Posted on 03/05/2006 5:37:17 AM PST by mal
When they briefly stated an intention to begin referring to a “global struggle against violent extremism,” certain officials in the Bush administration did more than implicitly acknowledge the vacuity of the idea of a “global war on terror.” They hinted, however obliquely, at something far more profound: a radical shift in the nature of conflict, what it means to be “at war.” From traditional notions of armies fighting armies in vast confrontations, the new concept seems to imply, the warfare of the future will look very different — twilight struggles against non-state networks of evildoers. This notion mirrors an emerging theory about the future of conflict: “Fourth Generation Warfare.” But while the Fourth Generation Warfare concept offers great insight as a description of the causes and character of warfare in the future, it misleads: The major trends of the past century yield up a likely different future for the activity we know, but may not always recognize, as warfare.
There is a tendency, when considering “theories of war,” to default to tactical distinctions for a definition of the core event — tank war versus insurgency, massed attrition as opposed to agile maneuver. But warfare is a product of international politics, and the form warfare takes is closely related to its causes: In the reasons for war, we will find clues as to the sorts of wars we will fight. My argument builds on two facts: First, the form warfare takes derives from, and cannot be considered without reference to, its causes; and second, the fashionable theories of the future of war are mostly silent on those causes. Today, three concepts vie for the position of leading theory of conflict in the twenty-first century: tried-and-true realpolitik, the reliable province of traditional state-versus-state conflict; “transformation,”
(Excerpt) Read more at policyreview.org ...
The fallacy that negates the entire article.
The statement is patently and demonstrably, false.
"The fact is that we are not “at war” in the way the framers of our Constitution understood that concept when they wrote the document. We are engaged in a different enterprise entirely, one that overlaps only a little with war as it has been traditionally — and politically — understood. More than any well-honed constitutional theory, it seems to me, this simple distinction hacks the legs out from under the assertions of executive privilege in wartime being made today."
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Pages and pages of this BS article - written just to knock Bush! See his last sentence above. The writer doesn't belong with the Hoover Institute.
Read later or Launch Now,
Given the current leadership in Teheran I vote option 2.
"Attend to identity.
Attend to the global economy.
Practice the greatest restraint possible in foreign policy.
Avoid humiliating others.
Do not become the focus of the alienation.
Crush the true extremists."
Actually, this article must have been the basis for Bill's failed policy: be nice to the Third World nutcases to soothe their "humiliation" at being ignorant and dysfunctional. Never respond to their provocations and attacks. Accept a certain level of losses of our own people and changes to our system as a result of their attacks. Ignore Islamic radicalism, it's just a symptom.
The very policy that brought us 9/11, in fact...and sadly, the policy that still seems to be in place at the State Dept.
What I didn't see in this article was a statement which said that a nation needed the will to engage in a conflict and win it. Tactics will always overcome a technological advantage.
Definitely psycho-babble. Come to think of it, however, this looks like our current policy, not only Bill's failed policy. Coming out of the Hoover Institute, in fact, it probably is our current policy.
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