L’apocalypse selon Lind

William S. Lind est particulièrement pessimiste, quant à la possibilité d’une attaque américaine contre l’Iran. Il est encore plus pessimiste quant aux conséquences de cette attaque.

Dans sa dernière chronique, sur Antiwar.com, il détaille une hypothèse qu’il a déjà évoquée, parallèlement, semble-t-il, à Donald Rumsfeld. Il s’agit du sort du corps expéditionnaire américain en Irak. Lind estime que ce corps serait un objectif privilégié des Iraniens cherchant à riposter à l’éventuelle attaque US contre leurs installations nucléaires.

Voici les explications de Lind, qui semblent refléter certaines préoccupations qui existeraient au sein de l’U.S. Army.

«What I fear no one foresees is a substantial danger that we could lose the army now deployed in Iraq. I have mentioned this in previous columns, but I want to go into it here in more detail because the scenario may soon go live.

»Well before the second Iraq war started, I warned in a piece in The American Conservative that the structure of our position in Iraq could lead to that greatest of military disasters, encirclement. That is precisely the danger if we go to war with Iran.

»The danger arises because almost all of the vast quantities of supplies American armies need come into Iraq from one direction, up from Kuwait and other Gulf ports in the south. If that supply line is cut, our forces may not have enough stuff, especially fuel, to get out of Iraq. American armies are incredibly fuel-thirsty, and though Iraq has vast oil reserves, it is short of refined oil products. Unlike Guderian's Panzer army on its way to the Channel coast in 1940, we could not just fuel up at local gas stations.

»There are two ways our supply lines from the south could be cut if we attack Iran. The first is by Shi'ite militias including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, possibly supported by a general Shi'ite uprising and, of course, Iran's Revolutionary Guards (the same guys who trained Hezbollah so well).

»The second danger is that regular Iranian Army divisions will roll into Iraq, cut our supply lines, and attempt to pocket us in and around Baghdad. Washington relies on American air power to prevent this, but bad weather can shut most of that air power down.

»Unfortunately, no one in Washington and few people in the U.S. military will even consider this possibility. Why? Because we have fallen victim to our own propaganda. Over and over the U.S. military tells itself, “We're the greatest! We're number one! No one can defeat us. No one can even fight us. We're the greatest military in all of history!”

»It's bull. The U.S. armed forces are technically well-trained, lavishly resourced Second Generation militaries. They are being fought and defeated by Fourth Generation opponents in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They can also be defeated by Third Generation enemies who can observe, orient, decide, and act more quickly than can America's vast, process-ridden, PowerPoint-enslaved military headquarters. They can be defeated by strategy, by stratagem, by surprise, and by preemption. Unbeatable militaries are like unsinkable ships. They are unsinkable until someone or something sinks them.

»If the U.S. were to lose the army it has in Iraq, to Iraqi militias, Iranian regular forces, or a combination of both (the most likely event), the world would change. It would be our Adrianople, our Rocroi, our Stalingrad. American power and prestige would never recover.»

Mis en ligne le 31 octobre 2006 à 15H44