Theoretical Solutions to Non-Sequiturian Problems
Military officers are trained to do two things. They know how to give orders and they know take orders. General David Howell Petraeus was ordered to devise a comprehensive strategy for counter insurgency and that he did. <link> The problems was, why and for what purpose?
If the purpose was for our operations in Iraq, as his monumental work indicates, we, the US military and the US civilian political leaders committed virtually every blunder one could commit at the critical and formative early stages of our invasion and subsequent occupation, to make General Petraeus’ plan for success, irrelevant. But let’s no cry over spilt camel milk.
General Petraeus was directed to devise a counter insurgency strategy based upon a few false assumptions and like any good soldier, he didn’t question the underlying precedent to his orders. In the United States of America, Generals do not commit us to wars or end wars, civilian politicians do. The President of the United States is not only the chief civilian political leader, he is "Commander & Chief" of all the nations military forces and as such, resides on top of the chain of command that General Portraeus must follow. That supreme military commander, issued an order to compile a report on a subject that he may have thought was, as we lawyers like to say, "was on all fours with" the actual situation on the ground, but it wasn’t!
Then Secretary of State, Colin Powell, thought outside of the military chain of command, follow orders mode when he proffered the now famous six-word caveat that he termed the Pottery Barn Principal; "break it and you bought it". Implicit in that principal is that with ownership comes responsibility which can include three options,
- Repair and restore it,
- Completely destroy and dispose of it or,
- Abandon it to allow others to hurt themselves and others (in law it is called an attractive nuisance).
The civilian leaders in the Bush Administration like to compare our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq with those of WW II Japan & Germany or Korea and Viet Nam. They do this without a thought on their part or a query on ours to the appropriateness of the analogies. In virtually all wars on this planet, the combatants were from two geographically diverse and separate territories and the victor demanded and received total and absolute surrender and capitulation from the vanquished as symbolized by the keys to the kingdom or the tender of the sword, or both. With this tender by the conquered and acceptance by the conqueror one could rely upon an infrastructure of bureaucracy, civilian & military, to remain in place and at the command of the conqueror.
In the instant "wars", there is and was no political or national enemy from the inception. If Iraq, through it’s leader Saddam, was or enemy, upon his removal from office, our war was over and indeed, Bush was accurate in proclaiming, "Mission Accomplished!"
Modern Militaries are built and maintained for three purposes and three purposes, only:
1: To project a nation’s political will upon others
2. To break things
3. To kill people
These three things we do better then any military in the history of this planet. In fact, since World War II, with our reliance on nuclear deterrent, instead of large conventional forces, (Doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction – MAD) our ability to kill & destroy efficiently was and is our strategy. The only problem is that only overwhelming force that assures destruction of things of value can only deter organized, civilized and industrialized nation states. Causes, criminals, psychopaths, sociopaths and fanatics aren’t impressed, deterred or dissuaded. In fact, they encourage military reaction and over reaction to establish both their legitimacy and righteousness.
General Petraeus fails to cite a single war and subsequent occupation against a non-governmental group where his strategies have succeeded because there have been no wars against non-governmental groups. In the legend of Robin Hood, Robin stole from the rich and gave to the poor and thus was protected and sequestered from the corrupt and brutal government of Prince John. The so called insurgents brutalize both rich and poor, Americans and Iraqis and have played the cards that they have been dealt. They will be there long after America leaves and America will leave, eventually. Whether next year or next century, leave we must and leave we shall and at that time, ancient animosities and prejudices will once again surface. The smart money will always recognize "home-field" advantage and even now, the reluctance of the Iraqi government to commit to a so-called reconciliation is that the politicians of Iraq are acknowledging the inescapable fact that when America leaves, nothing has changed.
Bush’s blunder and Petraeus’ flawed plan to address Bush’s blunder is that no military, in the 21st century, can successfully occupy a country that doesn’t want to be occupied. Russia couldn’t do it in Afghanistan in the 80s and they were not constrained with the ethics, morals or laws that we are. We could never dream of being as brutal as they were and it still didn’t work
The closest model for Petraeus to look after and emulate was the Nazis who occupied relatively devoid of open insurgency by employing political collaborators, maintaining career bureaucrats, and by arbitrarily executing 10 civilians (in the public square) for every German soldier injured or killed in that town. Genghis Kahn killed 1 out of ever ten and destroyed ten percent of everything in the town he conquered ("Decimation", from the decimal concept) just to get the vanquished attention and to demonstrate the folly of harboring or giving comfort to an insurgency. Now that’s "Shock & Awe"!
General Petraeus didn’t betray us, he just followed orders and is trying to write the second edition of his book, by attending the laboratory of Iraq. If ever another civilian leader decides to play general by breaking all the rules, maybe, Petraues will have a "second-half" football game plan for the President who decides to play the first half with 8 players, no shoes and blindfolds.
