Wishful Thinking and Indecisive Wars (Great essay - don't miss this one)

The Journal of International Security Affairs ^ | Spring 2009 | Ralph Peters

[SeafoodGumbo]

The most troubling aspect of international security for the United States is not the killing power of our immediate enemies, which remains modest in historical terms, but our increasingly effete view of warfare. The greatest advantage our opponents enjoy is an uncompromising strength of will, their readiness to “pay any price and bear any burden” to hurt and humble us. As our enemies’ view of what is permissible in war expands apocalyptically, our self-limiting definitions of allowable targets and acceptable casualties—hostile, civilian and our own—continue to narrow fatefully. Our enemies cannot defeat us in direct confrontations, but we appear determined to defeat ourselves.

Much has been made over the past two decades of the emergence of “asymmetric warfare,” in which the ill-equipped confront the superbly armed by changing the rules of the battlefield. Yet, such irregular warfare is not new—it is warfare’s oldest form, the stone against the bronze-tipped spear—and the crucial asymmetry does not lie in weaponry, but in moral courage. While our most resolute current enemies—Islamist extremists—may violate our conceptions of morality and ethics, they also are willing to sacrifice more, suffer more and kill more (even among their own kind) than we are. We become mired in the details of minor missteps, while fanatical holy warriors consecrate their lives to their ultimate vision. They live their cause, but we do not live ours. We have forgotten what warfare means and what it takes to win.

There are multiple reasons for this American amnesia about the cost of victory. First, we, the people, have lived in unprecedented safety for so long (despite the now-faded shock of September 11, 2001) that we simply do not feel endangered; rather, we sense that what nastiness there may be in the world will always occur elsewhere and need not disturb our lifestyles. We like the frisson of feeling a little guilt, but resent all calls to action that require sacrifice.

Second, collective memory has effectively erased the European-sponsored horrors of the last century; yesteryear’s “unthinkable” events have become, well, unthinkable. As someone born only seven years after the ovens of Auschwitz stopped smoking, I am stunned by the common notion, which prevails despite ample evidence to the contrary, that such horrors are impossible today.

Third, ending the draft resulted in a superb military, but an unknowing, detached population. The higher you go in our social caste system, the less grasp you find of the military’s complexity and the greater the expectation that, when employed, our armed forces should be able to fix things promptly and politely.

Fourth, an unholy alliance between the defense industry and academic theorists seduced decisionmakers with a false-messiah catechism of bloodless war. In pursuit of billions in profits, defense contractors made promises impossible to fulfill, while think tank scholars sought acclaim by designing warfare models that excited political leaders anxious to get off cheaply, but which left out factors such as the enemy, human psychology, and 5,000 years of precedents.

Fifth, we have become largely a white-collar, suburban society in which a child’s bloody nose is no longer a routine part of growing up, but grounds for a lawsuit; the privileged among us have lost the sense of grit in daily life. We grow up believing that safety from harm is a right that others are bound to respect as we do. Our rising generation of political leaders assumes that, if anyone wishes to do us harm, it must be the result of a misunderstanding that can be resolved by that lethal narcotic of the chattering classes, dialogue.

Last, but not least, history is no longer taught as a serious subject in America’s schools. As a result, politicians lack perspective; journalists lack meaningful touchstones; and the average person’s sense of warfare has been redefined by media entertainments in which misery, if introduced, is brief.

By 1965, we had already forgotten what it took to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and the degeneration of our historical sense has continued to accelerate since then. More Americans died in one afternoon at Cold Harbor during our Civil War than died in six years in Iraq. Three times as many American troops fell during the morning of June 6, 1944, as have been lost in combat in over seven years in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, prize-hunting reporters insist that our losses in Iraq have been catastrophic, while those in Afghanistan are unreasonably high.

Read the rest here .

[nathanbedford]

The canary in the mine shaft.

Right you are, this is a very good read indeed.

As a conservative, I read this way I am sure most Freepers read it, as a bill of particulars against the modern American left which has behaved as something resembling a fifth column opposing if not actually sabotaging America when we wage war. This is been increasingly true since 1945.

I think is also instructive to reflect that the left in America has been less than consistent in its opposition to the nation when it wages war. In 1938 the left was clearly opposed to Hitler and the militaristic threat he represented. In 1939, after the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact, the American left pivoted in place and without a trace of shame opposed the very people it had supported against Hitler and supported the very people it had opposed. In 1940, after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, the left again pirouetted without a trace of chagrin and supported the Soviet Union and opposed Hitler. In these three years the American left favored war, opposed war and favored war. Pearl Harbor only brought the rest of America to the point of view the left had maintained since Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union.

This leads one to ask whether the left is congenitally against war or against waging war against fellow leftists. I conclude the latter is the case.

There is one flaw in this analysis which immediately jumps to mind: why has the left in the war against Islamicist-fascist-terrorism behaved much the same as the left behaved in the cold war waged against communism? Ralph Peters has drawn his bill of particulars with which we agree. But surely one cannot equate Islamists with communists because they have fundamentally antagonistic ideologies. One need only examine the Islamists' treatment of women, homosexuals, atheists, or those who seek freedom from religion, to confirm that. Why did the left undermine the war against terrorism?

