War, It Turns Out, Has a Language of Its Own : Combat: A surprise attack may not be that much of a surprise. And feint, raid and demonstration all have meanings of their own.

When and if the allied ground attack begins, will it take Saddam Hussein by surprise? To answer that question we must first define surprise, for war, as that master 19th-Century military theorist Karl von Clausewitz emphasized, has its own grammar.

In its dictionary definition, the word surprise means to “take unaware . . . an unexpected seizure or attack.” While the military usage incorporates that meaning, it also recognizes that “it is not essential that the enemy be taken unaware, but only that he become aware too late to act effectively.”

As FM 100-5, the Army’s 1986 war-fighting manual, goes on to say, among the “factors contributing to surprise (are) deception operations of all kinds.” Usually, these are more effective at the operational or theater-of-war level than at the strategic level.

The reason, as Von Clausewitz explained more than a century and a half ago in words that fit exactly the allied situation in the Persian Gulf, is: “Preparations for war usually take months. Concentrating troops at their main assembly points generally requires the installation of supply dumps and depots, as well as considerable troop movements, whose purpose can be guessed soon enough.”

Saddam Hussein certainly knows that the allies have a half-million troops poised on his borders. All he has to do is watch television or read the newspapers to know how they are disposed, armed and equipped.

But this is not new. As the late UCLA Prof. Bernard Brodie noted in his afterword to the 1975 translation of Von Clausewitz’s “On War”: “In the spring of 1944 nothing was more obvious than that the British-American allies would soon land on the northern coast of France . . . it was impossible for many months before the event to conceal the fact that the invasion was going to occur.

“Thus, in the higher strategic realm there was no surprise,” Brodie goes on to say.

But at the operational level, it was another story. “The most important surprise achieved was in the fact that the original simultaneous landings on the Normandy coast were not the feint that the Germans thought they might be but the whole affair. Thus, the Germans held in reserve too long some divisions that would have been much more effective if thrown earlier into the fight.”

Feints, or what the military labels diversions, are “the act of drawing the attention and forces of an enemy from the point of the principal operation; an attack, alarm, or feint which diverts attention,” according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dictionary of Military Terms. And they are as old as warfare. So are raids and demonstrations.

A raid is defined as “an operation, usually small scale, involving a swift penetration of hostile territory to secure information, confuse the enemy, or to destroy his installations (which) ends with a planned withdrawal upon completion of the assigned mission.”

A demonstration, on the other hand, is “an attack or show of force on a front where a decision is not sought, made with the aim of deceiving the enemy.”

In October, 1952, during the Korean War, an amphibious demonstration was mounted against Kojo on the east coast of North Korea. The 1st Cavalry Division’s 8th Regimental Combat Team, then in reserve in Japan, embarked with the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

After a three-day air and naval bombardment, including fire from the 16-inch guns of the battleship Iowa, the troops climbed into assault landing craft and made a pass at the shore. The results were disappointing. The enemy did not react, and U.S. troop morale suffered when they found they were involved in a mere feint rather than an actual landing.

In the Vietnam War, another amphibious demonstration was attempted in support of Lam Son 719, the South Vietnamese Army’s 1971 abortive attempt to invade Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. A U.S. Navy task force with the 31st Marine Amphibious Unit embarked and conducted a demonstration off the North Vietnamese city of Vinh in order to keep enemy divisions tied down in coastal defenses. Again the results were disappointing.

The reason in both cases was that the demonstrations were seen as bluffs, not as indicators that an attack was imminent. In 1952, the North Koreans knew full well that the United States was trying to wind down the war, not start it up again. And in 1971, the North Vietnamese knew the same thing, especially when the Americans had been withdrawing their combat forces since 1969.

Credibility is the key to successful deception operations. The enemy must believe that the raid, diversion or demonstration is the real thing. For example, the recent U.S. Marine artillery raids near Khafji were no bluff. They actually engaged enemy targets and in so doing goaded the Iraqis into leaving their concealed fortified positions and launching a ground attack to silence the guns. Once in the open, the enemy armored columns were wiped out by allied air attack.

The Iraqi army is now dispersed to avoid destruction from the air. How to get them to mass again and provide lucrative allied air targets is the problem at hand. In theory, it would seem that a large-scale allied raid or other such diversionary attack would do the trick.

But such attacks are risky. I was a grammar school student in Canada during World War II. I can still remember the casualty lists of the local Essex Scottish Regiment in the pages of the Windsor Daily Star after the terrible failure of the 2nd Canadian Division’s raid on the French coastal town of Dieppe in August, 1943. Hundreds were killed aboard the landing craft, and of the 6,150 who made it ashore, 3,500 were killed or captured in the six-hour engagement.

Besides, given the more than 1,000 reporters now in Saudi Arabia, it is doubtful that the allied forces could pull off a diversionary attack without it being revealed. The British press is still complaining about unwittingly being made part of a deception operation during the Falklands War in 1982. If today the media were led to believe that the main attack was under way, only to find it was only a diversion, the cries of “credibility gap” would know no bounds.

As the Army’s 1986 war-fighting manual notes, the problem of achieving strategic surprise “is compounded in an open society such as the United States, where freedom of the press and information are highly valued.”

But deception is not the only way to achieve operational and tactical surprise. Other methods include speed and alacrity, employment of unexpected factors, effective intelligence, and variations of tactics and methods of operation. Like Adolf Hitler in June, 1944, Saddam Hussein knows the allies are coming. He just doesn’t know where or when.