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Excellent article, ping and bookmark for later.
Thanks
Leo
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Definitely food for thought...
I would be more than willing to go through the rationing, the speed limit restrictions, the hard times in general if it meant that we would be rid of the Islamic threat to our way of life. Sometimes sacrifice is necessary to win a real victory. Our current warfare pattern is not a recipie for true and long-term victory.
Unless there was another catastrophic attack on the US with a nation openly declaring war on us, these "WW2" rules would never fly.
I think that one explanation of the difference between the WWII model and that of Vietnam lies in the Korean War, only recently the recipient of the name of "War" and at the time a "conflict" or "police action." Part of the reason for this is (1) the fatigue the WWII generation felt at the successful ending of a maximum effort, and (2) the perceived lack of need for an all-out effort in a small and distant place. After a year or so of war there the latter attitude was grudgingly adjusted, but the idea was that we could support both a small-scale "police action" and European and domestic reconstruction simultaneously under an essentially peace economy.
The effects of that erroneous attitude are the principal complaints of veterans of that conflict - aging and inadequate supplies, inadequate ammunition - does this sound familiar? But quite in keeping with your thesis as I understand it was that from the home front's point of view this was war on a part-time basis.
Vietnam was very much entered and for a good number of years prosecuted on this basis. It takes a visible threat on the order of that posed by Nazi Germany to convince the population of the sacrifices necessary for total warfare. Neither Korea nor Vietnam was really convincing on that basis. With 9/11 the War On Terror was, War in Afghanistan was on a provisionary basis, but War in Iraq wasn't, or more properly was subject to vociferous criticism on that basis.
The difference is that in Afghanistan the 9/11 attackers enjoyed overt state-level support in terms of funding, logistics, and training. In Iraq that was not the case to anywhere near that level and was covert, and hence deniable, besides. The nature of the two interventions was entirely different from the point of view of the public and those differences were played upon, exaggerated, and exploited by those with a political stake in so doing.
What is most striking about this difference is that in the case of Afghanistan we had an identifiable opponent in a specific location; elsewhere in the WOT we have opponents who are not so readily identified who depend on the sanctuary provided under international law. The essence of proxy war by terror is to keep the threat under the threshold that would trigger open warfare. Bush moved that threshold down with respect to Iraq and infuriated an international diplomatic community who had come to depend on it. The effect is that now countries such as Iran and Syria are pressing to identify and re-establish that threshold. If it is formally codified in international law those who wish to exploit it may stay just under it and still conduct proxy warfare.
What that also does is to deny the attacked country the ability to mobilize the sort of all-out total-war effort to which your essay refers. It is warfare by slow asymmetrical dripping - I think "fourth-generation" is overstating the case but it certainly does represent the sort of lesson learned inadvertently by the communists in Korea and developed to fruition in Vietnam. In this respect 9/11 was a colossal blunder on the part of the terrorists because it threatened the very means of this warfare to exist unaddressed. A lot of liberals and internationalists liked the old rules because they knew where they stood (and how much they could get away with). A good deal of the shouting is to revert to those days, and I don't think given the nature of the new terror that the world can afford that luxury.
All IMHO and subject to vigorous debate as usual, of course...
I have never seen a coherent, cogent and convincing explanation for this.
For the life of me, I can't imagine why Israel by any measure justifies being "under control" for the benefit, ostensibly, of Europeans.
Has anyone seen such a justification? Has Israel ever attacked anyone before being provoked?
An analysis based on only WW II and Vietnam (a lost campaign in the ultimately victorious conduct of WW III, a.k.a. the Cold War) is not really very enlightening.
The notion that the general populace of a great power needs to sacrifice to fight a war effectively is not born out by a longer examination of history: Rome's conquests were not accomplished by imposing hardship on the citizens of the Republic. Frederick the Great fought many wars, and only resorted to conscription during the Seven Years War when all of the other continental powers were arrayed against Prussia. He once expressed the desideratum "Ideally my people should not even know that I am at war." Britain's imperial wars in the 18th and 19th centuries were not accompanied by great sacrifice at home, nor by indefinite terms for military service.
Indeed the decisive blows in the Cold War, the arming of proxies in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, the invasion of Grenada (repealing the Brezhnev Doctrine), and defense build-up that the Soviets couldn't outrace (augmented I've heard with faking of greater accuracy than actually achieved in anti-missile tests), were all accomplished without imposing WW II-style rigors on the American people.
What is needed is not hardship, but single-mindedness and resolve, two qualities lacking thanks to the treasonous behavior of the media and the American left both in and out of public office.
GREAT ARTICLE! ONE OF THE BEST!!
Bump
Bump for book mark
Being able to "Name the Enemy" is important; in this case, Naming the enemy, unless you're willing to call it "Islam" or even "Radical Islam" is difficult, and it becomes a "War on Terror" which makes as much sense as calling the war against Japan a "War on Naval Aviation".
But nobody asked me about it at the time :)
It is difficult to argue against any of this hypothesis.
To defeat our enemies I would commit myself to all those ways of WW2 thinking. And I would absolutely drool seeing people like Rosie put in prison for treason!
Would the "No Blood for (insert any U.S. strategic objective here)" crowd, the liberal news media and the Democrats demand a cut and run policy any less vehemently for any U.S. war if a declaration of war is on the books?
No.
During the Barbary Wars, a declaration of war was rejected because such a diplomatic courtesy is given only to sovereign nations and not to a bunch of cutthroats such as the Barbary Pirates. A declaration of war would only have inflated their international standing.
A declaration of war against a terrorist organization during a time of armed conflict is the diplomatic equivalent of appointing a U.S. Ambassador to such an organization during the absence of armed conflict.
A declaration of war recognizes your opponent as a sovereign nation worthy of such a diplomatic courtesy. That is why the United States of America never declared war on the Confederate States of America.
You are so, so right.
And we are so, so screwed.
later
bump for later
L