Tag: War

Fellow philophronos blogger Laura is pretty annoyed with William Arkin for what he wrote about the troops in The Troops Also Need to Support the American People. She has demonstrated that here and defended it further here.

Now anyone who has read both our blogs is aware that we disagree dramatically on the Iraq war. My initial thought was that Laura was going overboard at a fairly reasonable point–civilian control. But then I read Arkin’s blog entry. Starting with the title, he manages to obscure the one good point with a hail of contemptuous language.

Oh, by the way, I do consider “scumbag” excessive. But that’s just me. I might have gone with “condescending obnoxious elitist” or something like that.

• The troops don’t have to support the American people, they’re a part of the American people.
• The “American people” are not only what the majority want. I happen to be in that majority. I want us out of Iraq, but the people who disagree are also part of the American people, and so are the troops.
• Like the rest of the American people, troops are permitted to have opinions as well. I happen to disagree with much of what these guys said, but that’s life.
• Volunteer != Mercenary. Thank the volunteers, don’t beat them up.
• I have never met an obscene comfort, and I’d like to be given an example. I do wonder whether Mr. Arkin has been deployed, then extended and extended and extended without any choice in the matter. Perhaps whatever small comforts the troops can be provided might appear less obscene.
• I guess the troops are allowed to have any opinion except one of contempt for any portion of the people back home. Mr. Arkin has an odd view of “freedom of speech.”
• The troops in general should not be blamed for the various scandals, any more than a community should be blamed for having a mass murderer in it. Those responsible should be punished. Those not responsible are, well, not responsible.

What bothers me is that this is the very sort of attitude and writing that is not support for the troops. They are doing precisely what they are supposed to do. They are carrying out the will of the civilian leadership in Iraq. It’s not up to them to figure out whether their activities are popular. Those of us who oppose the war can do so, and we are doing so, by the legitimate means of the ballot box. That portion of the American people who are in uniform in Iraq don’t have control over that, and shouldn’t, one way or the other.

Support for the troops involves respecting what they do. It doesn’t mean excusing those who do wrong, but it also doesn’t mean blaming everyone in uniform for the faults of a few, nor does it mean blaming people in uniform for the faults of their civilian leadership.

On the other hand, it should be clear that one can oppose the war and support the troops. I was one of the troops in more than one conflict in which I disagreed with the civilian leadership. As a person in uniform, I carried out my orders. It’s as simple as that. But I will not, as a civilian, simply accept whatever military leaders happen to want to do. The Iraq war is a bad choice badly executed. But it has been executed by excellent volunteer troops who deserve our thanks.

And now the third in a series of short posts–an unprecedented attack of brevity for me!

I’ve been saying “Iran” over and over again as the war in Iraq was first contemplated and then executed. An article today in the Washington Post talks about the influence of Iran and the fears, entirely justified in my view, of various regimes in the area on this matter. I think this article is quite enlightening.

In all the debates about winning or losing the war in Iraq, what I find extremely frustrating is that the discussion so often occurs without adequate context. Today Joe Carter writes about How We Lost the War (And Will Lose the Next One Too). I agree with many of his comments about American public opinion, but I think he also displays the dangerous tendency that Americans have to simply not think about the context of other countries, from the leadership on down.

Carter presents his rather excellent argument which is quite logical in a sterile sort of way. I even agree with the conclusion of his argument. Pulling out at this point cannot be painted as some sort of victory. It’s a loss. But in arguments the devil is often in the definitions, and there we have the real problem with this argument. Points #1 and #2:

(1) The object in war is to impose your will on your enemy.
(2) The will of our enemy is that we leave Iraq as soon as possible.

The enemy has a good idea what his will is, and what he wills is something that can potentially be accomplished. The American people, on the other hand, aided by mixed messages from their government, really never had any idea what their will was for Iraq. One could reverse the logic, and instead use our will as the standard, and our failure to impose that will means defeat. But the problem would be to discover just what our will was.

