Counter Revolution in Military Affairs
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Good read indeed.
One question though. How did Japan suppress China in the WW2 era?
Paints a lost cause and almost seemed to imply that we need to go Genghis Khan on them.
"Islamist terrorists, to cite the immediate example, would do anything to win. Our enemies act on ecstatic revelations from their god. We act on the advice of lawyers. It is astonishing that we have managed to hold the line as well as we have."
One question though. How did Japan suppress China in the WW2 era?
Paints a lost cause and almost seemed to imply that we need to go Genghis Khan on them.
"Islamist terrorists, to cite the immediate example, would do anything to win. Our enemies act on ecstatic revelations from their god. We act on the advice of lawyers. It is astonishing that we have managed to hold the line as well as we have."
Interesting that he mentions Heart of Darkness, as when I was reading this piece, I was thinking of Col. Kurtz's monologue in Apocolypse Now.....
The man raises a few trenchant points, especially the point that sheer technology is not the ne plus ultra determinant of military victory.
But he misses a wide array of others, and his hinted conclusion - that it takes men of faith to defeat men of faith - is both wrong-headed and a little disturbing.
The suicide bomber is not a recent invention. The Japanese had them, in the Kamakaze, both the airborne and submarine forms. The Japanese armed forces were not short on fanatical men eager to die. Yet barely 10 years after the war, the Japanese were staunch allies; their radical, militant fanaticism completely extinct.
I think the major military failing of the latter 20th century, moving forward into the new millenium, is the failure to take notice of the example of the end of the Second World War. The way you REALLY defeat the enemy is to make him your friend. For every Overlord, there must be a Marshall Plan. The job isn't done until you have rebuilt the enemy's country and turned it back over to him, ideally in better condition than it ever was under the former, enemy regime.
You defeat men of faith by ripping out the foundations of their faith. If they cast you as Satan, prove them false by being more generous and forgiving than their God ever was.
The West, and the US in particular, have gotten spectacularly good at warfighting, such that campaigns that formerly would have taken years are now complete in weeks or days. But it has forgotten the other side of the coin, the "rebuilding and make him your friend" phase, that worked so brilliantly with Japan and Germany.
There are times I think Canada should take the lead on this. Identify the tasks that need to be done in order to rebuild a shattered nation after its defeat. Then create actual units designed to spearhead these reconstruction and rebuilding tasks. Infrastructure experts. Legal system and police experts. Medical experts. And then once the battles have been won, the "First Canadian Nation Reconstruction Division" deploys to make the victory complete.
We don't need a "counter-revolution"; we need to actually pay attention to the lessons of the past and re-implement what worked. Winning the battles is only the first part of the task.
DG
The man raises a few trenchant points, especially the point that sheer technology is not the ne plus ultra determinant of military victory.
But he misses a wide array of others, and his hinted conclusion - that it takes men of faith to defeat men of faith - is both wrong-headed and a little disturbing.
The suicide bomber is not a recent invention. The Japanese had them, in the Kamakaze, both the airborne and submarine forms. The Japanese armed forces were not short on fanatical men eager to die. Yet barely 10 years after the war, the Japanese were staunch allies; their radical, militant fanaticism completely extinct.
I think the major military failing of the latter 20th century, moving forward into the new millenium, is the failure to take notice of the example of the end of the Second World War. The way you REALLY defeat the enemy is to make him your friend. For every Overlord, there must be a Marshall Plan. The job isn't done until you have rebuilt the enemy's country and turned it back over to him, ideally in better condition than it ever was under the former, enemy regime.
You defeat men of faith by ripping out the foundations of their faith. If they cast you as Satan, prove them false by being more generous and forgiving than their God ever was.
The West, and the US in particular, have gotten spectacularly good at warfighting, such that campaigns that formerly would have taken years are now complete in weeks or days. But it has forgotten the other side of the coin, the "rebuilding and make him your friend" phase, that worked so brilliantly with Japan and Germany.
