On war: Sun Tzu Says

I've come to some conclusions on the state of our foreign entanglements. I've been on these for a while, but I prefer not to voice my thoughts on warfare. Mostly because I suspect that having an opinion on how to run a war in modern times has thoroughly escaped our strategic planning. There have been two major blunders of strategy in our thinking (if you can call it that). Of the first, we failed to define the conditions of military victory before committing to battle. This was an essential portion of the so-called "Powell Doctrine" during the first Gulf War. Powell, being one of the few in government who seemed to know what he was doing, is long gone. Of the second, we are still fighting old wars. The belief that more troops and more tanks or planes wins battles is over. Battles are fought in hit and run limited engagements because nobody is dumb enough to fight our planes or tanks head-on anymore. A new strategy is required to meet this threat.

First things first. In any war, the determination of victory conditions must be made. Our condition of victory has been constantly refined, radically so, since the beginning of the war. Always a bad sign. The reason for this is that we have failed to properly identify the conflict we are engaged in. It is not a singular battle for nation-states that should concern us. That time is past. Organizations, multi-national forces, dominate the landscape. In economics, giant corporations merge and spread across borders. In our private lives we can communicate with people all over the globe with minimal effort, time, or expense through the convenience of the Internet. And in warfare, terrorists do not care what country they are in, only that they must carry out their radical, dogmatic missions. The great conflict we are engaged in has little to do with Iraq or Afghanistan. Those are merely the places that have hummed out the tune. They are not the music.

The great war here is not with a nation run by a tyrant. It is with a religion that is in a struggle for internal control, most specifically with the more radical segments of that religion. There are nations that play a part. Afghanistan was such a place. Iraq was a bit different. I believe Iraq wouldn't have minded playing a larger part, but I rather doubt it was doing much besides being a general pain in everyone's posterior. These "free radicals" are generally to hostile or at least careless toward anyone who does not share their agenda. That by itself does not begrudge them to me, but it does of course mean that conflict is guaranteed. If we are required to fight, we should have at least taken the time to know who we are fighting and how to beat them.

If we have any illusions that appeasement or peace can be made with such people, we are badly deluded. Who for example do we negotiate with? Iran doesn't run all the terrorist groups. Al Qaeda, for example, is outright hostile toward the Shia' branch which Iran speaks for. They wouldn't accept an agreement handed down by the Persians. The recent fighting in Lebanon suggests that some more moderate Muslims have tired of the extremism that has come to define their faith. That much is hopeful. Allies are necessary to crush this rebellious nature.

But what have we defined as our victory? A free and stable Iraq? There is a hint that a few understand this to be generational conflict, an unceasing fight crossing several more national boundaries before it ends. That being the case, having such a limited and implausible victory condition is foolish. Only recently has a reasonable suggestion come forth: Divide Iraq back into autonomous states with a central federalized capital. For all the organizing that has gone on in corporations and collections of the faithful, nations have been busy dividing. Let them go. A 'stable' Iraq was an impossibility with the imposition of "free" (democracy) upon them. Democracy does not flourish where the seeds are not yet sown. Perhaps given this taste of the fruits of freedom, Iraqis will not soon seek other temptations. But I seriously doubt it. Russia's experiments with democracy have been largely impotent. Looking around the world where democracy has been imposed, it has usually failed. Not because it is a terrible way to run a country, but because it is a difficult way to. It must be tended to, maintained, and occasionally people in power don't get what they want. That's a hard pill to swallow in that part of the world.

In America it has triumphed because of the vastness of our diverse viewpoints. A Simpsons' episode once gave Burns 'invincibility' because he had every disease known to man. Since they were too busy tripping over each other, he never fell ill. America is much like this. Too many factions tripping over each other for any one of them to make too much of a bother. Iraqis have only three factions. And they all seem to literally hate each other to death. If it was to be a stable country, then a stronger, firmer hand is required. As it is, it can be stable only if there are more than one of them. This should have been understood prior to our invasion. The lack of understanding of the cultural realities of a foreign country makes imposing our will upon it all the more hard to take, and that much easier to resist. Taking democracy and expecting it to govern over a country still stuck in a feudal lord mentality isn't going to work. And we should have known that going in. As it is, it's still possible it can work, but not very well. There is too much extremism at work in a place where extremists were all too often hammered down for many years.

