Bush's Shrinking Safety Zone

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

... the Vietnam analogy is tired and thin now, having been stretched by you to apply to all of the M.E. and most of middle Asia.

The Vietnam analogy is really lesson after lesson about how not to conduct a war. I can think of no war where every major principle was violated starting with no strategic objective, no smoking gun, no exit strategy, Domino theory, propaganda, whistleblowing that exposed that propaganda (Pentagon papers), etc. I cannot think of another war where the attacking nation was so much its own worse enemy ("We have met the enemy and he is us")

Latest issue of The Economist demonstrates a same problem in Israel's leadership:

Victory is not a matter of seizing territory, Dan Halutz once explained. It is a matter of “consciousness”. And air power, continued Israel's chief of staff, affects the adversary's consciousness significantly. Indeed, the very concept of the land battle is "anachronistic". Lieut-General Halutz, an air-force man, is said to have persuaded Israel's militarily inexperienced prime minister, Ehud Olmert, that the task of destroying Hizbullah in Lebanon was the perfect job for aircraft.

It did not quite work out that way. Yet the seductive idea that air power can provide swift victory with light casualties has been around almost as long as the aeroplane itself. ...

But when it comes to rooting out guerrillas and insurgents, wishful thinking still tends to outweigh technological capabilities. A study of the use of air power in small wars over the past century by James Corum and Wray Johnson, two former professors at the American air force's School of Advanced Airpower Studies, concluded that insurgents and terrorists "rarely present lucrative targets for aerial attack". Air power has been used to greatest effect in such campaigns only indirectly: to gather intelligence, move troops or maintain communication.

And as others besides the Israelis have found, trying to wage an air campaign against irregular forces is especially vulnerable to the backlash that invariably arises as civilian casualties mount.

Vietnam most demonstrated the fallacy of Air Power as a primary weapon. But The Economist goes back even to 1920 and Somaliland to demonstrated the myth. Vietnam, a war where fallacy after fallacy was promoted, is also the perfect example of why Air Power is only a support function. IOW those lessons (along with so many others from that war) are so important that Pentagon Papers is required history reading. Lessons so important as to even define Colin Powell's strategy for a Kuwait Liberation.

And so we have above but one in a long list of lessons from Vietnam.

What Year Is It? Is it 1918? Or 1972? Or 1948? is a most interesting article. Maybe only entertaining. Or like The Economist’s Big Mac Index, it contains a strong thread of reality. However one sentence struck me curiously.

Saddam and Zarqawi are the Hitlers and Tojos of our era

Problem is that Hitler and Tojo were real enemies. Saddam and Zarqawi were enemies hyped and promoted only by propaganda. Neither (of the latter) were the centralized leaders of a coordinated enemy - except where propaganda said otherwise. Both were promoted because propagandists could not even identify a real enemy. (Another problem created when a strategic objective does not exist). IOW the current war is chock full of mythical enemies as both China and USSR were the enemies in Vietnam, or as Gandhi was considered an enemy by the colonialist Churchill.

IOW where in that article are the 'year' when the enemy does not really exist? Where an enemy is really a mythical creation of the aggressor?

Returning to the Economist's 26 Aug 2006: "Air power An enduring illusion" :

General Halutz was said to have been strongly influenced by NATO's war of psychological pressure against Slobodan Milosevic, which aimed to force the Serb dictator to take a specific action - pull out of Kosovo and halt his ethnic cleansing - through an air campaign that kept ratcheting up the costs by destroying power plants, bridges, factories and other bits of infrastructure.

If he really believed this, then the Israeli general never learned why that use of air power by Richard Holbrook was so successful. Air power was not a principle tool. Military victory was only secondary. Air power only operated in a support function to something far more important than war or victory: the negotiations. Air power was a tool used by Holbrook to have Milosevic negotiate himself out of a job.

OK. This takes but one lesson from Vietnam one step farther. It demonstrates another useful support function of air power: how air power can be used in a tool in negotiation; 'carrot and stick' or 'Bugs Bunny' diplomacy. This because the negotiations - not victory - are more important (something that those with a 'big dic' mentality so often never learn).

Return to THE most critical aspect of all war - negotiations. In Hezbollah / Israel conflict are no negotiations. Even America does not talk to Hezbollah. In Iraq, America created enemies that America does not even talk to as that war is slowly being lost to an enemy that most Americans don't even understand (and not easily defined). In Iran, President Ahmadinejad, as even defined by a Wall Street analyst on this subject, is desperately asking (almost begging) for direct talks with the US on everything from pistachios to nuclear energy. We have that much to negotiate and still avoid negotiation; which makes war inevitable. In North Korea, we completely destroyed what negotiations were slowly achieving (defusing). And even in Vietnam, Nixon literally undermined Johnson's secret offer to N Vietnam for a truce. Nixon sent a message to Ho Chi Minh to not accept a truce since Nixon would offer him a better deal. Again, war inevitable because conflicting parties did not talk; did not even understand what the other side really wanted.

So where in that article does it define the 'year' where war is created by ignorance of the other, propaganda promoting the other as evil, and stupid insistence that negotiations cannot occur?

The stupid use of air power was one lesson from Vietnam. Reasons why wars are created - especially a refusal to talk - is but another reason. Propaganda where 'they must be evil' is but another lesson. Vietnam is chock full of example of why wars happen; when wars are futile; how wars become perverted and corrupted by propaganda, hate, and emotions; how wars using the world's strongest militaries and best weapons are lost (the strategic objective, a smoking gun, and an exit strategy); and especially the importance of negotiation.

I don't fool myself for one minute. I suspect this post went right over the heads of most readers. However it should, at minimum, introduce the lurker to how sophisticated an analysis should be long before war is advocated or even considered. By not having viewed war with such complexity, we had Vietnam, we have Iraq, we have a now losing effort in Afghanistan (a war where the smoking gun did exist), and we have the totally useless and wasteful seventh invasion of Lebanon by Israel.

In each case, these wars were avoidable, and the outcomes statistically predictable once an analysis gets this complex - using nothing more than basic geo-political-military lessons from history - especially Vietnam.

Again, it is why having not read the Pentagon Papers is akin to not yet learning why war is created and how war is so easily avoided (when a smoking gun does not exist). 1919ers, 1938ers, 1942ers, 1948ers, and 1972ers do not exist with this more complex perspective. I find that article amusing. But, as best I can tell, it does not define what does and does not justify war AND it does not even define simple principles from Vietnam (et al) including fallac uses of air power.

Vietnam is simply the best example of so many failed geo-political-military strategies and myths. Vietnam is chock full of why wars are promoted by the naive for rediculous, foolish, and wrong reasons.