There are times I think Canada should take the lead on this. Identify the tasks that need to be done in order to rebuild a shattered nation after its defeat. Then create actual units designed to spearhead these reconstruction and rebuilding tasks. Infrastructure experts. Legal system and police experts. Medical experts. And then once the battles have been won, the "First Canadian Nation Reconstruction Division" deploys to make the victory complete.
We don't need a "counter-revolution"; we need to actually pay attention to the lessons of the past and re-implement what worked. Winning the battles is only the first part of the task.
DG
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DG,
I found this quote interesting,
The West, and the US in particular, have gotten spectacularly good at warfighting, such that campaigns that formerly would have taken years are now complete in weeks or days. But it has forgotten the other side of the coin, the "rebuilding and make him your friend" phase, that worked so brilliantly with Japan and Germany.
Do you think the trouble is the wars are over too quick now and the people [bad way to describe it] are not as easy to convert afterwards?
I found this quote interesting,
The West, and the US in particular, have gotten spectacularly good at warfighting, such that campaigns that formerly would have taken years are now complete in weeks or days. But it has forgotten the other side of the coin, the "rebuilding and make him your friend" phase, that worked so brilliantly with Japan and Germany.
Do you think the trouble is the wars are over too quick now and the people [bad way to describe it] are not as easy to convert afterwards?
No, I don't think so.
But I do think that maybe the rapid pace of modern war sets an expectation that reconstruction will happen at a similar pace - and then when it doesn't, you create an evironment in which your enemies can flourish in an insergency mode.
It's interesting to compare the difference between the British and American experiences in Iraq. The Brits made a point of immediately transitioning into... not necessarily a "rebuilding" mode, but a "post-combat" mode, where the helmets and flak jackets came off, and the patrols shifted into a Northern Ireland-esque "make contact with the people" mode. They made friends with the locals, and (my assesement is) that they were able to defuse a lot of potential trouble up front.
The Americans... seemed almost suprised that it was all over so quickly, and didn't seem to have a plan as to what to do next. So they circled the wagons and isolated themselves from the population. They also disbanded the Iraqi Army and Police Forces, dumping a bunch of militarily-trained men onto the employment market all at once.
There's an analogue there to Germany post WW2. Nobody was particularly happy with the idea of having ex-Nazis in positions of power, especially when it proved so difficult to separate "real" Nazis from men who had joined the Nazi party because they had to, but hadn't bought into Nazi philosophy. In the end (and I need to read more about this) pragmatism won, with the result that Germany didn't have to go through a period of anarchy post VE day.
One would THINK that this would serve as an example for future operations that involved an occupation and change of regime, such that the plans were all written up and ready to go... but I guess not.
That's where I'm going with this. We need to understand that the national reconstruction of the enemy's territory is one of the phases of war, and that the war isn't finished until the defeated nation is reconstructed. If there had been a plan in place, backed by men whose job it was to implement the plan, such that reconstruction efforts started the second the guns stopped firing, I bet that the Iraqi insergency would never have gotten off the ground.
But I also feel that, while nation-rebuilding is an essential phase of war, those responsible for executing that portion of the war aren't your warfighters. Your warfighters can be made responsible for security, and can do a lot to ease tensions and build goodwill (the British model) but I don't think we make "rebuild a sewer line" a PO/EO on the Infantry DP2,if you follow what I'm saying.
I'm starting to sketch out what I think the organization of a "Nation Reconstruction Division" might look like...
DG
But I do think that maybe the rapid pace of modern war sets an expectation that reconstruction will happen at a similar pace - and then when it doesn't, you create an evironment in which your enemies can flourish in an insergency mode.
It's interesting to compare the difference between the British and American experiences in Iraq. The Brits made a point of immediately transitioning into... not necessarily a "rebuilding" mode, but a "post-combat" mode, where the helmets and flak jackets came off, and the patrols shifted into a Northern Ireland-esque "make contact with the people" mode. They made friends with the locals, and (my assesement is) that they were able to defuse a lot of potential trouble up front.
