Sunday, June 26, 2005
In San Diego for Equipment Repair I’m in San Diego to fix some of my unit’s equipment. The weather was supposed to be foggy and dull, but it turned out to be quite lovely: sunny with pleasant breezes. I did reconnaissance on the locations I need to be tomorrow because they were locations I haven’t been to in my previous tours here. I also got my hair cut at Marine Corps Recruit Depot because the barbers there cut the hair of Drill Sergeants, and take their work quite seriously. I want to be seriously squared away for tomorrow; reservists often get treated like dirt because they show up looking like a pile of burlap sacks. I am serious about my military bearing and responsibilities, and I want it to show. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the Indepundit himself today. One of the places I was checking out for tomorrow’s checking in was directly above where he was drilling this weekend. He was very pleasant to talk with, and although I am professionally obligated to disagree with his position on China, I understand his reasoning. I think I’ll try and steal a march on his position post and outline why I think he’s wrong. Everybody in the armed services in the US swears first to uphold the Constitution of the United States; that is our primary obligation. If the sitting President should decide to engage in a land war in Asia without the approval of Congress, the troops aren’t going to fight. If units did deploy and the Congress and the Supreme Court opposed the action, the units would keep themselves alive and withdraw. That is how things would play out, and every President knows this. China does not have that understanding implicit in the formation and control of the People’s Liberation Army. One of the central problems with the rubber-stamp fiat nature of the Communist Party is that once an action is taken, the Party can either embrace it or disavow it, they cannot debate the action. Additionally, the last war that China won was fighting against other Chinese. (If you want to consider the invasion of Tibet a war, go wild…but name one battle, first.) China’s generals do not know the limits of their competence, mostly because the last serious military action they took was twenty-seven years ago. In that action the Vietnamese Army handed them their heads, inflicting as many casualties in six weeks of campaigning on the Chinese than they did from 1962-1975 on the US. The Indepundit will have you believe that the Chinese want to focus on business and trade and ignore Taiwan until the problem just goes away. To a large extent that is a true statement. However, the rural peoples who are not sharing in the wealth, and the military whose grasp on power is being eroded by the rising prosperity are not actually covered by this statement. There is a very real possibility that some People’s Liberation Army Warlor…General will decide to get froggy to maintain power. I don’t want to go to war with China, but I want them to win one even less because of the consequences of rewarding military imperialism. Specifically, with the exception of Egypt and South Africa, China can now take and hold any nation in Africa. Tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers will die through logistical incompetence, but they have always shown a willingness to throw bodies away for advantage. If we don’t stop China in Taiwan in this generation, we can’t stop them in the next from taking Africa. The People’s Liberation Army Warlor…Generals know this, too. I’ll still be helping out with the Protest Warrior event this Saturday. If you’re in San Diego, or can get there, please come and support the troops.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Sun Tzu Was Pretty Specific About Attacking Prepared Positions…It is a truly good that our enemies are spectacularly weak on reading military classics that are not the Koran. A Naval Officer weighs in on the enemy's escalation in Iraq. While some see this as a bad sign for us, having an enemy reinforce a strategic failure is not a sign of impending loss. Forgotten in Bill Roggio's analysis of the current situation is an appreciation of the growing effectiveness of Iraqi forces. More and more of the fight is being taken to the enemy by the Iraqi Army and Police. Read the whole thing and decider for yourself.
Towards a Better Definition of Terrorism Part Two Jason Van Steenwyk replied to my first pass with the following: Terrorism is not "pious" by definition, nor is it fraudulent. Some terrorists are pretty up front about their nature and their demands. It's not a misrepresentation.
What's wrong with "the use of violence, or threat of violence, against noncombatants in order to achieve political or economic ends?" He brings up several good points and has the integrity to put his own definition up for discussion. I like the blogsphere because you get to have civil dialogues with people who have intellectual integrity. (Unlike for instance…college?) There are some criteria for the definition that I left unsaid before, mostly because I wanted to get the idea out there for discussion as I was on my way to the base in the morning. So now that somebody agreed to play the game, let me write down the rules. The definition needs to be exhaustive, to cover the relevant cases.
