On Recent Wars

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On Recent Wars

Things Not Figured Out


May 17, 2006

People ask how we got into our splendid mess in Iraq and why we can’t get out. The question is a subset of a larger question: Why, since WWII, have so many first-world armies gotten into drawn-out guerrilla wars in bush-world countries, and lost? Examples abound: France in Vietnam, America in Vietnam, France in Algeria, Russia in Afghanistan, Israel in Lebanon, etc. Why don’t they learn?

The answer I think is that militaries are influenced by a kind of man—call him the Warrior—who by nature is unsuited for modern wars. He doesn’t understand them, can’t adapt to them.

The Warrior is emotionally suited to pitched, Pattonesque battles of moral clarity and simple intent. I don’t mean that he is stupid. Among fighter pilots and in the Special Forces for example it is not uncommon to find men with IQs of 145. Yet emotionally the Warrior has the uncomplicated instincts of a pit bull. Intensely loyal to friends and intensely hostile to the enemy, he doesn’t want any confusion as to which is which. His tolerance for ambiguity is very low. He wants to close with the enemy and destroy him.

This works in wars like WWII. (Note that the American military is an advanced version of the military that beat Germany and Japan.) It does not work when winning requires the support of the population. The Warrior, unable to see things through the eyes of the enemy, or of the local population, whom he quickly comes to hate, wants to blow hell out of things. He detests all that therapeutic crap, that touchy-feely leftist stuff about respect the population, especially the women. Having the empathy of an engine block, he regards mention of mutilated children as intensely annoying at best, and communist propaganda at worst.

On the net these men sometimes speak approvingly to each other of the massacre at My Lai. Hey, they were all Cong. If they weren’t, they knew who the Cong were and didn’t tell us. Calley did the right thing, taught them a lesson. There is an admiration of Calley for having avoided bureaucratic rules of engagement probably dreamed up by civilians. War is war. You kill people. Deal with it.

If you point out that collateral damage (dead children, for example) makes the survivors into murderously angry Viet Cong, the Warrior thinks that you are a lefty tree-hugger.

Today, the battlefield as understood by the enemy, but seldom by the Warrior, extends far beyond the physical battlefield, and the chief targets are political. In this kind of war, if America can get the local population to support it, the insurgents are out of business; if the insurgents can get the American public to stop supporting the war, the American military is out of business. This is what counts. It is what works. The Warrior, all oooh-rah and jump wings, doesn’t get it. Vo Nguyen Giap got it. Ho Chi Minh got it.

Thus the furious, embittered insistence of Warriors that “We won Tet of ’68. We slaughtered them! We won, dammit! Militarily, we absolutely won!” Swell, but politically they lost. It was a catastrophe on the order of Kursk or Dien Bien Phu. But they can’t figure it out.

The warrior doesn’t understand what “victory” means because he thinks in terms of firefights, courage, weaponry, and valor. His approach is emotional, not rational. Though not stupid, he is regularly out-thought. Why?

It’s not mysterious. An intelligent enemy knows that America cannot be beaten at industrial war. So he thinks, “What then are America’s weaknesses?” The first and crucial one is that the American government enters into distant wars in which the public has no stake. Do you want your son to die for—get this—democracy in Iraq? You diapered him, got him through school-yard fist fights, his first prom, graduation from boot camp, and he comes home in a box—for democracy in Iraq?

The thing to do, then (continues thinking the intelligent enemy) is to make the Americans grow sick of the war. How? Not by winning battles, which is difficult against the Americans. You win otherwise. First, don’t give them point targets, since these are easily destroyed by big guns and advanced technology. Second, keep the level of combat high enough to maintain the war in the forefront of American consciousness, and to keep the monetary expense high. (Inflation and gasoline prices are weapons as much as rifles, another idea that the Warrior just doesn’t get. Bin Laden does.) Third, keep the body bags flowing. Sooner or later the Americans will weary of losing their sons for something that doesn’t really interest them.

