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My friend Bruce Kesler, who takes a position of healthy skepticism on theories about warfare, sent me a piece by the colorful military writer and ex-intel analyst, Ralph Peters, a few days ago which I finally had the time to read today. The article appeared in The American Legion Magazine and might have been off the radar of some of my readers ( it was off of mine -thanks Bruce!):

12 Myths of 21st-Century War

“Thanks to those who have served in uniform, we’ve lived in such safety and comfort for so long that for many Americans sacrifice means little more than skipping a second trip to the buffet table.Two trends over the past four decades contributed to our national ignorance of the cost, and necessity, of victory.

First, the most privileged Americans used the Vietnam War as an excuse to break their tradition of uniformed service. Ivy League universities once produced heroes. Now they resist Reserve Officer Training Corps representation on their campuses.Yet, our leading universities still produce a disproportionate number of U.S. political leaders. The men and women destined to lead us in wartime dismiss military service as a waste of their time and talents. Delighted to pose for campaign photos with our troops, elected officials in private disdain the military. Only one serious presidential aspirant in either party is a veteran, while another presidential hopeful pays as much for a single haircut as I took home in a month as an Army private.

Second, we’ve stripped in-depth U.S. history classes out of our schools. Since the 1960s, one history course after another has been cut, while the content of those remaining focuses on social issues and our alleged misdeeds. Dumbed-down textbooks minimize the wars that kept us free. As a result, ignorance of the terrible price our troops had to pay for freedom in the past creates absurd expectations about our present conflicts. When the media offer flawed or biased analyses, the public lacks the knowledge to make informed judgments.

This combination of national leadership with no military expertise and a population that hasn’t been taught the cost of freedom leaves us with a government that does whatever seems expedient and a citizenry that believes whatever’s comfortable. Thus, myths about war thrive….”

Peters goes on to list and explain the following “12 myths”:

1. War doesn’t change anything
2. Victory is impossible today.
3. Insurgencies can never be defeated
4. There’s no military solution; only negotiations can solve our problems.
5. When we fight back, we only provoke our enemies
6. Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs.
7. If we fight as fiercely as our enemies, we’re no better than them
8. The United States is more hated today than ever before
9. Our invasion of Iraq created our terrorist problems
10. If we just leave, the Iraqis will patch up their differences on their own.
11. It’s all Israel’s fault. Or the popular Washington corollary: “The Saudis are our friends.”
12. The Middle East’s problems are all America’s fault.
    

In the course of his preface and the extended “de-bunking” that follows, Peters makes a large number of points that I can agree with individually in the abstract or in isolation. To that, I cheerfully admit. My problem – and it’s a serious problem, actually – is that in the big picture, where Peters takes the simplification and conflation of complex and critical variables to the point of intellectual irresponsibility.

Peters is arguing for America taking a “Jacksonian” ( in Walter Russell Meade taxonomy) posture toward our Islamist and terrorist enemies in particular and toward the world in general. It’s an argument that may appeal to members of the American Legion, in particular the GI Generation of WWII vets who experienced fighting a total war, but it’s not a helpful strategy unless our enemies manifest a sufficiently targetable center of gravity, like, say, taking over Pakistan and making Osama bin Laden Grand Emir.

Frankly, our goal should be to never permit let our enemies reach such a position of strength in the first place. That means peeling away Muslim and tribal allies of convenience to pitch in killing the al Qaida network, not lumping the Saudis in with al Qaida, the Iranians, Musharraf and whatever itinerant Middle-Eastern types seem vaguely dysfunctional in a civilizational sense ( personally, I like reading about dead terrorists and I think their supporters, financiers, intellectual cheerleaders and mosque recruiters are all fair game for rendition or assassination, wherever they are. Doesn’t that give us more than enough of room to work with without attacking the entire Arab-Islamic world ??). I won’t even bother to go into the geoeconomic lunacy of bombing or attacking Saudi Arabia.

In my humble opinion, Peters knows all this very well. He’s a very smart guy. Certainly smart enough to comprehend downstream effects. What he’s doing these days is not strategy but shtick.