The definition needs to be exclusive, to eliminate specious cases.
The definition needs to be succinct, to eliminate boredom.
The definition needs to be direct, to inspire the people fighting this disease. While Jason's definition is exhaustive and succinct, it lacks exclusivity and it nowhere near his capacity for mean. The two identities I wanted to exclude most from this definition's coverage were ordinary criminals and media twits. While Al Capone was a very bad man who probably deserved to die slowly of the clap, he was not a terrorist. When the Capone mob took a mistaken, and thankfully inaccurate, shot at my grandfather in Chicago they apologized in envelope form without lingering obligation. This is not behavior that fits a useful definition of terrorist. Another group that needs to be excluded from this definition is the media twits. While they often strive to achieve the moral vacuity of terrorists, the participants of the show "Jackass" need to be kicked out of the set…if for no other reason than to keep them from getting the attention they are addicted to. I am not certain that my definition does enough to set aside their antics, since they will probably adapt their behavior to obtain the title if they think it will get them air time. This problem is central to the issue of terrorism, and my definition also ignores the media elephant in the room. Without a pervasive media to be co-opted, there probably would not be any terrorism to define. In defense of my own definition, the concept of pious fraud probably should be hyphenated to indicate inextricability: pious-fraud. Terrorists operate under the cover of a piety that their actions render fraudulent. Part of being unkind to the bombers and beheaders is not playing along with their pretensions. If we dignify their violence, we excuse it, and thereby encourage it. Now that we have handed over the government and delivered elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have the moral authority to call the actions of others pious-fraud without meaningful disagreement. I'd like to thank Jason Van Steenwyk again for responding. This is a conversation that needs to take place, because the current nebulous definitions floating about are not serving the interests of our culture. We need to better define the unacceptable other to stay true to a better idea of ourselves.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Towards a Better Definition of Terrorism I had the misfortune of being subjected to my service's definition of terrorism this last weekend. It was long, meandering, and generally incomprehensible. I will not repeat it here because some of you may be about to operate vehicles or heavy machinery, and I wouldn't want to expose you to a narcolepsy attack. I remarked to a shipmate that the definition was execrable and resolved to do better. Here is what I came up with: Terrorism: A pious fraud that uses conspicuous acts of violence to steal notoriety unearned by merit or innovation. I am very interested in improving on this and actively solicit your input. I would really prefer to keep it concise and as simple as possible.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
And If Enough Troops Had Won?The "Not Enough Troops" crowd, dubbed the NETties because they are so tedious to have earned a label, are compulsively picking at the past again. Apparently they believe that packing 400K troops into a narrow front and advancing them in a coherent manner in a limited timeframe is simplicity itself. I wonder if any of these people have ever stood around and waited for a complex military evolution to go forward in a narrow timeframe. I really doubt that any of these NETties have ever tried to make a complex military evolution move forward in a timely manner. Nevertheless, here is my take: If we had destroyed the Iraq insurgency immediately, the global supporters of terrorism would have stopped backing that front and moved their efforts elsewhere. As it stands, the bulk of anti-western terrorist funding and activity is being directed towards Iraq, where we have prepared troops and a secure logistics chain. We have found and fixed the enemy's attention and are routinely capturing and destroying them. We have grasped them firmly by the nose and are kicking their asses soundly. This process is not always pretty and it is by no means perfect, but we are mangling the enemy's capacity and will to fight. What part of this constitutes a failure to plan or execute? Why should we agree to shift the fight away from ground of our choosing where we are winning? I would rather fight this fight in the hot, dirty, stinky, and distant place it currently resides than wait for it to come to my home. I really like keeping the war distant from my wife and family, and I'm willing to put up with hot, dirty, stinky, and…refreshing malted beverage deprivation penalty to keep things away from them. This location choice is why I raised my hand, and why I go to work on base every day.