However, the Warrior does not grant the public the right to grow weary. For him, America exists to support the military, not the other way around. Are two hundred dead a week coming back from Asia? The Warrior believes that small-town America (which is where the coffins usually go) should grit its teeth, bear down, and make the sacrifice for the country. Sacrifice for what? It doesn’t matter. We’re at war, dammit. Rally ‘round. What are you, a commy?

To the Warrior, to doubt the war is treason, aiding and supporting, liberalism, cowardice, back-stabbing, and so on. He uses these phrases unrelentingly. We must fight, and fight, and fight, and never yield, and sacrifice and spend. We must never ask why, or whether, or what for, or do we want to.

The public of course doesn’t see it that way. In 1964 I graduated from a rural high school in Virginia with a senior class of, I think, sixty. Doug took a 12.7 through the head, Sonny spent time at Walter Reed with neck wounds, Studley I hear is a paraplegic, another kid got mostly blinded for life, and several, whom I won’t name, tough country kids as I knew them, came back as apparently irredeemable drunks. (These were kids I knew, not all in my class.) It was a lot of dead and crippled for a small place. For what?

Cowardice? I was on campus in 1966 on a small, very Republican, very patriotic, very conservative, very Southern campus. The students, and their girlfriends, were all violently against the war. So, I gather, were their parents. Why? Were they the traitors of the Warrior’s imagination? No. They didn’t want to die for something that they didn’t care about.

This eludes the Warrior. Always, he blames The Press for the waning of martial enthusiasm, for his misunderstanding of the kind of war we are fighting. Did the press make Studley a paraplegic? Or kill the guy with all the tubes who died in the stretcher above me on the Medevac 141 back from Danang? Did Walter Cronkite make my buddy Cagle blind when the rifle grenade exploded on the end of his fourteen? Do the Warriors think that people don’t notice when their kids come back forever in wheelchairs?

They don’t get it.

[Surlethe]

This is what I've been saying for a while: this "War on Terror" is being pursued as a black-and-white, conventional conflict against an enemy which is, almost by definition, unconventional. It's why we'll never win the war if we keep on going this way: our leaders are irrational, and we are paying the price for their disconnect with reality.

[Uraniun235]

I think a big part of the problem was calling it a "War on Terror" in the first place.

[Elfdart]

That's part of it, but one reason first-rate coutries haven't done very well in warfare since WW2 is that ever since Nuremberg, mass murder has carried a bad image and mass murder is exactly what's required to beat most rebellions. Notice how the US no longer has any problems with the Comanches, Apaches, Mohawks or Pequots? Why? Because they were exterminated with very few survivors.

Another reason is that thanks to mass production of weapons and advances in science, even the most poverty-stricken insurgent can get his hands on weapons that put him in the same league as his occupiers. They also have a Maguyver-like skill of turning everyday objects into bombs.

[Surlethe]

I think a big part of the problem was calling it a "War on Terror" in the first place.

Like I said in the other thread, Bush has based his entire claim to emergency executive powers on a simple equivocation. He calls it a "war on terror", and then declares that it's an actual war, when "war on terror" is idiomatic; by his reasoning, Clinton should have siezed executive emergency powers for the war on drugs, and Johnson (?) shoudl have siezed those powers for the war on poverty.

[Jalinth]

The only example I disagree with is the Israel in Lebanon example. The reasoning is different and so is the political background. They invaded a country being used as a cats-paw by various groups attacking the country proper of Israel.

Both Vietnam and Afganistan are cases where apparent prestige was at risk - leading to real prestige and loss in men, morale and equipment. Call it badly misunderstanding the risk/reward ratio.

[Surlethe]

That's the problem with arrogance: America is a superpower, but because it's arrogant, it overvalues its own prestige. Suddenly, national pride becomes worth lives, and people start dying in wars fought over the globe because someone insulted the President's daddy.

