Deleted chapter: The U.S. M1A1 Abrams, A Beast Of War
This is the rough draft of chapter discarded by the editor from Part II of Candid Intent.
The M1A1 Abrams tanks are redoubtable beasts of war. If you are a rogue nation—a member of some designated Axis of Evil—and America decides to pay you a visit and rolls these heavy pieces of weaponry across the gates of your home base, you might just as well throw your hands up in horror and admit that you have met your Waterloo.
When the Abrams tanks are being wheeled out, America has decided to put some boots on the ground—a decisive move at every turn, a spelling of big trouble for the enemy. For when that happens, America is perhaps going full-on for nothing short of regime change, with complete ownership of the enemy as the endgame.
But Abrams!?
What’s here in the name?
What’s in the name of this deadly war machine?
Creighton Williams Abrams Jr
In God, We Trust, the Americans have written into their dollar bills. But the name of the M1A1 has nothing to do with that Father of Many Nations—the Hebrew Patriarch revered by the usual God’s people: the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims.
Nor does it allude to the great Abe Lincoln, the formidable civil-wartime leader. No, the tank was named in honour of one top American warrior—Creighton Williams Abrams Jr. And the War in Vietnam was not alien to that honour. How?
Vietnam was a nasty tale for every serving US President from Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford. But for Creighton who, incidentally, hated the politics of war and the world of defence contractors and their ugly sins of war-profiteering; for this man, Vietnam was even more of a wakeful nightmare.
Of course, there was the politics he copiously detested. But here is really why Vietnam must have touched and re-shaped him in such a unique fashion: From the build-up to the war, roughly in 1955, until he was promoted to Chief of staff in 1972, Creighton had been on the frontline of the US operations against the North-Vietnamese communists and their Chinese and Soviet allies.
If it’s accepted that Vietnam had been a misguided American affair—as it was—Creighton would be in pole position for a good share of both the blame and the honour. Certainly, he was one man who couldn’t just wash his hands of the deaths of the 47,000+ US troops killed in combat throughout the war. Such a responsibility would be an indelible blotch on anyone’s career.
And Creighton’s career was no exception: For all his solid credentials as a West Point graduate and for his undeniable merit as a commendable veteran of the Second World War, Creighton still went down in history for having overseen the lamentable mess in Nam, legitimately earning the rather dubious claim of having materially won a war that was effectively lost.
Indeed, by every metric known to the military, America—with a death toll decisively dwarfed by the 1,100,000 Vietcong casualties—had put up a superior fight, overwhelming the enemy at home for over ten years. But the US and its protégés in South Vietnam couldn’t own the enemy; they were simply up against rabid fighters who had resolved to remain unbowed.
Their determination not to quit till the last ultimately paid: Against the wall of their unabated resistance, the dollar and human cost of the war kept running high while its moral argument nose-dived and grew weaker and weaker—Around 2,000,000 civilian deaths and counting; and what was there to show for it?
Definitely, not victory!
Victory was more elusive by the day, impossible to declare, with the endgame still remote and soon out of reach—forever out of reach. In the end, after America withdrew its troops in March 1973 in the face of strong opposition at home and worldwide, Vietnam would unite under the flag of Communism. And Vietnam would scar the American collective unconscious for years to come; it would force Washington to review, if only implicitly, the rule book about the use of the troops on foreign soil.
The ghosts of Vietnam, in some measure, were the reason why this full-blown invasion of Iraq—complete with the high risk of putting American boots on the ground—did not happen until after Nine-Eleven when America, in the face of the emboldened monster of global terrorism, decided to throw caution to the winds in favour of Bush’s novel doctrine of Pre-emptive Strikes.
Otherwise, since Gerald Ford came to power and wound down the US direct involvement in Vietnam; since Jimmy Carter, on his second day at the White House, took the memorable decision to pardon the Vietnam draft-dodgers as if to suggest that they were the ones who knew better: since then, and until that shift in the wake of Nine-Eleven, America had grown fond of resorting to the rather cautious use of CIA covert operations to further its critical national interests overseas.
