What Part of 'War' Don't We Understand?

Political debates tend to be moved forward by new facts generated "on the ground." At these moments, it is far easier to convince people of the truth, because that truth is tied directly to facts people can see out in the world.

A few of us have been saying for years that the War on Terrorism is not just about Israel by itself or Iraq by itself--that it is a "regional war," as Michael Ledeen has put it, in which the US and its allies are being attacked by an "Islamist Axis" connecting Iran to its network of terrorist proxies across the Middle East.

Last week, for example, a headline in the New York Times admitted "Crisis Is Regional, Not Just Israel vs. Palestinians." This week, Newsweek devoted its cover story to Iran's role as the instigator "feeding the fire" of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

Condoleezza Rice summed it up when she concluded that the terrorists "have showed their hand. And they've showed that their sponsors are in Tehran and in Damascus. Things are clarified right now." And the real news about President Bush's open mic night at the G-8 summit is not his use of a common vulgarity, but an exchange between Bush and Tony Blair regarding Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

There's been a lot of talk about the cleverness of the Iranians and about what master chess players they are to outmaneuver the Bush administration. But their strategy turns out to be utterly transparent.

Bush followed his exchange with Blair by adding, "I felt like telling Kofi [Annan] to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen." As we all know, the most fearsome response to an act of war is a phone call from a UN bureaucrat.

A similar paralysis is even holding back some of the most seemingly belligerent commentators. The Wall Street Journal, for example, characterizes the Hezbollah provocation as "Iran's First Strike" against the US--then counsels that we should let Israel do our fighting for us while we seek sanctions against Iran at the UN Security Council. Similarly, Michael Oren advocates an Israeli strike against the Syrian military--but only to force the Syrian regime to make a bargain, keeping itself in power by withdrawing support for Hezbollah.

None of these actions matches the problem. If the problem is that the Syrian and Iranian regimes seek to preserve themselves and extend their influence by supporting terrorists across the Middle East, then the solution is to end those regimes--and we should devise a military response directed at that goal.

Syria and Iran cannot be pressured, deterred, or contained, because supporting terrorists is their means of survival. This has been the Iranian and Syrian strategy since 2003: support the insurgency in Iraq, support Hezbollah and Hamas in the Palestinian territories--and keep everything in such turmoil that America will be afraid to take further action, for fear that things will get even worse. But past military action has led to chaos only because we have always left intact the terror-sponsoring regimes in Syria and Iran.

Consider the incentives we have created for these two regimes: the more trouble they cause for us--the less likely we are to attack them. The more they attack us, the more secure they are from our retaliation. This is the opposite of a rational strategy.

What makes this possible is the crippling effect of two fundamental errors in our thinking: myopic short-range Pragmatism and crippling altruistic self-doubt.

Pragmatism doesn't just mean being practical; it's a philosophy which holds that there are no over-arching ideas and principles that can guide our action. The best expression I have ever read of the fractured thinking method of Pragmatism is in the current Newsweek cover story. After showing that Iran is the force behind every major conflict in the Middle East, the authors admonish us: "The Iranian challenge is not a Gordian knot that can be sliced through in one bold stroke. It's a bag full of knots, each of which has to be untied and, if possible, untangled from the rest."

Part of the reason America hesitates to act is because generations of Pragmatists have tried to turn our brains into bags full of knots--making it harder for us to see the big picture and the bold strokes that are actually necessary to defeat our enemies.

Just as powerful is the warped logic of the "suicide bomb morality" of altruism, which identifies self-sacrifice as the essence of virtue. In any conflict, the good guys are expected to prove that they are good by backing down and sacrificing their interests--while nothing is expected of the bad guys, precisely because they are evil. That's why a Los Angeles Times op-ed

demanded that Israel "has to be the most responsible party" by declaring an immediate ceasefire. Why should Israel be the first to back down from the fight? The author answers: "What, after all, can we expect from Hamas or Hezbollah?"

Notice the warped psychology this fosters: the onus is always on the good guys to turn the other check and submit to evil. This is a moral outlook that empowers the evil because they are evil and restrains the good because they are good. Should we then be surprised to see the evil emboldened to greater acts of destruction?

There is no longer any doubt what is driving the conflict in the Middle East: it is the Syrian-Iranian strategy of using proxies to strike at the US and extend Iran's fanatical influence over the region. The only question is whether we can stop tying our brains into knots and stop turning the other cheek long enough to strike back and topple these two regimes.

Please excuse a little musing on war, from bother personal experieince and a lot of historical study.

Some musings look like this. If Condi can't make a cease fire soon maybe we'll turn this into an Op Ed or something so please give me some feedback. If this is of no value to you my feelings will survive!....

Just a week or so ago, we wrote for a paper what we were realy thinking: We are living in a new strategic environment that we do not yet fully understand. ... Some of our adversaries, once viewed as of no or lesser importance, are undeniably at work developing ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. This ushers in an entirely new age of threat, terrorism, intelligence and defense.

In the Cold War, everyone understood the rules. The United States and the Soviet Union were at odds. Smaller nations chose sides: and they understood whose side they were on. The little guys had little weapons. Only the big guys had missiles and such.

If smaller, regional wars flared, the big superpowers let them play out or they encouraged conduct that would not irreparably alter the strategic balance.

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) kept the two superpowers at odds yet cautious; ever wary of overstepping bounds with the other. The concept that either superpower could unleash hell on earth upon the other; but only with the full and complete knowledge that it would reap the same hell after a short, almost imperceptible delay; supposedly kept the world “safe.”

