Next Campaign of WW4
Some on the net are of the opinion the President has neither the authority, the resources, nor the support of the citizens to press the GWOT in other theaters. I disagree.
Resolution in response to 9-11: ..."That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."...
It's pretty clear the President has all the authority (minus eventually needed budgets) to prosecute the war in all these theaters. Aid and harbor and prevent future acts are very broad terms.
The language in the congressional resolution will be interpreted by the (historians of the) victors. So this is an open hunting license for any one or more of the 20K-40K cadre trained in the al qaeda camps in the 90s (which were some small fraction of those recruited from the tens of millions of students that passed through the madrassas), and any country they (or their current or past organization) happen to have been in or been helped by (that hasn't become fully cooperative and transparent in gathering intelligence, documenting money and people flows, and locating and handing over these individuals and leaders of these groups).
The reason for the Iraq resolution was less necessity than fair-play and diplomacy (many reasons for a vote outside of authorization), and politics (we see a grand political strategy emerging, given they understood within weeks that the new National Security Strategy had to include pre-emption, which they duly published, took the heat, and then said Iraq looks and smells like a threat by these rules, yet "if it was a fact, it would not be intelligence" so "it's time to vote, place your bets").. Granted, the president was able to use the Iraq resolution (and "does or does not national security trump any and all past sloppy practices and constituencies?" card) against his opponents in the 2002 election (nothing like your opponent begging you to use your hammer to beat him). And the current team are inveterate and masterful poker players (and I do hate to watch pros play poker).
With regard to current "commitments" (i.e. are we too tied down to do anything else?), - there are none other than to lend a helping hand, right? We didn't break anything that wasn't already broken. We offered the leadership that was a probable threat a deal they should not have refused. When they did refuse, we removed them and wished the liberated that remained a good life. Not unlike welfare reform. You can't give someone "security" (civil society) any more than you can give someone self-respect. You can give them a hand up (bullets and bombs and our own casualties... we bleed all over the world for our friends, and even to hold down the casualties of some of our enemies), but the rest they have to do themselves, including bear the costs in lives and treasure. And if they screw it up (to the point they are not at a minimum cooperative and transparent), they know we will remove that leadership as well. Unfortunately, given human nature, most anything more that we do (as a government, vs. private efforts, just like welfare) is likely an unappreciated gift (e.g. there's no reason to expect the Iraqi soccer team to be grateful even if we'd put the five million troops into the country that it would have taken to completely lock down (like a prison) the border and cities, Iraq being a BIG country. IMO those that called for more troops are in the same category as those that demanded some stalinist fully-scripted 5-year-great-leap-forward plan for pacification to be in place before going to war, both are actually arguing against going to war. Similar items filled the European press around the time of Munich.
From a military perspective we're now in a position to use force to move towards our end-objectives (societal change in ME, either by direct application of force (deposing leadership), or through Libyan-like acquiescence and cooperation - which has never been obtained by bluff, i.e. most UN-SC resolutions).
We've both equipment and people in the field. The equipment is not coming back (i.e. use it or lose it, sooner than later, wrt wear-and-tear in the desert, call it $1T we'll walk away from if we "give up"). Good to great supply lines are running smoothly. Soldiers are rested and battle-hardened, and getting impatient (Navy and Air Force have had a year's vacation). Pacification is not what they signed up to do and is no fun, long term - (even in Najaf where we learned how to do urban warfare w/ minimal casualties to us and non-combatants by knocking down buildings Israeli-style, vs, say, the horrific Russian armored losses in Chechnya).
Which means now's the time to prepare for the next (threat of) pre-emption. If there's demand for a vote, I'm sure the poker players will be happy to double up the ante (they'd love to have a filibuster proof senate).
Right, there will be no serious diplomatic or Libyan-class victories until after the election, and as Mr. Cheney observes, Mr. Kerry winning eliminates the opportunity for a -bloodless- battle, where if we withdraw to our borders not only will we be attacked here, but what remains of our civil liberties will disappear. i.e. maginot-line-like defenses are always destructive of liberty, if only as a tax on our productivity that no other nation pays for the same goods.
We seem to need to relearn every generation that punitive offense (eliminating those that would take away our freedom) is the only way to maintain civil society at the level where we don't need to fear our neighbor - and in a moore's law age of weapons and information, there's no one who is not our neighbor - i.e. borders are fictions (and if we manage to get everything that transits recorded, it's only because we made it in their interest to be recorded.. i.e. no black market in anything remains). Individuals and small groups, especially apocalyptic ones, can increasingly find the ever-decreasing amount of expertise and money required to wield the power of last-century's nation-states.
