The Beauty Of Asymmetrical War

Last night in his announcement of his intended draw down of American forces in Afghanistan, President Obama underscored the beauty, the appeal of asymmetrical war for those who put their strategic fortunes in its ample basket.  Stripped of its camouflage, cover, and concealment the president's words conveyed the simple appeal of asymmetrical war--it works.

Asymmetrical war worked in Afghanistan. That is obvious.  The US has lost.  And announced that defeat in the verbiage of declaring victory.  The president made all the expected genuflections before the alter of economic necessity.  He took the position that now was the time for "nation-building" here in the US.  But, under this convenient shelter, the reality remains.  The reality is blunt.  The US, We the People, the government which purports to represent us and seek to protect our national interests abroad, has lost the political will to continue the war.

This, my friends, is the goal in all asymmetrical wars.  Defeat the numerically and technologically superior enemy by progressively exhausting his political will to continue.  Taliban, the Haqqani network, even the not-quite-pathetic remnants of al-Qaeda as well as their supporters and sponsors in Pakistan have succeeded in so enervating the political will of the US that we are tossing in the sponge even as we teeter on the edge of military success.

The announcement does nothing to advance the progress of the very tentative talks with Taliban representatives.  History in both the Korean and Vietnamese wars shows that diplomacy of talking depends for progress let alone success upon the diplomacy of the gun.  The battlefield and negotiating table are connected head, shoulder, and hip.  Only the continued demonstration of political will in combat serves to convince the talkers at the table that they had best make the best deal possible as quickly as possible lest they lose everything on the bullet raked fields of battle.

Given that the only campaign of vital interest to President Obama is Campaign 2012, his decision to undercut the efforts of the past two years in Afghanistan and declare the losses of dollars (replaceable) and hundreds of lives (irreplaceable) to be written off in fact if not in rhetoric was to be expected.  He would have announced an even faster pull out, such as that demanded by his progressive base, if that move would not have simultaneously cost him potential votes among the rest of the electorate.  As it was, his decision was informed far more by the polls showing the escalating war weariness among We the People than the expert advice of the commanders on the ground.

Ten years ago the thought that the US would suffer one more defeat in an asymmetrical war was almost unthinkable.  Within the military there was a widespread belief that the phrase "no more Vietnams" meant or at least implied that the US would never again engage in an intervention or, if we did, it would be of the very limited sort typified by the operations in Kosovo.  Overall, the men in uniform thought that the so-called Powell Doctrine would prevail.  No significant military commitment absent an overwhelming force and full domestic support.

The small number of people both in and out of uniform who had spent the decades of the Eighties and Nineties studying asymmetrical war under its several different names--unconventional war, interventionary operations, limited war, counterinsurgency--were not so optimistic.  The end of the cold war had liberated a number of pressures which would result in small, nasty wars some of which would put American interests in peril.  At the same time the effects of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the ongoing Arab-Israeli war served to promote the growth of violent political Islam.  The net result was the conclusion that the US would be in an asymmetrical conflict with an Islamist adversary within the next ten years--and, neither the military nor the civilian government would be ready to fight that inevitable war.

The past ten years have shown, as the Geek adumbrated in yesterday's post, the power of asymmetrical war in a way both dramatic and unmistakable.  Now that the power of that sort of war has been underscored by President Obama's message of American defeat, asymmetrical conflict will be more common around the world at the same time as the US will be decreasingly willing to take up the challenge.

Now, like the coach sez, "let's get back to basics."

One basic about asymmetrical war is that it is nothing new.  Over the sanguine centuries of warfare--defined as the centrally directed, organized application of violence to a political goal by a state, a pretender to statehood or a non-state actor--asymmetrical wars have been as numerous as peer-to-peer conflicts.  Insurgencies, both offensive (revolutionary) and defensive (separatist,) have been and continue to be asymmetrical in nature.  All peacekeeping or peace imposition (stability) operations are inherently asymmetrical.  The increasing use of proxies, the growth in sponsored transnational terrorism, the rise of narco-warfare, all of these constitute sub-sets of asymmetrical wars.  All will be common in the future for reasons to be considered in later posts.

