Posted on 01/21/2007 10:58:10 AM PST by quidnunc
Writing of the decline of the West — and the United States in particular — has been a parlor game from the time of doomsayers Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee to Paul Kennedy’s pessimism of the 1980s. Now the most recent serial epitaphs center on the Anglo-American experience in Iraq that will soon end, it is foretold, in defeat and a global loss of American prestige to the detriment of the West at large.
The extremists in the Middle East — Hamas, Hezbollah, and their Iranian and Syrian sponsors — are supposedly empowered as nearby Iraqi Islamists tie down the American Gulliver. Democracy, we are also lectured by leftists, realists, and isolationists alike, won’t work in the Muslim world. Instead elections only provide a veneer of legitimacy to ‘one-vote/one time’ terrorists and jihadists like Iraqi Shiites and Hamas.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
What is changing, however, is not the influence and power of the United States, but perceptions of such prompted by America’s own unhappiness over the inability to establish a democracy quickly in the heart of the ancient caliphate after the three-week victory over Saddam Hussein. Our technological prowess and spiraling wealth have left the Western public with expectations of instantaneous results. In war — after Panama, Bosnia, and Kosovo — that means victory without losses; in peace, the absurd notion that if we aren’t perfect in our execution, we are not good in our intent.
Europe — with its vaunted constitution in peril, stagnant economic growth, unassimilated minorities, demographic stasis and puny militaries — treads carefully. The notion that Americans may think they are in trouble cheers many. But privately they rightly fear even more that the United States might just do what continental intellectuals dream of — withdraw from the world stage. That would mean pacifist Europeans would have to rely on their utopian principles to reason with an energy-rich Russia, a nuclear Iran, and radical Islamist or autocratic regimes cross the Mediterranean and in the nearby Middle East.
FYI
"History teaches us that when a barbarian race confronts a sleeping culture, the barbarian always wins."
--Arnold Toynbee
As I have said on other threads, I was naive enough to think that the internet would not allow the msm to pull what they did in Vietnam. Too many of our citizens hate the America that we love and too many more are too stupid to think for themsleves, getting their worldview from oprah, katie and rosie.
Good article. Please go read it, since it is actually positive and encouraging, and intelligently lays out why we aren't even close to going to pot.
We watched an old John Wayne movie about an airplane that was running out of gas on the way to San Fransico. The plane had two co-pilots, a navigator and a pilot. The Coast Guard was monitoring the flight from another plane and there was a Civil Defence guy standing watch on the shore.
It occurred to me that in those days people were interdependent, there was no technology and we needed each other. Now days, when someone asks, "Are we our brothers' keepers?" "The answer is only if we can help out without getting our hands dirty." The gov't is expected to do the same.
Good article by VDH. Thanks for posting.
That would mean pacifist Europeans would have to rely on their utopian principles to reason with an energy-rich Russia, a nuclear Iran, and radical Islamist or autocratic regimes cross the Mediterranean and in the nearby Middle East.
And best of luck with that one. A Golden Age is passing rapidly at the hands of those too stupid and contrary to recognize what they're killing. Both Spengler and Toynbee had examples of that in abundance, which may account for part of the reason they can be such a depressing read.
American armed forces are stretched too thin — and said to be exhausted after failing to stop the resurgent bloodletting not only in Iraq, but now in Afghanistan as well. A weakened George Bush reaches out to Democrats at home and Europeans abroad in vain. Both seem to be saying that their once loud calls for bipartisanship and multilateralism applied only to a strong rather than lame duck President.
Strategypage.com
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmurph/articles/20070118.aspx
The Myth of the Broken Army
January 18, 2007: Let's destroy a myth. In this case that sending more American troops to Iraq will "break the army." In reality, it works like this.
The American reinforcement, or "surge" for Iraq will consist of five combat brigades. There are already 15 brigades there (13 army and two marine.) The force for the last three years has, on average, been fifteen brigades. What difference will five brigades make? A brigade has three combat battalions. Each battalion has three companies. Each company has three platoons. Each platoon has 30-40 people available for duty (usually closer to 30, than 40.) You also have about fifty M-1 tanks, 16-18 155mm self-propelled artillery vehicles. Thus out of a force of 3,500 troops, you have about 900 "shooters" (guys with guns who can get out there and do things, like search for weapons, for fight.) It's also become customary to have the artillery crews, and even some of the tank crews, serving as infantry as well. But that only gives you another hundred or so shooters. Thus, sending five more brigades to Iraq, is sending another 5,000 shooters, plus about 15,000 support troops (who are armed, and can at least defend themselves if attacked, and win.)
The U.S. Army is in the midst of a reorganization, which doesn't change the number of troops, or equipment, in a brigade, but does change how they are organized and used. This will not change the above numbers.
The army, marines and reserves an muster about sixty combat brigades. For the last three years, there have been 19 brigades deployed to combat zones (15 in Iraq, three in Afghanistan and one in South Korea.) What the army has been trying to do is keep active duty troops home for two years, and in a combat zone for one year. For reserves, the goal was home for four years, overseas for one. With help from the marines, the army can just about make that.
But with the surge, many troops are going to end up home only half, instead of two-thirds, of the time. What does this do? The army already knows. The more you keep the troops in a combat zone, beyond a certain number of months, the less likely they are to re-enlist. Note that everyone in the army works on employment contracts (of 3-4 years, usually). Not everyone renews their contracts when they expire. But since September 11, 2001, an above average number of people have. This is very important, because people (officer or enlisted) who "re-up" are the most valuable people you can have. They are experienced, many of them "combat experienced." But keep them out there too long, and they will start to leave. Not in large numbers. The U.S. Navy has had the same problem, because of the long deployments at sea sailors often had to endure. That experience enabled them to work out a formula, which calculated the number of sailors they would lose, for a taskforce, for each additional day, beyond the usual six months, they kept them at sea. The army is about to encounter a similar effect. The army is not publicizing their anticipated losses (people who don't re-enlist), but it could be several thousand troops a year (depending on how long additional troops are kept in Iraq.) That doesn't break the army, but does provide more headaches for those in charge of recruiting and retention. The senior generals treat this sort of thing as "losses." Not combat losses, the people who don't re-enlist leave the army in one piece. But the army loses experienced troops at a time when Congress wants them to increase their strength by 65,000 (to 547,000). That's another issue, and another set of myths to demolish.
