Posted by
Patrick Henry on Friday, August 06, 2010 2:55:52 PM
If history should never be ignored in the calculus of war, neither should culture.
For example, given the ongoing strife, animosity and violence between the Shia and
Sunnis, and the historic dominance by the minority Sunnis over the majority Shia
in Iraq, civil war, in the vacuum created by Saddam's overthrow, was axiomatic.
The U.S. should have seen it coming many miles away, and crafted a strategy to
extract our troops before they became targets in a crossfire that claimed the
majority of American lives in that country. We should be carefully looking at the
cultural factors at play in any country we seek to invade, and calculate in advance
the likely aftermath of our success or failure. This calculus should then drive our
strategy, tactics and extraction plan.
Alliances are a huge factor in both success and failure in war. In Viet Nam, the
North's close alliances with Russia and China doomed the American effort from
the beginning. In Korea, Harry Truman's reluctance to fully engage a stubborn
Chinese enemy caused him to reign in Douglas MacArthur's strategy to win the
war, and caused America to settle for a hard-won, bittersweet draw. Today, the
Taliban alliance with powerful elements in neighboring Pakistan threaten American
success in Afghanistan. None of these alliances were great surprises, and should
have been factored into the war objectives in each of these cases and, perhaps,
even the decision regarding whether to fight at all.
Timing is also a major factor. Should we have attacked Hitler before he conquered
most of Europe, confronted the Japanese Navy before Pearl Harbor or restrained
Mexico before the Alamo? In hindsight, probably so. But "pre-emptive war" is a
slippery slope, and launching an attack absent irrefutable evidence of capacity and
intent on the part of our enemy can lead to embarrassing debacles such as Iraq. The
trick is to fight when success can most likely be achieved, and before irreparable
damage is done. Military analyses show that the U.S. could likely have beaten Iraq
anywhere, at any time and on any field. So why not wait until the WMD evidence
was conclusive?
The undeniably changing nature of war is a growing factor in evaluating which
wars to fight and under what circumstances. King George's redcoats, using standard
European military doctrine in which lines of marksmen stood opposite one another
in an open field and blasted away to see which could do the most damage, was
summarily routed by American militiamen utilizing ambush tactics learned from the
American Indians and utlizing natural cover and concealment. The Iraqi's, using
Russian military doctrine reliant on long-range heavy artillery and massed armor
were shocked and overwhelmed by the advanced American military tactic known
as the "vertical envelopment," in which large contingents of skilled commandos
parachuted behind their lines, surrounded them and cut their communications. In
Viet Nam, the Cong proved to be better jungle fighters than the Americans. It
stands to reason, because it was their jungle. Military strategies can no longer be
static, and must be tailored to factor in a great many different contingencies. The
toughest admission is the most obvious: that most wars today will ultimately devolve
into guerilla conflicts.
A major factor in American conflicts has been lack of a clear and achieveable
objective, or a major change of objective that is not successfully communicated,
sold, and re-calibrated into strategy and tactics. Most Americans were on board
with attacking Iraq when they believed Iraq had nuclear and biological weapons
that might threaten the U.S. homeland. But had someone told them there were no
weapons of mass destruction and asked permission to sacrifice over 5,000 U.S.
lives to overthrow Saddam, the proposition would have been universally scorned.
George Bush was loth to admit the catastrophic failure of intelligence, and his
attempt to justify the invasion after the fact by the beat down of Saddam and the
presence of al Qaeda was simply too weak to bear scrutiny. And given that shift
in rationale and objective, the U.S. was far too slow in converting its strategy to
pure counterinsurgency. The lag undoubtedly killed American soldiers.
So what, then, are the criteria Americans should use in deciding whether, where,
when and how to fight? And what is the likely future of the mission in Afghanistan?
Tomorrow's final post in his series will make concrete suggestions.