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July 14, 2006
Limits
by 'Cicero' at July 14, 2006 02:37 PM
A friend of mine said yesterday that he believes Israel and the United States have reached the limits of their power. He believes the battle is joined, is highly asymmetric, and has ground American and Israeli forces to a halt. He wasn't gloating, but was hypothesizing.
He might be wrong. Having power assumes a monopoly of violence. As we restrain our power to appeal to our allies and win friends on the ground, Islamicists do everything they can to monopolize violence through random acts of terror. They're quite unrestrained in that pursuit, and on that level, we are neck-and-neck with them for control on the ground. The battle for the monopoly of violence is symmetrical in this war because we restrain ourselves from unleashing our full fury. My friend assumes that we will restrain ourselves indefinitely, and so we have reached the limit of our power.
My friend will be right -- that the Israelis and Americans have hit their wall -- only if we continue self-restraint. We've made war with our seat belts on. There's no guarantee that things can't get to a point where further self-restraint makes no sense.
I am chastened when I consider the unlatching of our seat belts. Real war is total, not self-restrained. Real war is horrible for both sides, when everything is at stake; when everything can be lost. Real war is a desperate struggle for survival. Since 2001, we have not been fighting that kind of war, though the battles have been many, the losses tragic.
If July, 2006 marks the beginning of real war, I will have to take my friend's observation with a healthy dose of skepticism. Our force must be fully unleashed before his hypothesis can be proven. Once we get to a point to where we really believe we are fighting for our lives, the limits of our power will truly be tested.
In the years to come, we may wonder how this thing started. We may look back through a haze and wonder why 9/11 happened, and why we went into Iraq. Our moral and political calculus will have evolved after the fury is unleashed. It isn't for us to say today how our current motives will be interpreted by the survivors of this great war.
Part of me wants to see our self-restraint maintained; we have the keys to Hell's door, a Pandora's Box that is best kept shut. Another part of me wants to see our civilization's enemies mercilessly vanquished. We can't have it both ways forever.
On Limits
Posted By Grim
The incomparable Winds of Change has a post on limits in warfighting, which cited in the comments my post on Hamdan.
I gather they can't communicate with blogspot, so I'm going to cross-post my reply here, in case they wish to discuss the matter. It follows in the extended entry.
It's nice to be cited at WoC, which is one of the best thinking-blogs out there.
The author of the post is broadly correct. I honestly don't think we've begun to fight -- not, at least, to fight a war. The gamble in Iraq and Afghanistan has always been about trying to prevent the escalation of the problems we face into a world war.
If it fails -- well, a world war is what America's military was designed to fight. In many ways, the task will be rather easier if North Korea and Iran and Syria and whoever else wants in escalates the situation. We will abandon those restrictions once we pass the point at which we can credibly "police" the situation, once the threat reaches the point at which we obviously must fight rather than manage the problems.
A real war will be bloodier, by far -- but it will also be easier, because we will be liberated from the self-imposed restrictions designed to prevent escalation. We have many purpose-designed tools for such an eventuality, and there are many kinds of leverage we can apply that are only appropriate to real war.
That said, I think we ought to continue trying to win the original gamble. It is harder to do, but better for literally millions of people worldwide. People who genuinely love peace, and who are of good heart -- I think most of the anti-war crowd, particularly that faction led by the Quakers, falls into this group -- ought to support the venture.
They need to grasp that what lies behind the loss of the gamble is not peace, but real war. This is the last chance for peace.
I realize that sounds Orwellian -- 'the Iraq "war" is the last chance for peace' does indeed sound much like 'War is Peace.' Yet real peace is not possible in this world: there is always violence at some level. What matters is choosing the level. Iraq gives us a chance to have a better level of violence in our lives.
Insofar as we are acting like police, we aren't acting like soldiers; insofar as we are acting like soldiers, we aren't acting like murderers. In Iraq, we are acting like police most of the time -- indeed, we are behaving rather gentler than the police of many nations. Even on those occasions when we have escalated into properly military violence (as for example in Fallujah), it has always been with the intent of returning to a policing-level as soon as possible. Our warfighting has been about cracking pockets of enemies, so that we could set up a police force instead.
I keep thinking that the anti-war movement will come to recognize this fact. So far, they seem devoted to the fantasy that the US can be beaten into submission -- that, if only we can be made to lose in Iraq, that's it, that's all, the US will be a whipped puppy and will follow tamely the guidelines of our moral betters at the UN and in Europe, and on the US left.
Such a complete failure to understand America is not reasonable. No culture on earth has such a complete hatred of the idea of failure. Indeed, if there is any common culture that can be called American at all, it would have to be the culture of success -- the notion that a man should take care of himself, and that his failure to do so was a moral as well as a practical failure.
This is not a nation that will respond to a loss of its gamble in Iraq by becoming submissive. It will respond by becoming aggressive. If it cannot rebuild certain nations into successful, peaceful democracies, it will instead destroy those nations. It will not submit to a future of being blackmailed by the most murderous and least free nations of the earth. Nor ought it to do so.
That model of destructive warfighting was advocated by the 2004 Kerry Campaign (among other things it chose to advocate), and by John Derbyshire in the present context. It is a workable strategy. As just demonstrated, it has powerful advocates on both sides of the political spectrum.
If North Korea will not be reformed, it must not be allowed to dictate through terror and nuclear power the future of northern Asia. If Iran cannot be reformed, it must not be allowed to dominate the lives of millions of people in Iraq and elsewhere. If Syria will insist on backing terrorist groups as a matter of national policy, and if indeed it is beyond us to change them, then their state power must be laid waste. The future of humanity, a future in which every corner of the globe is increasingly important to the entirety of humanity, will be brighter if we strike down such tyrants.
I continue to believe in the gamble in Iraq. I continue to believe that we ought, morally, to avoid real war and pursue a type of fighting that will spread freedom and prosperity now. I hate the idea of laying waste even to a tyranny, for there are innocents there who are victims of these evil states. Far better if we can free them, help them shake off the sickness of the mind and heart that tyranny embeds in men, and teach them to rejoin peace-loving people abroad.
My feeling is that the Special Forces have the right motto, which ought to guide America: De Oppresso Liber. That is the right way for us.
But if that way proves impossible, I know America well enough to know that she will not submit. All decent people should look true war in the face, and reconsider if they will not back America in Iraq and elsewhere. We have now only three paths before us, and we shall take one of them whether we like any of them: We shall succeed in Iraq and elsewhere; we shall fight a true war; or we shall see the tyrants of the world, some of whom cannot even feed their people, assume a new place of power in the world.
That last one must not be. America will not let it be -- and she does indeed have the strength to stop it. Her military was made for a war of that type. We can fight and win, if we must.
Far better, though -- far better! -- the first. All people who wish the best for all mankind should join with us in bringing peace and order to Iraq, to Afghanistan, and elsewhere as we must. Let us pursue that road as long as there is any light at all to guide us on it. It is the right road, if only we can find the strength to walk it.
Posted by Grim
Kathianne said:A response to the above. Of course, links at site:
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2006/07/on_limits.html#more
