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November 25, 2007
The dualistic way of [losing at] war
(Posted by John.)
It's one thing to read a sentence like this about a war in the past, say from a history textbook:
While the military finds success in a virtually unbroken line of tactical achievements, intelligence officials worry about a looming strategic failure.
But when it's written today, about an ongoing war, you've really got to wonder why anybody bothers writing history books, since it's clear that nobody reads the damn things anymore. Except maybe Kevin Drum. Moreover, maybe it's worth repeating once more that war isn't something that you can half-win.
American commentary really seems to regard war -- generically, but also specifically in the cases of Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan -- as nothing more than a collection of battles. If America "wins" every time they fight the Taliban in the open, then America wins. Hooray! And yes, it's now officially boring to point this out, but it would be nice to see behaviour change sometime soon.
There really is no clean line between the "tactical" and "strategic" side of the war. This isn't Iron Chef: you don't get to win on style but lose on substance. You just lose. American soldiers killed many multiples more Vietnamese in battle than they lost. So what? The Republic of Vietnam doesn't exist, while the Socialist Republic of Vietnam does. As far as verdicts go, it's pretty clear that the main objective of US military force in that region was a collossal failure.
I can't count the number of times I heard, in 2003, American newsbots talk about how "amateurs think strategy, professionals think logistics". And I thought to myself, wow, what a classically American way of thinking about things: the most important thing is to make sure that weaponry is available, in appropriate volumes, to destroy the enemy. Not, for example, making sure that institutions of power and control are effective and corruption free, but that nothing gets in the way of the precious, precious trucks. Strategy is, in this way of thinking, explicitly subordinated to a task that Wal-Mart performs every day, without the necessity of Abrams tank escorts.
But of course, if we really did think about war strategically, we would have to admit that we keep losing, so best not to think strategically at all.
Meanwhile, the Taliban not only reinforce their control over the rural areas (where most Afghans live) but extend it beyond their core areas in the South. And not to be left out in the annals of military mediocrity, the Canadian government's much-touted Operation Medusa, which was supposed to have wrestled Panjwai district away from the Taliban, is now basically obsolete: according to the same Post story, the Taliban are back to their previous numbers in Panjwai.
November 25, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Winning wasn't the point. The war itself was the point. They thought that Total Permanent War (tm) would keep them in power forever.
Whoops.
Posted by: craigie | Nov 25, 2007 10:20:08 PM
While it's certainly true that the level of violence has subsided recently, it's wrong to say that we are winning the war.
If we had managed to kill or capture large numbers of insurgents in the past two or three months, then we could argue that we're winning. But that hasn't happened.
Posted by: FS | Nov 25, 2007 10:39:37 PM
FS what would amount to large numbers? I thought the insurgent loses had been pretty high recently.
Posted by: NateO | Nov 25, 2007 11:37:11 PM
craigie's on to it--the war's the point. It's a racket, as Smedley Butler said, and a very profitable one. What better way to raid the national treasury for ones' friends and business associates without any fear of the 'loyal opposition'? It has nothing to do with winning or losing, or battles. The game's the thing. Nobody knows nor cares about Vietnam any more. Who was the victorious general against the French and Americans in Vietnam? Is the name of Vo Nguyen Giap common knowledge?
Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 26, 2007 12:21:16 AM
The lowest common denominator in America finds it difficult to make the necessary distinctions between war and the Super Bowl.
Spectator sports are the LCD's truest religion and the most powerful and pervasive catalyst of popular culture. Rooting for the home team is among the holiest sacrements and when the game is big enough, as in Iraq, refusing to cheer for either side is still blasphemy.
In sports world, if one side is losing, the other must be winning. In Iraq, swift, near-total victory over the Baathist party and the liquidation of its political and military infrastructure proved to be beginning of major strategic losses for the U.S.
But there is hardly any point to discussing that kind of detail with people who can't even imagine that the war is something completely different from a football game writ large.
Posted by: bunkerbuster | Nov 26, 2007 2:32:58 AM
The War on Terra is like the War on Drugs - how do you measure when you have won? The metrics will just change to keep the contracts flowing.
Posted by: CParis | Nov 26, 2007 10:26:29 AM
To restate craigie slightly: for conservatives, including those in the present Administration, the real war is the war for political power, the war to discredit liberalism and the Democratic Party. They clearly regard the literal wars, the ones with bullets and bombs, principally as tools to win the political war with.
Throughout both shooting wars, they've had no long-term plan for winning those wars. Once Osama bin Laden, our supposed objective in Afghanistan, escaped at Tora Bora, they took the Special Forces units best suited and trained to track him down, and shipped them to Iraq to do pre-war recon there. They went into Iraq without any plan for what to do once Saddam was driven from power. And ever since then, they've had no long-range plan to stabilize Iraq - just a series of Band-Aids to get them through the next election or public P.R. crisis.
This only makes sense if their primary objective pertained to domestic politics rather than success in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I know this is old news, but it never hurts to restate the reasons why we believe this Administration has gone to war for domestic political purposes.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | Nov 26, 2007 1:02:45 PM
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