Page 500 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Gazelles and Lions
497

two airborne divisions,
one marine division,
two to four infantry divisions,
a marine air wing,
six squadrons of attack aircraft,
six squadrons of defence aircraft,
transport squadrons (number unspecified),
three to five Hawk missile battalions,

sixteen aircraft carriers,
128 cruisers and destroyers,
forty-eight assault craft, and
an undetermined number of transports and supply ships.

After this, the conclusions of the authors hardly come as a surprise:

U.S. parachute assault forces are too few to cover all objectives quickly. Amphibious

forces are too slow. Skilled teams could wreck havoc before we arrived;
Two to four divisions, plus substantial support, would be tied down for a protracted
period;
Direct intervention by Soviet air/ground forces, a distinct possibility, ... might make
our mission impossible;
U.S. strategic reserves would be stripped. Prospects would be poor, and plights of

far-reaching political, economic, social, psychological, and perhaps military conse­
quence the penalty for failure.

It is difficult to appreciate from all th hich is not exactly a mihtary
r 11 this that what is being discussed is the
occupation of a corner of Saudi Arabia, a c ta^e seriously the opinions
power of the first dimension. Itisequa y invasion force roughly the size
of researchers who will postulate for this tas j . 1943, or who talk 0
of the American army corps which lan t in . , policy - in Arabia. Yet

the Saudis as being bound to pursue a score articulating the prevailing
the authors of the congressional study were o , States at the time on
opinion in political and intellectual circ es in Quif oilfields. Much

the subject of possible military intervention to . £ tw0 articles stating
of this opinion was voiced in response to the PuD“^cker
the case for intervention, the first by Ro ert • jgnotus’ (whom
in Commentary in
January 1975, the second by a pseudonymous a ’ as qgnotus, Miles’)

our Library of Congress researchers classify in politicians and pundits
in Harper’s in March 1975- The general reacuon o and alarm. Visions were

to the mere notion of intervention was one o naines from a thousand
conjured up of the sky over Arabia aglow wi . out of the desert to
blazing oil wells, of the ferocious hordes of Ara y s ^nt0 sea, of the

smite the Western interlopers and drive hffnJws vodka on his breath and
gigantic figure of the Russian bear (snow on n P ’ ^a and of a subse-

rape on his mind) lurching down the valleys o e only a few drops
quent scene of utter desolation along the Arabian s >