Capturing Moscow didn’t help Napoleon, and in fact, set him on a downhill slide that ended in Paris. Capturing Paris was a fleeting victory for Hitler. Capturing Philadelphia and New York didn’t help the British either. Certainly capturing Baghdad didn’t help us, and in fact was about as useful as stomping on a Texas ant hill. Battle may be like capture the flag, but war isn’t. Battle may have it’s odds like craps, or poker, but war is more like 52 pickup with three incomplete decks of cards from different games.
While battle is often waged not only to smash something, or grab something, it is also used to make a statement. The Thirteen Days in October 1962 recognized the notion of negotiating with displays of kinetic force, like a blockade and a saber rattle. The Alamo made a statement about Texian resolve. The Doolittle Raid made a similar statement about American resolve, and in fact prodded Admiral Yamamoto into losing four aircraft carriers. Bombing Ghaddafi’s home in the desert seems to have brought him into a reversal of his support of terrorism regardless of stripe.
Sometimes, however, the other side isn’t listening. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor to induce us into negotiations, which negotiations were completed on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Hirohito listened and pulled a coup to overthrow military control of the Japanese government when faced with the real possibility of Soviet Occupation and American nuclear annihilation. Hitler didn’t listen at all, and died in his bunker. Ho Chi Minh didn’t listen either. It remains an interesting “if” if we had taken the Plain of Jars by 1968 and seen whether Ho Chi Minh would have let the Chinese come into Vietnam like the Chinese in Korea.
Occupying Richmond and defeating Robert E Lee ended the War Between the States, but only temporarily freed the slaves which slavery continued under other guises until Brown vs the Board of Education, and with Affirmative Action action. The resentment of the white Southerner to Reconstruction wrecked Reconstruction, and the resentment of the white Southerner to heavy handed Federal aka Yankee interference in local events still plays out in our elections.
It is probably useful to be able to establish some form of military doctrine about the non-kinetic effects of battle which itself has kinetic and non-kinetic means. Psychological Operations has a history of interesting effects of non-kinetic energy.
Operation Moolah in Korea was an offer of a payment of $30,000 to any Chinese or North Korean pilot that flew a Mig-15 to South Korea. While we did get a Mig, the real effects were the stripping of Communist air cover over North Korea for several weeks while the Communists grounded their planes for fear of the defection of any of their pilots. The Poles caused the Germans to lose one full day of war production by issuing a fake proclamation allegedly by Nazi headquarters giving Hitler’s birthday off for Polish war workers.
The analysis of this apparent anomaly leads us to make a serious change of how we define victory and how to get it. What separates a Hitler from a Hirohito? What separates the successful occupations of their lands from our attempts to Reconstruct the South or of Iraq? How do we know we have won?
I suggest we define victory or success in war is when the other side enforces our wishes with their own police and courts and other agencies of political, economic and social power. I suggest that victory comes when the other side sees a long term advantage in their own interests in cutting a deal.
Germany and Japan benefited from our occupation and were a non-belligerent ally in the Cold War. The South took over a century to recover from Reconstruction economically. In both those cases victory was dictated from the barrel of a gun. What would have happened if Lincoln had missed the play, and what would have happened if we had flooded Germany and Japan with Carpet Baggers and Scalawags?
The approach to a victory, then depends on the carrot and stick offered to those in the opposing side’s structure who have a dog in the game. Sometimes this isn’t the Boss, but someone willing to sell him out, or culling the Boss to cut and run. And it is often those closest to the Boss who are his weakest point. Himmler tried to pull off a coup and cut a deal with the Allies, Hitler wound up appointing Admiral Doenitz as Fuhrer, while Doenitz wasn’t hard core Nazi.
When it gets down to defeating the enemy, however defined, it is the informal structure of power, and the role of personality that counts.
Some leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam were brilliant practitioners of the art of survival by divide and control within, but not so hot in managing combat forces. Each of these three applied the Law of Inverse Relevance by touting their military infallibility which, if a virtue, was the least of them. The confidence of nations under leadership of this nature is based on a lie.
Incurring defeatism and division in the enemy’s ranks is the most popular way to achieve non-kinetic victory. Accordingly, President Wilson took no chances with pro-German elements in America nor was he tolerant even of the slightest hint of defeatism. Wilson established the Committee of Public Information (CPI) under George Creel to operate as a de-facto ministry of Propaganda. Wilson’s Sedition Act banned “uttering … any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States government or the military” (this from Goldberg’s book ‘Liberal Fascism’). Breaking into this form of psychological control is a tough nut to crack.
The trick is to identify the segments of the other side who are willing to cut a deal and who are willing to implement our policies afterward.