Throughout the Reagan Years, and throughout the Presidencies of Bush Senior and Clinton—a clear twenty-years period—the US showed little appetite in gung-ho military operations.
On the few occasions when Uncle Sam had to ship out the troops—for example, in Kosovo as part of NATO, and in Somalia at the request of the United Nations—the overriding argument had been humanitarian rather than hegemony.
In most of the other cases that called for a classical flexing of the big American muscles, the US was careful to leave lying fallow the Vietnam-style military involvement.
One might remember that, during the lengthy two decades of the Afghan-Soviet War, Washington preferred to take on the Soviets by proxy; it opted to back the motley crew of Mujahedeen fighters, whose natural suspicion of American imperialism was only outstripped by their common hatred of Communism and by their unflinching commitment to the tenets of the Islamic Faith.
Likewise, to deal with the new Islamic Republic of Iran—this new republic where the Revolution of 1979 was a great anti-American affair; one that culminated in the drama of the Hostage Crisis at the American Embassy in Teheran—the US was again careful to stay away from open and direct military involvement.
Although, at the time, Saddam Hussein and the Soviets were close; although Saddam, at the time, was known for getting a kick out of gassing the Kurds in Northern Iraq, America still took the view that the Kurds-gassing dictator was something of a lesser evil in the Persian Gulf, compared of course with the Iranian Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khomeini who thrived on little else than his loud anti-American tirades.
And so, when Iraq and Iran went to war in 1980, America—officially neutral at first—later saw a good opportunity for a molestation of the Ayatollah and his regime. Soon, Saddam Hussein would become somewhat of an American friend.
And throughout the war, which lasted for eight years and resulted in the deaths of more than a million men, the great America of Reagan, the very eternal City Upon the Hill, would seat on its lofty principles, paradoxically assuming the role of godfather to the man who was nothing short of an Angel of Death to his domestic opponents.
In the defiant words of former British MP George Galloway, Washington knowingly supplied weapons to Saddam, complete with maps for him to better target the said weapons.
Yes, there had truly been times when Saddam and America were buddies, if only uncomfortable ones. And those were the times when Donald Rumsfeld—as Reagan’s Special Envoy to the Middle East—flew out to Baghdad.
In the Iraqi capital, he would meet Saddam Hussein and would notoriously trade that warm handshake with the dictator. That show-of-confidence gesture would come back to haunt him:
Twenty years after that trip to Baghdad, anti-war protestors would remind Rumsfeld of it; they would remind him that Saddam Hussein was one bloody ogre that America had played a role so significant in moulding up.
In any event, Saddam Hussein—just like the Afghan Mujahedeen—was an odd bedfellow of the first order for Uncle Sam: the two parties would never have become an item, had it not been for that Vietnam hangover.
Remember those 47,000+ US troops killed on the frontlines; remember Ford and his decision to wind down the unpopular US direct involvement in the war; and remember Carter and his popular pardon of the draft-dodgers; remember: Those were still fresh in American memories.
And the politically astute Ronald Reagan understood very well the zeitgeist that had swept him into the White House; it was one that was not amenable to another immediate down-and-dirty commitment of troops to a war zone on foreign soil. And that disposition towards sparing America’s mighty rod wouldn’t change much until after the spectacular tragedy of Nine-Eleven.
That would explain why America even chose to keep matters within relative proportion, when Saddam—after reverting to full enmity towards Uncle Sam in the wake of its war with Iran—decided to invade Kuwait in 1990. The US, given no alternative to military action, responded proportionately with Operation Desert Storm, in which America acted in tandem with more than thirty other nations.
Now, how proportionately?
America could have got carried away, but America restrained itself from crashing through the gates of Baghdad to exact regime change when Saddam—realising his big mistake—swiftly run his troops back out of Kuwait. One of course may wonder why America did act then with such restraint.
To deliberately labour the point, Vietnam had caused the US to lose its appetite for down-and-dirty military operations abroad. And that was—let’s repeat it—until Nine-Eleven came to pave the way for the Bush Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strikes.
