Posted on 09/27/2005 4:24:32 PM PDT by northmoor
The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World By Gen Sir Rupert Smith
“War,” he declares “no longer exists.” Violence exists; indeed, it flourishes. But war will not be waged and won between states. Instead we will fight “among the people”.
The problem is that governments and their armed forces haven’t really noticed the shift yet.
Despite billions spent on defence, we are almost back where we started: defenceless..“Terrorists don’t have their own transport system. They use yours and adapt some of it into a weapon to attack you.”
Smith offers a striking word for the spread of terrorism: “rhizomatic”. It propagates like a weed, by the root below ground, swiftly and unseen. You can chop heads off, but it carries on spreading down below. So is the hunt for Osama Bin Laden a distraction? “Well, Al-Qaeda isn’t hierarchical. The idea (of militant Islam) is already franchised.”
Is the situation in Iraq impossible? “Not impossible, but it might be beyond our resources.. To establish a democracy we approve of, we need order. But by sweeping away civic society, the only home-grown authority left is that of the militant mullahs. “So who is providing order? I don’t think we ever asked that question.”
Has war in Iraq helped to spread our values? “It is probably too early to say but the indications are that it is not helping.” Why? “It is likely that we are spreading the cancer (of terrorism), combined with a demonstration of our own ineffectiveness. Plus, in Britain, a lack of popular support. These,” he says dryly, “are all negatives.”
“Administering an occupied country was seen as part of the military operation, which denies the political purpose of your force.”
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Quote from book
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4284306.stm
The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World
By Gen Sir Rupert Smith
Extract on the war in Iraq below:
"The desired outcome was a democratic state operating to the norms of Western democracies and open to free trade with the West. Such a state would be purged of Saddam Hussein and his regime, and pose no military threat to its own citizens, the region or the world, including that of putting weapons of mass destruction in terrorist hands.
Given this desired outcome, which is both political and military in nature, one would construct a strategy by working back in considerable detail from it whilst never forgetting the basic dictum that your enemy is a reacting, thinking being; he is not sitting still waiting for your onslaught but actively creating his own strategy both to foil yours and probably to attack you.
Furthermore, within the idea of confrontation and conflict, the opponent is both a military and a political being - meaning that focusing on and overcoming the resistance of the one without reference to the other will not lead to the desired strategic outcome. With this in mind, the analysis and planning would have started with the understanding of the strategic objectives - the will of the Iraqi people and their leader, and the necessary measures to capture it, or at least keep it neutral.
This means the proper process should have been to start to define the successful outcome of the occupation before the occupation actually commenced - before the invasion. The lead agency for this planning should therefore not have been the military specifically but rather those responsible for reaching the desired outcome and conducting the occupation.
It appears from the evidence available that this was not the case."
Well, I guess we should just all surrender. Just go get some burkas and cover the women.
Maybe the guys would like it. Get to play with guns all day long and marry as many women as you can afford.
CONTROL YOUR BORDERS.
But of course, we're not even TRYING to do that....
He didn't say that.
What he did say is that we didn't think the damn thing through.
He's not Wesley Clark running for office. He's a guy whose seen first hand the uses of force applied by the West over the past 15 years, and is writing a warning that the politicans and the generals need to start assuming a little less and clearly looking at the world a little more.
But many problems in the world are borderless.
"Problems without borders", you might say.
So how does border control help manage such challenges?
People said this after World War I and World War II. The ancients probably said this after Alexander the Great ran out of lands to conquer. Fukuyama proclaimed the end of "history" not long before 9/11. But human nature doesn't change, and it would be foolish to assume that it has.
We'd be smarter to listen to Gen. Douglas MacArthur and always be prepared for the worst:
"But always in our ears rings the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: 'Only the dead have seen the end of war.'"
Another retired general writes a book about how he would have won the war if only everybody had listened to him. Very popular passtime among ex-Wehrmacht generals in the 50's.
Yes, China is getting ready......
You said it Jack! The article reminds me of Matthew Ridgeway's pronouncement that Korea would be the last war fought entirely without atomic weapons. Today North Korea is still a threat for a conventional war and/or one with atomic weapons. Either way it would be a war between governments.
It would be nice if Taiwan did not have to worry about a conventional attack but it would be very foolish for them not to gear their defensive preparations to that possibility.
Erwin Rommel
And China, N. Korea, and Iran, as nuclear powers enter into this brilliant tome in just what manner?
islam against not-islam (states or individuals) is discussed - how?
Invasions consisting of millions of unarmed 'individuals' acting according to the express intent of their government is not an invasion but - what?
Think I'll pass on this one, I'd rather continue working on the life of Churchill - I doubt that these niceties worried him overmuch.
What he's doing is spreading doubt about what we're going. Who will be willing to go die if there's doubt in the air?
Anytime we commit forces to battle, it's necessary that we're gung ho, all the way, right or wrong. We can critique what we did wrong in the VFW over some beers in a few decades.
This is the problem with permitting this "anti-war" crap. It spreads doubt, and doubt leads to defeat.
The left, and Saddam, was right. We can't sustain a "war" very long no matter how much of a pushover the enemy is, because we no longer have the courage of our convictions to put generals like this in jail for treason.
If generals like this want to talk about their issues with strategy behind closed doors, fine. But writing a book and doing interviews spreading doubt about what we're doing should be treason.
The General has simply made a strong case for pre-emptive strikes against the "threats" in the world, and perhaps a stronger case for the extinction of "militant Idiologies"...
Semper Fi
Idiologies = ideologies
By the way, Generals hardly ever know anything about this sort of stuff. They just don't think that way. Besides, they are not at all trained in this sort of thing. To a man with only a hammer everything is a nail.
By the way, Dwight D. Eisenhower knew how the world worked and was real good at handling it.
Douglas MacArthur, a brilliant man, was terrible at this stuff. His mother did all that for him in his early years before she died. Didn't hurt that his Dad was a very big shot general and Medal of Honor. Didn't hurt that MacArthur was so good at his trade, really good. Medal of Honor himself, and deserved.
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