I rarely fisk, but the idiocy is so thick that I cannot help myself. Let's look at the author's statements and arguments. His are in Italics and my comments follow in bold (I don't know why but I could not erase the italics on my comments--even in html edit mode):
During the last half century, the conflicts that continued for decades have outnumbered those that lasted just months or a few years. Colombia and Sudan feature civil wars that have dragged on since the 1950s. The "troubles" in Northern Ireland and the Palestinian uprising have been under way since the late
1960s. Afghanistan has seen constant warfare since 1979, with no end in sight. There are many more, including Sri Lanka and Kashmir.Well, two can play at this game. Let's look at the quicker wars of the last 50 years, with a couple years at most: The 1956 Suez War. The Six-Day War. The October War. The Ogaden War. The Ethiopia-Eritrea border war. The Soccer War. The Falklands War. The China-Vietnam border war. Toss in a couple Indo-Pakistani Wars. I could go on, too. If we added them all up, would we have more long wars than short wars? The very idea of short wars is harder to define than a long war which is obviously a war. What is the difference between a short war and an incident? And is the experience of the last fifty years unique in the long history of warfare? His assertion appears quite weak.
All these conflicts have two things in common: combatants on each side unwilling to compromise and unable to land knockout blows.
Um, that would be why they are example of long wars.
Now comes our self-styled war on terror, which snugly fits this pattern. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are full of zealots dedicated to eliminating the shadow cast by American power over the Muslim world. But they cannot hope to defeat American military forces in the field.
For our part, we believe that by conquering and democratizing rogue nations we can somehow defeat the terrorist networks arrayed against us. Yet we can't ever find enough of their fighters to stage a decisive battle, nor can we stem the tide of their recruitment. Isn't this the definition of stalemate -- a recipe for war that goes on year after year after year?
He asserts we are incapable of winning and then uses this assertion to prove that we are in a stalemate? Well, I assert that Jennifer Aniston secretly pines for me and that therefore we will soon be dating. Personally, I think we can win. (And I'm under no delusions about Ms. Aniston) I see trends in the Moslem world that indicate that recruitment is under pressure. Certainly, we've curtailed their ability to train whatever recruits they get. As to being unable to find enough of their fighters to stage a decisive battle, ever hear of Afghanistan? Or Fallujah? (I'll return to this battle a bit later)
In an introspective moment, President Bush told NBC's Matt Lauer it was possible the war could never be won. He later backtracked, but the damage was done. Victory, it was clear to many people, not only wasn't at hand but perhaps wasn't attainable.
What?!! The President was referring to the idea that there will be no formal peace treaty ending the war. It will go on, fading away, until one day we kind of notice that it has been a while since the Islamists struck anywhere. How do you provide an endpoint to a struggle such as we are in? No backtracking was involved and no admission of the impossibility of victory was made.
Bush's statement, coming from a self-described "war leader," was most disturbing. Why are we spending more than $1 billion per day of taxpayers' money on the military if there's no hope of winning the war?
Why the quotes? Are we not at war? Is President Bush not our leader? Even if we could not win, the reason we would spend the money is because the enemy is trying to kill us. Is the author really trying to argue that if we can't win we might as well bank the money we are spending? Is efficient surrender preferable to costly stalemated fighting?
So, whatever the ramblings of presidential candidates, it seems likely we are in for a long struggle, something like the increasingly pointless, unending strife that science fiction writer (and Vietnam veteran) Joe Haldeman described in his classic novel, "The Forever War."
So keeping the enemy from killing us is pointless? And although it has been many years since I read Haldeman's book, that forever war started from a misunderstanding between Earth and the aliens. What misunderstanding started our current war? What did I mis-read about 9-11?
But perhaps there is a way out. Or, in this case, two ways to end the terror war. First, one side might make a stunning military breakthrough. Or second, both sides could agree to a negotiated settlement. Neither outcome is very likely, but both are worth examining.
But the fight against terrorism--except when the fight is against a state sponsor--is not a military struggle. I'm shocked at his lack of nuance. As to negotiations, I am eager to hear the author's suggestions on whether we should negotiate the veiling of woman or the stoning of homosexuals. And do the terrorists give up beheadings or truck bombs in exchange? I mean, you give a little, you get a little, right? But since he says the enemy can't beat us, why is he in a hurry to negotiate? Isn't an endless stalemate better than losing a little?
The terrorists will win if they develop or obtain nuclear or biological weapons because we cannot effectively threaten their stateless networks with retaliation. We just wouldn't know what to hit.
I dare say that if our enemies go nuclear, we will go medieval on them. We will nuke somebody or we will have declared nuclear open season on ourselves. Any hope of maintaining deterrence will be gone. Would we nuke Tehran? Probably not. But a Pasdaran military base or two would be a sheet of glass at the end of the day.
Although we have spent every effort to stop the spread of such weaponry, and once again are busily scooping up loose nukes in Russia, this eventuality is a real risk. Donald Rumsfeld put it quite succinctly in his congressional testimony in May 2002: "It is inevitable that terrorists will obtain weapons of mass destruction, and that they will use them against us."
He makes the mistake of assuming a statement about WMD must mean nukes only. This includes gas, as in the Tokyo subway Sarin attack, or bio weapons.
Yet we do have a chance of winning outright before terrorists can acquire weapons of mass destruction. If we ever decided to wage "netwar" (i.e., network-style conflict) against the terrorists with smaller, more nimble, more flexible forces, we would have a real capability to rip al Qaeda apart, cell by cell.