"Now that everyone agrees that the war is lost and Bush is too stubborn to admit it".
Let us join Bush in being stubborn and fighting the defeatist and retreatist mentality. A lot of the war support is dropping in the past 12 months because all the security metrics went in the wrong direction. Things went off track because sectarian violence flared up. But such a trend is not a strategic and final conclusion. It can and should be simply turned around with greater focus on Baghdad security. That is what Bush is proposing to do with the 'surge'.
Does it change the fundamentals? Iraq-on-Iraq violence is going to be around until the political accomodations change. What has poisoned the well is the Mahdi Army influence in the Government, which has made appraochment with Sunnis impossible.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/20/AR2007012001446.html?nav=hcmodule
WashPost analysis of Bush's course correction on Iraq lays out some clear points: Bush is looking to find out how to win, not how to withdraw or how to cut losses;
the stability of the Iraq is a possible, worthwhile, and achievable goal and the Iraq Government is geniunely trying to make it happen; Bush was offered a plan by Malaki to pull back from Baghdad and let Iraq troops do it, but they looked seriously at it, found it would not success and the consequence (ie chaos) and concluded it was wrong way to go; Bush has found the alternatives wanting and is going with a plan to secure Baghdad as well as train up the Iraqi forces further.
We have been winning more than losing throughout these 3 to 4 years. Promised elections happened, progress was made to build a Constitution and laws in Iraq are underway. Saddam met his just end. In the end however, the plan A was that we trained up Iraqi security forces, and they would be bolstered by the political unification of Iraq and through that be able to keep the peace. This has not happened due to the Iraqi Govt being to sectarian for the Sunni insurgents, and sectarian conflict has bubbled up.
Further: Political forces that are adamantly hostile to our power projection have an interest in bringing us down. They include Iran and Syria, but there are others in the middle east and of course here at home the Democrats are more interested in bringing Bush down than keeping America up.
To win, it will be hard and take time, but the current plan has 3 elements that are key - security in Baghdad; training and equipping even further the Iraqis; political dialog.
Blogger Frank Warner interviews U.S. Army Capt. Eric Coulson, Commander of A Company, 321 Engineer Battalion, based in Ar Ramadi, al-Anbar Province, Iraq.
“I think there are as many opinions as there are Soldiers. Some are here to do their duty merely as Soldiers; others have a deep belief in the mission. I have no doubts about the need to build a democracy in Iraq, and have no doubt we can be successful given the time and patience to do so.”
Well, if you consider the fact that we need to win the war NOW and worry about out-year retention later, the surge makes perfect sense.
What we really need is (a) a surge that is big enough to pacify Baghdad considerably for a long enough period of time to 'take hold', and then have mixed US/Iraqi forces that gradually hand off the *pacified* area to Iraqi forces who are then *capable enough* to keep the peace.
The missing link has in the past always been the fact that the Iraqi forces have cracked under the pressure of excessive violence and/or were compromised in some way.
Well, if you consider the fact that we need to win the war NOW
It take around 10-12 years to win a guerilla war. So I wouldn't expect this to be over anytime in the next two years.
But if Petraeus thinks this will work, and given he's forgotten more than I know about this kind of stuff..I defer to him.
"It take around 10-12 years to win a guerilla war. "
You are right, so maybe i should recast my logic: I am trying to say that if we dont take care of the short term urgency, the long-term issue of readiness (and of winning the war in Iraq) becomes a sidenote anyway.
If status quo will cause us to lose the war soon as things spin out of control, then a surge NOW is the better approach (with the plan to hand off a more pacified Iraq to a stronger Iraqi forces in 1-2 years, to complete the mission of winning the war) than status quo (or reduction in forces). If our troop levels are lower in 2009-2010 anyway (which is almost certain), readiness and enlistment will not be an issue then.
Sometimes the complaints from Democrats about 'wearing the army out' sound like someone who decides to keep his car in a garage out of fear he'll wear it out. Now is the time to do what it takes to stabilize Iraq and preserve the Iraqi Govt.
The overall strategy in Iraq has not failed because of anything the US has done as much a failure of the new Iraqi Government to acheive the political unification of Iraq. The more we can do ( train and equip Iraqi army) the better, but to fail to stamp out the high level of violence is to make it impossible for the new Iraqi army to fully get traction and keep the peace. It's got to work together.
"But if Petraeus thinks this will work, and given he's forgotten more than I know about this kind of stuff..I defer to him."
Dittos.
Good quote. However, I think it is premature to assume that the Western Culture is a sleeping culture. It is only 40 years since their last rampage.
Let me know if you want in or out.
Links: FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
His website: http://victorhanson.com/
NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
New Link! http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/
I am trying to say that if we dont take care of the short term urgency, the long-term issue of readiness (and of winning the war in Iraq) becomes a sidenote anyway.
Well that makes more sense to me. It's a matter of adjusting long and short term policy to each other with the long term goals driveing the short term.
The problem is too many people seem to think this is like a movie, where the hero rides off into the sunset in an 1 1/2 hours. It's not, it's real life and there's no tivo, fast forward or pause button. And yes we are making it up as we go along.
Bump
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