Posted on 05/25/2009 9:17:48 AM PDT by 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 casualtieshostile, civilian and our owncontinue 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 newit is warfares oldest form, the stone against the bronze-tipped spearand the crucial asymmetry does not lie in weaponry, but in moral courage. While our most resolute current enemiesIslamist extremistsmay 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; yesteryears 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 militarys 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 childs 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 Americas schools. As a result, politicians lack perspective; journalists lack meaningful touchstones; and the average persons 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 .
The conductor, a decent guy, turned around and said something about honoring veterans (first mistake. Memorial Day is to honor the war dead) serving “in ‘our’ behalf.”
Being a veteran, I resent it greatly when someone thanks me for serving “in their behalf.”
I know what you’re saying about Memorial Day. My boss wished me a “happy Memorial Day.” He’s a good guy but is clueless. I just shrugged my shoulders. I started hating Memorial Day years ago when it became clear to me that people thought it was for cookouts and wiffle ball. I have nothing against either but....
Oh well.
Good article. So re the others at the link.
Second, the blame for the expectation of a near-bloodless war doesn't fall on defense contractors, it falls on the military that has managed to wage them on several recent occasions. The Iraqi army was the sixth-largest in the world in 1990. 100 hours. The fall of Afghanistan, a country in virulently anti-Western hands, took three weeks. The second time into Iraq, the same to the fall of Baghdad. People expect these incredible fighters to do anything because they damn near can. Only when the mission is changed from war-fighting to occupation and nation-building does the butcher's bill start to climb.
But the media, oh, my, does Peters ever hit that one on the head.
Today, the United States and its allies will never face a lone enemy on the battlefield. There will always be a hostile third party in the fight, but one which we not only refrain from attacking but are hesitant to annoy: the media.
In the latest Iraq invasion the only decent, reliable press came directly to the public from men and women embedded with the troops, where the chances to filter it through a mesh of ideology were minimized. When that changed, the story changed. The international press especially, but the domestic press as well, is crippled by an institutional leftism that declares that violence is always wrong when employed by the strong and always right when employed by the "weak," even though the latter tend most to employ it against the even weaker. This is the one-size-fits-all ideology of oppressed versus oppressor, the adolescent romanticizing of butchers as liberators. It is unthinking decadence, the luxury of a class that never had to fight for the freedom it abuses.
Lastly, and despite my stout refusal to consider a draft military superior to a volunteer one (I served in them both and so did Peters), I will have to lament, as he does, the diminishing percentage of Americans, especially those in positions of responsibility, who have served. It does make a difference.
The phenomenon of Western and world journalists championing the rights and causes of blood-drenched butchers who, given the opportunity, would torture and slaughter them, disproves the notionwere any additional proof requiredthat human beings are rational creatures. Indeed, the passionate belief of so much of the intelligentsia that our civilization is evil and only the savage is noble looks rather like an anemic version of the self-delusions of the terrorists themselves.
Rousseauian "noble savage" bs that "journalists" swallow whole.
Thanks for the ping T.
Your comments are right on. I would only add - as a suggestion - that the left has been at war for decades, but off the battlefield. We, the opponents of the left, have been fooled into a belief that if no bullets are flying, no war is in progress. If we are to win the current war (not in Iraq or Afghanistan, but the one we’ve been fighting since shortly after the end of WWI), it will require a huge shift in our collective mind-set. Only “civilized” Man (civilized according to the definition from the “elite”) would devise a game called War and attempt to play it by a set of accepted “rules”.
What nonsense. What good are “rules” to the losers?
Utterly fantastic.
Why is it that when ever I begin to read a well thought-out, articulate post, at the end, I see a picture a Nathan Bedford Forrest?
Thanks for the kind words.
Here in Germany I do not think I can get your book. How is it going?
LOL!
Great post. If you have a ping list - please add me. Thanks.
I don’t have an official ping list for Ralph Peters but believe he is one of the best writers re our military. I’ll remember you asked and ping you along with the few others to his articles if you are interested.
It’s a little much for me to be a ping list of one! If you remember - and it’s a great one - I’d love a ping. If not, don’t worry - I’ll try to keep an eye out for Ralph Peters’ stuff. Thanks for the offer.
Ping
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