Playing Politics With History

Bruce Ackerman teaches law at Yale. Being a lawyer by trade, Professor Ackerman is good at making an argument. It does not bother the professor that he shoots history in the neck.

In his WaPo op-ed piece last Saturday, Professor Ackerman compares General Stanley McChrystal's forthright statement at the previous day's conference at the Strategic Studies Institute with the insubordinate actions of General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. The comparison is specious. It is misleading in the extreme. It is historically as wrong as a cat barking.

Professor Ackerman is not the only person pontificating from a basis of historical ignorance--willful or otherwise. Today in the WaPo, Eugene Robinson plays the same game albeit without referencing the famed Truman-MacArthur donnybrook. Richard Cohen completes the WaPo trifecta. Mr Cohen does drag the ghosts of Truman and MacArthur back into the spotlight.

Now, for the edification of pundits great and small, here is why the analogy between the comments of the bluntly spoken and honest minded General McChrystal and the statements, letters, and actions of the prima donna of the US Army, Douglas MacArthur, is wrong. And, bucko, here is why any comparison between the bluntly spoken and honest minded Harry Truman and the present incumbent are wrong as well.

First it is essential that the context of the Truman-MacArthur contretemps be established. The general was a legend in his own mind--and the popular perception of We the People. Having defied orders, failed to take precautions despite warnings, and generally fouled up the defense of the Philippine Islands at the outset of World War II in the Pacific, MacArthur was turned into a "hero" by the press with the connivance of the Roosevelt administration. The president was in desperate need of a "hero," genuine or not, in the darkest days of the war.

For the balance of the hostilities in the Pacific, MacArthur was an adequate but far from brilliant commander. He was, however, a genius at public relations so that his halo glistened ever more brightly as the war continued. (It might be noted that the grunts bestowed upon the General a far from flattering nickname, "Dugout Doug.")

At the end of the war, MacArthur became the de facto ruler of Japan. Most but not all historians reckon that the General did a decent job of running Japan, but it must be noted that his major accomplishment was allowing the Japanese to rediscover their democratic experience which had been masked with the rise of militarism during the late Twenties and Thirties. He invented nothing, but didn't stop the Japanese from exercising their remarkable capacities for self-organization in both political and economic matters.

When the North Koreans invaded the South in June 1950 it came as a bolt from the blue to Washington--and MacArthur. MacArthur had precluded the CIA and its predecessors from operating in his geographic areas of responsibility both during and after World War II. As a result there was no American intelligence agency operating in the Korean peninsula which might have provided adequate warning.

In the confusing opening days of the war as first South Korean and then American troops were defeated--badly, it was Harry Truman and his administration which acted both decisively and effectively. Truman and his people (which group included some of the most gifted foreign policy personalities in recent American history) made a number of critical and time sensitive decisions which had two important consequences.

First and foremost, the decisions assured the war would be limited in scope, goals, and means. There would be no widening of the war geographically. The goal was initially limited to restoring the status quo ante. The means strictly eschewed the nuclear option.

The first turning point in the war came with the twin successes of defense and offense. The defensive success was that of stopping the North Korean Peoples Army at the Pusan Perimeter. The offensive success was, arguably, MacArthur's finest moment--the amphibious landing at Inchon, far behind the NKPA lines.

MacArthur's finest moment left as fast as it came. Almost immediately he lost sight of the initial goal and replaced it with one of his own--the defeat of the NKPA, occupation of North Korea, and the forced unification of the two Koreas. The Truman administration went along with the General.

The movement of US, South Korean, and other UN forces into the North had the result of bringing the Chinese into the war. Despite ample warnings through diplomatic channels, the General poo-pooed the possibility of the Chinese entering in any number.

He was wrong. The Peoples Liberation Army moved with dramatic effect into the war. The US, South Korean, and other forces were compelled into rapid and sometimes disorderly retreat. MacArthur lost it.

He demanded that the atomic bomb be used. He proposed sowing a radioactive band of death along the Yalu and Tumen rivers. He demanded that the Chinese Nationalist forces be "unleashed" against the Mainland.

All of this was contrary to the limited war policy which had been decided upon by President Truman. The General was (as the military terminology has it) "counseled" and even gently, very gently reprimanded. Privately of course. The General was touchy. His ego was quite easily bruised.