Mr. Kerry will discover that EU / France and Germany are really as toothless and "poor" as we (the U.S.) would be today if his party's Ted Kennedy's and he had succeeded in demobilizing and stripping our forces, and killed off U.S. productivity by regulating and taxing us into a European welfare state. And no amount of $$ or Kyoto treaty bribes will be enough to enable the EU to mount an effort that is larger than 10% of ours. (which should be no surprise given the moral hazard we created when we guaranteed Europe's security without appropriate human and $$ compensation, to say nothing of casting a blind eye towards their crony statist capitalism that corrupted any chance of check-and-balances in their countries' financial relationships with, and dependencies on, these dictators).
Note that it's not just a case of France and Germany being unwilling to provide forces and monies, they simply have little more to provide than what they already have in Afghanistan (thousands at best). And their economies are "broke" in all aspects (not competitive in terms of innovation or productivity, not solvent, and not providing their middle class w/ the comforts of our poor). So odds of them being able to "moore's law" equip a soldier (so they are 10x more destructive and protected than any opponent) are small and nil without our help, and even then they'll need years of training in our facilities.
Worse, to admit that the large headcount and budget consumed by their "armed forces" is "only" a jobs program would be an unbearable loss-of-face (and it would uncover a significant amount of post-berlin-wall decay, if not corruption, likely leading to their elites falling from power) - not unlike the U.S. political constituencies that hang on to unused military bases, processes and even agencies. Granted, our own tooth-to-tail ratio in the DoD is at a minimum shameful, if not corrupt in a manner that costs us lives, and stuck in the 70s, something Rumsfeld and team must (and are) fixing.
So the fifth campaign (of I'd guess 10) is coming. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Pakistan (Kahn). (?) Some will appear multiple times.. Not unlike WW2 ebb and flow, occasionally paying for the same ground twice, adapting our strategy and plans as the enemies of civilization adapt to us.
Fyi, David Gelernter (a unabomber casualty) gets the moral issue exactly right (at the level a 6th grader can understand).
(I wrote far more than I intended.. I wager Wretchard can say all this in 3 paragraphs :-)
Resolution in response to 9-11: ..."That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."...
It's pretty clear the President has all the authority (minus eventually needed budgets) to prosecute the war in all these theaters. Aid and harbor and prevent future acts are very broad terms.
The language in the congressional resolution will be interpreted by the (historians of the) victors. So this is an open hunting license for any one or more of the 20K-40K cadre trained in the al qaeda camps in the 90s (which were some small fraction of those recruited from the tens of millions of students that passed through the madrassas), and any country they (or their current or past organization) happen to have been in or been helped by (that hasn't become fully cooperative and transparent in gathering intelligence, documenting money and people flows, and locating and handing over these individuals and leaders of these groups).
The reason for the Iraq resolution was less necessity than fair-play and diplomacy (many reasons for a vote outside of authorization), and politics (we see a grand political strategy emerging, given they understood within weeks that the new National Security Strategy had to include pre-emption, which they duly published, took the heat, and then said Iraq looks and smells like a threat by these rules, yet "if it was a fact, it would not be intelligence" so "it's time to vote, place your bets").. Granted, the president was able to use the Iraq resolution (and "does or does not national security trump any and all past sloppy practices and constituencies?" card) against his opponents in the 2002 election (nothing like your opponent begging you to use your hammer to beat him). And the current team are inveterate and masterful poker players (and I do hate to watch pros play poker).
With regard to current "commitments" (i.e. are we too tied down to do anything else?), - there are none other than to lend a helping hand, right? We didn't break anything that wasn't already broken. We offered the leadership that was a probable threat a deal they should not have refused. When they did refuse, we removed them and wished the liberated that remained a good life. Not unlike welfare reform. You can't give someone "security" (civil society) any more than you can give someone self-respect. You can give them a hand up (bullets and bombs and our own casualties... we bleed all over the world for our friends, and even to hold down the casualties of some of our enemies), but the rest they have to do themselves, including bear the costs in lives and treasure. And if they screw it up (to the point they are not at a minimum cooperative and transparent), they know we will remove that leadership as well. Unfortunately, given human nature, most anything more that we do (as a government, vs. private efforts, just like welfare) is likely an unappreciated gift (e.g. there's no reason to expect the Iraqi soccer team to be grateful even if we'd put the five million troops into the country that it would have taken to completely lock down (like a prison) the border and cities, Iraq being a BIG country. IMO those that called for more troops are in the same category as those that demanded some stalinist fully-scripted 5-year-great-leap-forward plan for pacification to be in place before going to war, both are actually arguing against going to war. Similar items filled the European press around the time of Munich.
