I’m going to go back to first principles for a sec. Just play along with me for a moment.
Seeing as we have the ability to kill every man woman and child in the entire Middle East, the only way we lose is if we give up and decide to lose. We don’t wish to be draconian or worse than the terrorists and we may only be willing to go so far in this regard to win. If we are unwilling to openly advocate and commit moral atrocities than winning or losing depends on how many lives and how much money we are willing to lose fighting the war without crossing whatever moral line we don’t wish to cross. Or, perhaps things get so bad that we decide the cost for victory is so high that we give up.
It appears that as a country we are pretty close, if not over that line. Our enemies really can’t hope to win conventionally, they are taking their model from Vietnam and simply tying to demoralize us so we give up.
In this regard, if we publicize the numbers and successes of the opposition, we are actually helping them demoralize ourselves. So, we can lie, or change accounting methods to make things seem better than they are. This of course conflicts with our freedom of speech and free press. So, our enemy is using the weaknesses inherent in our system against us. They are taking advantage of the fact that we share information openly and can be demoralized and have our resolve weaken. This is the weakness of a representational democracy. Get the mood to swing and we change course. The IEDs are basically a public relations device.
Bush is trying to counter this by portraying strength and resolve, and pigheaded stubbornness.
There’s something called the UFC, ultimate fighting championship. When it first began it was a round robin open martial tournament that took place all in a single night. There were no time limits for the fights. They went on until somebody gave up or was knocked out.
The fights never lasted very long. Most took only a few minutes, a few took a little longer, very few went over fifteen minutes.
The UFC got worried. What would they do if a fight went on and on? They put a time limit on fights because of this concern. I think it was an hour. Pretty quickly most of the fights started to last an hour. Once people knew that there was a third alternative to win or lose, that if they could just hold out for an hour, that’s what started to happen.
Now most fights last much longer than they would have in the early days. Most fights go up and hit the time limit. People know they just have to hold out.
We have given hope to our enemies. They’re waiting for a timetable, they’re waiting for the next election. They are fighting to demoralize us, so we leave on our own.
I’ll predict that if the resolve shifts in this country and we elect somebody in '08 who’s committed to victory and America is behind him, the terrorists will fold up as quickly as Iran did when Reagan was getting innaugurated. They knew what Reagan’s first order was going to be. Because Reagan was willing to make that order and Carter wasn’t, Reagan didn’t have to and Carter couldn’t win.
If they know we are committed to winning at all costs, we no longer have a war. We win. They only win by demoralizing us enough and holding out enough and making the cost high enough that we give up.
Our lack of resolve, our hesitancy, our disagreement is costing lives and creating suffering. If we are there we have to fight to win no matter what. If we are not willing to do that we should never have gone. Now that we are there, we have no choice. If we give up, the next time we go to war, the lesson will be clear. Our resolve is weak and all they have to is demoralize us to make us give up.
We will literally defeat ourselves.
Why help them by publicizing their victories? We are, in a war of advertising. Why give them airtime? If we didn’t pay attention, if it didn’t demoralize us, than they wouldn’t do it.
Now having read all this, you probably think I am going to excuse or endorse what Bush is doing.
I don’t. There is no excuse. It’s not a one-sided thing. From day one Bush’s opponents have undermined his efforts, hurt our troops, and caused suffering by actively promoting the enemy’s agenda. I’m sure a lot of this is because they beleive we shouldn’t be there and we should leave. I’m also sure a lot of it is pure politics, rhetoric to turn the tide of the public in a more favorable light towards Bush’s opposition.
Economists love incentives, and claim they guide behavior. That’s my experience, too. The sad fact is that Bush’s opponents are incented to create an unfavorable outcome in Iraq. I think that’s why they want the timetable. Just tell the terrorists how long they have to hold out.
Bush hasn’t handled this well. He’s tried to go it alone, and he’s made some critical mistakes that have further polarized the country and alienated his opposition.
Now it appears he’s trying to win the PR war by playing with the accounting. Probably, not a good move.
I think that’s the sad state of affairs that we are in right now. It leaves me disgusted with my own country.
I remember reading a biography of Sherman. At the outset of the Civil War he claimed how it would be the most horrible and costly and brutal conflict imaginable and said theat it could only be won by a concept he called “total war.” Total war is basically war without limits. If you decide you are going to fight you do everything you can to take away the enemy’s power to resist. You burn cities, cripple your enemies and set them loose so that the opposition has to care for them, destroy the hospitals, destroy everything until the enemy gives up. He argued that this would ultimately be more merciful and kinder and civilized than the limited engagements and wars with ethics that we fought before. If you are fighting a war without limits, once you think you are going to lose, you sue for peace to avoid the continuing horror.
This he argued was merciful and kind. Because, it is quick, and, ultimately less damage is done than in a protracted limited conflict. Besides, it usually comes down to total war anyway.
These arguments of Sherman were not received well. They were received with the horror you might expect, and Sherman was basically put into an insane asylum for voicing them.
Five years and hundreds of thousands dead later, they got him out of the asylum and gave him an army. He used that army to begin his march to the sea leaving a trail of destruction in his path. The South quickly capitulated.
We basically fought total war in WWI and WWII.
I think we have to do that now. I think Sherman was right. I look at the limited conflict of the Palestinians versus the Israelis and the generational suffering and I think it would have been much better if one side had simply won long ago.
I beleive we are in such a conflict with militant fundamentalist Islam. I don’t think we are going to a lasting peace. One side will have to win. If we don’t do it now, I think they will get stronger. We may have peace for a short time, but it will be bigger and uglier next time. Maybe we won’t win.
Maybe we will look back at this time and think of how the only way we could have lost was by choosing to do so, and we will lament the choices we made.
I read that Sherman biography a long time ago, but I remember deciding something from it. It was something that I had been told by my Father and my Grandfather both (one of the few things they agreed upon.) I didn’t really understand when they told me, and truthfully they weren’t very clear. Anyway, what I decided was this: Now that I was more a less of an adult, if I ever got into a physical fight with somebody I was going to my level best to kill them. To do otherwise would be depending to an extent on their restraint not to kill me, and to depend on the good nature of a person I was in a physical conflict with was probably foolish. With this resolve in mind, the corrollary was that I better not fight unless I had to, and if I do fight it had better be worth killing or dying for. I simply decided that I was never going to engage in a limited physical conflict.
The way my father explained it to me was “You better be sure you want to die on that hill before you go charging up it.” The way my grandfather explained it had to do with guns. “Never pull out your gun in a conflict unless you are immediately going to shoot somebody with it in order to kill them.” He knew of many instances where people had tried to defend themselves with guns where there attempts to show the gun as a warning merely gave their enemy a chance to take the gun away from them or a chance to dodge and attack, or give them a chance to pull their gun. As a policeman he didn’t have that liberty. He was required to endanger himself and put his safety second.
He was pretty sure though that it was a bad idea. He had the wounds and knew enough who had been killed or wounded in this way to prove it.
Call it “Scylla’s theory of absolutism in violence,”" or more accurately call it “Sherman’s theory of total war,” but I think it’s correct. I said as much in '04 or thereabouts.
It’s not about IEDs or wounded, or casualties. That is what happens in war and we are in war. By trying to minimize them and show restraint, you actually do the opposite and increase suffering and death.
We are at war. We have to win. I wish we would just do it and get it over with and debate it later.
Goddamn, I’m long-winded and off topic. Sorry.