The Americans... seemed almost suprised that it was all over so quickly, and didn't seem to have a plan as to what to do next. So they circled the wagons and isolated themselves from the population. They also disbanded the Iraqi Army and Police Forces, dumping a bunch of militarily-trained men onto the employment market all at once.
There's an analogue there to Germany post WW2. Nobody was particularly happy with the idea of having ex-Nazis in positions of power, especially when it proved so difficult to separate "real" Nazis from men who had joined the Nazi party because they had to, but hadn't bought into Nazi philosophy. In the end (and I need to read more about this) pragmatism won, with the result that Germany didn't have to go through a period of anarchy post VE day.
One would THINK that this would serve as an example for future operations that involved an occupation and change of regime, such that the plans were all written up and ready to go... but I guess not.
That's where I'm going with this. We need to understand that the national reconstruction of the enemy's territory is one of the phases of war, and that the war isn't finished until the defeated nation is reconstructed. If there had been a plan in place, backed by men whose job it was to implement the plan, such that reconstruction efforts started the second the guns stopped firing, I bet that the Iraqi insergency would never have gotten off the ground.
But I also feel that, while nation-rebuilding is an essential phase of war, those responsible for executing that portion of the war aren't your warfighters. Your warfighters can be made responsible for security, and can do a lot to ease tensions and build goodwill (the British model) but I don't think we make "rebuild a sewer line" a PO/EO on the Infantry DP2,if you follow what I'm saying.
I'm starting to sketch out what I think the organization of a "Nation Reconstruction Division" might look like...
DG
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Iraq is the first time since WW2 that we have had to worry about administering a conquored country.
The lessons we learned from our military government days are having to be relearned. Some fault the release of Saddam's army and police as a reason for insurgency. That would be not be a good conclusion to draw. The Iraqi Army and police were run by Saddam's officers. We certainly didnt want to keep on Saddam's Republican Guard and SRG. We HAD to start over. In fact we had to start over twice because of infiltration by the Sunni's. If we had kept on the exisiting army it would have been a threat to any civilian government that was stood up. The present force will be coup proof which is the best protection we can create for the new democracy.
The lessons we learned from our military government days are having to be relearned. Some fault the release of Saddam's army and police as a reason for insurgency. That would be not be a good conclusion to draw. The Iraqi Army and police were run by Saddam's officers. We certainly didnt want to keep on Saddam's Republican Guard and SRG. We HAD to start over. In fact we had to start over twice because of infiltration by the Sunni's. If we had kept on the exisiting army it would have been a threat to any civilian government that was stood up. The present force will be coup proof which is the best protection we can create for the new democracy.
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Col Peters has written on this theme at some length (google the Parameters site and look at the back issues index), and I think he is onto a very good point. Quoting from a different essay, he once said we will be facing enemies from out of the Iliad and Old Testament.
The motivations of Bronze Age Warriors is completely different from anything we are used to seeing or considering, and the implaccable enemies we see now, motivated by seemingly alien faiths are the modern incarnations of Agamemnon and Achilles. (And don't forget the wily Odysseus lurking in the background pulling strings). Our soldiers and their leaders will have to be like Samurai swords, both hard and supple. Maybe we really do need men of faith to defeat men of faith. Victor Davis Hanson's book "The Soul of Battle" is the biography of three outstanding Western commanders; Patton, Sherman and Epaminondas, who defeated the most savage military forces of their day; the National Socialist Germans, the Confederate Army and the Spartans, respectively. The impression I got from reading this (as well as related works like Sherman's memoirs) is these men were the sort of people who should be brought out in an emergency like a war, but are very disturbing to be around otherwise.
WRT fanatical enemies, the lesson of history seems to be they and their society must be totally smashed and their beliefs discredited, to end the war and the resistance. In the three VDH examples, the Germans, Confederates and Spartans were crushed, and have never again risen to threaten their neighbours. Interwar Germany could claim they were not defeated, and today North Korea can make the same claim, and Saddam Hussein made much the same claim after the Persian Gulf War, with the unpleasant results we know today.