These segments aren’t always the same bunch. We reduced Germany and Japan to smoking wreckage in hopes of inducing them to kick their leadership out for it was assumed that killing civilians would be a positive motivator for the civilians. That didn’t work in bringing down the regime in charge, but it certainly made a splendid motivator to keep out of the business of conquest afterward. Likewise, the Russians didn’t venture into hot wars until Afghanistan.
It is popular to demonize the demon in charge of the enemy as a snake. Cutting the head of the snake is also a popular sound bite in planning for victory, but sometimes you don’t have a snake, but a can of worms, or an ant hill … like in the Muddle East. It might have worked if Hitler had been killed on July 20, 1944. But killing Osama Bin Ladin isn’t likely to end Islamic terrorism as this movement grows heads as fast as they are cut off. Snake analogies don’t help when there is no snake.
Since Secretary of Defense Gates has taken charge, there is less of Rumsfeldian bombast, and a ripple of curtains behind which deals are being cut. In this current drama, fuss and fury are theatre. Helzbollah was suckered into dropping it’s cloak of invisibility and showed it’s hand as a meddler in Lebanese politics than a partisan of Palestinian liberation. Syria is talking to Israel about peace while calming the Iranians and Palestinians with promises not to be kept.
In short, I hope that it is the Gates paradigm that appears to be positively engaged in engaging the key players of the Muddle East with the traditional mix of jawing and warring at the same time. Call it Jaw Wars. It’s also as deeply engrained in Chinese government and politics as it is in the Muddle East, or in Chicago.
Showing posts with label victory in iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label victory in iraq. Show all posts
Friday, May 30, 2008
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
When Jane Comes Marching Home Again, Does She Run For Office?
A standing long service professional military force and victory in war is a conflict of interest like psychological counseling and curing the patient is for the shrink. The rice bowl is broken when the patient is cured or the war is won. In both cases, successful professional practices are to work on the problem, fight the battles, make progress, but short of solving the problem.
The Italian Condottieri hired by Italian city states in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries were extremely well trained, equipped, and led but managed to develop a tactical system that maintained the payroll at minimum loss of blood or decisive action. Machiavelli despaired of their cost and indecision and so recommended in his “On War” that the best military for the city state was a well regulated militia of the best of it’s citizens. French firepower and disregard for French casualites under King Charles VIII eventually ended the reign of the Condottieri.
Perhaps it is time to return to those golden years of yesterday where the ambitious warrior would ride off to war with a mind to a triumphant return from victory in war so he(she) can run for office, get the prettiest girl/richest man in town, the best paying job, and life time bragging rights. While transitional rotations emulate the cycle, there is no requirement for actually winning anything, except survival. Statistical allocation and normalization readily papers over any embarrassing lack of booty.
A large standing professional army was only adopted around1979 with the post Vietnam purge of reservists on extended active duty and abolition of the draft. A post Vietnam mustering out of Guard and Volunteer units, the normal custom., was moot as the Guard and Volunteer units were not called. The rotation of Guard and Reserve units and personnel as an “operational reserve” precludes any messy purge to maintain the purity of essence of the true warrior force. It also precluded a decisive victory.
In order to protect the closed nature of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Full Time Warriors, it will be necessary to blame the non-union Weekend Warriors for failing to be effectively mobilized, and to reduce that apparent threat to the continued largesse of the largely ignorant Congress.
The Italian Condottieri hired by Italian city states in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries were extremely well trained, equipped, and led but managed to develop a tactical system that maintained the payroll at minimum loss of blood or decisive action. Machiavelli despaired of their cost and indecision and so recommended in his “On War” that the best military for the city state was a well regulated militia of the best of it’s citizens. French firepower and disregard for French casualites under King Charles VIII eventually ended the reign of the Condottieri.
Perhaps it is time to return to those golden years of yesterday where the ambitious warrior would ride off to war with a mind to a triumphant return from victory in war so he(she) can run for office, get the prettiest girl/richest man in town, the best paying job, and life time bragging rights. While transitional rotations emulate the cycle, there is no requirement for actually winning anything, except survival. Statistical allocation and normalization readily papers over any embarrassing lack of booty.
A large standing professional army was only adopted around1979 with the post Vietnam purge of reservists on extended active duty and abolition of the draft. A post Vietnam mustering out of Guard and Volunteer units, the normal custom., was moot as the Guard and Volunteer units were not called. The rotation of Guard and Reserve units and personnel as an “operational reserve” precludes any messy purge to maintain the purity of essence of the true warrior force. It also precluded a decisive victory.
In order to protect the closed nature of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Full Time Warriors, it will be necessary to blame the non-union Weekend Warriors for failing to be effectively mobilized, and to reduce that apparent threat to the continued largesse of the largely ignorant Congress.
