The reality? The ground truth which controls all aspects of a warrior's existence?
The warrior, each and every one, has signed a personal covenant with death. The agreement stipulates that the warrior will use his brain and body, his skills and abilities, his every fiber of mind and muscle to stay alive. The agreement also provides that no matter how able and motivated, how skilled and able, how fast of reflex and quick of mind, there can be no immunity from death.
In the fabled French Foreign Legion the covenant was once summarized in a brilliantly brutal and succinct way: "Legionnaires! You are in the Legion to die. The Legion will send you to where you will die."
The Covenant With Death is offset in a very small way by a belief held by many (but not all) warriors. This belief is also held by many of those associated with the warrior: buddies, family, lovers. The belief gives some slight measure of comfort to those who survive the warrior's death, or who suffer with him after he has copped a major league clobber, the kind of clobber which in a blasting small part of a second takes away swaths of the warrior's body or mind.
The belief?
That the warrior's life will not be sacrificed for any end of lesser goal than that of "winning." It is hoped and believed that the body, mind, life of the warrior will not be wasted in the pursuit of a false goal, thrown away on some obscure purpose of state, lost in the ego driven strivings of a superior officer or political leader. All warriors at the least secretly hope that if death claims its share of the covenant, the reason will not be shallow, superficial, transient, or of no lasting purpose.
In the warrior's world the goal is--must be--winning. Even should the warrior die, the victory is secured. It may be the smallest and most intimate of victories, the survival of a buddy. It may fall in the endless midrange of winning, the objective which is taken, the hill cleared, the village secured, the battle ended with the enemy in full flight. Or, it may be victory of the greatest sort, the obliteration of the enemy force and state.
However, and here is the rub, "winning" or "victory" are slippery, protean concepts. A clear and decisive "winning" is rare, particularly when the "victory" is sought on the largest scale.
This is why, for Americans, World War II has been so long and so often characterized as "the good war." Really it was the perfect war. When the guns fell silent two enemies had been destroyed, obliterated, conquered.
For the US the war had been one of a total nature, a total war for national survival. When it ended each of the two major enemies, each of the two regimes seen as being both implacably hostile to the US as well as comprising existential threats, had been utterly and completely defeated. The victory was seen as having such a complete and final nature that it fully justified each and every American warrior claimed by Death's Covenant.
Total wars of national survival are rare in modern history. Far more common are small, often intentionally inconclusive wars on the far frontiers conducted for reasons of state. Also far more common are interventionary wars, nasty conflicts where warriors are killed and maimed but where "winning" is either impossible or illusionary.
The Korean War has become the paradigm for Americans in defining the limited war in support of policy, the cruel little war undertaken for reasons of state in which conclusive victory is either impossible or, at the least, undesirable or unachievable. The warriors die in droves, are maimed in their multitudes, but all that hangs in the air is an anguished question, "For what?"
If the "For What?" question is central to understanding the limited war in support of policy such as that waged in the cold and snow of the Korean mountains, how much more is it apropos when considering the interventionary operation (or, to use currently fashionable circumlocution,) the overseas contingency operation? The survivors, those who have buried their dead comrades, mourned their dead lovers, sons, fathers, brothers, can wail even louder the question, "For what did they die?"
The fine words, "winning" and "victory" have little, if any, relevance in any absolute sense to the outcomes of interventionary operations, of the grim and savage war of insurgent against counter insurgent. True, on the micro level, on the level of the individual warrior who has survived more or less intact in both body and mind, it is possible to say, "I won, damn it! I'm still here." It is possible to assert in the midrange that "We accomplished our mission. The hill was taken. The town was secured. We did bring peace to our valley."
But, on the largest level, the level of states and their policies, the terms, "winning" and "victory" have no genuine applicability. The best which can be said with honesty is, "We achieved our policy goals--more or less."
And, bucko, this ground truth is very, very thin comfort for those who bury and mourn the dead warriors. It is equally thin payback to the warrior claimed by Death's Covenant.
Which brings us to another brutal reality: It is the only reward for being true to the Covenant. It is the only comfort to the survivors. It is the only balm for those who have been cruelly maimed by the battle and the policy which brought the battle.
A policy success--usually of the less complete sort--and the military accomplishment of achieving the minimum strategic need of "not-losing" is the only reward which can be expected in the waging of interventionary war, particularly one of the counterinsurgent sort. At the end, no insurgency is marked by the obliteration of the enemy.
There are no victory parades when the counterinsurgent succeeds. There will be no photo-ops surrounding the defeated insurgent signing a surrender document. There will be no glorious upsurge of national pride as the victorious counterinsurgent forces come home to a grateful public.
Insurgencies do not end with a bang. They don't even end with a whimper. They simply fade out. The noise of battle, of bomb and gun, fades away to the silence of politics. One morning the counterinsurgent wakes to find there is no more war. He stretches, looks around, listens to the silence--and goes home.