WRT reconstruction, the physical infrastructure isn't enough. The entire society needs to be remodeled and new value systems imposed to replace the old. Japan is a spectacular example of this, since the American occupation successfully recast the constitutional foundations of the Japanese state while keeping their symbols (the Emperor) and making them symbolic rather than "real". The American project to create liberal democracies in the Middle East seems to be another example of this thinking, but perhaps the MSM and left wing critics can take off their tin foil hats long enough to reflect Germany and Japan took several decades to be rebuilt, the American South (even though it shared common historical roots as the rest of America) also took decades to be reabsorbed into American society (some might say it took until the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Counter examples like the American civil governments in the Caribbean during the "Banana Wars" demonstrate the folly of simply constructing infrastructure; once the Marines left the local elites continued to live and rule as they did before, with the results we see today in Haiti
The summary of my take: we do need men like Oliver Cromwell, Gustavus Adolphus, William Sherman, or Xenophon to command our forces against our enemies, and we need to have the long term vision to embark on projects like reconstructing entire societies from the ground up over thirty or more years to achieve success.
The motivations of Bronze Age Warriors is completely different from anything we are used to seeing or considering, and the implaccable enemies we see now, motivated by seemingly alien faiths are the modern incarnations of Agamemnon and Achilles. (And don't forget the wily Odysseus lurking in the background pulling strings). Our soldiers and their leaders will have to be like Samurai swords, both hard and supple. Maybe we really do need men of faith to defeat men of faith. Victor Davis Hanson's book "The Soul of Battle" is the biography of three outstanding Western commanders; Patton, Sherman and Epaminondas, who defeated the most savage military forces of their day; the National Socialist Germans, the Confederate Army and the Spartans, respectively. The impression I got from reading this (as well as related works like Sherman's memoirs) is these men were the sort of people who should be brought out in an emergency like a war, but are very disturbing to be around otherwise.
WRT fanatical enemies, the lesson of history seems to be they and their society must be totally smashed and their beliefs discredited, to end the war and the resistance. In the three VDH examples, the Germans, Confederates and Spartans were crushed, and have never again risen to threaten their neighbours. Interwar Germany could claim they were not defeated, and today North Korea can make the same claim, and Saddam Hussein made much the same claim after the Persian Gulf War, with the unpleasant results we know today.
WRT reconstruction, the physical infrastructure isn't enough. The entire society needs to be remodeled and new value systems imposed to replace the old. Japan is a spectacular example of this, since the American occupation successfully recast the constitutional foundations of the Japanese state while keeping their symbols (the Emperor) and making them symbolic rather than "real". The American project to create liberal democracies in the Middle East seems to be another example of this thinking, but perhaps the MSM and left wing critics can take off their tin foil hats long enough to reflect Germany and Japan took several decades to be rebuilt, the American South (even though it shared common historical roots as the rest of America) also took decades to be reabsorbed into American society (some might say it took until the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Counter examples like the American civil governments in the Caribbean during the "Banana Wars" demonstrate the folly of simply constructing infrastructure; once the Marines left the local elites continued to live and rule as they did before, with the results we see today in Haiti
The summary of my take: we do need men like Oliver Cromwell, Gustavus Adolphus, William Sherman, or Xenophon to command our forces against our enemies, and we need to have the long term vision to embark on projects like reconstructing entire societies from the ground up over thirty or more years to achieve success.
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Bruce,
The wars are NOT over quickly. Conventional resistance by regular armed forces seems to end quickly, but the population is not made to suffer the shock and devastation necessary to impress upon them that they have been well and truly whipped. The Germans and Japanese were so impressed in 1945. The Iraqis never were.
The wars are NOT over quickly. Conventional resistance by regular armed forces seems to end quickly, but the population is not made to suffer the shock and devastation necessary to impress upon them that they have been well and truly whipped. The Germans and Japanese were so impressed in 1945. The Iraqis never were.
