“The bended knee is not a tradition of our Corps.”
(General Alexander A. Vandergrift, USMC, to the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, 5 May 1946.)
There has always been an enormous divide between what Marines know about Warfare and how the American people perceive the idea of war. In today’s digital age, the utopian paradigm of war, according to the American civilian and politician, is totally and completely fucked up. I hate to sound like the conjured Col. Nathan Jessup, but America needs to wake up and smell what they are shoveling.
From the Administration to Academia, there are very few people that are willing to accept the four primary truths about warfare:
1. “War is the extension of politics by other means.” – Carl von Clausewitz
2. Warfare begins with a period of learning, during which, many mistakes are made, the military weans itself of incompetents and cowards and techniques, tactics and procedures are perfected.
3. Victory in war is achieved by the side with the strongest will. The vanquished is always the one who quits in the face of adversity.
4. The cost of war is paid in blood.
There is another important truth. It is so important, that it overrides all other functions of warfare, factors that influence outcomes, intangibles, etc. It is this: No democracy can wage war successfully without the support of the people. It is the national will that will determine victory.
The National Will is so fundamental to the concept of warfare that the Chinese government is shaping its warfighting doctrine around the American Iraqi experience. Before Operation Iraqi Freedom, the PRC had high hopes that the Iraqi Insurgency would validate the legacy of Mao’s “People’s War.
” We can see that if Saddam Hussein can mobilize the entire army and people of the entire country to fight a guerrilla war and street battles so as to delay the speed of the US offensive and trap the US forces in a ‘Desert Storm,’ the situation will be the common wish of the Chinese military. ”
The Chinese also made a chilling prediction:
“If the US has some 100 casualties, there will be large-scale anti-war demonstrations within the United States. If the number of casualties exceeds 1000, Bush may be forced to resign.”
It is interesting to me, that this reality is crystal clear to the Chinese. It is so fundamental to the concept of fighting a war with the United States, that it has shaped their warfighting doctrine around a single fundamental truth – the way to defeat America is to suck them into a conflict that will challenge the strength, courage and commitment of the populace.
Maybe it was just easier to understand al Qaeda’s strategy from their side of the map.
This line of attack is not new. It dates back to our birth. The British tried it, the Japanese tried it, and the North Koreans tried it. Not until Vietnam did the tactic succeed. It has been used successfully since; in Beirut, Somalia and now in Iraq.
I would argue that the current Domestic Political climate in this country is exactly what UBL hoped to see. I believe that he thought that our National Will would fracture on September 11th, 2001. I believe that the pendulum has begun to swing in his favor and that the Chinese prediction is on the verge of becoming a reality.
I am writing, from the perspective of a former Enlisted Infantry Marine and Marine Officer, to explain why many of us feel that our nation is not willing to give us the tools to win the Global War on Terror or achieve victory in Iraq. I hope that my words may wake people up to the fact that the citizens of our great nation, not the insurgency, Al Qaeda, or our nation’s military will determine success.
One of the most important lessons that I learned as a Marine was that no plan survives contact with the enemy. This is true because the enemy “has a vote.” As soon as friendly forces come in contact with enemy forces, something will happen that no one had planned for. Then, all bets are off and the force that can “observe, orient, decide and act” first will win.
The point is - there is no certainty in warfare. Intelligence is routinely wrong, the enemy either has something you didn’t know about, is in a different place or does something completely out of character. It’s the nature of warfare. It has not changed since the Athenians fought the Peloponnesians. Sun Tzu knew it. Carl von Clauzewitz knew it. Every military man and woman worth a shit knows it. But somehow, as a country, we have either never heard of such a silly idea or some think the Bush administration made it up to cover their own ass. Believe me; Don Rumsfeld didn’t come up with this one himself.
At this point, some may simply tune out because they believe this is another work of the republican propaganda machine. Yes I am a republican. Yes I voted for Bush. Twice.
But my ranting is not an attack on the left. It is a critique of how all Americans have failed to capitalize on the lessons of history and are repeating the mistakes of the past. The mistakes that were made in North Africa, Vietnam, Beirut, Bosnia and Somalia are all testaments to how we can succeed in the future. Today these lessons are being ignored the administration, congress, generals, media moguls, the anti-war movement and the American people.
Much of the problem stems from the situation – we are attempting to do something that this nation did not train to accomplish, our culture is ignorant to the requirements, sacrifices and cost of war, and neither our civil, nor military leadership has the experience to make perfect decisions. Prior to 2002, our doctrine was still dominated by blunting the tactics of the Soviets, we dismantled our intelligence capability after the wall fell and it took us over a decade to figure out that gutting our armed forces would not create a lean, flexible, responsive force capable of fighting in the post cold war paradigm.
My goal is to focus on the impending consequences of our naiveté about the ugliness of the world outside of our boarders. This is a commentary about how we win or loose. It is a story about strength, weakness and character. It is about the way to show the world that we are determined to be a positive force for democracy and at the same time stand to fight the evil of tyranny and murder. It is about honor, courage and commitment.
Our ideology is one that is worth fighting for. As an American is it your decision. Do we stand together and fight or do we tear each other apart? I hope you choose to read on, think critically about our future, and cast aside partisan propaganda to find the path of victory.
Semper Fidelis.
we fight because of freedom, but sometimes fight is not right!
Posted by: writer jobs | September 26, 2011 at 01:47 PM