Or, in the alternative, the noise continues but the counterinsurgent simply goes home. The war goes on, but the outsider is now a major non-participant. He is absent with leave from the fighting and the dying. The warrior is given permission by his government, by the folks back home to come home.
In short, under this alternative, he is defeated. The warrior may be happy or, at least, greatly relieved to be exempted from Death's Covenant. He may be happy, or, at least, greatly relieved to be spared the fear of impending combat, of death being present at one's shoulder night after day after night after day.
This does not offset the reality that he has been defeated. Even if "victorious" in the field in battle after battle, skirmish after skirmish, the counterinsurgent warrior nonetheless has been defeated. So also has the policy, the government, the country which sent him.
And, as history shows time after time in century upon century, defeat always brings consequences, the majority of which are bad. Countries, particularly those which have aspired to and achieved Great Power status, do not long survive major defeats.
Signing the Covenant With Death is not enjoyable. Neither is facing the reality of death night and day seemingly without end. No warrior can be blamed for doing all in his power to stack the odds in his favor. It is human to seek every advantage against death, to use all the means, all the technology to save one's only skin. It is expectable that no additional risks will be undertaken by the warrior without a very compelling reason.
As a result it has come as no surprise that many of the American and other ISAF troops in Afghanistan were angered by the "courageous restraint" doctrine put into effect by General Stanley McChrystal. It is totally without shock that one reads of the resentment felt against the doctrine felt by so many under McChrystal's command as well as the relief felt with the promise by General Petraeus to review (and, at least, by inference) change it so as to reduce the perceived risk to the troops.
Courageous restraint did bring a rapid and extreme lowering of casualties inflicted by US and other ISAF forces upon Afghan civilians and Afghan National Forces personnel. An indication of what is to be expected should the McChrystal doctrine of courageous restraint be modified significantly--or at all--has occurred within the past twenty-four hours.
An air strike was called upon a contingent of Afghan National Forces when someone didn't interpret the imagery correctly. Five Afghan troops were killed by precision guided munitions. The Afghan government is hopping mad. The same may be presumed, but is not mentioned in the media with respect to the Afghan forces generally and at least some civilians.
On the US/NATO/ISAF side of the fence, the reaction has been pure pre-McChrystal. There was no immediate hospital visit to the injured survivors by the commander in theater; there was no immediate and compelling statement from the highest command levels of dismay, sincere apologies; rather an investigation was ordered. This back-to-business-at-the-old-location is a lot of yadda-yadda in the ears of the Afghans.
So, why the hell should we care?
We should care about this incident as well as the context of modifying the courageous restraint doctrine because it matters greatly as to whether this insurgency ends in a way favorable to American interests or in an American military defeat. The only way in which the US and its allies have even a slight chance of achieving the minimum strategic goal of "not-losing" is by fighting in a way which puts our warriors at greater risk but provides greater physical security to the Afghans.
The only way in which the war will simply fade away allowing our warriors to come home without dragging the can of defeat behind them is by placing a greater burden of risk and fear on our warriors, by insisting that more, perhaps many more, be claimed by Death's Covenant. The only way in which we can justify the deaths of those already killed, or the physical and psychic damage done to so many others is by forcing the war to a conclusion which is favorable to our standing and influence in the world. Then and only then will the deaths be given meaning.
The US government--and We the People--decided to cut and run from our war in Southeast Asia. The US government--and We the People--concluded to pack up and leave, resigning the South Vietnamese to whatever fate might have store.
By this decision the US government--and We the People--declared that all those Americans, more than sixty thousand, who had been taken by Death's Covenant, had been killed for nothing. The US government--and We the People--cancelled even the thin comfort of the deaths having not been without meaning or positive effect.
While the defeat in South Vietnam did not damage the US in its long term national and strategic interests, it did damage us at our core. No nation can write off the lives of thousands of its young men without doing damage to its central values, its belief in itself, or its confidence in its own worth.
A defeat in Afghanistan, no matter how concealed or how colored, will do the same to our national soul as did the self-inflicted loss in Vietnam. Beyond that, a defeat in Afghanistan unlike that in Vietnam will impair our long term national and strategic interests by emboldening those who espouse violent political Islam around the world.
What this means today is simple and unpleasant in the extreme. There must be no backsliding from the doctrine of courageous restraint for to do so is to seek defeat. More American warriors must, perforce, be placed in harm's way, made to hold Death's hand, feel Death's eternally cold breath on their necks.
Only by showing a will to die rather than to risk killing the wrong Afghans can we sanctify the losses of our warriors. Ironically, we cannot kill our way to "victory" in Afghanistan, but we can restrain our killing capacities and achieve all that can be achieved in this kind of war, an incomplete policy success and, more critically, 'not-losing."
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