A second basic about asymmetrical war is that it is identical to conventional peer-to-peer conflicts in one essential respect.  The intent is to bring about a better state of peace by bending the enemy to your political will.  The difference, a very critical one, between the peer-to-peer war and its asymmetrical kin is found in the means of bending the enemy to your will.  The side initiating the asymmetrical conflict seeks to attack and progressively reduce the target's political will and social cohesiveness by imposing costs which are politically and economically unacceptable while remaining tolerable to the attacker.

Here is the takeaway, the nitty-gritty which was not understood ten years ago but is blindingly apparent today: The goal of al-Qaeda and similar entities was to inflict such politically and economically unacceptable costs on the US employing means which capitalized on strengths inherent to Muslims such as to compel the US to accede to a set of political demands.  Based upon the American responses to earlier attacks, the expectation that the attacks of 9/11 would be sufficient to force the US to bend to Arab political will was not lunatic in nature.

The weak and ineffective responses by the US to the series of terror strikes on American targets both overseas and domestically convinced Osama bin Laden and others (including some holding positions of authority in Pakistani agencies) that the proposed 9/11 attacks would be effective at low risk for retaliation.  While the Clinton administration was correct to have responded to the truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center as a law enforcement matter, its limp wristed reactions to later attacks, Khobar Towers, the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as the water borne hit on the USS Cole were not only too little, too late, they were de facto admissions of impotency.  Each demonstrated the power resident in asymmetry.  It was only logical to anticipate the same sort of non-linearity when nineteen good Muslims converted commercial aircraft into manned cruise missiles.

Bin Laden and company blew it.  They had misjudged the American character.  They didn't understand the Pearl Harbor syndrome and its potency in the collective American mind.  Instead of the expected flight of easily evaded cruise missiles, the Mighty Men of the Great Sheik got a reasonable imitation of a military full court press.

Now comes one of the most, perhaps the most, thoroughly delicious ironies known to the Geek (a devoted collector of historical ironies.)  The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Neocon Ninny administration blew their phase of the asymmetrical war as much or more than bin Laden blew his.  They failed to understand what previous leaders had discovered.  In the counter strike period of an asymmetrical war, one uses overwhelming force quickly and decisively.  The superior force must be employed so as to bring the speedy and complete destruction of the inferior.

The archaic, politically impolite but quite accurate term for this counter strike is "punitive expedition."  The goal is to demonstrate political will as well as military supremacy by obliterating the enemy who mounted the attack while "punishing" what and whomsoever supported, facilitated, or gave safe haven to the attacker.  The purpose of the exercise is not judicial in nature.

One is not interested in bringing an alleged offender before the bar of justice, but to eliminate him.  With respect to those who aid, abet, and protect the enemy, the purpose is to inflict an unacceptable level of economic, social, and political damage upon him.  The superior force uses his capacities to squash the offensive but inferior one in a manner akin to the Monty Python giant foot descending irresistibly from the clouds.

The response of the attacked but superior target is quick, brutal, and decisive.  The word "brutal" may be offensive to today's hyper-sensitive ears but in the final analysis it is a far more humane approach than would be the ineffective efforts at "nation-building" embarked upon by the clueless bunch in the Bush/Cheney White House and continued until last night by the successor Obama administration.

Afghanistan has been termed the "graveyard of empires" not because the empires lacked the means to successfully defeat and occupy the land and people of the region but rather because the "empires", British, Russian, and American, have lost their political will in the face of the rugged physical and, even more, the spiky human terrain of the place.  All, and, most particularly, the American, efforts have foundered because the invader has lacked the political will necessary or the correct strategic and operational concepts to prevail.

The takeaway here is simple.  When entering an asymmetrical war, the US must not only employ sufficient means quickly and firmly, it must limit its goals to those which can be achieved by purely military means.  These goals are few and easily defined.  Military force can topple a regime, but it cannot build one.  It can impose a peace but it cannot create stability.  It can punish a malefactor but it cannot rehabilitate one.  It can back the diplomacy of talk, but it cannot replace it.  Most importantly, military force can terminate hostilities, but it cannot resolve the underlying conflict which resulted in the outbreak of hostilities.