From a military perspective we're now in a position to use force to move towards our end-objectives (societal change in ME, either by direct application of force (deposing leadership), or through Libyan-like acquiescence and cooperation - which has never been obtained by bluff, i.e. most UN-SC resolutions).
We've both equipment and people in the field. The equipment is not coming back (i.e. use it or lose it, sooner than later, wrt wear-and-tear in the desert, call it $1T we'll walk away from if we "give up"). Good to great supply lines are running smoothly. Soldiers are rested and battle-hardened, and getting impatient (Navy and Air Force have had a year's vacation). Pacification is not what they signed up to do and is no fun, long term - (even in Najaf where we learned how to do urban warfare w/ minimal casualties to us and non-combatants by knocking down buildings Israeli-style, vs, say, the horrific Russian armored losses in Chechnya).
Which means now's the time to prepare for the next (threat of) pre-emption. If there's demand for a vote, I'm sure the poker players will be happy to double up the ante (they'd love to have a filibuster proof senate).
Right, there will be no serious diplomatic or Libyan-class victories until after the election, and as Mr. Cheney observes, Mr. Kerry winning eliminates the opportunity for a -bloodless- battle, where if we withdraw to our borders not only will we be attacked here, but what remains of our civil liberties will disappear. i.e. maginot-line-like defenses are always destructive of liberty, if only as a tax on our productivity that no other nation pays for the same goods.
We seem to need to relearn every generation that punitive offense (eliminating those that would take away our freedom) is the only way to maintain civil society at the level where we don't need to fear our neighbor - and in a moore's law age of weapons and information, there's no one who is not our neighbor - i.e. borders are fictions (and if we manage to get everything that transits recorded, it's only because we made it in their interest to be recorded.. i.e. no black market in anything remains). Individuals and small groups, especially apocalyptic ones, can increasingly find the ever-decreasing amount of expertise and money required to wield the power of last-century's nation-states.
Mr. Kerry will discover that EU / France and Germany are really as toothless and "poor" as we (the U.S.) would be today if his party's Ted Kennedy's and he had succeeded in demobilizing and stripping our forces, and killed off U.S. productivity by regulating and taxing us into a European welfare state. And no amount of $$ or Kyoto treaty bribes will be enough to enable the EU to mount an effort that is larger than 10% of ours. (which should be no surprise given the moral hazard we created when we guaranteed Europe's security without appropriate human and $$ compensation, to say nothing of casting a blind eye towards their crony statist capitalism that corrupted any chance of check-and-balances in their countries' financial relationships with, and dependencies on, these dictators).
Note that it's not just a case of France and Germany being unwilling to provide forces and monies, they simply have little more to provide than what they already have in Afghanistan (thousands at best). And their economies are "broke" in all aspects (not competitive in terms of innovation or productivity, not solvent, and not providing their middle class w/ the comforts of our poor). So odds of them being able to "moore's law" equip a soldier (so they are 10x more destructive and protected than any opponent) are small and nil without our help, and even then they'll need years of training in our facilities.
Worse, to admit that the large headcount and budget consumed by their "armed forces" is "only" a jobs program would be an unbearable loss-of-face (and it would uncover a significant amount of post-berlin-wall decay, if not corruption, likely leading to their elites falling from power) - not unlike the U.S. political constituencies that hang on to unused military bases, processes and even agencies. Granted, our own tooth-to-tail ratio in the DoD is at a minimum shameful, if not corrupt in a manner that costs us lives, and stuck in the 70s, something Rumsfeld and team must (and are) fixing.
So the fifth campaign (of I'd guess 10) is coming. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Pakistan (Kahn). (?) Some will appear multiple times.. Not unlike WW2 ebb and flow, occasionally paying for the same ground twice, adapting our strategy and plans as the enemies of civilization adapt to us.
Fyi, David Gelernter (a unabomber casualty) gets the moral issue exactly right (at the level a 6th grader can understand).
(I wrote far more than I intended.. I wager Wretchard can say all this in 3 paragraphs :-)
posted by Unknown at 9/11/2004 09:18:00 PM
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