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Thats what I mean, as horrible as it sounds, do the local civilians need to suffer for years like wars past before they are subjectable to "change"? [ Don't like that word but it fits].
Not to put too fine a point on it, Col Peters is off his nut.
We have *always* faced enemies who have held firm resolve: some faith-based, some idealogical-based, and some a mixture of multiple reasons. Look at Vietnam; there you have an implacable, relentless enemy willing to go to extremes to win, based somewhat on ideology (small "c" Communists) but for the most part, on a desire to expulse the foreign invader and their local puppet government from their homeland.
We have faced quasi-religious fanatics in Imperial Japan, and we have faced idealogical/cult of personality fanatics in the Nazis.
And we ourselves (we being the West) have generated fanatical levels of resolve ourselves. Isn't "Nuts!" as Bastogne, or "We can't take your surrender, we haven't the facilities." at the "bridge too far" evidence of soldiers willing to fight to the death? And while that devotion to their cause may not be fueled by religious fanaticism, isn't the end result the same? "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"
Hell, Georgie Patton explicitly invoked Homeric imagery in his leadership style - and I bet Homer could have whipped up a nice epic poem about Patton, or Monty, or Rommel - or Schwartzkopf. None of this is new.
What *is* new is Col Peters thinly veiled suggestion that to defeat Jihadis, you need Jihadis of your own - that the way to beat Faith-based fanatics is to create your own Faith-based fanatics. (Could he be worried about a "faith-based fanatic gap"?) It sounds like he is arguing for a new Crusade, Christians against the Muslims, part XXVII!
And in this, he is singularly wrong-headed. I can't imagine what would be more counterproductive. By so doing, you change the nature of the war to that of a clash between religions and in the process, suck in every non-fanatic (from both religions) who would otherwise not be involved. It makes combatants out of the disinterested.
A secular society is not necessarily an irreligious society. "Secularism" does not imply "Atheism". A secular society is religious-neutral; it does not care one way or another if individual members of society subscribe to a religion or not. It separates, explicitly, Church and State, and gives the Church the freedom to do what it likes, as long as no Church activity seeks to supplant a State one. Secularism is not the enemy of Islam (or any other religion) it is the enemy of those BRANCHES of Islam (or any other religion) that seek to unify Church and State.
Where Secular rule can win against fanaticism is by demonstrating that Secularism is not the enemy, by raising the local standard of living to the point where most people are comfortable, and by respecting the local religious customs and traditions. Once people learn that a secular government does not mean that the mosques will be ripped down and the Imams imprisoned, once a human face is placed on secularism, much of the fanatic support base will dry up.
A similar thing happened in Japan, where the Japanese were allowed to keep all the symbols and rituals related to the Emperor. A secular society does not mean the people in that society need to abandon their religion.
What DOES need to take place though is the understanding that "make the enemy your ally" is the FUNDAMENTAL point of the exercise; that the war isn't over until this happens. As such. every operation needs to be have these considerations in mind, and any action that would tend to undermine this goal needs to be carefully reviewed.
Most people understand that war means death and destruction. We killed French civilians (by accident) when we liberated France. It should be minimised whenever possible, and the West and the US in particular are getting much better at this, but ultimately, the military considerations of winning the shooting war take priority. But once the shooting war has been won, steps must be taken to set things as right as possible as quickly as possible, to cast yourself in the role of the "good guy".
For example, it may be necessary to disable a power plant in order to accomplish a military objective. When the lights go out for Joe Civilian, he will probably recognise that the fact he is without power is a hardship of war, and while he won't be happy about it, he will probably accept it. But once the war is over, once the military necessity of him sitting in the dark has expired, every single day he is without power is just more reason to be resentful of the invaders - and stack enough of these straws on the proverbial camel's back, and you have made an enemy out of a neutral - especially if he is being actively recruited by the enemy. Conversely, if you get the civilian infrastructure back up and running as quickly as possible, you undercut the leverage that an enemy recruiter would attempt to use.
