Bush has been at it again this week, trying to demonize critics of his war and domestic-espionage policies as disloyal, traitorous, and assisting The Enemy.
With recent polls showing approval of Bush's Iraq War policies down in the 40% range among the American public, this would mean that close to two-thirds of the American public are disloyal defeatists who are aiding the enemy. This is really extreme talk. The very fact that such rhetoric goes largely unremarked in his own party is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that "moderate" Republicans don't really exist. Or, more precisely, that they're pretty useless, no matter how much our "press corps" lionizes that bold Maverick McCain. Today's Republican "moderates" promote the same things as rightwing Republicans; they just try to frame it in more reassuring terms.
But how can you say in a "moderate" way that Americans who criticize Bush's disaster is Iraq are traitors who are aiding The Terrorists?
On Tuesday of this week, Bush spoke to the VFW in Washington: President Addresses Veterans of Foreign Wars on the War on Terror White House Web site 01/09/06.
The VFW is a generally conservative veterans group. In a sad and ugly irony, the first part of the speech is devoted to praising the new democracy that we've supposedly created in Iraq, with all the debate and disagreement that comes with competitive elections. Bush said:
Democracies are sometimes messy and seemingly chaotic, as different parties advance competing agendas and seek their share of political power. We've seen this throughout our own history.
And yet Bush doesn't want to see or hear on his watch. At the end of his speech, he laid out his pitch to demonize war critics:
The coming year will test the character of our country, and the will of our citizens. We have a strategy for victory - but to achieve that victory, we must have the determination to see this strategy through. The enemy in Iraq knows they cannot defeat us on the battlefield - and so they're trying to shake our will with acts of violence, and force us to retreat. That means that our resolve in 2006 must stay strong. ...
We face an added challenge in the months ahead: The campaign season will soon be upon us - and that means our nation must carry on this war in an election year. There is a vigorous debate about the war in Iraq today, and we should not fear the debate. It's one of the great strengths of our democracy that we can discuss our differences openly and honestly - even in times of war. Yet we must remember there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate - and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas.
The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.
When our soldiers hear politicians in Washington question the mission they are risking their lives to accomplish, it hurts their morale. In a time of war, we have a responsibility to show that whatever our political differences at home, our nation is united and determined to prevail. And we have a responsibility to our men and women in uniform - who deserve to know that once our politicians vote to send them into harm's way, our support will be with them in good days and in bad days - and we will settle for nothing less than complete victory.
We also have an opportunity this year to show the Iraqi people what responsible debate in a democracy looks like. In a free society, there is only one check on political speech - and that's the judgment of the people. So I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account, and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy - not comfort to our adversaries. (my emphasis)
On Wednesday, Bush was in Louisville, Kentucky: President Participates in Discussion on the Global War on Terror White House Web site 01/10/06.
He gave his wife Laura a dubious compliment at the start:
I'm sorry the First Lady isn't with me. She is a heck of a person.
I've said the same thing about Dubya himself, actually.
And he continued his appeal for people to have the Will to back his war policies:
And so things are good [in Iraq]. I'm confident we'll succeed. And it's tough, though. The enemy has got one weapon - I repeat to you - and that's to shake our will. I just want to tell you, whether you agree with me, or not, they're not going to shake my will. We're doing the right thing.
A couple of quick points, then I'll answer your questions. You hear a lot of talk about troop levels. I'd just like to give you my thinking on troop levels. I know a lot of people want our troops to come home - I do, too. But I don't want us to come home without achieving the victory. We owe that to the mothers and fathers and husbands and wives who have lost a loved one. That's what I feel. I feel strongly that we cannot let the sacrifice - we can't let their sacrifice go in vain. ...