Whether any of us like the idea or not, there will be future challenges in the area of asymmetrical war.  The specter of transnational terror has not left the world.  Nor has the threat posed by violent political Islam.  Even if peace breaks out in Afghanistan, there are plenty of other locations where asymmetrical attacks might be planned and mounted.  There is Yemen.  There is Somalia.  There is Sudan.  There is Pakistan.  Any or all of these might become necessary targets of an American counter strike.  So also might a number of other failed or failing states.

There is more to be learned from a defeat resolutely and honestly studied than a victory celebrated.  Now that the president has announced an American defeat (or, if it makes you feel better, an incomplete success) in Afghanistan, the time has come to take a very long, very hard, and very honest look at what was done wrong--and right--in Afghanistan.  We must be prepared to do the job right the next time out, for there will be a next time regardless of the wishes of any of us.

Or, there is an alternative.  We can build a very high and very thick wall around the US and pretend the rest of the world isn't out there.

A Fiftieth Anniversary--And An Object Lesson For Today

Cuba went all giddy a couple of days ago.  The reason was the Fiftieth Anniversary of the failed Bay of Pigs "invasion" of Cuba by an American trained and equipped motley brigade of refugees.  The initial plan for the operation came during the closing days of the Eisenhower administration.  The plan was predicated upon highly overly optimistic projections of weakness on the part of the Castro regime plucked from the imaginations of recently arriving political refugees.

The Eisenhower administration passed the plan along to the incoming Kennedy people.  The bunch surrounding JFK was comprised of steely-eyed cold war liberals eager to show how the job of containing and rolling back communism should and could be done.  Propelled by faith in their ideology, the New Frontiersmen backed the evermore ambitious plans of CIA for their proxy army.  A glittering assemblage of unjustified assumptions and fond hopes was assembled.  By the time it was necessary to make a final go/no-go decision, all hands with the exception of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had convinced themselves that the operation would succeed.  Even the handful of doubters took comfort in the belief that should the operation stumble, the US military would come to the rescue.

When push did come to shove as it must, the belief that the cavalry would back the play of the invaders was proven false.  For reasons good or bad President Kennedy refused to allow the US Navy, which was offshore with aircraft fueled and bombed up, to take part in the rapidly failing effort.  Our aircraft were limited to making demonstration passes safely offshore, and the Marines most assuredly did not land.

Within two days it was all over.  The invaders were all dead or captured.  Castro was more firmly in control than ever.  The US was humiliated.  And, a valuable lesson should have been learned--there is no such thing as a plausibly deniable military operation after the administration of the United States had declared that a given foreign leader was unacceptable to it.

Before embarking on his strangely bifurcate effort in Libya, President Obama would have been very well advised to revisit the misadventure in Cuba.  After all Mr Obama had made it clear that the policy goal of the US was the removal of Brother Leader Gaddafi (or choose the alternative spelling you prefer.)  Once these words had passed the president's lips, the whole world knew just what the US, the purported front porch dog of the Free World, wanted in Libya.  The real deal of the attendant UN Security Council resolution, for all its diplomatic pap (inserted so that neither Russia nor China would exercise the veto) about protecting civilians, was that the US in conjunction with at least two other Great Powers, France and the UK, sought the removal of Gaddifi.  The Colonel would go, peacefully if possible, violently if that was the only option.

Every halfway thoughtful observer knows perfectly well that the removal of an obnoxious regime is not difficult.  The US did the job in a matter of days in Afghanistan and mere weeks in Iraq.  The removal part of regime change is easy to accomplish.  The problems in both Afghanistan and Iraq came later--in the bootless attempt to create a modern Western style nation-state in Afghanistan and the very difficult task of seeing Iraq create of itself a reasonable simulacrum of a functioning nation-state with some aspects of democracy and rule  of law.

In Libya the same paradigm would have applied if the Obama administration had not opted to retreat behind the screen of proxies, in this case NATO.  When this choice was made, the path to a replay of the Bay of Pigs was charted.