Thus without the precondition of victory defined as the quashing of religious extremism, which was, after all, what attacked us on 9/11, we're stuck in something not quite anything worth fighting. Building a nation that is schizophrenic and parts of it don't quite think we're building a nation they want to live in isn't exactly a cause that the American people will rally behind. And of course, they haven't. They have abandoned this war, forgetting that it is but a limited objective in a grander scheme. Of course that grander scheme hasn't been revealed because, right now, there isn't one. I would say in some ways what we have accomplished is like a throwing right hook without landing any jabs before hand. The jabs are much more important. The hook looks nice, but it might not connect, and thus must be part of a plan. It hasn't been so far.

So how do we prevail, what sorts of strategy should we employ? Troop surges are not the answer. The key is how those troops are deployed and used. Tanks driving down the street accomplishes nothing of consequence in this type of war. A war of organizations, rather than nations, can go on almost without end. Guerrilla warriors know their strengths lie in being small cadres of tightly bound men (or women) who make small and numerous strikes against a larger, more ponderous foe. To fight them, an army must create small and numerous forces ready to strike back. Ambushes should not be the craft our enemies. They should be our craft. Gather and use intelligence, and then strike. Ruthlessly and hard. These types of tactics worked to invade Afghanistan. Conquering it was the easy part. But in holding it, we reverted to garrisoning. That was not our objective. Our objective there was to depose the hostile government and kill terrorists. Kill. Not 'neutralize'. These are not people who are inclined to stop fighting anytime soon. They will use any means to strike at us they can place in their hands. Such ruthlessness can only be met with equal measure and judicious force. Our mercy can be saved for people who have no quarrel with us. In doing this we must be sure that our mercy is shown.

Israel recently failed most spectacularly in the war of public opinion because it failed to take the formless shadow it was fighting and put a face and body to it. Chopping off the arms of a hydra does nothing productive anyway. To fight a shapeless and nameless foe, we must take on the characteristic of that thing we fight. Being a spotted and solid form we have been inundated and surrounded by a more fluid enemy. To fight back, we must become more fluid. Our enemies take form only briefly and then to disappear back into anonymity. We must be able to do the same, appear where we are unexpected and then disappear. Our firepower and training give us the ability to attack with maximum power, power which cannot be matched by our foes. Where they appear, we must be able to react swiftly enough to strike hard before they disappear. Their attacks and resistance would become putatively futile against this. Suicide bombing can work for a time, but the kills are not our forces in these cases. They are the people, the innocents. The people can only tolerate such nonsense for so long. In Lebanon, they have tired of it. I suspect Iraqis are much beyond the breaking point, but have no means of their own to strike back. When it becomes clear that paramilitary type resistance is useless in the face of public scrutiny and military tactics, our enemies in this fight will have to adjust to another means of fighting. We're not at that point yet, sadly.

To resolve this crisis and conflagration we must ourselves learn new tactics and employ them to our maximum advantage. Our army has for some time used what is adapted Soviet army doctrine. That's fine for fighting other armies, but that time has passed. It obviously didn't work out all that well for the Russians in their own misadventures in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, I guess. There are few nations that are left to oppose us on their own terms. It is necessary for us to learn how to survive in this new environment if we wish to define the terms.


What can we learn; after all this undoubtedly a long struggle, regardless of what happens with Iraq. We must understand that democracy is a seed that must be allowed to grow and flourish in its own forms. It may be a flower that we may identify with, but it is to be a very unique one in each place it takes root. Islamic radicals may claim democracy to be incompatible with their faith, but even Iran has a Constitution and something approaching meaningful elections. I believe, in time, this flower can take root. But it cannot be planted in infertile grounds. Iraq has some reformers in it, but its previous occupants were effective at rooting out such activity and expelling it in many ways. We may have been more fortunate had we occupied Palestine or Lebanon, though either would have been more hostile in reception and less useful politically at home. Spreading democracy is a fine cause, but it is only a secondary policy in this engagement. Radicals are radicalized by what is seen as our encroachment on their ways. Secular democracy is the cornerstone of this encroachment. I don't see how enforcing it is going to win the war. Spreading it, yes. But democracy does not operate from the barrel of a gun. It may form from it, as in our history, but it forms where the people have risen to it by any means they have available, guns or no. We would do well to remember that next time.