MacArthur was a man upon whom subtlety was lost. He ignored the "counselling" and "guidance" provided by the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense. He shot off his mouth criticizing the Truman decisions. At one point he violated orders regarding an upcoming effort to start ceasefire talks by imperiously and publicly demanding the virtual surrender of the NKPA and the Chinese.

That torpedoed the first effort at talking peace.

Then the General allowed the public release of a letter he had written to the Republican leader in the House of Representatives. The letter was tantamount to a declaration of war against the Truman presidency. No US commander before that (or since for that matter) had ever penned such a bitter and baseless diatribe against his commander-in-chief.

Had the MacArthur strategy been put into effect as it was laid forth in the letter and other public statements, the US would have taken on a land war in China and a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. MacArthur's strategic view would have resulted in an American defeat to say nothing of costing lives beyond counting.

Truman faced the rank and dangerous insubordination with firmness, decisiveness, and a willingness to run enormous political risks. In his decision to fire MacArthur he was backed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff including its chairman, Omar Bradley. The bantam from Missouri fired the General from Megalomania.

Truman was excoriated in the majority of the press. The Republicans yelled for his scalp. In the end, Truman and his administration survived the storm of congressional hearings, press abuse, popular disapproval. Ultimately, the General as he predicted in his speech to a joint sitting of Congress simply "faded away." History (or at least historians) pronounced Truman right and MacArthur wrong.

There it is. History, complex events, in a small capsule. Easy to understand. Even a law professor ought to be able to wrap his brain around it.

General McChrystal has not been insubordinate. He has done nothing other than to follow his orders. He was tasked with assessing the state of the war. He did. He was told to be blunt and honest. He has been.

The London remarks were not out of line in the slightest. No orders were given that were of the gag variety. Even the President has acknowledged that.

However it is more than passingly strange that members of the chattering and political classes who demanded a full, public debate of the Iraq "surge" a few years back are now reaming out General McChrystal for doing that both in public and private regarding the Afghan mess.

President Obama should have realized that when he took the advice of Secretary of Defense Gates and others and appointed General McChrystal, he was naming a man renowned for his straight forward way and total intellectual integrity--to say nothing of moral courage. General McChrystal is a rare man. He is a professional man-at-arms, not a careerist ticket puncher with his nose firmly in place--and not on his face.

Just as General McChrystal is not General MacArthur updated, President Obama is not a brand new and improved version of President Truman. Truman made decisions and took personal responsibility for them. He acted quickly and decisively without regrets, without polls, and without looking back.

He consulted to be sure. But he made the decisions. He exercised leadership. He did not follow the winds of either his party (and he was the most yellow dog of yellow dog Democrats) or the American public. As the sign on his desk read, "The buck stops here."

Nor did Truman dither. Hold endless review sessions. Endless meetings with senior staff. He listened. He read. He chose. He acted. He acted in a timely manner. He was, of course, not a lawyer so he understood the real world meaning of that lawyer-loved phrase, "time is of the essence."

Truman would have appreciated McChrystal. He would have listened to McChrystal. Then he would have decided. Quickly. Effectively.

Truman deserved McChrystal. But, he had MacArthur.

McChrystal deserves Truman. He has Obama.

Pity.

The Road To Victory

Well, bucko, how about a little bit of historically derived military theory? You know, strategy and all that. It might be rooted in the past, but the implications for today are as obvious as a hippo in the bathroom.

As the coach said, "We gotta get back to the basics!"

There is nothing more basic than understanding the four ways by which military strategy has sought victory during the long and very bloody history of the human race. While most of the examples referenced are drawn from Western experience, trust ole Doc Geek, war and the four avenues to victory have existed everywhere wars have been waged.

The most basic avenue to victory is that of annihilation. The target of military operations is the enemy's forces in the field. The goal is the total destruction of these forces in one climatic battle, or as an alternative, a short series of battles.

Back when armies were small and combat was always face-to-face, the battle of annihilation was quite possible. The most often used examples of the battle of annihilation were those of Hannibal against the Romans during the Punic War. Not once but twice Hannibal encircled and obliterated the hapless Roman legions, thus establishing the paradigm of what has been the general's wet dream ever since.