And when you do things like Abu Girab, or use religiously and historically loaded words like "crusade" in a Presidential speech, you do your cause harm. Actions like that just give ammunition to the enemy.
Well... maybe. I see what you are getting at, and there is a degree of validity to that idea. Certainly things like the American commander who filed the residents of the local German villiage through the remains of an extermination camp can help win hearts and minds ("See the evil you and your government did?")
In cases like Iraq, where it is not at all obvious to the world, never mind the general citizenry (who if they didn't cross Saddam, actually had things pretty good) it is probably more important to restore the standard of living as quickly as possible, and to make contact with local citizenry and make friends with them (per the British example) as soon as possible - and then not do stupid things like Abu Girab.
I don't think the average Iraqi really cared one way or another about Saddam. The mission to win his heart&mind comes down to restoring and raising his standard of living as quickly as possible, not offending him, and demonstrating why it was necessary to inconvenience him/impose hardship and suffering on him to eliminate Saddam.
The other thing to keep in mind was that Iraq's standard of living had gone into the toilet in the memory of many of its citizens. Some of that was due to debt/loss of revenue suffered because of the Iraq/Iran war (where Iraq fought on the side of the US... kinda...) and the rest was due to US-imposed economic sanctions. The US came into the war already the "oppressor", and so needed to prove otherwise on a very short timeframe. If an Iraqi reconstruction effort had started immediately following the last shot fired, the US had the opportunity to win a lot of friends.
And that, coupled to the success of the Marshall plan in Germany and Japan, is why I think that "national reconstruction" needs to become part of strategic doctrine, and needs to have some sort of actioning body ready to go, as a necessary and integral part of the operation - and the more powerful the army, the more rapidly the defeat of the enemy is projected, the sooner you need them on the (ex) battlefield.
DG
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RecceDG said:
I don't read Col Peter's works that way, but maybe it is more a matter of interpretation than anything else. The "Clash of Civilizations" argument can be spun into all encompassing conflicts resembling the 30 years war (and we may end up going that way), but my own belief is if we can find our 21rst century Pattons or Cromwell's and turn them loose with sufficient resources, then victory can be achieved in a relatively short time.
The rebuilding argument can be interpreted in several ways, so long as the civil population does not receive the true impact of war, then they may very well see the invasion and occupation as an inconvenience. IF the society is totally shattered (and it is abundantly clear that the explicit or implicit support of the previous regime was the cause of this), then rebuilding of both the society and infrastructure can continue apace without too much difficulty. Both Germany and Japan had the potential to carry on irregular warfare for years after the formal capitulation of their respective governments, the Germans setting up "Werewolf" units and Imperial Japan mobilizing the entire population and issuing weapons to repel the projected invasion (and not taking this stuff back at the end). If the victor isn't interested in rebuilding (like the Thebans marching through Laconia and devastating the estates of the Spartan "Similars"), then the conquered state will slide into obscurity and vanish from history (as happened to the Spartans).
Ever since the First Gulf War - or perhaps ever since the Falklands - that hasn't been the problem. The West wins open battles handily and speedily, and there has been no reluctance to let the Pattons off the leash. And to their credit, the modern-day Pattons have proven increasingly adept at winning without massacring the civilian population in the process.
The issues we have been seeing lately aren't failures in warfighting ability, but rather difficulties (and perhaps a certain lack of commitment) in transitioning from a pure warfighting mode into a nation-building mode. In being tardy getting reconstruction done, the door has been opened to a different kind of battleground, one that Col Peters has (rightly) identified as being difficult to fight with mass armies of manoeuvre.
But we have a successful example to follow here as well - the way the British handled the IRA in Northern Ireland.In that example, you have a secular army ultimately defeating (although not in the field) an army motivated by political ideology, religious ideology, and to no small extent, criminal motivation. That operation was successfully concluded without the aid of Agamemnon and Achilles.
We're not seeing anything new here. The players may be different, but the play is the same.