[Darth Wong]

To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. That's the problem with employing the Warrior Creed as national policy, and that's the problem with the all-pervasive "support the troops" mantra.

When people say "support the troops", what they really mean is "support the mindset of the troops". But the troops' mindset is, quite frankly, implanted into them by their training program. They have been trained to solve problems in exactly one way, leaving larger issues of public policy to civilian decision-makers. This is not necessarily a bad thing, unless the civilian decision-makers fail to remember that it is their job to think in ways the military might not.

By subordinating all national policy to the mindset of the troops, we ignore the entire reason for a separated civilian/military leadership. By making "support the troops" into a political and social rule, we take an entire nation and narrow its mindset to fit the training of one specific kind of person. So much for the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. They should all shut the fuck up and let Soldier Man tell them what to do.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

This article is doing nothing but attacking a self-made carciture. It set's up and knocks down its own sterotype; I doubt that a signifigant portion of the armed forces have this attitude.

[SirNitram]

This article is doing nothing but attacking a self-made carciture. It set's up and knocks down its own sterotype; I doubt that a signifigant portion of the armed forces have this attitude.

As always, you step up to the plate, you puff yourself up, you try and look cool, and you whiff so hard you fall on your face. Pathetic!

The description does not apply to the common enlisted or officer. Indeed, it is their job to think like a soldier, a warrior, to view objectives as things to be taken, damn the costs.

The description refers to the people making the strategy. The civilian leadership, and to a lesser extent, the frothing, insipid retards who behave just like that. And yes, they exist in vast hordes.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

This article is doing nothing but attacking a self-made carciture. It set's up and knocks down its own sterotype; I doubt that a signifigant portion of the armed forces have this attitude.

As always, you step up to the plate, you puff yourself up, you try and look cool, and you whiff so hard you fall on your face. Pathetic!

The description does not apply to the common enlisted or officer. Indeed, it is their job to think like a soldier, a warrior, to view objectives as things to be taken, damn the costs.

The description refers to the people making the strategy. The civilian leadership, and to a lesser extent, the frothing, insipid retards who behave just like that. And yes, they exist in vast hordes.

Oh really? Then why does he single them out in the article?

The answer I think is that militaries are influenced by a kind of man—call him the Warrior—who by nature is unsuited for modern wars. He doesn’t understand them, can’t adapt to them.

The Warrior is emotionally suited to pitched, Pattonesque battles of moral clarity and simple intent. I don’t mean that he is stupid. Among fighter pilots and in the Special Forces for example it is not uncommon to find men with IQs of 145. Yet emotionally the Warrior has the uncomplicated instincts of a pit bull. Intensely loyal to friends and intensely hostile to the enemy, he doesn’t want any confusion as to which is which. His tolerance for ambiguity is very low. He wants to close with the enemy and destroy him.

The bolded line certainly makes it appear as if he's refering to military personel specifically.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

Ooops- messed up my bolding. I was refering to the 145 IQ sentence.

[SirNitram]

To demonstrate that people who definately have the 'warrior' mindset(As I mentioned above, the people who are paid to have it.) are quite capable of being bloody smart.

[Darth Wong]

The bolded line certainly makes it appear as if he's refering to military personel specifically.

(sigh) You just don't get it, do you? Of course military personnel have that mindset; they're trained to approach enemies with that mindset. The problem is that the civilian leadership of the country is also adopting the same damned mindset, and its job is to think on a larger scope.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

The bolded line certainly makes it appear as if he's refering to military personel specifically.

(sigh) You just don't get it, do you? Of course military personnel have that mindset; they're trained to approach enemies with that mindset. The problem is that the civilian leadership of the country is also adopting the same damned mindset, and its job is to think on a larger scope.

No, I understand the points you made about the civilian leadership and the population at large. I'm objecting to the idea that EVERYONE, or even a large portion of, the personal in the Armed Forces has adopted this "warrior" mentality that willingly approves of the slaughter of innocent civilians and has as much understanding of guirella warfare as an over-drunk chimpanzee.

