RIP Norman Schwarzkopf

The airborne units that dropped behind enemy lines and picked off key positions and access routes also played a big role in D-Day's success.

What Schwarzkopf and the U.S. did in Desert Storm was remarkable. The U.S. suffered more casualties in non-combat accidents than they did from enemy fire. That, in and of itself, changed the way wars are fought -- and maybe not for the better.
Ever since then, there's been a perception that war can (and perhaps should) be bloodless to Americans. It's a stupid idea, of course, but Desert Storm was so easy that it made people think that way. It's a big part of the reason why the Somalia mission, the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan have been looked at as such colossal failures. It also might have made it easier for the decision-makers to enter those wars, thinking it'd be as easy as Desert Storm, rather than look at thousands of years of military history and realize that DS was an aberration.

 

That's what you get for asking Lou Holtz to assess the enemy.

 

I think a better comparison would be that the Iraqi Army was the 1-15 Jets coached by Rich Kotite.

 

That war was the first major event I was old enough not only to remember, but to breathlessly pay attention to. I begged my parents to stay up late and watch Nightline so I could, ya know, watch the war. We didn't have cable, and I remember my dad was out of town in a hotel the night it started and man I was I jealous that he had CNN and I didn't. It was in those weeks I decided to fly a Stealth fighter, since none of those got shot down and I think at least one of every other type of fighter did. (I didn't go back to check that "fact." Also, bad eyes and science requirements led me away from life as a fighter pilot. My handle has been Pilot(Something) ever since I started on AOL when I was young, though, and that followed me to SJ.)

Anyway, I remember the Iraqis supposedly had superior artillery to ours, according to the news. I remember being pretty worried about that and the Republican Guard.

Did anyone else buy the Desert Storm trading cards? Oh man, I thought those were the coolest things ever.