DG
KevinB
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DG - it think you are incorrect with both your interpretation of the work and the IRA parallel.
The IRA are/where Roman Catholics - hardly a religion that encourages martyrdom.
Islam, when taken the the extremes offers that in spades. Catholics did not flock to Ireland to fight against the British (some came that is a fact - but not the same ghusto that is happening in the Muddle East...)
The IRA are/where Roman Catholics - hardly a religion that encourages martyrdom.
Islam, when taken the the extremes offers that in spades. Catholics did not flock to Ireland to fight against the British (some came that is a fact - but not the same ghusto that is happening in the Muddle East...)
Well, the word "martyr" was coined to describe a Catholic who gave his life for his faith. St. Stephen,in fact.
But, OK, point taken - Catholicism doesn't encourage martyrdom. Martyrs become saints, but seeking martydom isn't considered admirable And while the IRA liked bombs, they didn't (as far as I can remember) employ suicide bombers.
But that's just a difference in scale. Both the IRA and the jihadis had no problem blowing up innocents. It's similar tactics. The only difference is that a sufficiently radical jihadi will stick around to make sure his bomb goes off next to his intended target, where an IRA bomber didn't care quite so much who he hit (and wasn't willing to sacrifice himself in the process)
But it's still a bomber, indistinguishable at first glance from the rest of the population, drawing support from sympathetic members of that population. It's the same problem as Northern Ireland, but written larger.
Tell me Kevin - you're there. Do you consider every Iraqi a potential suicide bomber? Not from a tactical sense, but personally; what proportion of the people you deal with every day do you estimate are radical enough to become suicide bombers?
DG
But, OK, point taken - Catholicism doesn't encourage martyrdom. Martyrs become saints, but seeking martydom isn't considered admirable And while the IRA liked bombs, they didn't (as far as I can remember) employ suicide bombers.
But that's just a difference in scale. Both the IRA and the jihadis had no problem blowing up innocents. It's similar tactics. The only difference is that a sufficiently radical jihadi will stick around to make sure his bomb goes off next to his intended target, where an IRA bomber didn't care quite so much who he hit (and wasn't willing to sacrifice himself in the process)
But it's still a bomber, indistinguishable at first glance from the rest of the population, drawing support from sympathetic members of that population. It's the same problem as Northern Ireland, but written larger.
Tell me Kevin - you're there. Do you consider every Iraqi a potential suicide bomber? Not from a tactical sense, but personally; what proportion of the people you deal with every day do you estimate are radical enough to become suicide bombers?
DG
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I see I am suffering from another self induced foot injury here. When I am talking about leadig our forces to victory in this sense, I am talking about the sort of absolute victory which includes unconditional surrender and discourages continued resistance. If the Allies had stopped short of Berlin in 1945, taken Hitler prisoner for some sort of war crimes trial etc. I have little doubt there would be "Werewolf" operations lasting into 1948 or beyond, while German Generals and politicians preached that Germany wasn't defeated at all....
The West might have to rethink how we fight wars; it never was clean and antiseptic and it never will be either. We might have to suck back the idea that (sometimes at least) it is not only permissable but absolutely necessary to rain fire on enemy cities and sow the land with salt. The enemy armies in the field are there because there is implicit or explicit support for them to be there, and often the reason they and their society fights is in support of some sort of mythology, backed by a particular myth of marital superioraty.
In the historical examples I alluded to, the enemy cracked when the boasts of marital superioraty was shattered and civilians discovered that the Western forces could bring war directly to their door. This does not imply mass slaughter by the way, Sherman's "March to the Sea" produced far fewer casualties among the southerners than a single one of Grants attrittionist bloodbaths.
The West might have to rethink how we fight wars; it never was clean and antiseptic and it never will be either. We might have to suck back the idea that (sometimes at least) it is not only permissable but absolutely necessary to rain fire on enemy cities and sow the land with salt. The enemy armies in the field are there because there is implicit or explicit support for them to be there, and often the reason they and their society fights is in support of some sort of mythology, backed by a particular myth of marital superioraty.