Sunday Punditry misses the point
The Sunday pundits meeting the press or facing the nation assert with good reason that the reasons that we as a nation face serious defeat in Iraq due to the incompetence of leadership and inability of the military to adapt to the conditions of counter insurgency. They say that the military misread the Iraqi mind, failed to have a reconstruction plan, unable to train a new Iraqi military, and obsessed with conventional war of the Cold War. The truth of the matter is that these were failures of the Pentagon, and that the services themselves had the correct capabilities and doctrine, mostly in the Guard and Reserves which were committed piecemeal and ineffectually. And in so doing, double crossed the President.
The Pentagon has a management culture and way of doing business that bears little relationship to military staff and command procedures. The military themselves are rotated in and out of the Pentagon with too short a tour to have lasting effect, likewise with most appointed officials. The real power in the Pentagon is wielded by long serving civil servants including the formidable clerical staff and the Machiavellian super-grades who maintain the continuity of policy regardless of the intent of the military and political assigned there.
As in the case of the courtiers of Versailles, the Tsar, Imperial Rome or the Forbidden City, survival depends on flattery of the powerful and on assuaging their insecurities, by raising the powerful above the decision making process which the courtier and bureaucrat is only to willing to assume. In this way, the Pentagon’s civil service treats it’s clients as a closed union shop, like ancient nobility, which excludes the lesser and less noble. Such is the case of the Guard and Reserves who are treated as seasonal workers fit only for non union, less noble work. This process, in Pentagonese, is called Transformation.
Transformation, like the Emperors New Clothes, is aimed at transforming the military from something that used to win wars against real enemies, to one that battles imaginary ones, by creating standardized expeditionary packets of troops that rotate to and from the battlefield so that every gets a crack at being up to bat. We no longer hear of campaigns like Tet, the Bulge, Normandy, or Meuse Argonne, but of Rotations 1, 2, 3 or 4. Imagine WW2 being fought with two thirds of the Army resting up for a rotation to the Pacific or the ETO.
The Pundits assert that the military doesn’t have the capacity to win this war. They do, but it’s being kept out of the fight. The solution is simple. Stop unit rotation so that the commanders on the ground can achieve a stable and consistent presence. Mobilize the necessary Guard and Reserve units as such for the duration. By pass the Pentagon by creating a direct link to a single theater commander which includes the necessary incident management system to coordinate all government agencies involved.
The real tragedy for our military is that they have never been so well trained, equippped, or led by their field commanders nor have they ever had such high morale and esprit de corps than in any previous war, far more than the "greatest generation", and that their best efforts have been tossed like used toilet paper by a wacked out puzzle palace. Even today where the troops outside the Beltway are training to best practices for Full Spectrum Warfare, inside the Beltway the golden cockroaches and embedded charlatans make a full court press to achieve "Transformation", already proven to be a prescription for defeat.
And now the Loony Left, unaware that the Third International is privatized, goes after the troops not the nuts by Shutting down JROTC in Fog/Fag City. The last time the Left got their pants in a tie-dyed twist, military retirees lost thier medical care which took thirty years to recover.
The Pentagon has a management culture and way of doing business that bears little relationship to military staff and command procedures. The military themselves are rotated in and out of the Pentagon with too short a tour to have lasting effect, likewise with most appointed officials. The real power in the Pentagon is wielded by long serving civil servants including the formidable clerical staff and the Machiavellian super-grades who maintain the continuity of policy regardless of the intent of the military and political assigned there.
As in the case of the courtiers of Versailles, the Tsar, Imperial Rome or the Forbidden City, survival depends on flattery of the powerful and on assuaging their insecurities, by raising the powerful above the decision making process which the courtier and bureaucrat is only to willing to assume. In this way, the Pentagon’s civil service treats it’s clients as a closed union shop, like ancient nobility, which excludes the lesser and less noble. Such is the case of the Guard and Reserves who are treated as seasonal workers fit only for non union, less noble work. This process, in Pentagonese, is called Transformation.
Transformation, like the Emperors New Clothes, is aimed at transforming the military from something that used to win wars against real enemies, to one that battles imaginary ones, by creating standardized expeditionary packets of troops that rotate to and from the battlefield so that every gets a crack at being up to bat. We no longer hear of campaigns like Tet, the Bulge, Normandy, or Meuse Argonne, but of Rotations 1, 2, 3 or 4. Imagine WW2 being fought with two thirds of the Army resting up for a rotation to the Pacific or the ETO.
The Pundits assert that the military doesn’t have the capacity to win this war. They do, but it’s being kept out of the fight. The solution is simple. Stop unit rotation so that the commanders on the ground can achieve a stable and consistent presence. Mobilize the necessary Guard and Reserve units as such for the duration. By pass the Pentagon by creating a direct link to a single theater commander which includes the necessary incident management system to coordinate all government agencies involved.