I fully expect in a democracy - I expect and, frankly, welcome the voices of people saying, you know, Mr. President, you shouldn't have made that decision, or, you know, you should have done it a better way. I understand that. What I don't like is when somebody said, he lied. Or, they're in there for oil. Or they're doing it because of Israel. That's the kind of debate that basically says the mission and the sacrifice were based on false premise. It's one thing to have a philosophical difference - and I can understand people being abhorrent about war. War is terrible. But one way people can help as we're coming down the pike in the 2006 elections, is remember the effect that rhetoric can have on our troops in harm's way, and the effect that rhetoric can have in emboldening or weakening an enemy. (my emphasis)
Somehow, I don't think "being abhorrent about war" is exactly the same as having an abhorrence of war. But I can understand someone saying that Bush's behavior in the Iraq War has been abhorrent.
This is a signal that the President intends to base his Party's 2006 campaigns on using war fever to position themselves against the Democrats. Stigmatizing dissent is nothing new for this administration. In my second month of posting at Old Hickory's Weblog, I was talking about Loving Bush or Stigmatizing Dissent? 09/19/03.
In fact, when I was looking up that post, I was surprised to see that I had made several posts that month on this same issue of Bush accusing war critics of underming the public's Will on the Iraq War.
And we're still seeing the same approach by this administration, just much intensified as Bush becomes more and more desperate over the problems he's facing with his war in Iraq. Here I want to mention at a few pespectives on this issue.
Sources of criticism
One is that, as British General Nigel Aylwin-Foster says, while the Iraq War is "not yet another Vietnam, it does need to be rcognised as just as critical a watershed in U.S. Army development." The implications and lessons of this war need to be debated, analyzied, hashed over. And not just by military analysts, but by the public, as well. Trying to demonized dissent over the war just makes that very necessary process all the more difficult.
Gen. Aylwin-Foster's comment that I just quoted appeared in the Army journal Military Review for Nov-Dec 2005: Changing the Army for Counerinsurgency Operations).
At this blog, I've quoted often from journals like that one, and the Army War College's Parameters quarterly. And from papers by serving officers available at the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, and papers by military analysts at think-tanks like the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Sources like these provide plenty of critical perspectives and factual analysis that differ, often in major ways, from the official position of this administration.
And that's not just the case with opponents of the war, either. The CSIS' Anthony Cordesman, for example, supports Bush's "stay the course" determination and keeps stressing that pulling out American troops now would be a bad thing. (I agree that it would be a bad thing. But I also think that it would be the least damaging to the United States of the practical options now available, all of which can be expected to have bad results.)
Republican comma-dancers could object that Bush wasn't referring to this kind of criticism, since he made a ritual distinction between legitimate criticism and the disloyal kind. In practice, the Republicans regard any kind of criticism that people actually make - unless maybe it's rightwing criticism that we aren't killing and torturing enough civilians - as being the irresponsible kind. And, in fact, criticisms from people like Aylwin-Foster and Anthony Cordesman are often much more specific and farther-reaching than those being made by Democratic members of Congress.
What is victory?
Cordesman is quoted in this article on the question of how to define victory": Stakes in Iraq are high, but how high? A largely unanswered question is what the US should do if Iraq deteriorates further by Mark Sappenfield Christian Science Monitor 01/11/06.
In the conventional war model overwhelmingly dominant in the armed forces, victory in war can be fairly easily defined. The enemy forces are overwhelmed and destroyed to the point that they either surrender (Japan and Germany in the Second World War), concede the desired aim (Iraq leaving Kuwait in the Gulf War) or just stay out of the way while the US goes about doing whatever it intends to (arresting Gen. Noriega in Panama).
But in a counterinsurgency war, the notion of victory is not so clearly defined at a moment in time like, say, the President appearing in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier to declare Mission Accomplished. Sappenfield writes:
The base line for success is only a relatively stable government that denies terrorists a haven, analysts say. Yet in a polarized Congress and country pulled between the extremes of staying the course at any cost and withdrawing as soon as possible, there has been little dialogue about what the most realistic waymarks might be, or what America should do when Iraq does - or does not - meet them.
"The debate has been far too ideological," says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. "It doesn't prepare US citizens for all the contingencies when we might have to leave. It has been far too unwilling to ask: What really happens next?"
