War and peace

Thanks to terrorism there is much less difference between war and peace than there used to be. "War" used to be a matter of governments openly declaring war and sending armies across national boundaries to fight against each other. Civilians were often casualties but, at least, it was considered to be a war crime if armies deliberately targeted non-combatants. Violent attacks in times of "peace" -- governments not officially at war -- were crimes even if commited across international boundaries. The perpetrators were criminals and police, "peace officers", not soldiers, were dispatched to deal with them. Unfortunately, governments, including ours, got into a habit of lending support, usually covert but often overt, to terrorists treating them not as criminals but as freedom fighters or defenders of the faith or some such. Now laws that used to work well based on a distinction between war and peace are no longer realistic. That is a loss. Civilization, such as it was, is set back.

War and the law

War profiteering, marauding mercenaries and such have been part of war throughout the history of war. Likely the problem is even worse when war is chosen for dishonest or dishonorable reasons. It might not be immediately obvious on the outside but insiders would know that an anything goes tone has been set and that all manner of crime would be quietly countenanced in the heat of battle. Misdeeds up to and including outright atrocities are covered up or rationalized away in order to not distract from prosecution of the war or cause questions to be asked about its propriety. Being the ultimate exercise of power, war is also the ultimate source of corruption. Lawyers should be among the first to recognize the danger except so many of them are merely mechanics using the tools of law to achieve ends defined by the providers of their pay checks. While war fever holds sway, they can't be bothered to also be defenders of the rule of law. More often they are among the agents of its corruption.

Afghanistan war is doomed

I have been reading all the arguments that half measures arguments will only lead to a lost war and, frankly, I am convinced they apply just as well to General McChrystal's proposals. The war will be lost his way as well with Vice President Biden's except with greater casualties and expense. There is simply no reasonable way for an occupier so foreign culturally to the occupied to defeat a national resistance. The population will never be sufficiently behind the occupier's puppet government. It would take millions of troops and a permanent curfew just to maintain a semblance of order in the cities. The countryside would remain a hotbed of guerrilla warfare. It would be at best an indefinite stalemate -- until we went broke trying to buy "victory" and/or ran out of cannon fodder and/or faced rebellion at home.

If we were fighting another Western country it would be different. The natives would see a puppet regime as not so different from what they would have had anyhow. These poor, illiterate tribal Muslims, however, would never consent to any government that we, with our modern Western values, could allow. This war is doomed. The best course is to get out.

The theory that the war is necessary to deny Al Qaeda a base makes no sense. Al Qaeda has never needed the kind of base used for training troops. They are not an military organization. They are terrorists. Their kind of attacks can be planed and prepared almost anywhere, including European NATO countries and the United States. Why is this war being fought?

The only supporters of this war who have a clear and superficially achievable purpose are the neocons and their military industrial allies. Between them they envision a benevolent global US hegemony, a form of empire, maintained by overwhelming military superiority over any potential rival. One reason for the Afghanistan venture in particular is its proximity to China which, as it grows in economic power. may need to be intimidated into subservience. But this utopian neocon enterprise is beyond achievement. The cost in blood and treasure is unbearable and there will always be the Afghanistans and Vietnams of the world which will not surrender and will be nothing but permanent bloody killing fields for US and allied troops, (unless and until they leave).

Not taking Edward Luttwak seriously.

Edward N. Luttwak is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the author of several books regarding warfare and insurgency. I recently came across a 2007 essay of his at Harper's magazine website and became quickly unimpressed. He early on presents an argument so blatantly fallacious as to convince me that it must be quite easy for muddleheaded armchair theorists to gain notoriety at serious publications and think tanks.

In this specific case, Mr. Luttwak wishes to argue that popular support is not essential to successful counter-insurgency. He goes about this by citing the Napoleonic War in Spain as a prime example of an oppressor enjoying the support, apparently against its own material interests, of the very population being oppressed -- successfully deploying it against its own would be liberators. This, along with mention of similar events in Naples in 1799, are very interesting and instructive examples, but they do not support the thesis that popular support is not essential, or even important, to successful counter-insurgency. They actually support the opposite conclusion. We have here a plain "sour grapes" fallacy: If we may not be able to obtain popular support for a counter-insurgency effort then it must not have been necessary in the first place.

I have not bothered to read on to the rest of the essay.