The growth of mass armies and industrialized warfare seemed to spell the end of annihilation as a viable avenue to victory. But, when a massive asymmetry exists in firepower, mobility as well as the integrity and efficiency of command and control systems, the battle of annihilation can still be brought to pass. This was demonstrated dramatically during the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Now for the bad news. Annihilation does not bring victory in the sense of successful hostilities termination. What happened to Hannibal following his two splendid little victories? Yep, that's right, nothing. He and his small army wandered around Italy for awhile, went home, and eventually his successors were destroyed by a Rome which had never lost its political will even when its legions were gone.

You see the parallel with Iraq, right? No victory parade regardless of "Mission Accomplished" banners and presidential grins. The political will of those Iraqis who feared, loathed, or hated the US and other foreign interlopers made their position plain. Sectarian rivals (which really means political opponents) did the same. The result was no hostilities termination let alone conflict resolution. (That's right, the two terms are not identical with implications which will come later.)

Although the term got a bad rep during World War I and an even worse one in the course of the American War In Vietnam, attrition is a perfectly valid and often employed avenue to victory. Once again the target of military operations is the enemy's forces in the field. The goal is the progressive reduction of these forces over a relatively long time. This implies the winning side can kill its opponents faster than they can be replaced--and faster than the opponent can do the same to the eventual winner.

It is important to note that while the strategy of attrition is valid, it has never been responsible in and of itself for victory. Attrition has always looped into one of the next two avenues.

The third route to victory is erosion. Implementing the erosion strategy requires the target be the enemy's material capacity to wage war. This means destroying or disrupting the enemy's factories, agricultural base, transportation infrastructure, and other facilities critical to the continuation of the war. In the process, the enemy's forces in the field are attacked only in so far as doing such serves to overstretch and eventually break the lines of supply and the goodies fed into those lines.

The Anaconda Plan developed by Winfield Scott for defeating the Confederacy was primarily one of victory through erosion. The strategic bombing campaign of World War II, particularly in Europe, also sought victory by emphasizing erosion. The enormous resilience of industrial states with a large infrastructure and a population which can be mobilized effectively for the war effort can successfully resist erosion. This remains true even when it is multiplied in effect by attrition of the forces in the field.

What is remarkable about World War II in Europe is not that Germany was defeated. What is remarkable is the amount of time, effort, and blood the job required.

Parsed closely all three avenues outlined point to the supremacy of the final route to winning--enervation. Enervation, the progressive reduction of the enemy's political will to continue the war--is the most effective of the several alternative approaches. It is also the least well understood by military and governmental decision makers and planners. It is also the avenue least likely to be consciously chosen.

Even though the American War of Independence was won because the British elite lost the will to continue, Americans refused to accept the reality that it was not the Americans winning but the British losing which brought independence in its wake. Nonetheless, it was an American, William Sherman, who first implemented the strategy of enervation with deliberate premeditation.

Sherman, who had lived and worked in the south, understood the conflict of loyalties which could be created in the mind of Confederate troops if their homeland seemed wide open to Yankee threat. He conceived his March to the Sea as being the mechanism which would cause the collapse of morale in the Confederate forces as well as the will to continue the war in the minds of civilians generally.

The immense success of General Sherman's concept can be seen in several ways. One of the easiest is to look at one surrender. No, not the famous one of Lee to Grant. Rather the surrender to Sherman of Johnston's army, which at the time it surrendered was intact, under arms, well ordered, and securely ensconced in the mountains of North Carolina from which it could have waged guerrilla war for years. But, all hands saw no point in the exercise after the great sweeps of the March to the Sea and its successor, the March Upcountry.

Centralized, authoritarian regimes are both more and less able to resist enervation than democratic, decentralized ones. This can be seen in World War II.

The Germans never lost political will. Not until the Russian tanks and Mongolian infantry were in Berlin and the Anglo-American forces in Western and Southern Germany did the Nazi remnants toss in the sponge. Mass surrenders by German troops did not occur until the last few weeks of the war when the prospect of being taken captive by the Russians served as the stimulus to call out "Kamerad" as the Yanks or Brits drew near.

The Soviet central regime showed the same characteristic as their Nazi opponents. Once Stalin recovered his nerve a few days into the invasion, the Soviets never lost their will to resist and re-conquer. (Even if the Americans always feared the separate peace and based too much policy on this self-generated delusion.)

