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“I was talking about the military war. The one with troops, bullets, bombs and grenades. You must be talking about the culture war between the Left and the Right.”

So was I. I was talking about the military war.
Military wars are fought in the field, but they depend upon a base of political support to be fought to victory. If that base of political support fails, the military forces in the field do not achieve the strategic objective, and the war is lost.

By 1952, America had been battered in Korea, but still had an effective nuclear monopoly over the immediate adversaries (China didn’t get the bomb until about 1965). American and UN Forces were, with sufficient devotion of power, capable of driving the Communists out of Korea and achieving victory in a united province, recapturing all the territory MacArthur had lost. But Ike ran on a platform of ending the war. He got into power and ended the war, with a stalemate line. We have been paying the price of the failure of achieve victory ever since, with the perpetual expense of guarding Korea, and now, with the nuclearization of the peninsula. Failure to defeat the enemy has consequences. We failed to defeat the Communists militarily in Korea because domestically, the US president did not want to mobilize the country, declare war, and expend the resources necessary to achieve victory. Instead, we sent enough to hold the line, got a lot of men killed, and are still paying for that outcome sixty-five years later. What happened “in the news” in America is what cost us the war in the field in Korea. A major political party, the Republicans of the time, campaigned against the war and won power based on opposition to the war. And once they got power, they took steps that promptly ended any hope of victory, settling for an armistice and a draw.

The Vietnam War was lost in Washington, and in the living rooms of America. Again, an undeclared war. Again, insufficient will to fully mobilize, or to apply full resources, again because there was a domestic agenda “too precious” to allow the government to fully commit. So we sent a lot of troops, fought a lot of battles, and everything we did there fell apart with the collapse of political will at home.

Grenada was fast, but President Reagan assessed the public’s lack of willingness to fight a middle eastern war when he precipitously withdrew the troops after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.

The Kuwait war is another example. The military victory was sweeping, and was generalizing into a strategic rout of the Iraqis and a revolt against the government. But the American command authorities abruptly halted the advance, and then did not commit the forces to back up the revolt against Saddam. Soon enough, Saddam was back in business taunting America again, hiding WMD, shooting at American planes and sponsoring terrorism abroad. A year after the tactical victory on the battlefield, the result achieved seemed to be nothing but a status quo ante. It felt good to be part of a victory, but the weakness of political will in 1991 led us directly to the desperate war of attrition of today.

There never was much will to be in Somalia, and as soon as US forces were hit hard, our position wilted and we retreated.

And now Iraq. Military victories in skirmishes and battles here and there and everywhere are better than defeats and losses, but they do not lead to victory in this war, not on the scale we are fighting it. The political will is already far too weak to contemplate sending more troops to win it. The political will to end it is not strong enough to do so, so we’re in this holding pattern, with insufficient forces to achieve military conquest of our foes, and thus condemned to bleed a day at a time, while with every day the national will to keep up this fight ebbs a little bit more.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

You asked me MY plan, to set you straight, what I would have done?

On September 13th or 14th, 2001, as soon as I had the assurances from national intelligence that Islamist terrorists were responsible, I would have made a speech, a call to war, very similar to what Bush actually said: “America is at war with all terrorist organizations of global reach, and with all the states that support them” - the same open-ended committment to terrorism. But I would have made it on the floor of a joint session of Congress, and it would have been the operant part of a specific request, under Article I of the US Constitution, for a formal Congressional Declaration of War, against “all terrorist organizations of global reach, and all those who support them”.

I would not have had universal support for this declaration. The original,.very limited move to authorize the use of force had a handful of dissenters who voted “No”. More would have voted no in September, 2001. Some would have said that the declaration was too open-ended, that it was unlimited, etc. Some. But by no means enough. The country was united in September, 2001. The country was angry. Congress was as angry as anyone. 9/11 was a Pearl Harbor moment. What it wanted was an FDR to sieze the moment, sieze the floor of the Congress and demand the plenary, unlimited grant of the war power by the United States Congress, just as FDR received. This WOULD have been granted.

And had it NOT been granted? Were I President in September 2001 and the country was attacked and the Congress REFUSED to declare war, even then, I would have resigned the office and gone home to Crawford.

But there is no way in hell that would have happened. Congress would have given the DoW.

At that same time, recall, the European NATO ministers were meeting and offering the invoke the general defensive articles of the NATO treaty. They did so openly and of their own volition, in September, 2001. Europe OFFERED to go to war for us right after 9/11. Remember that? I do. We thanked them, and turned them down.

