July 27, 2004
War of Ideas
The Armed Liberal writes about how to defeat terrorists:
We don't need to sacrifice our economic well-being at the levels we did in WW II in order to produce at the level required, and because the boundary between war and peace is fluid we can't treat everyone from, say, Saudi Arabia as an enemy combatant. In fact, a big part of this war will, like wars against street gangs, consist of trying to peel away the less-committed supporters from the core, and to do that will require some form of positive engagement, of 'selling'.
He goes on to discuss a recent NRO article that advocates a military victory first and foremost. I tend to agree with the Armed Liberal's approach of attacking terrorism's "root causes" and weakening those movements through "positive engagement" rather than the "kill 'em all" strategy Leeden advocates:
That's why the public figure who has best understood the nature of the war, and has best defined our enemy, is George W. Bush. Of all people! He had it right from the start: We have been attacked by many terrorist groups and many countries that support the terrorists. It makes no sense to distinguish between them, and so we will not. We're going after them all.
Yes, there are times when military action will be necessary and unavoidable, as in Afghanistan, but I think the majority of that has already passed. Does anyone honestly think invading Iran or North Korea would be wise right now? Perhaps much later, after sanctions, inspections, and containment have sufficiently weakened those nations and made such action feasible, but not now or anytime soon. Bush, however, seems incapable of engaging other nations in any way other than militarily. He's so blinded by his dual-toned worldview that he can't make the sort of realpolitik and diplomatic moves that wisdom and pragmatism require. This is the sort of work Kerry would excel at and would make the nation safer in the long run, yet another reason he's the better choice.
The armed liberal article is Almost spot-on. I went into it with a skeptic eye, based on the url alone. I was happy to be wrong. On the other hand, the NRO article makes a good point, albeit a little heavy handedly. The way I see it, part of making the price that the terrorists pay to high to bear is causing them the logistical crapstorm we are causing them now. Even if we are "creating" new terrorists, there is still a logistical breakdown that will occur, especially if we sweel their ranks. The more materiel they expend, of course means finding restocks of explosives, guns, etc. The more they go on the hunt to equip these new ranks the easier they become to track effectively. Just one of the things that I think we are doing right. I must ask though what are the root causes of terrorism that we can change? We cannot feasibly cut ties to all of our outposts in the Middle East. From my understanding that is one of the main gripes the radicals have. Maybe I have missed something along the way, but I can't think of anything else we could do to appease them.
In other words, in order to defeat the terrorists, we need to create as many of them as possible? That seems a bit, um, far-fetched. I don't think we should be appeasing terrorists or their supporters. The point the article is making is that military might alone cannot win. We must spread Western ideals throughout the Middle East and try to more or less seduce the weak supporters and ambivalent terrorists over to our way of thinking. We cannot do that by villifying every brown-skinned person, all Muslims, or any other clearly defined group of people. It's an overly simplistic formulation and counterproductive.
As for the site itself, it's a good mix of liberal and conservative (tending more towards the latter) with a heavy focus on foreign policy. Just ignore the name if it bothers you. :)
After my post I noticed the actual URL. It was the name of the poster that threw me. I'm of course not saying that creating as many terroists as possible is the answer. I think what I am trying to get at is that this is a polarizing time for that ilk, and anyone who was on the fence is probably falling to whichever side they were leaning. The logistics comment was to illustrate that the supposed upswell isn't really a bad thing. I whole heartedly agree that military might alone might win. thats how I feel they are being misused. Even with the reportedly small numbers we have in-country, it is a very cumbersome force Ill suited for the type of action they are seeing. I would have preferred to see a more special forces heavy force working there, like the beginning of Afghanistan. We need the rank and file on the ground as a QRF, but their tactics are not suited for insugencies. This is what I feared most about Iraq and Afghanistan. SF would get it started, it would go too slow, and beurocrats would start singing the knee-jerk response of "more troops=quicker action". We started training SF teams in the 50's just for situations like these, but military beurocracy almost always prevents them from being used properly. Point being if we can do something with a couple of hundred troops, why would the government fund the good old meat and potatoes military? Thats the way most of the 4-5 stars in the Pentagon think, and thats what gets us into these situations. Vietnam may actually have been winnable when all we had were 2-300 green berets in country, util the pentagon god a hold of it as a way to justify a larger budget.
I really don't think we could have done much of anything in Iraq with "a couple of hundred troops". It's such a large country and Hussein had a significant army. Or are you talking about the security situation since then? If so, I do think we could have used better trained troops to deal with the insurgents and other problems, but fewer troops would have been worse. Again, it's a large country; we had problems in many areas at once and, even with the large numbers on the ground, we couldn't cover all the areas we wanted. Fewer, but better trained troops would have just been stretched even thinner, even if they were more effective in what work they managed to get done. Maybe if the administration had taken a little more time to train the troops to deal with peace-keeping then we might have done better, but that would have required the administration to recognize that it wasn't going to be all flowers and hugs after Hussein was toppled.
True on the training, but that's not an administration thing. For some reason our Armies still have the notion we are going to fight some giant super-war, and they train accordingly. Both the execution, and the peacekeeping could have benifitted from more SF participation, in the roles they were actually designed for. SF on the ground caused the first bomb to drop that night, as they had a "tier one" in sight. It was bad planning to not have aircraft on station, thereby missing the target by minutes. Sf was basically used to laze targets deep inside, but they are worth so much more, especially in a situation like we have. Without getting into the TO&A of SF, the Green Berets are specifically trained to insert into an area and doo what they can to win the support of the locals, effectively building a great force multiplier. Thats exactly what should have been done in Iraq. Maybe even more so than Afghanistan. When the people of a country feel that they have done most of the work to liberate themselves, there is much less occupier backlash. Of course like I said we should have had A large QRF on station to assit should things go awry. With that tactic you have a very fluid fighting force, with minimal time needed to prepare for movement. Part of the reason for our beloved pentagon to be gun shy of SF planned insurgencies is the Bay of Pigs debacle, which failed because of underfunding leading to poor training, culminating in one of the single worst black eyes our SF teams have ever had next to the Desert One incident (again underfunding led to combat ineffectiveness). The Green Beret tactics were beginning to work in Vietnam before we decided to shove in a bunch of regular joes. Our teams were quietly gaining intel on the NVA, all the while fanning out to nearby villiges to engage in what SF does best: building bridges and houses, generally improving the lives of the natives, so that when the time comes the locals might not want to pick up a gun and kill them.