The story in Imperial Japan was quite different. Here the High Command, both civilian and military, was, in the main, in favor of fighting on even in the face of probable defeat. The bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima did not alter the views of these men. The mushrooms over Japan did change the mind of one man--the emperor. Hirohito made the call, "we must bear the unbearable, endure the unendurable."

On occasion enervation may occur without intent. This is what happened in August 1918 at the battle of Amiens. The British breakthrough so unnerved the war lords, Hindenburg and Ludendorf, that they advised the Kaiser the war must be ended as they could no longer guarantee the capacity of the Army to continue.

The German army had a lot of fight left in it as was shown in the aftermath of Amiens. The German population was suffering under the twin scourges of the "famine blockade" and the coming of the great flu pandemic, but the army could have kept on keeping on just as the Americans and the Allies expected. But, nerve once lost, political will once abandoned, cannot be regained. The road to Allied victory was paved by the weak knees of the German High Command.

The US lost its war in Vietnam through a case of self-inflicted enervation. This does not excuse nor ignore the raw fact that the US military fought the war in the wrong way so as to hand the political will advantage to the North Vietnamese. Nor were the antiwar protesters in and of themselves particularly responsible for the loss of political will stateside.

The sapping of American political will came from a complex of reasons poorly understood at the time and not deeply investigated by historians through the present. Basically, the combination of the draft, high American body counts, and the absence of any particular likelihood of anything approximating success were responsible for the steady loss of political will. Americans were used to "crusades" against an identifiable "evil" enemy against which we would muster all our strength and see "good" prevail in short order. We were not particularly enthused with limited wars in support of policy as the Korean War had shown a few years earlier.

Political will is a tough critter to target. This is particularly true when the enemy is a set of self-organizing groups bound together by nothing more tangible than a series of religiously rooted beliefs. In comparison to the motley and ever changing assemblage of Islamist jihadist groups and their individual members, the US is a soft target for enervation.

Absent the spur of an attack upon us or strong, decisive leadership capable of articulating a compelling reason for continuing a seemingly endless war with no prospect of anything approaching a "victory," American political will is fragile, easily enervated.

It is not surprising that support for the war in Afghanistan is slowly dropping. The surprise is that it lasted this long.

The US will not win against the Islamist jihadists whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere by enervating their political will--at least not in the foreseeable future. We can, however, defeat ourselves by losing our political will.

The real foreign policy challenge for President Obama and the others in his administration is not the specifics of a strategy for Afghanistan where success will remain quite elusive if one wants success to be defined by a Taliban surrender or the creation of a fully functioning state governed from Kabul. The real challenge is maintaining the political will of We the People lest we travel the avenue to victory called "enervation"--a victory for the jihadists.

Doing The Historian's Duty

The Geek has been severely (and correctly) chastised for having neglected to point out the grave and egregious historical errors in President Obama's Cairo Address. The purpose of this short post is to address in necessarily abbreviated form the substance of the Obama mis-conceptions of Islamic history. And, the blatant falsity of the president's contention that he was "a student of history."

With oodles and oodles of political correctness and an utter lack of historical understanding, President Obama credited Islam with having made major contributions to human knowledge in physics, math, navigation, medicine, astronomy, and chemistry. In so doing he gave credit to the followers of Mohammad which properly belonged to Europeans, Chinese, the Greeks of the Classical Period and the astrologers of the ancient societies of Mesopotamia.

The compass goes back to China. The use of zero as a place holder was developed by businessmen in India. The foundations of modern physics may be dated accurately to Galileo. Copernicus laid the base of modern astronomy. Predating both and providing the basis for the work of Galileo was the pioneering efforts of Archimedes of "Eureka!" fame. For Copernicus, the data compiled by Ptolemy were central.

Many, if not most, of the presumed advances in medicine laid improperly at the feet of Muslims were actually the product of Jewish physicians exemplified by Maimonides who practiced their calling under the Banner of the Prophet because they and their coreligionists had been expelled by the Catholic Christians of Spain. This, at least, proves that Islam is not alone in ignorant intolerance.

It is true that Arabic translations of many ancient Greek works preserved the knowledge from the censors and reactionaries of the One True Church so that they were available for re-translation into Latin as the Dark Ages of Europe faded. This reality introduced some problems such as the persistence of Arabic terms (eg algebra, alchemy) and Arabic names for celestial objects (eg Aldebaran and Betelgeuse.)