But I would have sent my Secretary of State straight to NATO, armed with the US Congressional Declaration of War, and I would have ACCEPTED the full offer, and mobilized NATO, and prepared to send military forces to several parts of the world. By doing so right at the beginning, I would have had all the parts of Europe, including France and Germany, right on board and committing forces at that start. They were READY in September, 2001. WE said no. And then we dithered and did not declare war.

With America formally at war, and NATO at war, I would have treated American domestic politics precisely as FDR did. I would have immediately shelved the domestic agenda of the GOP. The whole thing. America is at war. When the war is over we will pick back up with our bickering. We need a general mobilization. We need the taxes to back it. We need to monitor communications and have censorship of military operations, just like in the World War II precedents.

America is a country that runs on precedent. I would have very self-consciously invoked all those World War II precedents, bringing them to the fore. THAT is how America behaves when formally at war, and I would have taken America formally to war.

In my war cabinent, I would have had prominent Democrats. Tom Daschle would have been there. And Hillary Clinton too. The Democrats would have been fully involved in the war effort, including the planning of operations. They would have “owned” the war as much as the Republicans did. Churchill did that in Britain in World War II, and to a great degree FDR did it too. Both parties had to “own” the war and reap the glory of the victory. Politics ends at the water’s edge, and I would have made sure that happened by bringing top Democrats into the cabinet.

Wars require money. The tax cuts would have been abandoned, and taxes raised, on the World War II precedent. There would have been trimming of fat from social programs too, and it would have all been for the war effort.

There would be no “Department of Homeland Security”. Homeland Security would be achieved by going into the nations where the enemies live abroad, and killing them, and by using the regular FBI and CIA and NSA to police and hunt down domestic terrorists.

I would not MYSELF have reminded people of the Korematsu precedent, but I would have had my law enforcement and security heads hint darkly at it. I would not have appeared in a mosque in my stocking feet proclaiming Islam a “religion of peace”. That is bullshit, always was. America would not be at war “With Islam”, but Islam is the key element in international terrorism, and I would have remarked that. Muslim leaders in America would be scared, and SHOULD be scared. The anal exam and spying on all things in organized Islam would have been intense. There is no political correctness in war.

I would never have made an “Axis of Evil” speech identifying only three countries, and dragging East Asian North Korea into the mix. The problem is terrorism, Islamist terrorism. Bush didn’t want to seem to be picking on Islam, so he added in the rogue state in Northeast Asia. It was a distraction. Maybe, if the link were eventually proven, I would be involved in North Korea, but N.K would have been off my list.

I would have stated the list of states that support terrorist organizations of global reach: Libya, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan. They would have known, openly, and through back channels, that they faced military operations from clandestine operations AND outright military force. As it happened, Libya, Yemen and Saudi Arabia flipped anyway. We probably would have had to fight all of the others at any rate, and that would have been the plan. Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Iran.

There would have been no year’s hiatus going for new resolutions. There would have been no WMD contretemps. Those states support terror. They will hand over the terrorists or there will be war.

To accomplish a regional war against multiple states, and to be able to occupy the territory and rebuild afterwards, I would have used the general mobilization and the taxes to triple the size of the US military, and deploy the forces outright. It would have been clear from the beginning that the war was going to proceed front to front, terrorist organization to terrorist organization and states supporting them, until the central Middle East was conquered or the terror-supporting states swore off terror.

The Democrats and NATO would have been in the planning the whole time. There would have been nothing ad hoc about it, and no dithering. From 9/13 onward, with the DoW, the PURPOSE would be to field a several-million man army and conquer Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, swiftly, and to hold them.

When al Qaeda fled into Pakistan, I would have followed with full US forces right into the country. I would have ignored the Pakistani governments cries about sovereignty. You have terrorist enemies of the United States operating from your soil, and you cannot control them. We are going to enter and destroy them. You will stand aside. It is your responsibility to control your territory. If you cannot or will not, and a threat emanates from there to us, then under the law of war we may intervene. If the Pakistanis decided to go to war, I would have aligned with India, offered them the Kashmir, and allowed an Indian conquest of Pakistan.

The point would have been to maintain momentum, and a massive and growing wartime military buildup in the United States, with heavy and early use of Nato forces, to give the war a global, and inevitable, feel to it. What Bush SAID America was going to do, I would have locked in legal stone by having Congress declare (they would have), and by invoking precedent and using the authority to MOBILIZE and ship forces out.

