Soviet” and backwards, which made no sense to me but apparently it’s true, NATO leaders do have this perception of Ukrainian generals. They consider Soviet influence and doctrine poisonous and have gone to great lengths to get rid of it. According to the newest HistoryLegends video, the new Ukrainian storm brigades are comprised entirely of “green” troops with young officers, sometimes absurdly young. He also gives a synopsis of the Ukrainian offensive so far, and goes into some detail of how columns of Leopards, Bradleys, MRAPs, and BMPs got mired in Russian minefields and destroyed from afar.

Ian Kummer

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7 thoughts on “The Gulf War Myth of Invulnerability is Finally Laid to Rest”

    • I know, it’s interesting watching Nemesis approaching on the heels of Hubris.

      I read a comment somewhere recently saying that it’s a bit stupid calling for Carthage to be destroyed when you live in Carthage, but to be honest, I’m sick of all the child sacrifice and the sooner the Romans come and put a stop to it, the better.

      Reply
  1. We are witnessing evolution-in-real-time with respect to military operations in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Technology is outstripping conventional strategies at an accelerating pace, and traditional armored assaults are about to go the way of the battleship. As an example, minefields used to be static things that could be mitigated with sappers, but not anymore. Minefields can now be laid dynamically after a successful clearing operation thereby nullifying the initial benefit. Aerial drones now rule the skies, but what happens when landmines become mobile, intelligent, and autonomous? And mass produced at minor cost. When a few hundred land drones costing a few hundred thousand dollars takes out a billion dollars worth of armor in a single engagement, the economics alone do not bode well for victory.

    Is the US military capable of learning this lesson? Methinks only hard knocks can cure this delusion, and a lot of fine young soldiers are going to have to pay for that stupidity with their lives.

    Reply
  2. “They didn’t create an invincible military, they simply created the illusion that it was invincible”

    I swallowed the lie back then. One must admit Anglo-Saxons are very good at lying. They’re also good as selling defeats as… sort of victories. Look at the movies about Vietnam or A Bridge Too Far.

    Reply
  3. The problem is that these delusions can have real world repercussions that aren’t at all funny. I remember very well in 2014-15 how suddenly the Obama regime started planting stories in the media that “limited nuclear war” was not just “fightable” but “winnable” and all Russian nuclear missiles would be “destroyed in the boost phase”. Once the regime itself believes its fantasies it could act on them.

    Reply
  4. Important stuff. My only contribution is anecdotal observation, that once confronted with in-your-face evidence contradicting and falsifying prior belief, there is often a multi-year time lag before it registers in the mind. The better part of a decade, when talking about organizations.

    So don’t look for any impact whatsoever at a political / governmental big picture level. Do look for changes at the smaller scale tho. Ukraine and Russia both are clearly adapting fast at the micro level.

    Reply

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