[Admiral Johnason]

This article is doing nothing but attacking a self-made carciture. It set's up and knocks down its own sterotype; I doubt that a signifigant portion of the armed forces have this attitude.

As always, you step up to the plate, you puff yourself up, you try and look cool, and you whiff so hard you fall on your face. Pathetic!

The description does not apply to the common enlisted or officer. Indeed, it is their job to think like a soldier, a warrior, to view objectives as things to be taken, damn the costs.

The description refers to the people making the strategy. The civilian leadership, and to a lesser extent, the frothing, insipid retards who behave just like that. And yes, they exist in vast hordes.

Oh really? Then why does he single them out in the article?

The answer I think is that militaries are influenced by a kind of man—call him the Warrior—who by nature is unsuited for modern wars. He doesn’t understand them, can’t adapt to them.

The Warrior is emotionally suited to pitched, Pattonesque battles of moral clarity and simple intent. I don’t mean that he is stupid. Among fighter pilots and in the Special Forces for example it is not uncommon to find men with IQs of 145. Yet emotionally the Warrior has the uncomplicated instincts of a pit bull. Intensely loyal to friends and intensely hostile to the enemy, he doesn’t want any confusion as to which is which. His tolerance for ambiguity is very low. He wants to close with the enemy and destroy him.

The bolded line certainly makes it appear as if he's refering to military personel specifically.

Man, the article is refering to the commanders and generals. Pattonesque is a word used to descirbe army commanders. Pilots and special forces are usually exceptions to the rule of lower level commanders because a.they have to be in the field and b.because they require a greater degree of independence to operate effectively. General's commands are sometimes refered as extentions of their self due to the fact that they make the unit work.

[Medic]

Blindly repeating the mantra of basing a pull-out only on the opinion of "commanders on the ground" really only is worth a damn if those commaders know how to fight a 4th generational conflict.

The Lessons of Counter Insurgency. The single most positive article I've yet seen on any unit in Iraq (posted here at SDN a while ago IIRC).

Article detailing 4th generational warfare Pretty damning stuff really, this goes hand in hand with the OP's criticisms in a few ways, that tactically, concepts (as they're implemented) such as "force protection" may be tactically sound but strategic blunders. We're not at all integrated with the culture of Iraq, we just ride till we die, and let the bullets fly.

The best points on that 2nd article are that completely oblitterating the state's of Afghanistan and Iraq created a rich hunting ground as we scrambled to prop up governments from the ground up. Yes, the Taliban had to go, yes Sadam was a butcher, but there's no doubt completely getting rid of the powers that be in Iraq created a vacuum. All the crazy non-secular Islamists Sadam kept in check (or well compensated) are now running amok screaming God is Great and making videos of bombing humvees and sniping Soldiers. Just something to consider.

It's not like no one know's what's going on, just those setting policy.

[Civil War Man]

No, I understand the points you made about the civilian leadership and the population at large. I'm objecting to the idea that EVERYONE, or even a large portion of, the personal in the Armed Forces has adopted this "warrior" mentality that willingly approves of the slaughter of innocent civilians and has as much understanding of guirella warfare as an over-drunk chimpanzee.

Stop beating on that poor strawman. You know it can't defend itself.

"Warrior mentality", despite your delusions, does not equal "eating babies". It is about fighting a conventional war. Fulfilling objectives. Taking cities. Armies clashing. The US under Bush has been trying to fight that kind of war.

And yes, from the top on down, a lack of understanding in guerilla warfare has been evident. And those who did understand what would happen, and voiced their concerns to the Hawks in charge, were ignored and replaced with the proper drones because they contradicted Bush's and Rumsfeld's pie-in-the-sky "shower us with rose petals" WWII-style liberator fantasies.