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Bring the Troops and the War Home? One of the frequent anti-war criticisms is that there is no schedule or guideline for when the troops will come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Part of the reason there will never be a schedule or list of required accomplishments to trigger a withdrawal is that announcing your intentions in a war is stupid. We do not tell the enemy what our strategic objectives are because we do not want those objectives to be blown up. The acronym for this behavior is "OPSEC" which is short for "Do Not Be An Idiot." The actual objective of this war, though, is the same as any other war. We are destroying the enemy's will to fight. Unlike previous wars where the enemy had a defined frontier, our current adversary is distributed around the world and in our own backyard. I have worked in the same building as an admitted Al Queda operative. Although our enemies are doing their best to destroy their own support by being really despicable sons of pigs, they are also very resistant to allowing reality to intrude on their thought processes. If it was easy, the war would already be over. Unless and until we have destroyed the enemy's will to fight, discussions of bringing the troops home are ludicrous. All bringing the troops home does is bring the fight home. Part of being a successful military leader is making the battle take place on your choice of ground. Nobody in his right mind chooses to have a fight in his own home when they have the capacity to fight anywhere else effectively. Ask the French farmers who are still pulling plowing up artillery shells from ninety year old battles, battles should be fought as far from home as you can win them. One of the nice things about being the United States is that we can win battles a long way from home. I am really sorry that a lot of decent people in Iraq are suffering for living where the United States can most effectively bring our enemies to battle. The only consolation I can give them is that we're using the minimum and most accurate force necessary to win the war. Part of that is keeping our troop levels down to the point where we can rotate them out frequently, so that they will be rested and trained. What a lot of people who claim to be concerned for the Iraqi's or winning the war don't understand when they call for more troops is that large numbers of exhausted troops does not mean that you can win the war more effectively. A lot of amateurs fail to comprehend the impact of endurance on military effectiveness. About fifty years ago an American historian, S.L.A. Marshall, codified the rule of military endurance: fatigue is exactly equal to fear. When you get tired, you get afraid. When you get afraid, you get tired. Something else that factors in here is that exhaustion and fear also make you stupid. If we had gone in two years ago with all the troops in the US military and they were still there, our troops would be constantly exhausted and making stupid mistakes. By keeping our numbers down to where we can rotate regularly, we minimize our own mistakes. OK, everybody gets tired and makes mistakes, but the kind of routine grinding exhaustion experienced in previous wars is an unnecessary sacrifice we are avoiding making in this war. Combat fatigue is not something you hear a lot about in this war, that is not an accident. It is hard to change the public perception of the military, and I'm not just saying that because I'm sick to death of hearing buggery in the Navy jokes. (It's really offensive to me when people tell me that I tolerate sexual assault in my workplace just because they read it happened centuries ago.) One of the misapprehensions that is functioning right now is the notion that bringing the troops home will mean and end to the conflict. While it is traditional for the war to be over when one side withdraws, we have no mechanism in this conflict to negotiate such a settlement. The enemy has shown abundant willingness to attack anywhere without a shred of compassion. Currently we have been able to focus the bulk of the struggle away from our homes, where we can fight most effectively, although this is at the expense of the Iraqi people. It would be an impeachable offense for President George W. Bush to allow that struggle to refocus in the United States. Returning the troops before the enemy's will to fight has been substantially destroyed is a violation of the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is just not going to happen with George W. Bush, if for no other reason than his opponents in Congress would impeach him in a moment. Talk of bringing the troops home is just noise, because nobody is talking about bringing a campaign of terrorist violence to their own neighborhoods. The troops will stop deploying when the enemy abandons their efforts to restore a global caliphate. Breaking the enemy's imperialistic design may take some more decades, but making noise about impossible returns won't speed that up.
|