Here are some options:

1. Removal of Saddam Hussein from power
2. Elimination of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq
3. Removal of a potential base for terrorists
4. Creation of a new, stable government in Iraq
5. Creation of a democratic government in Iraq
6. Creation of a government friendly to the United States in Iraq
7. Creation of a society that would take a stand against terrorism

Well, #1 was accomplished and should have been expected. From a tactical point of view, capture and execution of Saddam Hussein was an added benefit. (What the process did to overall strategy is worth consideration.) It turns out there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction to get rid of, so #2 is accomplished, in a way. There’s no evidence that Iraq was an above average base for terrorism. In fact, Afghanistan and Pakistan probably remain better bases, and terrorists don’t settle in for the long haul in one location, at least surviving terrorists don’t. The remaining items are either contradictory or simply impossible in some other way. Donald Stoker, quoted by Carter claiming that combatting an insurgency normally takes 8-11 years, provides an interesting base line. I have no reason to dispute his estimate.

But one aspect of context when one deals with the Middle East is time or perhaps timelessness. If you spend 8-11 years imposing peace, and you succeed, you still have no assurance–or better not even a probability–that the imposed peace will last once you withdraw. Feuds can go underground only to pop back up as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Notice that the chief image for U. S. involvement from the Arab side of this is the crusades, and they were fought hundreds of years ago. Iraqis can still think in terms of restoring the glory of Babylon, which takes it into millenia. Americans simply can’t fathom that kind of thinking as a rule.

But there is a substantial problem in Iraq. Assuming that we want a democratic government, which seems to be part of the strategy, there is simply no reason for anyone to assume we’re also going to get a government that is friendly. We are much more likely to get one that is more similar to Iran than anything else, and such a government is not going to be pluralistic in nature, but inevitably will tilt toward one center of power or another. Based on population, that would be a Shi’ite dominated government. At a minimum, such a government would no longer stand as a counter-balance to Iran in the region, and could very well become an Iranian ally.

If your will in a war is self-contradictory, then there is simply no formula for victory. I don’t blame the American people for losing this war. There was never any potential strategy for victory. The one thing that could have made any of it worth anything would have been the finding and elimination of weapons of mass destruction. The removal of Saddam Hussein is, without context, a good thing to do, but we’re not going to be any happier with a Shi’ite dominated government, which right now is the most likely accomplishment of this war. We’ll still have attrocities in Iraq; they’ll just be against a different group of people.

Now I’d advocate staying on the simple grounds that we’re responsible for the current version of the mess. But I don’t think that we can make it better for the long term. The Iraqi people are going to have to decide for themselves whether they are going to return to all of the ancient feuds or whether they are going to learn to work together. History indicates that without some substantial force, the disparate elements that were brought together to create Iraq are not likely to form a terribly stable and peaceful union.

Many people seem to believe that my opposition to the Iraq war is an oppostion to war, that I don’t want us to go after terrorists or find and capture Osama bin Laden. On the contrary, my opposition to the war in Iraq is precisely because it detracts from that very goal. It expends huge quantities of human and material resources for at best marginal benefits. It is as though a commander in a war attacked a fortress that would become isolated in a properly conducted war, and expended huge amounts of ammunition and numerous troops to reduce that fortress when it could be simply isolated and allowed to become irrelevant. If you further imagine a fortress that is simply not going to fall or will take up the same enormous resources to occupy, you have the strategic impact of Iraq on the war on terror. It doesn’t get us anywhere, and it expends troops that are more useful elsewhere.

But based on the polls and on the truly silly notions held by many people, I also have to agree with Joe Carter’s conclusion:

What is even more distressing than the fact that we have lost this war is that we are likely to lose the next one too. We have no interest in fighting in engagements that last longer than a season of 24. Given this reality our best option is simply to refuse to fight. Rather than engage in ‘pre-emptive wars’? we should take a page out of France’s strategic playbook and make a habit of ‘preemptive surrender.’?

I’m afraid that no matter how much I believe the war in Iraq was a mistake from pretty much any angle, there will be numerous conflicts that will be good ideas, and based on the polls and general reasoning, I’m afraid the American people won’t back those up. I am wondering whether the completion of the war in Afghanistan, making sure that the government can stand, that the country can remain free, and that terrorist operations there can be largely eliminated, would receive the continued support of the American people were the news media focused on that country instead of Iraq. And there we do have the possibility of accomplishing good things, and we already have.

