While reading a capsule outline of the Second Punic War last night, something struck me:  Hannibal's strategy against Rome was almost exactly the same as the US/Coalition strategy against Iraq in the First Gulf War.

First, both wars were started over the "liberation" of a small group of people who had recently been taken over.  In the Punic case, it was the Spanish city of Saguntum, located in Carthaginian territory, but supposedly friendly to Rome.  In the Gulf war, it was Kuwait.  (In this case there is a difference - Iraq wasn't planning on attacking us, but Rome was clearly gearing up to fight Carthage.)

Second, both Hannibal and Schwartzkopf made daring maneuvers to surprise the enemy.  Hannibal took his army over the Alps, Schwartzkopf took his through the desert, but in both cases they moved through "impassable" terrain to get into position before they should have been able to.

Third, Hannibal's goal was not the destruction of Rome, but the destruction of Rome's ability to wage war.  Sound familiar?

One last thing - Hannibal's "sales pitch" to his mercenary Gallic troops was that he wanted to force Rome back into Italy so that they could get control of their lands back.  He expected the Gauls and the Italiot tribes to "Rise up to support him" in his fight.  Which in his case, they did for the most part, so that's not quite parallel either, though it might explain why our guys thought the Kurds would be more supportive.

Hannibal then proceeded to slaughter Roman army after Roman army, assuming that at some point, the Romans would give in and stop trying to conquer everyone.  Needless to say, Hannibal didn't count on Rome's cussedness, and willingness to send hundreds of thousands of men to their deaths.

Of course, the politicians back home in Carthage (all of them wealthy merchants, btw) quickly lost interest in Hannibal, and stopped supporting him in the field.  Ultimately, the Romans got strong enough to take the battle to Africa, and when Hannibal was called home to defend Carthage, he suffered the first defeat of his career - at Zama.

So what I don't get is this - while Hannibal did have amazing military success against the Romans for a very long time, in the end, he pissed the Romans off so badly that when they finally did conquer Carthage some decades later, they burned the place to the ground and sewed the fields with salt.  Why did we think this was a good model to follow again?

To me, this logic suggests that wars designed only to destroy your opponent's ability to fight run a high risk of failure.  The First Gulf War experience seems to back that up.

I feel wrong in even putting this thought down in words, but it's possible that the only way to actually defeat Iraq was to crush it.  Since we can't make it a colony or "glass" the place (the modern equivalent of sewing salt into the fields), installing a democracy is the closest we can come.  Just destroying the army and laying siege to the country doesn't seem to have done the trick, as study of the Punic wars might have predicted.

I'm still not convinced that the first Gulf War was necessary, but at the time, we were sort of forced into it because of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.  Our interests in the area are too extensive for us to sit back and let political darwinism run its course.

Reluctantly, I have to count myself in the "should have finished the job the first time" camp, though that though is still alien in my head, and will take some getting used to. :-)