This is a question which I wish the author had considered. My tentative conclusion is that the left sought power and regarded Islamist-fascism as a short-term opportunity if a long-term threat. In other words, if they could undermine George Bush's war against terrorism they could undermine George Bush and gain political power. If they fail to undermine George Bush's war he would get elected in 2004 and another Republican would get elected in 2008. Beyond these immediate goals the left presume from its myopic ideology that the Islamists are not really motivated by religion but by class considerations of poverty, colonialism etc. When the left assumes power they will address those issues and terrorist threats will fade away. The left assumes that religion is irrational, an emotional reaction class problems caused by capitalism. Islam will naturally become rational as those problems are dealt with by socialism.

The author touches on the mindset of the Islamist and of the American elitist intellectual but he does not go as far as I do.

What is the significance of the left's presumption that it can manage Islam after the left attains power? It means that the left thinks it can exploit terrorism now to gain power and solve the problem later. What has that got to do the way the left flip- flopped around the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact of 1939? It means that the left is very much willing to wage war when its values and its power are threatened. For confirmation one need only survey the bloody mindedness of Stalin when sacrificing millions in suicide charges against the Nazis; or Mao's murderous cultural revolution to protect his own power; or the brutality of the Khmer Rouge; or the murderous takeover of South Vietnam.

My point, we conservatives have become so habituated to regarding the left to be anti-military , anti-military-industrial complex, and so soft, and so unreliable in time of war, that we think that the left is congenitally against war. I fear that is not so.

If we apply these reflections to the present American administration we see that the left has virtually unfettered power in America and certainly over our foreign policy. With Barack Obama in power and the Congress, not to mention the media, wholly in his thrall, there is no further need to undermine the war against terrorism, indeed, the war against terrorism has become as real a threat to the left as Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.

The author mentions the threats from Russia and China. I do not think that we should equate the ideology of present-day Russia and China with the ideology that was so congenial to the American left during the Cold War. I do not want to make too broad a statement, but I do not think the thugocracy of Russia is regarded the same today by the left. China, likewise, if a threat, is a threat as much for its robust capitalism as for its statism.

Therefore, I propose that conservatives watch the reception this article receives from the left as a miner would watch his canary to determine if danger looms. When the left generally endorses the precepts of this article, watch out!

[Walrus]

I, too, have just forwarded this excellent essay to several friends ... including one who has definite liberal/pacifist tendencies. He’s the one who needs its cold logic and wisdom most!

[marron]

Yours is the post of the day, and the Peters’ piece is the article of the week.

I too have tried to consider why the Left sees the Islamist as his ally rather than his blood enemy, when they appear to be polar opposites.

I agree with your analysis, but I’ll embroider a bit anyway. There are a couple of reasons. The first is that the average leftist is not rational, and despite his conceit he is not very knowledgeable about the world. What he knows about history and the military and current events he gets from Hollywood movies, his professor’s Chomsky rants, and the Comedy Channel. He’s convinced that Islamist rage has something to do with our oil companies, our Israel policies, and a lack of social programs for the poor which they will fix as soon as they take control in Washington.

And in any case, the Islamist gunman is someone far away, who kills people he doesn’t know, whereas the Republican next door is the immediate obstacle to everything he wants to achieve. In his mind the Islamist is the enemy of his enemy, which is to say, Republicans and believing Christians and Jews. He just can’t find it in himself to see the Islamist as any threat, except in terms of accidental collateral damage. And since he blames Republicans, Christians, Israel, and oil companies for the Islamist’s rage, he blames those same people for any collateral damage and for any danger he might himself be in for looking like one of us.

And the final reason is sheer uncomprehending moral cowardice. When the average leftist looks at Islamists he blinks, and then blinks again. Blaming Republicans, Christians, Israel, and the oil companies for Islamism relieves him of any responsibility to do anything to stop it, he is relieved of any need to explain why he sits frozen in place while the dangers gather. Attacking you and me is safe, we’ll never hurt him, we’ll defend to our deaths his right to blame us for everything that ever happened in history, for everything that ever happened to him in his life, whereas attacking Islamists could very well be fatal in the very here and now.

So thats it. For the leftist, the Islamist is the perfect wrecking ball that he thinks he can ride unharmed. Part of it is that he hates us, the enemy he knows, more than them, the enemy he doesn’t know. Some of it is sheer ignorance. And some of it is moral cowardice. He is the guy John Stuart Mill was talking about; the leftist will always be kept safe by better men than he.

[Tolik]

Long and good. Must read!

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for the perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author all 100% to feel the need to share an article.)

I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of the good stuff that is worthy of attention.

You are welcome to browse the list of truly exceptional articles I pinged to lately. Updated on April 1, 2009.  on  my page.
You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).

Besides this one, I keep 2 separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson and Orson Scott Card.  