Unfortunately, I think Joe Carter is right that we simply don’t have the staying power for such a conflict. He and I disagree on the Iraq war itself, but I think we would agree on the broader issue. The American people will only tolerate a conflict if the losses are minimal and don’t distress us. The potential strategic gains or losses don’t seem to matter. At the moment, I don’t think we even have the will to pay for and support the type of security we need to protect our homeland, much less to support operations worldwide for decades to come. The 8 to 11 year estimate is probably good, based on history. Understanding the middle east would suggest that the estimate is low for the type of conflict we’re in, and we need to be ready to stay the course for more than 8-11 years, and that each such war is merely a battle in the larger war on terrorism.

. . . is someone who is willing to fight for it.

I don’t mean disrespect to peaceful protest. There is a great value in it, and in civil disobedience, though civil disobedience has been somewhat tamed since the days of Martin Luther King. When I was stationed at Offutt AFB, Nebraska, a protest leader told me that she informed the security police before a nuclear protest about how many would be there, and how many would cross over the line onto the base. That way the SPs could have the right number of vehicles along with lunches to feed the protesters before they received whatever letter they were going to get or they were charged. Gandhi and Martin Luther King never had it so good!

Nonetheless, such protesters do have a definite role in holding our feet to the fire on a variety of moral issues. The desire to protest is not limited to the left or the right, though the causes are different. Neither is the impulse to move toward violence if things don’t change, or don’t change fast enough.

What is often missed, I believe, is the fact that peaceful protest requires an ally: The conscience of the people one is protesting against. If those people are without consience, then the peaceful protester quickly becomes a dead protester. Gandhi was successful because whatever their faults, the British had limits beyond which they would not officially go. Certainly there were atrocities, but those were embarassments to the administration. I know some will say that it’s simply the shame that makes this work–the rulers don’t really have a conscience, they just don’t want to get caught. But even the fact that they don’t want to get caught indicates some conscience.

(more…)

I think Fareed Zakaria is right on point with his Newsweek commentary We Might ‘Win’ But Still Lose. He notes:

If the 20,000 additional American troops being sent to the Iraqi capital focus primarily on Sunni insurgents, there’s a chance the Shiite militias might get bolder. Colonel Duke puts it bluntly: “[The Mahdi Army] is sitting on the 50-yard line eating popcorn, watching us do their work for them.”

This has been the problem from the first. The question is not how many battles we can win. Doubtless we can win battles. The question is what the final result is going to be, and just how final it will be.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Uncle Sam wants US Muslims to serve and is taking positive steps to make them feel welcome in our armed services. We should do this simply because we are a society that values freedom of religion. But there is a practical side, indicated in the article–Muslims in the military have valuable language skills and knowledge of the culture in countries in which they may be called to serve. Lack of human intelligence (HUMINT) is one of our weaknesses in the war on terror.

Hat tip: Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

I’m a fairly regular reader of the evangelical outpost, and often disagree, even though I respond here infrequently.; Today Joe Carter has a post, The Ruby Slipper Option: Why We Can’t Win in Iraq, that is really exceptionally good, though I detect that Carter is less happy with his conclusion than I am.

I have commented a few times that Americans are, quite fortunately, not ruthless enough to be an occupying power. Carter notes that we tend to be a bit of a homesick power, although the homesickness is heavily the work of the voters who are already home. This is an excellent point with regard to American attitudes.

I would add, however, that there never was a hopeful option in Iraq. There was never any doubt that we could win on the battlefield, and of course we did. But winning as an occupying power with troops required to function as a fairly advanced police force is much less likely. I sense regret in many conservatives, such as Joe Carter, that we don’t have the staying power to make Iraq stable before we leave.

But what solution is there in Iraq that creates a stable country? The fact is that a stable Iraq that is also completely democratic is a fantasy. It’s not going to happen. Iraq is an artificial country combining people with different goals. These facts should have been given more consideration before we went in. One important consideration in formulating foreign policy should be: Is it sustainable? Determining that means considering whether the voters are likely to hang in there for the long haul. If you persuade people to enter the war with optimistic forecasts, you can’t be surprised when they abandon that support when things don’t look so rosy.

I would note, however, that I see no good reason for the voters to have been deceived. I believe the administration painted an excessively optimistic picture, but why would anyone with reading skills have believed it? If anyone supported the war, it should have been with the knowledge that it could have been worse than it is, and that it would certainly involved American lives and resources for a substantial period of time. I credit those who continue to support the war with consistency. I wonder about those who supported it and changed their minds.

In any case, American leaders should consider the Wizard of Oz factor when formulating foreign policy.