Showing an abysmal ignorance of history--even very recent history, Mr Obama confused the removal part of regime change with the what-next? effort of seeing a new government created by a society unused to the freedom of creating its own polity.  He also failed to understand that there is no way the US can hide the bright light of its policy under the bushel of a proxy.

Had the US gone full bore into Libya, including the use of ground forces for combat against Gaddafi's loyalist units, Brother Leader would be gone already.  It is important to note that by removing the obnoxious leader the US would not have accrued an automatic responsibility for maintaining the good order within Libya.  Nor would it have taken the burden of turning Libya into a modern, pluralistic Western style democratic nation-state.  Both of these are misapprehensions.

The sole responsibility of the US would have been the execution of its declaratory policy--removing Gaddafi and by so doing protect civilians against the harm created by his loyalist forces.  The follow-on of creating a national polity from the tribal matrix of Libya would have been up to the Libyans with whatever assistance from other states or international organizations they might request.  The doctrine of R2P does not impose an unending task upon whatever state or states removes the threat to the civilians in need of protection.

Obama like Kennedy wanted to eat his cake while retaining it intact.  Both presidents wanted to abate a nuisance to American policy interests but had no desire to carry the long term freight of reconstituting the polity.  To this end both sought to use proxies.  In part Obama has seen the rebels in Libya as the equivalent of the exile Cuban "freedom fighters" with NATO playing the role which should have been undertaken by the US at the Bay of Pigs.

The Libyan insurgents are an even weaker reed than were the exiles at the Bay of Pigs.  This implies strongly that the Libyans would need even greater amounts of outside aid than did the Cubans of a half century ago.  An acceptance of this ground truth places an even greater onus on the US to use effective military force against Gaddafi and his loyalists.  Passing the buck to a divided and force impaired NATO set the stage for a stalemate in Libya and a loss of credibility for NATO.

Fifty years ago JFK made the worst decision possible.  If Castro was as American declaratory policy had maintained completely unacceptable to us, a threat to the peace and stability of the Western Hemisphere and a potential threat to CONUS, the right decision was to send in our forces in sufficient numbers to abate the nuisance quickly and decisively.  If, on the other hand, Castro was in fact a mere annoyance, a diplomatic conundrum, an embarrassment, the proper choice was to do nothing.  The worst option by far was the unsupportable attempt at covert invasion by proxy forces.

So it is in Libya.  If Gaddafi really is a challenge to national or strategic interests as Mr Obama's rhetoric holds, then the proper option is to go in fast and hard so as to remove the man and his forces.  If, to the contrary, Gaddafi is a threat only to his own people, then the US should have stayed out.  Or, if R2P is now to be a cornerstone of US policy, the correct choice is once again to move in openly, fast, and hard and then, after the removal of Gaddafi, back out and turn affairs over to the Libyans and whatever leaders they find in their midst giving only such aid as may be requested and justified.

From that list Mr Obama had a two in three chance of getting it right.  He didn't.  He chose the only bad option in the lot--the proxy effort to achieve American declaratory policy.  He sought to justify his blunder by what must either be spectacular ignorance of recent history or flat out tergiversation.  His use of Iraq, his "we have been down that road before" remark is a complete misrepresentation of what happened in Iraq.  The regime was changed in mere weeks and the consequent internal war was in large measure the foreseeable and preventable consequence of an ill-founded effort at nation-building which could have been avoided by the simple expedient of leaving the matter up to the Iraqis and providing only such aid as they requested specifically.

The same could have been accomplished in Libya.  All that was necessary was the assurance that the political goal was carefully and narrowly defined and that military force was crafted to achieve that goal.  Bereft of any implied responsibility for giving the Libyans a turn-key modern Western style state (which they don't want in any event) the task of directly turning declaratory policy into actual events would have been easy.

JFK is one of Obama's heroes.  It is too bad that the Nice Young Man From Chicago could not learn one simple lesson from Kennedy's second biggest blunder.

Let Somebody Else Do It

Secretary of Defense Gates' message was simple, blunt, and to the point.  The US will do only those few things which other countries lack the capacity to do.  We will provide midair refueling, surveillance, and reconnaissance, some forms of communication, and intelligence.  We will not provide weapons or training to the anti-government forces in Libya.  In his view there are numerous other states which can do these tasks just as there are others who can patrol the no-fly zone or provide strike sorties intended to protect civilians from harm.