In the historical examples I alluded to, the enemy cracked when the boasts of marital superioraty was shattered and civilians discovered that the Western forces could bring war directly to their door. This does not imply mass slaughter by the way, Sherman's "March to the Sea" produced far fewer casualties among the southerners than a single one of Grants attrittionist bloodbaths.
GK .Dundas
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I agree with you whole heartily and would mention that the historian Victor Davis Hanson 's book "The Soul of Battle From Ancient Time to the Present Day,How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny." in it Hanson uses an entire section of the book dedicated to Sherman to describe his (Sherman's) campaign to prove that point.a_majoor said:
I don't think that was ever possible in Iraq.
I don't think most Iraqis identified with Saddam (most of the Iraqi army just melted away when presented with an opportunity to fight) and I don't think your average Iraqi cares much one way or another that he's gone. And if you marched the population of villages past a Saddam-ordered mass grave - so what? That's Saddam's doing, not theirs.
And my understanding is that the Iraqi insergency is fueled by a combination of disenfranchised ex-Army and Police types, plus boatloads of radical Muslims happy to have a chance to kill Americans right in their own back yard - not citizens rising to save their homeland. (Not yet at least)
If you start randomly laying waste to Iraqi villages to try and root out the few insurgents hiding there, you're just repeating the errors of Vietnam. The more uninvolved people you kill - or even just inconvenience - the more hatred and resentment you build, and the more you aid the insergency.
The major lesson of WW1 was that forcing unconditional surrender on an enemy isn't enough. You can disarm him, you can humiliate him, you can bankrupt him, you can starve him; all this does is built resentment and the desire for revenge, and eventually, he WILL rebuild and come back to haunt you. Hitler rode this resentment and revenge to power, and we got a second World War. If there had been a Marshall plan in 1919, then you get no Nazis.
It is a principle of war that no enemy is truly defeated until he is your friend. Accordingly, it must be the goal of war to defeat your enemy's fighting forces, then set about doing whatever you have to do to make him your friend. A defeated enemy left unbefriended is a smoldering ember awaiting the time to burst back into flame.
DG
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a_majoor said:
RecceDG said:
You are quite correct, and indeed things in Iraq are going just as you say; the fighting is concentrated in the "Tikrit Triangle", where most of Saddam Hussein's clan/tribe and supporters come from. The south and Kurdish north are doing just fine, and what operations take place there are usually of the interdicting the "ratlines" from Iran and Syria rather than the grinding war against IEDs etc. in the triangle.
Too true. Remember Sherman (or Epaminondas for that matter) did not gratuitously slaughter people, but laid out a clearly targeted campaign against the elites and beneficiaries of the regime, and the underlying social compact disintigrated (especially since the average citizen saw first hand that their "fellow" Confederates or Spartans were quite willing to throw them to the wolves in order to save themselves). We defeated the Iraqi Army, and dismantled the apparatus of state, but the power structures inside the Tikrit Triangle are the same, and the leaders can rally the mobs with promises that "yes, we can have it all AGAIN, just help us throw out the Americans". The motivations of the Jihadis are more difficult to lay out, and it is quite possible they are insulated from any sort of Earthly pressure or persuasion, but even they need to have a human sea to fade into. (If they and their followers are so far gone, THEN the rain of fire solution may be the only way to go)
Germany settled on an armistance in WW I, hence the myths of the "Stab in the Back" and other festering pathologies which worked internally to fuel the rise of National Socialism. It is quite true the vengeful Allies didn't help all that much......
The Spartans were defeated but not befriended, and never again strode the world stage. Although I am not an advocate, there is a historical alternative:
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a_majoor said:
I tend to agree with RecceDG, though you both make very good arguments. I'd like to suggest, though, that waht we need is not the 21stC generals you mention above. As mentioned before, we do quite well at that aspect of warfare. What we need is 21stC Churchills - political will to fight as long as necessary.
I don't see any Churchills evident beyond my humidor these days.
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