In his speeches, Mr. Bush has refused even to consider the possibility of failure - such as a political collapse, a deepening of civil strife, or the disintegration of the Iraqi Army. In many respects, positive pronouncements are natural - and not altogether unwise. "The president shouldn't go out and talk about all the ways we can lose," says Dr. Cordesman.
Yet the lack of greater sophistication on either side of the Iraq discussion risks simplifying the stakes, he and others say - casting the conflict as either a hinge of 21st-century history or a foolish mistake best abandoned. Between those two opposites, there are a multitude of opinions. Most experts largely agree with the idea that Iraq is of fundamental importance to US security, both as a nexus for terrorism and as a linchpin of the petroleum economy. Yet many cast success more narrowly than Bush's vision of an Iraq "that will serve as a model of freedom for the Middle East."
Damaging morale
Bush said Tuesday, "When our soldiers hear politicians in Washington question the mission they are risking their lives to accomplish, it hurts their morale."
We might wonder whether many soldiers might be much more put off by hearing the President suggest their fighting morale is so fragile.
We can't say that homefront political support for a war would never affect fighting morale. But there have been plenty of opportunities in the last century or so to study the factors that actually affect combat morale. In fact, the Civil War is still mined for such lessons.
In the normal case, the strength of the organization of the army itself is far more decisive for morale than opinion polls on the home front. But other factors come into play. For example, if a unit loses as many as 1/3 of its members to combat casualties, their fighting morale is very likely to be seriously reduced.
We've had many reports of morale being damaged - or at a minimum, sorely challenged- by being required to do repeated tours of duty in Iraq. Stop-loss orders, which often extend soldiers' tour in Iraq, have also not been the best morale-boosted ever invented.
On the other hand, I haven't heard a single report from a Pentagon spokesperson saying that a unit failed to achieve its objective because the soldiers had just gotten word that John Kerry or Chuck Hagel had given a speech calling for an exit strategy, and their morale was so damaged they couldn't fight well. And we're not likely to hear something like that. After all, to hear the Pentagon tell it, our soldiers, led by their infallible generals, are winning every battle in Iraq. Making substantial progress. Breaking the back of the resistance. And so on.
Also, Gen. Aylwin-Foster argues that a certain kind of high morale, one based on the sort of moralistic pseudo-certainties that Bush has used to justify the Iraq War, may have actually been a signficant problem for the US Army in Iraq:
U.S. Army personnel, like their colleagues in the other U.S. services, had a strong sense of moral authority. They fervently believed in the mission's underlying purpose, the delivery of democracy to Iraq, whereas other nations’ forces tended to be more ambivalent about why they were there. This was at once a strength and hindrance to progress. It bolstered U.S. will to continue in the face of setbacks. But it also encouraged the erroneous assumption that given the justness of the cause, actions that occurred in its name would be understood and accepted by the population, even if mistakes and civilian fatalities occurred in the implementation.
This sense of moral righteousness combined with an emotivity that was rarely far from the surface, and in extremis manifested as deep indignation or outrage that could serve to distort collective military judgement. The most striking example during this period occurred in April 2004 when insurgents captured and mutilated U.S. contractors in Fallujah. In classic insurgency doctrine, this act was almost certainly a come-on, designed to invoke a disproportionate response, thereby further polarising the situation and driving a wedge between the domestic population and the Coalition forces. It succeeded. The precise chain of events leadingto the committal of U.S. and Iraqi security forces, or reasons for the subsequent failure to clear what had become a terrorist stronghold, lie well beyond the classification of this paper. However, the essential point is that regardless of who gave the order to clear Fallujah of insurgents, even those U.S. commanders and staff who generally took the broader view of the campaign were so deeply affronted on this occasion that they became set on the total destruction of the enemy. (my emphasis)
But you don't hear stuff like that very much on FOX News.
The public's Will
The football-game theory of war in which how loudly the fans cheer from the bleachers can decisively affect the outcome doesn't have a lot to recommend it.
But here I just want to take note of something that Antulio J. Echevarria II wrote in his monograph Fourth-Generation War and Other Myths (Nov. 2005; US Army Strategic Studies Institute). (I talked about the main theme of his paper in an earlier post.)