Here is the biggest and loopiest idea. Ah, "netwar." Recall the first celebrated practioners of netwar--the Mexican Zapatistas in 1994. You remember them, they netwarred their way into power, seizing Mexico City. No? Then they succeeded in creating an independent state. No? Then they convinced the Mexican government to spend more there. Wow. This example of so-called netwar was a guy with a colorful name, some college education, an internet connection, and a bunch of ill-armed indigenous peoples following him. Add an adoring press and presto! Netwar!
Unfortunately, for more than three years our primary concept of operations has been to rely on heavy mechanized forces augmented with strategic bombing. "Shock and awe." We have kept taking a sledgehammer to a ball of quicksilver. And all the signs are that the U.S. military remains staunchly resistant to creating the networked strike forces needed to win this war in the field. The recent flattening of Fallujah is proof the military is sticking to old-style warfare.
So after complaining that we can't find enough of the enemy massed to strike hard blows against them, he argues that we should not strike them hard and disperse them. By what insane logic is it better to leave them alone free to train and plot? Why is it smart to leave them in a sanctuary? Our enemies are not quicksilver. They are people who need organization and assets to kill us in the numbers their sick ideology demands. As for Fallujah, didn't the author earlier complain that we couldn't find enough of the enemy to strike them? What should we have done, declined to kill a thousand and capture another thousand? Send in a hundred special forces in ones and twos to harass them? I guess if you call it netwar it will be all cool and cutting edge.
All this suggests we face some important choices in the main battlefield in the war on terror. We must either start fighting in new ways against al Qaeda, or else commence some form of diplomatic negotiations with them. Perhaps we should do both at once. But we must do something.
Bush has a real opportunity at the start of his second term to strike out in bold new directions. His margin of victory and his party's control of Congress make it possible to act in ways less influenced by the push and pull of politics. Charting a new course designed to curtail the "forever war" against terrorists might even reduce the gaping partisan rift in Washington.
Good grief. Why is retreating always portrayed as a "bold new direction"? But if you've started off assuming we can't win, I guess surrendering is doing "something."
In practical military terms, this means undertaking a thorough organizational redesign of the armed forces. The biggest part of the problem is that our senior officers think only in terms of the 33 brigades that make up the Army. Most of these are tied down in or committed to going to Iraq, severely limiting our ability to mount a broad, networked offensive against al Qaeda cells around the world.
We must shift to smaller "units of action," the term Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker uses when he thinks of creating a more nimble force. He was brought back from retirement to undertake a real transformation of the military, but both he and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld have faced bitter bureaucratic resistance from traditionalists.
Huh? Has he not been paying attention? We are reorganizing our ten active divisions into these units of action, adding one brigade combat team to each division. We may add a fifth to each one. We are also going to organize our National Guard brigades this way and eliminate the divisions. As for our units being tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, limiting our ability to mount broad networked offensives against al Qaeda cells around the world, just how are brigade combat teams going to be used against terror cells! Isn't that using a sledgehammer to fight mosquitos? Does he even know what a UA is?! I really want to know just what area is going to be on the receiving end of a networked, UA offensive? The Horn of Africa? Hamburg?
On the diplomatic front, the challenges are even more daunting. First, there is the problem of our policy of no negotiations with terrorists. This hurdle can be cleared by noting that we already deal openly with Khadafy, a terrorist with a rap sheet as long as his forearm.
We did not exactly negotiate with Khadafy. We accepted his complete surrender of his WMD programs and will start to normalize relations. If the author means we should be willing to accept the surrender of the enemy, I agree. If not, just what is he going to negotiate about with people who see our total destruction as their goal? I don't consider it a diplomatic triumph to get them to agree to seek only the death of 4 million of us.
Some will say we can negotiate with a nation, even a roguish one, but not with a terrorist network. Why? Because networks don't have embassies or formal legal status. Yet, negotiation is more important with the networks because they are harder for us to fight. Doing battle with them requires inventing new tactics that radically differ from those we traditionally employ against national armies.
Again the silly "network" thing. Fighting our terrorist enemies is like fighting past irregulars and terrorists. They have the internet to communicate but we do it much better. Our soldiers are far better net warriors than their guys. Yes, fighting irregulars requires different strategies and tactics than fighting national armies. So I have to ask, just what does he think those UAs he wants to send out on networked offensives are going to do? Hack their bank accounts and deface their web pages?
Of course, negotiating with networks will require a similar amount of innovation. For example, we must accept that there might never be a treaty signed. But there could be a tacit agreement among the combatants, after which terrorist attacks almost entirely cease and U.S. forces begin an exodus from Muslim countries. Both sides have been saying they want the latter anyway.
Good grief, does he really think this is about exiting Moslem countries? Does he really think that our leaving Moslem lands--even if that was a reasonable demand--wouldn't just encourage them to follow us and attack us at home? Or does he insist that Moslems leave Christian--even nominally Christian--land, too? On the other hand, I'm glad he agrees with the President on the fact that no treaty will end this war on terror--even if the author doesn't know he agrees with the President.
At his best, Bush has shown his steadiness and resolve. But if we are to have any hope of ending this forever war, it is time for him to show intellectual suppleness and imagination as well. If he doesn't exhibit these traits, we are in for an endless slog.
I'll take steadiness and resolve over his idea of intellectual suppleness and imagination. The author's ideas will just lead us to The Forever Retreat. Netwits.
I have truly not read such a concentrated dose of idiocy in a long time. Such elevated idiocy will surely be rewarded with tenure. I do draw comfort from the disclaimer following the article: "His views do not represent offical Defense Department policy."
