There Are Times the Geek Really Likes the Brits!

Over the years, the Geek has had numerous opportunities to work with, live with, get drunk with, members of the British military and intelligence services. On occasion, they have been annoying, emitting a delicate fragrance of assumed superiority. Most of the time, these chaps have been quite delightful. They are well educated, thoughtful, dedicated, and thoroughly professional.

We have disagreed, debated, and even argued, but, win, lose or draw, these encounters of difference have been enjoyable (at least for the winner). When the Brits have been wrong, as they often are on just who developed what successful counterinsurgency approach first, they have been very, very wrong. When the men from the UK have been right, they have been extraordinarily bang-on.

Recently a British General, Gen Sir Mike Jackson, has again demonstrated how right they can be and how wrong it is not to listen to their views with the greatest of respect. The Geek strongly recommends a dekko at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/03/wjackson103.xml.

A cynic might aver that the Geek gives a strong thumbs-up to General Jackson because the good knight's position on the invasion of Iraq and the failure of the Rumsfield-Cheney--Bush bunch is to give proper consideration to the day after victory. The cynic would be wrong.

The views of General Jackson deserve careful consideration because the man is a very experienced and professionally competent military commander and planner. There is little doubt in the Geek's semi-military mind that senior American commanders saw the situation in Iraq in terms not dissimilar from Jackson's.

The French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, famously quipped during the Great War that "war is too important to be left to the generals."

Given the quality of thinking among senior commanders of the French Army during World War I, the quip had much merit. However, the Geek looks at the converse as demonstrated by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

War is too important to be left to politicians. This is particularly true when the politicians in question have a strong ideological bent.

It is commonplace to note, as General Jackson does, that the politicos of the current administration generally and those within the top civilian structure of the Defense Department in particular were (and to some extent, still are) the hardest of hard shell neo-cons.

It may be that true believers in the neo-con ideology have something to recommend them. Whatever that may be, it does not include competence in the planning and preparing for, or the waging of, war. In several previous posts, the Geek has noted many of the abundant failings of the Pentagon wonders in mufti in both planning and waging our two invasions. He does not intend to rehearse them now.

General Jackson zeros in with an aim better than a laser guided smart bomb on the greatest single failing of all. The deep thinkers in Rumsfield's Pentagon and Bush's White House did not properly differentiate between means and ends.

The politicians surrounding the Commander Guy and the Commander Guy himself confused the means of al-Qaeda and similar Islamist groups with their ends, their political goals. Al-Qaeda and its relatives have the goal of promoting Islamist ideology to a position of global power. One of the means by which they hope to accomplish the goal is terrorism.

Terrorism is not the only means available to Islamists in pursuit of their goal. There are others including subversion, propaganda, insurgency both defensive and offensive, the use of litigation, resort to the political arena, and recruitment of those who Lenin once called, "useful fools."

Get a grip on this. Waging war on terrorism makes as much sense as fighting only the German U-boats and Japanese kamikaze aircraft during World War II while ignoring all the other means of war employed by these two countries.

Yet, as General Jackson trenchantly notes, this is what the current administration did when it announced its "global war on terrorism."

The correct goal for the US and its supporters and allies is the defeat of the political ideology of the Islamists. This means that all the means available to the Islamists to pursue their goal of an Islamist global paramountcy must be effectively countered. Defeated.

The US made many mistakes during the half century of the Cold War. It never made the basic error committed by the current administration of confusing the enemy's goal with its means. At no time did any administration from Truman through H.W. Bush lose sight of the defining reality of the Cold War from our perspective: Moscow sought, if not global hegemony, at least global preeminence.

No administration ever confused any of the many different means available to the Kremlin with the goal. Whenever we could, however we could, the US countered each of the means employed. Granted, our success rates varied widely, even wildly. Granted, we sometimes saw threats that either were smaller than we perceived them or did not even exist.

Running through all the American mistakes, paranoia flashes, and strokes of brilliance from the famed Long Telegram of George Kennan all the way to the fall of the wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union like a twisting but bright thread was an ability to see the goal and not get lost in the maze of means.

The challenge for the current administration and those in the future, the challenge for the wallahs in congress, the challenge for We the People is simple. We must show the same ability as those who navigated the rocks and shoals of the Cold War. Keep our eyes on the enemy's goal. Counter his methods whether terrorism or seeking the perversion of democracy. Never quit. No matter how long it takes, never quit.

These lessons of the Cold War are applicable today. They were not time nor context dependent. They are as universal as any principles derived from the history of human conflict can be.

A note to the current administration: You have the information, the analysis, to know that the prize in the current wars is not simply the stabilizing of Afghanistan or Iraq. It is not the defeat of terrorism per se. The prize is reclaiming a small measure of success from the failure your blunders to date so richly deserve.

If the small measure of success is achieved, then time will have been purchased at great and unnecessary expense in both blood and dollars. Time, which must now be used to properly focus on the goal of the enemy, the true believers in the Islamist ideology, and be used to develop effective means to counter each and every one of the means they are using to achieve it.

The Geek is not suggesting that we are in a Huntington type "clash of cultures," nor is he insinuating that Islam qua Islam is the enemy. Not at all. There is an enemy who uses as one means the blood seeking terrorist. The enemy is the Islamist true believer.

The Geek also maintains with the powerful support of General Jackson that the confusion of the enemy's goals with his means does not simply imply failure in the offing.

No.

Confusing the goals of the enemy with his means will assure failure.

Get a grip on that.