The wars would have been considerably more conventional, because I would have sent far larger forces into the countries. Foreign casualties would have been far, far highter too, because I would have used airpower regularly to destroy areas in resitance and cleaned up with ground power.

What of domestic opposition in the USA? It would have been very muted for two reasons.

One is that the Democratic leadership would be in the war cabinet, and their fate tied to the war. The other is that press censorship would have kept the Abu Graibs and other atrocities off the front page. The World War II precedent is key.

So, that’s how I would have won the war. By now, there would be about 3 million US troops in occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria. There would be no over-border terrorists (I would send forces into any country that had terrorists at the border). There would be large number of European NATO and other troops deployed as well, and the military phase would be over. There would be a whole lot more Arab and Persian dead, because of treating regions in resistance as a military threat and using airpower, as opposed to making any “hearts and minds” efforts to police.

I would have ASSUMED that the countries to be conquered were like Japan and Germany, enemy states that support terrorism and whose populations are enemy, and I would have occupied them and fought them accordingly. I believe that when you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.

I would have made a point of NEVER respecting mosques from which fire came. They would be systematically destroyed with airpower at the first shot. The point would be twofold. One: to demonstrate that religion is no sanctuary, and two, actually, to foment wilder resistance at start. Remember Najaf, when the Americans put down their weapons and grinned because mobs came into the streets and menaced as Americans approached the mosque? I would have opened fire and cleared the streets every time.

America would have conquered, along with our allies, and then reorganized the conquered peoples on more western lines, through a considerable occupation. There would have been no pretence that these people were our friends. They support terror, as nations, and I would have used the terror of the full, systematic use of modern firepower to literally cow civilian populations into submission. Where they did not submit, as at Najaf, there would be bloody massacres. The word would get out, and everywhere else would have submitted.

The “rules of engagement” would have been those used in World War II against the Germans: if there is resistance from the village, destroy the village and kill all resistance. Repeat from village to village until there is no resistance, or there are no more villages. Period.

I would have treated the War on Terror like World War II against Germany, and I would have constantly pulled out the precedents.

I believe that Americans, and Europeans too, love victory. And this strategy would have brought swift military victories.

I don’t believe that Americans care about enemy casualties for a generation, especially if the information is censored and not readily available from any open source.

I think that the momentum of a rapid, serious, World War II precedent military building and attack would have maintained the stream of victories and the military momentum, and the insistent invocation of the World War II precedent - in overt distinction from the limited police actions in the interim - would have kept America focused, and HAPPY with the focus. Americans were hurt by 9/11, but everyone felt the national unity. I would have used war and unity government to maintain that unity, and victory after victory to foster it.

History would call me a butcher, because my airpower and artillery strategy for reducing areas in resistance would have increased Iraqi death rates, for example, from the current roughly 80,000 to probably 5 to 6 million, at a minimum, but those details would be for the future to wring its hands over.

In short: I would have set up all of the political conditions for a World War II precedential victory, starting with the Pearl Harbor precedent, and my massive buildup and mobilization strategy, and serious, progressive real application of “We are at war with every terrorist organization of global reach, and every state that supports them”, and I would have achieved victory with high morale. I would have saved Iran for last, because I truly believe that the Iranians are not crazy, and that if faced with an America in the middle east with a three million man army, that has smashed to pieces and conquered all of the former terrorist states, and that is willing to use unlimited airpower to destroy resistance, they would capitulate and cease supporting terrorism. If not, then the invasion and complete conquest of Iran would begin.

No joke.
I wouldn’t have just mouthed the words Bush mouthed. I would have made them real.
That was my plan in September, 2001. It would be my plan today. That is how you win a war. What we have done is adopt a strategy for defeat and retreat, which will leave the terrorists intact to attack us again. I would not make that error.

As to NOW, what would I do? In Iraq, I would heavily arm the Kurds and an Iraqi nationalist Shi’ite/Ba’athist fashion, and get out of the way as they waged the civil war with the heaviest firepower, won after a brutal series of slaughters, and established they’re authority. They would be allied with us, who made it possible. I would in no sense attempt to do this clearing business with US forces. US forces would merely be a reserve force designed to vouchsafe the government. I would accept reality: Iraq is in civil war, and pick sides in the civil war and give them the means to win.

That answers your question. I was saying the same thing the week of 9/11. There was a way to do it. And then there’s what we’ve done. The one way leads to victory. The others, defeat.