Shit, my mother whose military experience consisted of "used to teach the kids of military families living overseas", could see the insurgency coming from miles away, but apparently the warning signs were too subtle for Bush and Co.

[Medic]

The bolded line certainly makes it appear as if he's refering to military personel specifically.

(sigh) You just don't get it, do you? Of course military personnel have that mindset; they're trained to approach enemies with that mindset. The problem is that the civilian leadership of the country is also adopting the same damned mindset, and its job is to think on a larger scope.

No, I understand the points you made about the civilian leadership and the population at large. I'm objecting to the idea that EVERYONE, or even a large portion of, the personal in the Armed Forces has adopted this "warrior" mentality that willingly approves of the slaughter of innocent civilians and has as much understanding of guirella warfare as an over-drunk chimpanzee.

Although most Soldiers don't necessarily exhibit the degree of blind indifference ascribed to them in the article, i.e., acceptance of outright massacre, there is a lighter flavor and it's policy: force protection. The American forces at least are largely insulated from the population and there's little doubt in my mind we simply intimidate the population with our firepower. For example, the Iraqi citizens know not to drive head-on towards a convoy -- or else. Innocent civilians can and have died this way; did they make a mistake? Yes; it's also a sensible force protection measure though because vBIED's are the insurgency's most spectacularly damaging weapon.

It's really largely irrelevant whether most of the Joe's on the ground as you say "has adopted this 'warrior' mentality;" we don't set policy, our commanders starting at a battalion level and going on up the Chain of Command all the way to the White House do. I don't believe in outright slaughter and I doubt any of my coworkers do -- I know at least some will treat any detainees though roughly and will do what it takes to get home, above all else. It's almost impossible to be emotionally detached as a Soldier.

[Admiral Johnason]

The bolded line certainly makes it appear as if he's refering to military personel specifically.

(sigh) You just don't get it, do you? Of course military personnel have that mindset; they're trained to approach enemies with that mindset. The problem is that the civilian leadership of the country is also adopting the same damned mindset, and its job is to think on a larger scope.

Are you talking about the entire military or just the upper ranks?

[Coyote]

The article contains some truth to it; the "warrior mindset" searching for the traditional force-on-force clash that will leads towards a final decision that everyone will accept. But, this type of army vs. army "great clash" probably will not happen much in the future, if indeed at all. Just as today's Soldier looks back at the old method of warfare-- ranks of men in bright colors standing in lines and firing muskets point-blank at one another-- and shake our heads sadly, soon, so too will our expectations of what a "war" is have to fade.

War today is as much a game of public relations, media, and advertising as it is of shooting. Probably more so. The traditional role of "Soldier" as we know it in the West will have to transform and become sort of a quasi-Coast Guard-ish soldier/policeman/rescue worker type hybrid. It is absolutely fucking sinful that America, which won freedom with guerrilla tactics and avoiding force clashes, and which was the same country that practically invented and fine-tuned the concept of media advertising, can be caught so short with the way warfare has transformed.

The marketing directors at Madison Avenue could probably stage an advertising campaign that would make dog shit a hot selling commodity if they put their effort into it. But we can't market a war, which is what good old-fashioned propaganda should be able to do.

If we have a good message compared to our enemies (and I believe we do) we should be able to send that out and make most of the shooting unnecessary; however, we have to have the troops there and ready to enforce the policies where needed also. For example, having the troops enforce law and order immediately after the fall of Baghdad, with a properly coordinated media campaign for safety and compliance, enhanced by properly researching the society beforehand, would have helped a lot.

Too many in the heirarchy still see things like PSYOPS as 'touchy-feely hug the enemy and he'll be your friend' stuff, or, as a means to scare the enemy into submitting. Approaching PSYOPS from a marketing and advertising campaign mindset means that if you can "sell ice to Eskimos", then you can find a way to get a Muslim to buy into things like Democracy and liberty.