PERHAPS…

If the Bush administration really wants to cripple Iran, instead of planning an EBO attack or using IO scare stories about nuclear weapons, we should simply encourage Iran to adopt Ahmadinejad’s economic program.

YOU CAN SPEAK SOFTLY BUT MONEY TALKS

Beltway based Pundita observes:

“The US is fighting a war in a region where we’ve been very hostile to two countries bordering the war zone. Pundita is of the mind that the top priority is to win the war, and for that we need all the help we can get.

When it comes to asking Iran and Syria for help with Iraq, I see too much halfhearted trying from the US, then waving of hands and saying, ‘See, they won’t deal.’ Try harder.”

I agree. Iran and Syria are nasty regimes whose actions we must often oppose but where they are willing to cut some fair deals we should get down to business. Freezing Castro in the diplomatic equivalent of absolute zero has only served to help preserve his Communist- caudillo regime until the dictator’s old age while irritating most of our allies and trading partners. Do we really want a 92 year old Bashar Assad still in power someday ?

DETERRENCE AND IRAN

A set of papers from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy entitled “Deterring the Ayatollahs: Complications in Applying Cold War Strategy to Iran“.

Hat tip to Jedburgh of The Small Wars Council.

YOU CAN BLEED THEM WHILE YOU NEGOTIATE WITH THEM

When Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense, retired from government service after the end of the first Bush administration, he wrote a memoir , From the Shadows, in which he described the no-nonsense, George Schultz as ” the toughest Secretary of State I ever knew” who ” saw no contradiction” in bleeding the Soviets in one part of the world while negotiating with them in another. Secretary Schultz, whose opinion of the CIA on a 1 to 10 scale hovered in the negative integers, was not nearly as complimentary to Robert Gates in his own, ponderously unreadable, memoirs, but that is a story for another day.

I bring this anecdote of a less complex era up because of the furor over the Bush administration classifying the Pasdaran ( the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) as a terrorist organization in order to take action against those business enterprises that are connected to the Pasdaran. The objections to this move appear to be two-fold: first, that it hypothetically puts American military personnel at risk of maltreatment and, secondly, that it could disrupt negotiations with Iran on a range of bilateral and international issues, most importantly, Iraq.

The critics are incorrect. It is a move a quarter-century overdue.

In the first instance, correctly identifying the Pasdaran as a state sponsor of international terrorism, which as a matter of historical record, it clearly is, does not prevent treating it’s uniformed personnel as POWs in case of an armed conflict between Iran and the United States. The Pasdaran, by contrast, has already tortured two Americans to death – Beirut CIA station chief William Buckley and USMC Colonel William Higgins – at a time of peace between Iran and the United States.

Cry me no river of tears for Pasdaran agents in Iraq being held captive by the U.S. military or who are being whacked in some alleyway by Sunni tribals in our employ. The Iranians knew the risks, from the inception, of the rules they chose to operate under, violating the most basic precepts of international law. It did not have to be that way – even the CIA and the KGB came to a rough modus vivendi during the Cold War that prevented most escalatory incidents – Teheran though has chosen to play rough. Let them enjoy the bed they have made for themselves.

Secondly, until we have an agreement with Iran we do not have any agreement and the regime should be squeezed at every point until we do. I’m all for negotiating in earnest, making the realistic, even generous, concessions that we can easily afford, finding areas of common interest and ( eventually) normalizing relations. We should scrupulously keep our word and demonstrate to the Iranians through actions that we will deliver exactly what we promise. But until that point in time, Teheran should get no favors, no breathing space, no economic freebies of any kind until we come to an arrangement.

The leadership of Iran is a nasty and brutal group. Within that circle, Ahmadinejad represents some of the regime’s worst elements but, as a whole, the Iranians do not seem irrational, simply adversarial. We can cut a deal with them but we should proceed without any illusions.

IRGC STORY LINKS:

Thomas P.M. Barnett

The Newshoggers

Counterterrorism Blog

The Glittering Eye

Pundita

Right Wing Nuthouse