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Posted on 01/06/2007 11:15:13 AM PST by NormsRevenge
When historians get around to chronicling the first half of the 21st century, let's hope they don't write that America lost its war against terror by default.
Any change of direction from Washington now will be taken as a concession, and will certainly be read by Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban as a signal that they are on the right track.
But, what choice do we have? How can we achieve victory when we are fighting a war that has no specific goal? In our effort to bring peace and democracy to the world, we seem to have confused the art of diplomacy with the science of war. In the infantry, we used to hope that our country wouldn't engage in any war it wasn't sure of winning.
At America's prestigious war colleges — Annapolis, West Point and Colorado Springs — the teaching premise is the same: War has only one goal, victory. Otherwise it would be as disastrous as if a football coach told his team before a game that a tie is acceptable or that an occasional loss is all right, too.
The writings of Karl von Clausewitz, a military general and director of the Prussian War College after the Napoleonic wars, set the pace for military scholars. He said that the power of declaring war should be invested in the people through their elected representatives.
"The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it," von Clausewitz wrote.
Our Founding Fathers made it clear that the regulation of our military forces would be vested in the legislature as representatives of the people.
Both von Clausewitz and the framers of our Constitution made clear the distinction between the forces of the king and the forces of the people. They recognized that every ambitious ruler has wished for an army of his own, for a private guarantee of power.
The American armed forces belong to the people, and morally and politically they can have no allegiance to political parties, pressure groups or ambitious rulers.
Aye, there's the rub. The problem in a democracy is how to give the one-voice authority that the military needs to an army that belongs to the largest committee of all, the people.
The Constitution tries to bridge that gap by stating that the president shall be commander in chief of the Army, Navy and the militia of the several states. But every time we go to war, this dichotomy creates problems.
In the Persian Gulf War under Bush-the-first, the lightning-speed overrun of Kuwait to oust the invading forces of Saddam Hussein brought head-to-head disagreement between commander Norman Schwarzkopf and Washington's military supervisor, Colin Powell.
"Stormin' " Norman Schwarzkopf, in true military tradition, argued that the allies should take advantage of the fact that they had the Iraqi army on the run, and should proceed to capture Baghdad. Colin Powell said that we were bound by a directive from the most infamous committee of them all, the United Nations, and that our spectacular victory was to be denied just inside the Iraqi border.
War is serious business. To win, it must be directed by a single, strong voice; and that voice must have defined a specific enemy.
In the current war on terror, the American government has yet to define what would constitute victory. The vacuum created by failure to define who or what is the enemy is certain to create a loss by default. It's as if we sent firemen to attack a fire with hoses but no water.
In contrast, in World War II the assignment was to neutralize Germany. When the Nazis had been quelled and when we had established an occupational government, we declared victory. In the Pacific, the assignment was to disarm Japan.When the kamikazes had been quelled and when we had established an occupational government, we declared victory. But in our war on terror, there is no definition of what victory means.
This dilemma between the use of our military as an enforcer of our foreign policy, contrasted with the use of troops in a declared war, has long-plagued American presidents.
Nobel prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway probably said it best: "Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war."
aint that the truth- yet sadly, the dems- who are FAR removed from the ground war- have decided that they know what is really going on over there - because after all- the dems have CNN and the AP and Reuters to fill them in on what's 'really happening', and they have decided that they know better than our battle hardened commanders do how to fight htis war- Freakin pretentious morons in the dem party- http://sacredscoop.com
bump
"You can't run a successful war by committee."
It's how we've run every war since WWII, after the War Department became the politically correct department of Defense.
A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.
LAZARUS LONG
We had a war cabinet in WWII. Don't know what that was if it wasn't a committee.
Before it is over, we must clearly define this enemy and design and implement a comprehensive strategy to win it.
We are certainly not at war with all muslims but we are at war with that aspect of islam that espouses jihad and seeks to establish a global caliphate (and unfortunately that is most of true islam).
IMO, this war hasn't even begun.
An armadillo is a racehorse designed by a committee.
IMO, Short term yes; long term no. When the west is truely threatened with WMD and truely decides to fight, the Islam is ROP concept will already have been disproven, necessitating the brutal total war that will be required to win.
"The problem in a democracy is how to give the one-voice authority that the military needs to an army that belongs to the largest committee of all, the people."
Setting aside that the United States is not a democracy, we never had much of a problem winning wars until after WWII when one of the political parties in coordination with the entire American media determined that America should never, ever be permitted victory in any war fought in support of American interests.
This is why the political situation is so difficult. We have been at war at home between people wishing to deny the existence of God and silence all those who believe in the God who is acknowledged in our Founding documents, and another faction who, incredibly, believes our nation can continue to prosper if we eliminate war, close all our overseas bases and de-fund the military. And we are being attacked from abroad by those who seek to impose their religion on the world. What a freakin' disaster, and the Supreme Court is to blame.
Well, as much as I and others agree that Islam is Evil, the President has the responsibility for our protection, and if he were to state that Islam in it's present form is violent, he would have caused us all much danger- I'm sure he doesn't believe for a second that the Koran of Today is a peaceful book at all, but what else can he do but be diplomatic by stating that there ARE good Muslims who eschew violence and codemn the violence spoken of in the Koran. That is fact- Early Arabs practiced a peaceful preIslam religion that respected everyone- but Muhammad came along and forced their religion to accept his whacko ideals of rape,murder,pedophilia, the spread of the Koran at the point of a sword etc. Many Arabs today I'm sure want their original religion back but are helpless to stand up agaisnt Radical muslims today http://sacredscoop.com
Thank God Roosevelt and Churchill didn't go to war this way.
It always amazes me that politicians know how to prosecute a war better than the graduates from our war colleges. That reasoning is one reason many military officers resigned their commisions under the Clinton Admin. They didn't trust him.
completely agree.
Rewriting the Rules of War(long important article, must read)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1761362/posts
Yep. Throw as many Generals and purge strategies at Iraq as you want to. Our citizenry is not in a mind state of war yet.
4 or 5 nukes in the right places and we are an 1880's society with 300+ million people to feed. Yea, think about that.
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