America has
developed an unrealistic aversion to losing soldiers. I do not mean to undervalue, in any way, the
people on whom our freedom ultimately depends.
I am saying that, as a nation, we’ve forgotten what a real war is. On an average day in World War II, America
suffered the deaths of 302 combatants.
Not on D-Day or during the battle of Iwo Jima, but on an average day
during the conflict. The current general
conflict with Islamic fundamentalism has cost the US about 1.5 combatants on an
average day. If you consider the difference
between these two wars on a per capita basis, the ratio is not 200-to-1, but
closer to 500-to-1 – since we now have more than double the population. Nevertheless, the comparatively tiny number
of deaths in the current conflict (along with a somewhat more substantial
number of wounded) has left America fatigued and gun-shy. Even conservatives complain bitterly about
any hint of “more American boots on the ground.”
We are also
much more sensitive to enemy civilian deaths than we were during World War
II. The number of civilian dead the US
is responsible for is hard to determine for a variety of reasons, but the
qualitative policy differences are plain.
During World War II we heavily bombed both German and Japanese cities
with very little political backlash.
Now, we hear public outcries at the occasional smart-bomb that finds its
way – quite accidentally – onto a group of non-combatants. We bomb ISIS oil trucks with reluctance
because they might be driven by civilians.
The origins of
these changes in the public tolerance for bloodletting would be interesting to
examine, but for my purpose it is enough to simply understand that these
changes have occurred. Together, these
two essentially sociological factors have forced us to fight our wars the way
we do – using tactical air power almost to the exclusion of other means.
Bombing a
technologically inferior enemy from sophisticated tactical aircraft has to be
one of the safest forms of warfare ever devised. Drone attacks are even safer. Though the financial costs of these methods
are spectacular, the personnel losses are minimal. Likewise, compared to the mass, unguided
bombing campaigns in World War II, modern tactical bombing kills a minimum of
enemy civilians. The “bad-guy-to-bystander”
ratio is quite high, the obvious trade-off being, again, the astronomical cost
of smart munitions. A variable imbedded
in the equation is the use of special forces teams to locate targets for the
planes. More teams = more dead soldiers
(on both sides). Fewer teams = more dead
bystanders (and lower overall effectiveness).
The overriding consideration in employing air power this way is not the
age-old goal of military victory, but the goal of avoiding incidents that
journalists might publicize as atrocities.
War, the planners imagine, can be conducted without the mess. The lives that are wasted through the
unnecessary prolongation of the fighting do not seem to bother journalists or
politicians as much as individually bloody events. Their concern is about today’s news cycle,
not the retrospective view of history.
Unfortunately,
our enemies are rarely either as stupid or as sensitive as our politicians or
our press corps. The experienced
jihadist knows perfectly well that the safest place to deploy a rocket launcher
is in a populated area – preferably next to a school. Hamas has used the heightened sensitivities
of the western world against Israel and ISIS uses them against us. Moreover, our enemies also know that the
second-tier anti-aircraft weapons they are stuck with don’t have much chance of
downing American aircraft. Unable to
fight American soldiers or shoot down American planes, terrorism against our
population is the only option left. It
seems to be their preferred option in any case.
I am sure that whatever fraction of our officer corps that has eluded
political castration knows all of this and more. I am equally certain that the progressive
politicians now in power consider professional officers untrustworthy and think
of warfare as a dirty subject – unworthy of study by sophisticated people like
themselves. We have only to look at the
Obama administration’s prisoner exchange policies, their unjustified faith in
their own diplomatic effectiveness, and their penchant for releasing militarily
significant information to the press, to see their cold contempt for military
considerations. Making war has always
been a tragic, wretched business – but many contemporary politicians seem to
think the new millennium has somehow made warfare an entirely optional
undertaking. It is not.
No amount of
air power is capable of occupying even enough land for the skinniest of
diplomats to stand on. Aircraft, broadly
speaking, can only perform two operations.
They can find potential targets and they can destroy them. The cannot search houses or occupy
streets. The continual call, from
presidential candidates of both of our political parties, for a gaggle of Arab
allies to do the dirty work of dying for American national interests is a frank
admission of our national impotence.
From a foreign policy perspective, it is also desperately shortsighted. The people that do the dying have an
understandable expectation of getting victory on their terms. Their aspirations and ours are not the same. Even with our ground troops present, neither
Afghanistan nor Iraq showed much interest in rebuilding themselves as modern,
democratic, western nations. Culture has
never been that conveniently malleable.
Afghanistan and Iraq are the same tribal, corrupt, politically and
morally backward places they have been for centuries. Eliminating ISIS with a group of proxies will
not put an end to Wahhabism, but will merely disturb its focus
temporarily. History has let the
caliphate out of the bag, and the destruction of one provisional Islamist state
is not going to put it back again.
Unless we are driven to the level of public outrage necessary to either
occupy the entire Muslim world or reduce it to a depopulated smoking ruin, the
jihadists will continue to rise from their own ashes with a new name and the
same old 7th century objective.
Campaign rhetoric is unlikely to arouse that kind of public will.
Donald Trump,
to be fair, has a different bad plan from all the others. He wants to “take the oil.” There is no way to do this without a massive
ground operation. One cannot exactly fly
off with the oil in a special forces helicopter. “Taking the oil” would mean permanently
occupying not only the oil fields themselves, but also enough secure territory
to run a pipeline to the closest defensible port – without any pretense of ever
leaving. The “Trump pipeline” would
indeed rob the enemy of considerable wealth, at the cost of a slow trickle of
dead American soldiers for a very long time.
It is militarily possible but politically unthinkable.
Despite what
you might think, I am not a defeatist. I
believe that war and air power have a valid role, it just doesn’t happen to be
the role of playing king-maker between competing tribal nations. It is not a good thing when one tribe of
barbarians butchers another, but we have neither the public will nor the
responsibility to stop them. The role of
the American military ought to be the protection of the United States. In our time that should probably include the
suppression of nuclear weapons programs in hostile nations, and hard but
measured retaliation against the known state supporters of terrorist acts. It should not concern itself with maintaining
familiar borders on middle eastern maps.
In a sane world, nations that chant “death to America” or hold our
citizens for ransom ought to be considered enemies. If they declare themselves at war with us –
we ought to take them at their word.
They should be punished – they should not be managed. If tactical air power is the only tool the
public will let our military use, we should at least employ it effectively –
more against nuclear facilities and valuable enemy assets, and less against
illiterate fanatics with Kalashnikovs.
While we must
react forcefully in the international sphere to re-establish our credibility,
the larger problem of terrorism cannot be solved with high explosives or
American troops on foreign soil. The
idea of Jihad is simply too widespread.
The greatest supporters of terrorism against the US are not Saudi
princes or the Islamic Republic of Iran, but the weepy, hand-wringing advocates
of open borders and multiculturalism.
Neither the 9/11 bombers, Major Hasan, the Tsarnaev brothers, nor the
San Bernardino shooters lived in places one could use a Hellfire missile
against. Through the power of
self-destructive immigration policies – they all lived right here. That is where our present focus should be.
No comments:
Post a Comment