The real tragedy for our military is that they have never been so well trained, equippped, or led by their field commanders nor have they ever had such high morale and esprit de corps than in any previous war, far more than the "greatest generation", and that their best efforts have been tossed like used toilet paper by a wacked out puzzle palace. Even today where the troops outside the Beltway are training to best practices for Full Spectrum Warfare, inside the Beltway the golden cockroaches and embedded charlatans make a full court press to achieve "Transformation", already proven to be a prescription for defeat.
And now the Loony Left, unaware that the Third International is privatized, goes after the troops not the nuts by Shutting down JROTC in Fog/Fag City. The last time the Left got their pants in a tie-dyed twist, military retirees lost thier medical care which took thirty years to recover.
Friday, December 8, 2006
Volunteers for Victory
The Baker Report misses the point, the Sunnis want their cut of the oil money and fear the Sunnis will not only hog the profits but use it to fund pay back ethnic cleansing. The Neo-Cons want to convert the Muddle East into the Middle West with Texas style governance … where government does what it is told. The Pentagon is absorbed in rotating O-6 command slots in and out of the combat zone to blood the troops and sharpen the competition for flag rank. The only clown in the room calling for victory is W, and no one cares.
The Neo-Con penchant for privatization of warfare inadvertently coincided with the Pentagon’s long awaited plan to disarm the threat to their market position as Warriors to the World represented by the combat experienced National Guard and Reserves. This is a natural course of action for such unions as the Teamsters, AMA, ABA and plumbers union, and the Pentagon considers the military as a closed union shop with the Guard and Reserves seasonal workers at best, fit for non union jobs such as military intelligence, psychological warfare, civil affairs, logistics, etc. Better a contractor in civilian clothes getting blown away than a uniformed citizen raising the specter that the national defense can be done at one sixth the cost.
In short, W got the shorts and the GOP took up the short end in the current election. The lunatic left is foaming at the mouth at the prospect that Haight Ashbury might rise again, Woodstock reborn, and that Flower Power will reign. Talk of the draft has surfaced again despite the fundamental fact that the first trained unwilling private won’t show up on the battlefield for two years, ignoring the fact that we need trained troops for the full spectrum of rank and experience.
The principal obstacle to victory in the Muddle East is the Pentagon. Victory can be obtained by cutting them out of the action by starting a full spectrum reclassification of the civil service in the place while reallocating the office space based on relevant irrelevancy. Next the chain of command of troops in the field must go direct from the President to the commanders in the field. That will totally absorb the Pentagon and the war can be prosecuted in a professional fashion.
As for raising the needed troops, we only need to revert to the Old Fashioned Way of War … by calling for Volunteer units like the Rough Riders and asking the governors of the states to raise the necessary troops called for by the commanders in the field. A full brigade of Middle Eastern linguists could be raised here in Houston in about a month with detachments of already trained vets deployable in ninety days with the remainder deployed within nine months. They would be federalized but not in the other components which isn’t much different than currently mobilized Guard and Reserve personnel.
The Neo-Con penchant for privatization of warfare inadvertently coincided with the Pentagon’s long awaited plan to disarm the threat to their market position as Warriors to the World represented by the combat experienced National Guard and Reserves. This is a natural course of action for such unions as the Teamsters, AMA, ABA and plumbers union, and the Pentagon considers the military as a closed union shop with the Guard and Reserves seasonal workers at best, fit for non union jobs such as military intelligence, psychological warfare, civil affairs, logistics, etc. Better a contractor in civilian clothes getting blown away than a uniformed citizen raising the specter that the national defense can be done at one sixth the cost.
In short, W got the shorts and the GOP took up the short end in the current election. The lunatic left is foaming at the mouth at the prospect that Haight Ashbury might rise again, Woodstock reborn, and that Flower Power will reign. Talk of the draft has surfaced again despite the fundamental fact that the first trained unwilling private won’t show up on the battlefield for two years, ignoring the fact that we need trained troops for the full spectrum of rank and experience.
The principal obstacle to victory in the Muddle East is the Pentagon. Victory can be obtained by cutting them out of the action by starting a full spectrum reclassification of the civil service in the place while reallocating the office space based on relevant irrelevancy. Next the chain of command of troops in the field must go direct from the President to the commanders in the field. That will totally absorb the Pentagon and the war can be prosecuted in a professional fashion.
As for raising the needed troops, we only need to revert to the Old Fashioned Way of War … by calling for Volunteer units like the Rough Riders and asking the governors of the states to raise the necessary troops called for by the commanders in the field. A full brigade of Middle Eastern linguists could be raised here in Houston in about a month with detachments of already trained vets deployable in ninety days with the remainder deployed within nine months. They would be federalized but not in the other components which isn’t much different than currently mobilized Guard and Reserve personnel.
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