Bush talks about the role of the public's Will - and his own supposedly unfaltering one - as though it were some especially or perhaps uniquely important factor in the Iraq War. He calls it the only thing that can deprive us of his Complete Victory. But comparing "will" to other military factors like, say, number of tanks, or number of soldiers who can speak Arabic, can make a very misleading comparison. As Echevarria writes:
We would, in fact, be hard pressed to find a conventional conflict in history in which the belligerents did not have as one of their chief aims the changing, if not the complete undermining, of their adversary’s political will. It is tempting, for instance, to see World War I as little more than a brutal contest of attrition involving waves of men and massive barrages of firepower, which is how 4GW [a particular theory of counterinsurgy warfare] theorists see it. However, that perspective overlooks the fact that the ultimate aim of campaigns of attrition such as Verdun was to break the political will of the other side by demonstrating that the cost of continuing the fight was higher than the ends warranted- much like the definition usedby the theorists of 4GW. The problem was that each side tended to miscalculate the resolve of its opponent, believing that the will of the other was just about to break, and that one more major offensive would do the trick. ...
We should also remember that the notions of airpower theorist Giulio Douhet concentrated primarily on striking at an opponent’s will to resist - by bombing his major population centers at home - rather than destroying his combat materiel at the front. In essence, Douhet’s theories, aside from being an argument for turning Italy’s air arm into a separate service, amount to a case for creating terror on a massive scale. That the terror such bombing caused in World War II fell short of achieving the capitulation predicted by Douhet only proves how difficult it is to calculate the strength of an opponent’s political will, or how it might react to certain attacks directed against it. The Vietnam conflict often is portrayed as proof of a lack of American resolve, but for over a decade the United States remained involved in a war that some of its leading decisionmakers, such as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, initially assessed as unwinnable unless the South Vietnamese could be inspired to take “effective action.” This shows how difficult it is to estimate the will of an opponent.
Indeed, military theorists from Sun Tzu forward have wrestled with the need to understand the relationship between an adversary’s physical and psychological capacities to resist. Collectively, theorists typically have affirmed that will is the most important factor in war. Hence, since it is so difficult to assess, most military thinkers, like Clausewitz, defaulted to the aim of rendering an enemy defenseless (Wehrlos) by destroying his physical capacity to resist. We would do well to remember that the jihadists and other nefarious actors in the war on terror also face the difficult problem of estimating the will of some of their sworn enemies, the United States and its coalition partners, for example. Underestimating that will, in fact, seems to be a principal characteristic of their ideology. (my emphasis)
In other words, it's not simply a matter of character, or of showing the other side that our God's bigger than his God. Stubbornly hanging in there until "complete victory" only makessense if the benefits for theUnited States are likely to outweigh the costs and damages. And making that determination is a matter of judgment, not simply of testosterone-driven enthusiasm.
Criticizing the services
The armed services are not beyond criticism. But that's one of the problems of the sentimental way in which so many Americans, especially the Christian Right, "honor the troops" today. Presumably, politicians will always lace their speeches with reference to the courage and sacrifice of soldiers even while, as with Bush, they are seriously underfunding crucial things soldiers need, like better body armor or more adequate medical treatment for brain injuries (which have occurred a lot in the Iraq War).
But it would be terrible if members of Congress are so busy praising "the greatest fighting force in the history of the world" that they fail to adequately investigate some of the very real problems that have emerged with the armed services' performance in Iraq, from the torture scandal to the overwhelming focus on conventional war capabilities to the currently-expanding air war in Iraq. Aylwin-Foster is by no means the first to observe that there may be more than minor problems in terms of how the US armed forces are preparing themselves for the kinds of conflicts they are likely to face.
There is much to criticize about how the civilian leadership in this administration handled the Iraq War in all its aspects. But some of the problems are rooted in the approach of the military, as well. We'd all better hope that the "lessons of the Iraq War" don't get buried under sentimental platitudes that become excuses for Congress and the President to avoid addressing the problems.
No comments:
Post a Comment