Tuesday, September 26, 2006
The eternal "too few troops" meme
Here's something I wrote as a comment on the Anti-Idotarian Rottweiler (warning: strong language) in response to the (primarily anti-Rumsfeld) criticism of Operation Iraqi Freedom expressed by three former officers (text here).
Those three former officers make some good points, especially on the need for properly engaging the non-DOD parts of the government and nation for the Long War. However, I don't think they understand the Bush approach (not that their approach is necessarily wrong, but...).
The Global War on Terror is not primarily a military conflict. In fact, the lack of long-term planning for expanding the military makes me think the plan may not even include ANY more involvement of ground troops in an offensive role. Shock and Awe wasn't supposed to awe just the Iraqi regime, or even the Iraqi nation, but all pan-Arabia and even all Islam. And it worked, for some time, even as the Left made it increasingly obvious that the West's resolve was not as firm as we could hope. No Arab or even Muslim nation wants to fight our military.
The objective of OIF was not to kill America's enemies. Taking out Saddam was a big part of the public justification for it, but the real goal was to stimulate the formation of an anti-jihadi ideology in the heart of Arab Islam. The GWOT will end when the jihadists are so discredited that even any remaining conservative strain of Islam realizes that resorting to global terrorism is a losing option. Proving that democracy can succeed in Iraq would be a big step toward this goal, as democracy would ensure that there will be at least some public dissent against ANY Islamist ideology. Every little bit of dissent within Islam is a net gain for us at this point; our public affairs officers cheerfully taught electoral politics to the Iraqi COMMUNIST PARTY: for crying out loud, even good Marxists don't think that the dictatorship of the proletariat be established other than via progress to an industrialized state with a corresponding class structure. Iraq stepping up to become an actual military ally in the GWOT would be a bonus, but we can call Iraq a success already just because any amount of freedom there will necessarily engender a pro-democracy fifth column throughout the Arab world. It may be weak. It may not even be able to sustain itself. But OIF was an experiment. On 9/11 we had two clear options: surrender or genocide. Bush is trying to cultivate a third option. Personally, I didn't think it would work the first time, and that we'll have to overthrow multiple Arab regimes before they start to get the idea, so I thought (pretty much still do) that using up all our Cold War military stores and exhausting our ground forces in one enterprise was a bad idea. Now, however, I'm not so sure. It may yet work, and the rest of the military involvement in the GWOT could be some time-gaining bombing raids on Iran and some containment operations in places like Darfur while the Iraqis prosper and laugh at their neighbors.
Sure we didn't send enough troops to fully pacify Iraq. We didn't and still don't have enough troops for that, probably wouldn't even if we had 27 million soldiers so we could have one handcuffed to every Iraqi. We won our part of the Iraqi war long ago. It is now the Iraqis' job to pacify their own country. Even if they don't, we will still have time to think about revoking our adherence to international genocide laws and the parts of the Geneva Convention requiring us to protect human rights in the wake of our overthrowing a government. We had enough troops in Iraq to've turned left and gone right through Syria and Lebanon and brought our troops home from Beirut a few weeks after Saddam's statue came down; then we could've just announced that we'd be back to teach the next lesson whenever we wanted. Our message if our Iraq experiment fails may well be to that Arab that one of the generals quoted, "better 40 years of tyrrany than 40 days of chaos". Our message could be, "we can do worse than make war on you, we can knock down whatever you build as often as we like until you build a functioning society."
Is the opus of IRAQ THE MODEL (really good articles just lately) and giving women the vote worth the lives of 2800 of our best children? I don't know yet, but I think we owe it to our civilized traditions to try. Let's see if the jihadis can put those genies back in their bottles.
Oh, and I agree with the three officers in every hint they gave concerning disconnects in the executive, legislative, judicial, and popular approaches to the GWOT, but it seems to me that the most serious Infowar failures have been those involving Congress and the Supreme Court. We the People, the American Sovereign, get our chance to fire shots in this war only occasionally: choose your targets well on November 7th.
Those three former officers make some good points, especially on the need for properly engaging the non-DOD parts of the government and nation for the Long War. However, I don't think they understand the Bush approach (not that their approach is necessarily wrong, but...).
The Global War on Terror is not primarily a military conflict. In fact, the lack of long-term planning for expanding the military makes me think the plan may not even include ANY more involvement of ground troops in an offensive role. Shock and Awe wasn't supposed to awe just the Iraqi regime, or even the Iraqi nation, but all pan-Arabia and even all Islam. And it worked, for some time, even as the Left made it increasingly obvious that the West's resolve was not as firm as we could hope. No Arab or even Muslim nation wants to fight our military.
The objective of OIF was not to kill America's enemies. Taking out Saddam was a big part of the public justification for it, but the real goal was to stimulate the formation of an anti-jihadi ideology in the heart of Arab Islam. The GWOT will end when the jihadists are so discredited that even any remaining conservative strain of Islam realizes that resorting to global terrorism is a losing option. Proving that democracy can succeed in Iraq would be a big step toward this goal, as democracy would ensure that there will be at least some public dissent against ANY Islamist ideology. Every little bit of dissent within Islam is a net gain for us at this point; our public affairs officers cheerfully taught electoral politics to the Iraqi COMMUNIST PARTY: for crying out loud, even good Marxists don't think that the dictatorship of the proletariat be established other than via progress to an industrialized state with a corresponding class structure. Iraq stepping up to become an actual military ally in the GWOT would be a bonus, but we can call Iraq a success already just because any amount of freedom there will necessarily engender a pro-democracy fifth column throughout the Arab world. It may be weak. It may not even be able to sustain itself. But OIF was an experiment. On 9/11 we had two clear options: surrender or genocide. Bush is trying to cultivate a third option. Personally, I didn't think it would work the first time, and that we'll have to overthrow multiple Arab regimes before they start to get the idea, so I thought (pretty much still do) that using up all our Cold War military stores and exhausting our ground forces in one enterprise was a bad idea. Now, however, I'm not so sure. It may yet work, and the rest of the military involvement in the GWOT could be some time-gaining bombing raids on Iran and some containment operations in places like Darfur while the Iraqis prosper and laugh at their neighbors.
Sure we didn't send enough troops to fully pacify Iraq. We didn't and still don't have enough troops for that, probably wouldn't even if we had 27 million soldiers so we could have one handcuffed to every Iraqi. We won our part of the Iraqi war long ago. It is now the Iraqis' job to pacify their own country. Even if they don't, we will still have time to think about revoking our adherence to international genocide laws and the parts of the Geneva Convention requiring us to protect human rights in the wake of our overthrowing a government. We had enough troops in Iraq to've turned left and gone right through Syria and Lebanon and brought our troops home from Beirut a few weeks after Saddam's statue came down; then we could've just announced that we'd be back to teach the next lesson whenever we wanted. Our message if our Iraq experiment fails may well be to that Arab that one of the generals quoted, "better 40 years of tyrrany than 40 days of chaos". Our message could be, "we can do worse than make war on you, we can knock down whatever you build as often as we like until you build a functioning society."
Is the opus of IRAQ THE MODEL (really good articles just lately) and giving women the vote worth the lives of 2800 of our best children? I don't know yet, but I think we owe it to our civilized traditions to try. Let's see if the jihadis can put those genies back in their bottles.
Oh, and I agree with the three officers in every hint they gave concerning disconnects in the executive, legislative, judicial, and popular approaches to the GWOT, but it seems to me that the most serious Infowar failures have been those involving Congress and the Supreme Court. We the People, the American Sovereign, get our chance to fire shots in this war only occasionally: choose your targets well on November 7th.