There is no doubt but the desert dwelling Muslims observed the sky. But, we know from the archaeological record that all that was seen by the late coming Muslims had been systematically compiled by the astrologers of the Land Between The Rivers two thousand and more years earlier.

Muslims dabbled in chemistry or, to err on the side of accuracy, alchemy, as did the Europeans. But, their contributions to what emerged in the Seventeenth Century as chemistry was of no more consequence than the searches for the philosopher's stone by the alchemists of Europe.

The Muslims cannot take any credit for serving as a transmission belt between Asia and Europe or between the Classic Age of Rome and Greece and the beginnings of the Renaissance. Both were accidents. An accident of geography and trade routes. An accident of time, particularly the time of Catholic intellectual repression.

In short, the Muslims were no more critical in the development of modern science and technology than the Geek's Apache ancestors. As far as physics, math, chemistry, astronomy and medicine are concerned, the Muslims might just as well have never existed.

And, it could have been no other way. Islam ascribes all causation to the will of Allah. The positing of supernatural causation assures that science as we have come to understand both the term and the method behind it cannot exist, cannot even begin.

Science in Europe had to battle against the "Will of God" stricture. Ultimately, science won. But the battle was not short, was not low cost and continues in an important way yet today. One need not look behind the absurd claims of the "creationists" to see that reality.

In truth the battle never really got underway in the societies dominated by Islam. This is not to say or imply that Muslims are not personally, individually, capable of mastering the methods of the several scientific disciplines. Rather, it is to conclude from the historical and contemporary record that the doctrine and dogma of Islam fights against the development of true, wide-ranging, joyously inquiring, icon shattering science.

Unless and until the Muslim collective mind can come to some sort of consensus on the limits of the "If-Allah-Wills" stricture, there will not be any more science in the Islamic societies of tomorrow than there was in the past.

That's a tough truth. Tossing aside the culturally implanted dogma of religion and the personal identity features which come with it is not easy. But, unless and until it is done by Muslims generally and not simply a few here and there, who run the risk of being slaughtered as "apostates," people of Islamic adherence will never be full partners in the scientific quest to better understand the universe in which we live.

President Obama and his speech writers deserve an "A" in political correctness. They merit a flat out "F" for history. And, an "F" for doing real service to the best aspirations and potentials of Muslims everywhere.

Attack Of The Killer Bots

Science fiction writers back in the Fifties and Sixties wrote a number of high quality yarns dealing with the notion of autonomous, lethal robots as the primary war fighters of the future. While none had the planet-busting capacities imputed to Gort in the classic flick, Day the Earth Stood Still, these fictive creations were impressively deadly.

Continuing the trajectories of the past seven or so years modestly into the future as the fine folks at the Defense Research Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) and other components of the DoD's research and development community (which collective the Geek refers to as Weapons Advanced Research Investigations Group or WARPIG) are tasked to do, it is evident that reality will have caught up with sci-fi by 2015 at the latest. The people in the air-conditioned control facility in Nevada running Predators and Reapers on the other side of the Earth will be as obsolescent as the eyeball only forward controllers of past years and wars.

The High Minded Deep Thinkers of the Legal War variety are already in a tizzy over the potential of gun and missile slinging autonomous killerbots roving the earth below and the sky above looking for someone to kill, something to blow up. These academic and jurisprudential types are fretting over the prospect that without a human in the loop, future wars will of necessity be cluttered by heaps of dead non-combatants and piles of ruins which were previously hospitals, orphanages and religious facilities.

The techno-wonks reply, "Pashaw!" They argue that properly written programs will prevent such targeting errors. They add that killerbots will lack the emotions which cloud human decision making.

The Geek is not competent to comment on programming matters. He is, however, qualified by both experience and study to acknowledge that in contact, in a firefight, after being covered by slime which a moment ago was one's buddy's brains, cool and rational thought is impaired, the emotions run high and the right index finger can twitch with wild abandon.

The techo types finally argue that the pace of some combat operations such as air-to-air contact is simply too rapid for slow human mental processes. Besides, they contend, autonomous systems typified by the Navy's Phalanx Close-In Weapons System have been in use for years without controversy.

The Geek finds nothing wrong with these two contentions.