[Tolik]

Ping to a great article

[Vigilanteman]

Excellent observations for both of you. I am convinced that a substantial number, and probably even a deciding majority, of the mushy middle went for ObaMao by the combination of McCain’s pathetic debate performance and his ill-timed statement that an Obama presidency wasn’t to be feared. In other words, they were convinced that if the left was given power, they would suddenly begin to behave responsibly against the real threat of terrorist, particularly when the only viable alternative to them (McCain) publicly validated the theory.

[GOPJ]

The higher you go in our social caste system, the less grasp you find of the military’s complexity and the greater the expectation that, when employed, our armed forces should be able to fix things promptly and politely.

The truth is that we COULD defeat any of our enemies. Rather than going into Iraq with a speedy force we could have just nuked them. And it would have been over. Next group - do the same. There wouldn't have been a problem with North Korea now - but it's not our way.

So we play at war - knowing we have the superior ultimate weapons - ones our enemies have been fighting to get their hands on for decades.

We quake at the idea Iran might get "a nuke" or "two" while we have thousands of nukes.

It's silly. We're playing upper class "gentleman soldier" while they're playing down and dirty for real.

So yeah, it looks silly. Like a grown man pretending to be afraid of a two year old with a squirt gun.

[Lando Lincoln]

Thanks for the post and to my very good friend Tolik for the ping. I will put this on tonite’s read list. All the best.

[kalee]

for later reading

[mick]

"The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win."

Here is the essence of the article and the expression of the Moral Code needed for this civilization to endure and prevail.

An example from WWII of what I think he means. Relevant today with the torture issue:

Prof. Paul Fussell, a cultural and literary historian, and professor emeritus of English literature at the University of Pennsylvania wrote a book some time ago about his experiences as a US Army private in WWII. No conservative Fussell, but he describes an incident in the Battle of the Bulge when a small unit of GI's captured a few Germans. Being cut off from their unit and in desperate shape they needed to know exactly where the German tanks were to avoid being killed. The Germans prisoners refused to talk. Their Sergent lined them up and said that if they didn't talk he would begin killing them one by one. They still refused to talk. He immediately shot the first one in line in the head. The rest of them talked. The Americans were able to save themselves.

As Peters points out in this excellent article. We didn't win the war against the Germans and Japanese by playing fair. We played to win.

[GOPJ]

...we must dispose of one last mantra that has been too broadly and uncritically accepted: the nonsense that, if we win by fighting as fiercely as our enemies, we will “become just like them.” To convince Imperial Japan of its defeat, we not only had to fire-bomb Japanese cities, but drop two atomic bombs. Did we then become like the Japanese of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? Did we subsequently invade other lands with the goal of permanent conquest, enslaving their populations? Did our destruction of German cities—also necessary for victory—turn us into Nazis? Of course, you can find a few campus leftists who think so, but they have yet to reveal the location of our death camps.

Powerful logic.

[wbill]

Mom always said, "When you fight, you fight to win. Walk in, hit 'em with everything you've got, and get the hell out."

Good advice, IMHO. Pols could take a page out of Mom's book.

[litehaus]

"a child’s bloody nose is no longer a routine part of growing up, but grounds for a lawsuit; the privileged among us have lost the sense of grit in daily life."

.

Ol'Will was right---First, kill all the lawyers....

[itsahoot]

The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters.

Statement of the ages.

[itsahoot]

Powerful logic.

Yes but out of place on this forum, or so we will be told soon. Logic is only applicable to Lefties and RINO's since they are intellectually superior.

[Congressman Billybob]

Excellent, excellent. A long read, but worth every minute to read it slowly with clear understanding.

Congressman Billybob

Latest article, "The Coal-Fired Furnace in the Sky"

Latest article, "Ben Franklin (Congressman Billybob) at Knoxville Tea Party"

[penelopesire]

Excellent article by Peters. Loved this part:

“Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media.”

Military attacks on NBC/MSNBC sounds like a very good idea to me...LOL!!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Tolik.

We become mired in the details of minor missteps, while fanatical holy warriors consecrate their lives to their ultimate vision. They live their cause, but we do not live ours. We have forgotten what warfare means and what it takes to win... history is no longer taught as a serious subject in America's schools. As a result, politicians lack perspective; journalists lack meaningful touchstones; and the average person's sense of warfare has been redefined by media entertainments in which misery, if introduced, is brief.

[knews_hound]

Post of the Day



Cheers,

knewshound

http://www.knewshound.blogspot.com/

[PaleoBob]

I think Peter’s criticism of the Defense industry comes from the preoccupation with precision strikes, which are different from pinprick strikes. Precision strikes are a good thing because they deliver the right munitions to the right place. Unfortunately, precision munitions make pinprick strikes possible—and this is NOT a good thing. We will not win the war though pinprick strikes. We can only win a war when the enemy is exhausted and his will is broken. This is the part our Elites have forgotten and it will result in war without end. Victory will not happen with pinprick strikes.

---

He just seemed to paint with a very broad brush. I don’t know what part of the industry he was indicting so I figure it was the entirety of it.

As for the idea of growing our military, you might be right but with the Comrade General Secretary of the Party in the White House that’s a scary thought. At what point would he call them home to unleash them on us? And, are we sure he’s not adding forces in Afghanistan only to strengthen the resurgent communist republic lost by the Soviets?