[Darth Wong]

Marketing the war isn't the problem. The American government has done a very skillful job of polishing this turd. The problem is that they're only concerned about marketing it to the American people, not the rest of the world.

[Dahak]

I really found it always quite interesting that one doesn't hear as much Bad News(TM) from the British troops in Iraq than their US colleagues.

Would the general situation be somewhat different now if a more international-centred command would have called the shots?

[Medic]

Marketing the war isn't the problem. The American government has done a very skillful job of polishing this turd. The problem is that they're only concerned about marketing it to the American people, not the rest of the world.

We can bully, cajole or ignore the rest of the world; violence and mass demonstrations (Vietnam I'm going off) is a little bit harder to ignore -- it's those people who'll vote politician's asses out of office, out of power and shit out of luck.

We're not at that level yet and yet look at the vehement criticism of those that are speaking out. I don't blame them for trying their damndest in the sense that it's at home where the war will be "won" or "lost."

(quoted because it's all a joke, if ever I debate this pitiful subject in the real world, I need only ride the horse of "WMD" until I'm blue in the face)

[Medic]

Pop open this week's Army Times and speak of the Devil:

Lawmaker urges more emphasis on cultural training

New curricula sought to prepare officers for foreign duty

By Rick Maze
Times Staff Writer

A New York lawmaker wants the military to put the same emphasis on cultural awareness as it has put on training officers for joint-service operations.

Rep. Steve Israel, a House Armed Services Committee member and protege of fellow Democrat Rep. Ike Skelton, said the military needs to train for the future by having more officers and senior enlisted members with foreign language proficiency and backgrounds in cultural anthropology and other studies that prepare them for foreign assignments.

Isreal's effort to get foreign-mission training into the curriculum at military schools is similar to efforts in the 1990s by Skelton to get joint-duty training integrated into professional miiltary education.

In visits with US forces in Iraq and educators at the US Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and in meetingsd with military leaders and veterans who have come to his district office, Israel said he has become convinced that cultural training is just as important as combat training in many situations.

"Every single person who has come here has said cultural training would have been a help, from specialists to captains," Israel said. "Iraq has taught us an immediate lesson in the importance of being more than a warrior."

The military has recognized the importance of making service members aware of cultural issues and has done such things as set up a five-day class that seeks to make troops arriving in Iraq aware of local sensitivities.

Israel is looking for something with more depth than a five-day class dealing in basic concerns, such as not showing the bottoms of your feet when sitting with Iraqis. But that won't happen unless there is a change in the military regarding how cultuarl issues are taught, he said.

The military has a foreign area officer specialty that includes people trained in cultural issues, but the field "is still a dead end" for most people because career and promotion opportunities are scarce beyond the midgrade level, Israel said.

"They are starting to turn in the right direction," he said, but he added that he's still unsatisfied.

More intensive and braoder language training also needs more emphasis, he said.

Today's military has far more Spanish and Russian speakers than Arabic or Chinese linguists -- something military leaders know they need to change -- Israel said.

At Israel's urging and with the support of Skelton, the House version of the 2007 defense authorization bill includes a demand for a report about foreign language training at the service academies. The report will look at how many students are taking language classes, what languages they are learning and how foreign language training could be expanded.

The report, due six months after the defense bill becomes law, would serve as the basis for additional steps, Israel said.

Skelton, through hearings held over several years, persuaded the services tha including more joint-duty studies in professional education would benefit military operations.

But the moves did not come easily, as the services balked at changing curricula because they did not want to extend the length of courses or give up anything already offered.

Skelton wore them down over time, and joint-duty related education is now the standard in mlitary education courses at all levels.

Israel said he plans to follow the Skelton model of attempting to make chagnes slowly.

"Next year, we are looking at a carrot-and-stick approach," he said, referring to the possibility of using incentives for service members to get additional langauge or cultural training and requirements for course changes.

"We have to provide some flexibility because having a one-size-fits-all solution could discourage the services," he said. "We don't want to do that."