Even then, what the Bush Doctrine ultimately did was to revive the fading memories of Nam, prompting the Nation to slowly return to its post-Vietnam posture of prudentialism. As it were, Barack Obama—who had campaigned on a promise to bring the troops home from Iraq—would dutifully follow through.
And in 2011, Obama would strategically opt to lead from behind, when NATO took the decision to bomb Libya following the uprising in Benghazi, thus leaving the attention-seeking French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and British PM, David Cameron, to play the prominent role in sealing the fate of this old American foe, Colonel Gadhafi.
And while one might have thought that Donald Trump—with his brassy and bullish agenda of making America great again—would have been a trigger-happy Commander-in-Chief, Trump unexpectedly turned out to be one of the most peaceful US presidents in recent memory, having left office without starting a single war of his own. That, of course, is not to suggest that Trump didn’t indulge in those long-running Tariffs Wars with China.
Now, did Joe Biden buck this trend of American neo-prudentialism? At the time of writing these lines, Biden appeared to have perfected America’s fallback into its familiar post-Vietnam posture.
First, Biden cut and run from Afghanistan in August 2021, leaving the Taliban to overrun the country before swiftly storming and taking over Kabul. And when Russia, in February 2022, launched its invasion of Ukraine, Biden would resort to the rhetorical browbeating of Putin without much success. He would however succeed in tying down Russia in battle. How so?
Obviously, through the time-tested trick of attrition warfare: Having ruled out any direct involvement of US troops, Biden settled on funnelling funds and weapons to Ukraine, propping it on its feet, swaying in the face of Russia’s superior firepower, but strong enough to hold its stand, stemming any Russian progress.
It’s hard to anticipate how the war would further unfold. But Biden would have scored points by frustrating Russia’s initial endgame—the swift capture of Kiev and the eventual overthrow of President Volodymyr Zelensky in favour of some Russia-friendly puppet.
Surely—to a great extent—Biden’s modus operandi in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has been so far no different from that which the US had put in play during the Afghan-Soviet War of the 1980s. Biden has entertained a calculated passive-aggressive posture, resulting in the least possible economic and military damage, if any at all, for America.
The overall point articulated here is that Vietnam—with its legacy of American prudentialism—never ceased to be a psychological benchmark in America’s approach to warfare.
In any event, when the US ultimately withdrew from Vietnam, there was no ceremony with banners proclaiming Mission Accomplished. The homecoming was dignified but sombre, subdued. Now—with or without victory—it remained true that 550,000 servicemen had duly answered the call of Uncle Sam.
They had done what was asked of them: they fought and died; those who survived had now come home, somewhat bitter, and certainly haunted by the atrocities they had been privy to in the Southeast Asian jungle. What the troops did—within the grand scheme of the pride of nations—was the stuff of merit.
And as President Lyndon B. Johnson would put it, the Nation had a duty to remember how brave the young are, and how great is the Nation’s debt to them, and how endless is the sacrifice that “we call upon them to make for us.”
In keeping with that duty of remembrance, all qualifying members of the US Armed Forces would be awarded the Vietnam Service Medal, which was established in 1965 by order of President Johnson.
Then, throughout the war, and within the first twelve months following the end of hostilities, 235 servicemen—cited for having been part of something greater, for going above and beyond the call of duty—would receive the highest US military distinction: the Medal of Honour, first awarded in 1861 during the American Civil War. And then, since 1978, thirty-one further Vietnam veterans would join this most select of military rolls of honour.
Now, for the top American officer who had overseen the operations in Vietnam; for Creighton Williams Abrams Jr., the Nation’s duty of remembrance would go further than the generic Vietnam Service Medal that was given to him as to the half-a-million+ other servicemen who had been actively involved in Vietnam.
For Creighton Abrams, the Pentagon was not done yet with the honours. And what they did next would connect the deceased general with the Invasion of Iraq, with the events in those vicinities of the Al Jumhuria Bridge in Baghdad.
At the close of the 1970s, the Pentagon sought to rehaul its existing fleet of battle tanks, the reason being that the US Main Battle Tank of the day—the latest model of the MBT-70—was fast becoming obsolete.