Deterrence; the notion that the fear of MAD could guide men toward right decisions guided our lives for decades.

That the very existence of MAD meant the world was a few seconds or minutes away from total immolation at all times made for some sleepless nights, especially during a crisis like the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I grew up in the military during the Cold War, and, although not assigned to strategic forces, served as caretaker for tactical nuclear weapons more than once. It was a heavy burden.

And we knew plenty of men (they were all men then) that served in strategic submarines or missile silos or B-52 wings. These were the men on watch at all times. The men that made sure that MAD was valid, reliable and “safe.”

Many, most of us, are delighted, I expect, that MAD no longer exists. It seemed a terribly immoral policy; a total abrogation of the idea that peace could be assured through diplomacy and dialogue. Peace was maintained, some said, by the nuclear power of the two superpowers. The fear of nuclear weapons in fact.

And then this system melted away with the end of the Soviet Union.

The situation we have today, and we see the ugly evolution of the former strategic balance in the situation between Hezbollah and Israel, is something like this. A democracy, relying upon the superpower for arms, assistance and sometimes advice, is engaged with an enemy. That enemy, not a state at all but something greater than an armed militia and smaller than a duchy, is governed by religious zealots who are not elected. But the enemy leaders also rely upon third parties for arms, training and the like. The enemy and the third parties are all sworn enemies of the democracy, and perhaps every democracy; or every Christian democracy. They want to wipe the regional democracy off the map. They want to rule “from Spain to Iraq.”

The democracy and its mentor have nuclear weapons. The third parties, at least one of them in support of the enemy, may have nuclear weapons. Certainly they could get nuclear weapons if left to shop freely.

The enemy, even in the face of a democracy and its mentor armed with nuclear weapons seems undeterred. In fact, some learned sages practically guarantee that the enemy is not deterred. We spoke to Israel's Dr. Boaz Ganor, the deputy dean of the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy and the founder of the Institute for Counter Terrorism in Israel who said, "The Hizbullah has succeeded in creating a situation in which it deters Israel more than Israel deters it. It is unprecedented for a terrorist organization to deter a state and not vice versa."

Hmmmm.

Without elections to keep its leaders in check with some accountability; and with a weak, some might say powerless government (Lebanon) overseeing (loosely) its territory; for the enemy the normal strictures of treaties, good conduct, diplomacy and proper international behavior may have gone away. Add the fact that no international organization has stepped forward to demonstrate impartiality or the ability, desire and requisite influence or power to enforce proper conduct, much less a peace. So what do we have?

We have a very dangerous situation. “A new strategic environment that we do not yet fully understand.” It includes, undeniably, the existence of ballistic missiles with even longer ranges than those used thus far in the conflict; and perhaps weapons of mass destruction.

Israel and the United States and their allies, need to exert some control and establish some bounds by which a way forward without war may be found now. A cease fire is needed to stop the loss of innocent lives and to establish an environment for the discussion leading to a more lasting agreement. We agree, for a change, with Warren Christopher, who wrote last Friday, “Especially disappointing is the fact that she [Secretary of State Rice] resisted all suggestions that the first order of business should be negotiation of an immediate cease-fire between the warring parties.”

It seems that the enemy, in this case, and its vocal and seemingly irresponsible mentor nations, left to map the direction forward without proper dialogue from the democracies, could lead the world into an even more perilous situation.

And no rational man can want that.

We cannot leave the outcome and the timing of this thing in Hezbollah's hands. When Israel says they've reached a point they can live with we have to call a cease fire and start the dialogue if we can.

At this moment, if reports are correct that Israel will not go into Lebanon deeper, we (the West) have lost, or will loose the war. It will embolden the leadership of Hezebolla and that will spread like fire throughout Islam. I believe the West does not have the will to prosecute this war to win. Perhaps to slow it down, but not to win. We are hamstrung by political correctness, the left in this country, and the MSM who think we can just sit at a table and work out our differences. The islamofascists do not want to work out the differences. They have been consistent in declaring they will destroy Israel and the United States. It has been said that if they have a weapon on Mass Destruction, they will deploy it and use it as soon as possible. We, on the other hand could end this inevitable destruction of our cities or western cities, but have not the will to do what must be done.

Folks, there is a mad dog in the neighborhood now, and we want to teach it tricks. It will have none of this. It wants to kill you and your children. Failure to see this before they strike us will be a heavy burdon for us to carry. We can stop it now if we will. But, sadly, we do not have the will.

Have you noticed, as the Israeli bombs drop western television media and islamic television media photograph the leadership of Hezebolla inciting its constituency to lift up arms to fight us. Our media destructively debates the inhumanity and dysproportionate, assymmetrical warfare being waged. We place a high premium of loosing our soldiers (Israeli soldiers) while the facists have spent the past 40 years inculcating their constituents to wage a war against he west and die. The dedicated facists want to die for their cause. We want to discuss it. (Collectively). The will to victory will not be measured by numbers of dead but by prevailing ideology of the living. The west has a reproductive rate of less than 2 per household. The muslims have a reproductive rate of 9 per household. We are afraid to look back for fear they are gaining on us. The United States has adopted a world view that all views are valid to vet. The islamists provide that only one view is valid to pronounce. Wrong though they may be, they have clarity of purpose and it is extant and ubiquitous among moslems. Western citizens want to explore all possible avenues of synthesis. The islamists have one, and that is, in its purity, does not confound. The west needs to move to a singular view that survival is what should bind all of us who want to have this option of multicultural discussion in the future. We must propagate the Will to Win, or we will fail.

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