However, both the techos and the war ethicists miss a critical point. They both show a lack of understanding as to the nature and character of war. This point was also missed by the science fiction writers of past decades.

War is waged in order to force one side to submit to the policy dictates of the other. Both sides are pursuing a political end by violent means. In the eyes of each belligerent, the political goal represents a better state of peace. They can't both be right. The gods of battle determine which will prevail.

War is at root a contest not simply of arms and armies but of political will, of determination, of the capacity to endure regardless of sacrifice, regardless of misery, regardless of bloodshed and destruction. It is a contest between humans and the material agencies they create.

Historically war between enemies of equal technological capacity and levels of organisational complexity has ended either in an inconclusive stalemate or in the obliteration of one combatant's forces in the field, political will and social cohesion. Wars between belligerents which are not relatively equal in industrial/technological capacities and political/social organisational complexity have ended when one side loses political will and quits.

The only exceptions to that general statement have come when the "winning" side has such an abundance of material and human resources as well as a very high level of political will that the war ends with the total subjugation of the loser. The best, most recent examples of this are the vast number of colonial wars waged across North and South America, Africa and Asia during the Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries.

Importantly, no war--that's right--no war has been a contest between materiel per se. No country has been defeated simply through the destruction of materiel and physical plant. Not the Confederate States. Not Germany in either World War. Not even Japan even after the US Air Forces had leveled square mile after square mile of every Japanese urban industrial center.

People continue wars because men of their side die in combat. In a very real sense every war reaches a stage where the dead dictate policy. Where the collective political voice of a nation demands that their dead shall not have died in vain.

People end wars because enough folks on their side have died. Because the fear and loathing of death and destruction become more powerful than the initial commitment to the goal of the war or even the belief that the dead shall not have died in vain.

When the course of political will is tracked in every war of the modern (and now the so called post-modern) period, there is a direct link between combat deaths and, first, an increase in determination, followed by a progressive enervation of political will until terminal war weariness sets in.

In short, wars are not some sort of high-tech, high-expense form of chess. Without the up-close and personal human involvement in war, there can be no outcome. Not even semi-permanent closure of hostilities.

A war waged in whole or in major part by autonomous killer robots would, at the very best, resemble the limited wars of the Eighteenth Century in Europe. The wars were limited in death. Very limited in destruction. And, very, very inconclusive. As a result wars followed one another like circus elephants in trunk-to-tail procession.

Not until the wars of the French Revolution did war become a bloody, human contest with goals beyond the adjustment of boundaries or the satisfaction of royal egos. Then and only then did war once again become a struggle of political wills with genuine and long lasting results--including, it must be added, the cause of future wars.

Even the limited war in support of policy (or as it now called "overseas contingency operations") is at root a contest of political will. For Americans this kind of war, the most common it should be noted, is particularly difficult to understand and fight. We have a particular horror of casualties, particularly those of the fatal sort, so we bend our abilities to the task of winning while saving American lives.

There is nothing wrong with desiring to save the maximum number of American lives. The Geek is all in favor of that. With one proviso.

If, in the attempt to limit American exposure to risk, the US forces fight in a way which fails to undercut the opponent's political will, the war will drag on and on without an end in sight. There will be no better state of peace emerging.

OK, to err on the side of accuracy, there is another proviso, but it is linked to the first. If the US wages war in the wrong way or uses the wrong weapons, the very fact of doing so will strengthen the enemy's political will to resist. This is particularly true when the war is, to the Americans, a mere limited effort in support of some policy, and, to the enemy, it is an existential war or a war of transcendent significance.

The war currently being waged in Afghanistan and (in pertinent part) the FATA of Pakistan is such a war. For us it is merely an excursion in policy and punishment. For the Islamist jihadists of the target area, it is a war which is both existential and transcendent.

Our stand-off way of fighting can and has inflicted casualties on the enemy. It has killed key leadership cadre members.

But (here it comes again, the big "but") it has not undercut political will. Indeed, more than adequate information exists to support the contention that the remote control Predator and Reaper operations like air delivered death generally has been defined by potential targets as pusillanimous at best. They hold us in contempt for the way we fight.

You don't win by machines breaking machines. You don't win by machines merely killing people. You don't win by killing people. You win by killing political will within a group.

This means some must be killed. But, they have to be killed in the right way. Killer robots are not and never will be able to fill that mission.