For one thing, it was inadmissibly vulnerable to high-explosive rounds from the Soviets’ T-62, a medium tank that was then so wicked enough to withstand incoming American anti-tank firepower.
A remedy was urgently needed.
After America’s withdrawal from Vietnam, and in the wake of the Yum Kippur War of 1973, where models of the American tank used by the Israeli Armed Forces displayed serious limits, a painfully demanding process began within the Pentagon. The goal was to define the requirements, to assess available armament technologies with a view of building America’s next Main Battle Tank.
In November 1976—following that painstaking process—Donald Rumsfeld, in his first stint as Secretary of Defence, awarded a $20-billion-development contract to Chrysler Defence, the victor in a bidding battle with General Motors.
Three years later, the first batch of the new US Main Battle Tank, initially known as the XM1, rolled off the production line. The Pentagon went with the decision of naming its latest piece of weaponry after the now-deceased US Commander of Operations during Vietnam.
And thus, the M1 Abrams tank was born—the third-generation US Main Battle Tank. Today, its latest model is the M1A2. Regardless of model, pointing an Abrams tank at a hotel full of defenceless reporters and then firing it is an overkill, and very much so.
Known for the devastating firepower of its weapon system which features a high calibre smooth bore primary gun; known for the precision of its integrated digital system, and for its Inter-Vehicle Information System that allows for the automatic and continual exchange of information within any network of authorised vehicles; known for its effective thermal and night-vision features… the Abrams tank has been—with every upgrade—the “most modern battle tank in the world”.
At a maximum of 72 tons, the latest model, the M1A2, is understandably the heaviest tank out there as well as the flattest. It is heavy because it was designed for superior field acceleration and mobility. No matter how rugged the terrain, it wouldn’t mind.
And for that, it comes with a mighty jet engine—a multi-fuel machine running primarily on jet fuel, and capable of generating 1,500 horsepower to propel the compact monster at the highest possible speed of 42 mph. But the engine is just only one reason why this piece of weaponry is a perpetual last frontier in strength and sturdiness, in dependability.
As it were, the Abrams also comes with a unique composite shield—the Chobham armour—a protective shell of steel and ceramic tiles that offers top-grade resistance to high-explosive anti-tank rounds. And there’s more: The American tank is not easily cowed by most kinetic energy penetrators, those sharply-pointed tank-piercing ammunitions.
A kinetic energy penetrator, hurling in at maximum velocity, would most likely shatter into bits on impact against the compact armour, leaving the tank in one piece, unscathed, and gunning on.
As for the tank’s active-protection system, it covers the four crew members against the battlefield hazards of chemical and biological agents, and against the dangers of nuclear and radiological attacks.
The Abrams, of course, can be destroyed. But to destroy one, it takes a one-in-a-million-chance hit: An enemy intent on taking out the American tank must take the risk of firing their round from within close range, such as in an ambush, which would expose the attacker to a high probability of certain annihilation.
Any attacker who is operating at a safe distance must target incoming rounds in such a way that they would hit one of the Abrams’s Achilles Heels: straight down into the turret, or from the rear into the engine fuel cells—these are surfaces where the armour is the thinnest. All in all, the American Main Battle Tank is a sure-fire death machine.
Incidentally, the US Army had been without an opportunity to test the Abrams in combat until Saddam Hussein decided to invade Kuwait in 1990. Then, as part of Operation Desert Storm, some 1,800+ tanks, deployed in Saudi Arabia, made their way under a billowing cloud of dust, and proceeded across the desert to the battlefields, where they demonstrated a firepower superiority over the enemy.
During the combat—as Saddam briefly attempted to hold his ground against the American troops—the best available to him was the Soviets’ T-62. And since the T-62 had a shorter range, Saddam’s tank commanders found themselves within mortal reach of the Americans, at least half a kilometre before the Americans could even begin to fear any credible danger from the enemy whom they had within sight.
In any event, the Abrams and Saddam go way back: before the American tank returned to the Middle East for this Operation Iraqi Freedom, it had been decisive in the previous war that had pitted the United States against the man who had once been a cumbersome friend. To Saddam Hussein, America’s third-generation Main Battle Tank would have been but the Plague.