Leaving aside the more than slightly evident tensions between protecting civilians from all harm and the needs of the anti-Gaddafi forces for close air support and the accompanying sour sounds of hypocrisy, the position staked out by Dr Gates in testimony today showed a coldly realistic understanding of what the US can and cannot, should and should not do in the turgid turbulence of Libya.  The most realistic part of the Gates' view is its protective stance.  The limits placed on the American contribution to the "international community's" effort to immunize civilians from the effects of living in a war zone were clearly intended to protect against both mission creep of the sort which destroyed the American effort in Afghanistan as well as to shield Washington from the inevitable charges coming from the Kremlin, the Forbidden City, and elsewhere to the effect that the strictures of the relevant UN Security Council resolution were being transgressed.

There may be mission creep; there will be violation of the spirit and letter of Resolution 1973, but the US will not be a party to either.  This may not be the most courageous policy.  It most assuredly is not in the damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead! tradition of American war fighting or diplomacy.  It is, however, what is needed right now in the context of both Libya and the wider Mideast political tumult.  The view espoused by Gates in such clear and unmistakable fashion serves to give the US needed distance, needed time.  Both are necessary if the US is to formulate a genuine policy for facing the new political landscape of the region.

The Gates' formulation carries with it a very large downside.  This was recognized quite specifically by both the Defense Secretary and Admiral Mullen.  The downside is simply that when night falls Gaddafi may well still be in power.  The prospect of a stalemate, a de facto division between Cyrenaica and the rest of Libya, is real.  So is an outcome in which there is but one Libya under the direction of Gaddafi.

Either of these two outcomes would expose both Libyans and the world to the prospect of Gadaffi 1.0, the Brother Leader who never met a terrorist group he didn't want to fund, the international mischief maker whose wake was marked by downed airliners, blown up buildings, corpses, and failed states.  Whether for a few months or a handful of years, the restoration of the old model Gaddafi would be the worst of bad news for the people of the world.  The continuation in power of Brother Leader would be the worst conceivable development for Libyans, upon whose bodies the full fury of the man's sense of betrayal would lash.

Yet, in the real world, what alternative does the US have right now?  One can construct alternatives, but the least-worst outcome sort would have had to have been put into place weeks before the passage of the UN Resolution and the imposition of the no-fly/civilian protection zones.  Having come to the Libyan game too late and in an inherently overly limited way, the problem of constructing alternative policies to the one outlined by Robert Gates becomes far more problematical.

The problematical nature of the alternatives arise from the unique schizophrenia which afflicts the Arab mind.  It is a schizoid world view which was seen quite clearly in Iraq.  And, it has leaked around the edges of the political debates in recent weeks.

One prong of the schizophrenic view comes from the evident fact that the Libyan insurgents cannot fight in an effective, coordinated fashion.  It is not that the government forces loyal to Gaddafi are all that much better trained or equipped than the rebels for they are not.

(In this context it is worthwhile to spend some time checking out the immense amount of imagery available.  There is no essential difference between the equipment deployed by either the Gaddafi or rebel forces.  Nor is there much apparent difference in competence in military basics from digging in on the defense to the combination of fire and movement on the attack.)

The only essential difference between rebels and government is that the latter but not the former possesses a command structure.  Without a command structure, a coherent table of organization, none of the other features of military organization, communications, logistics, tactics, operational doctrine, are relevant.  The presence or absence of a command structure makes it possible for a numerically inferior force to beat its superior.  It allows a force comprised of men who are not a race of natural warriors (it there is such a critter) to defeat one comprised of heroes.  Command is all in war.

Well, if not exactly all, command, the capacity to control violence from a central location with a fair certainty that orders will be obeyed, is the sine qua non of effective war fighting.  The rebels have none.  The Gaddafi forces have some.  Therein lies the difference--and what a difference is clear from the imagery of the rabble running from a few distant incoming rockets or artillery shells.

There is nothing that can be done in a short span of time to address the critical lack of command in the rebel forces.  The lack is not simply one of training or inexperience.  Rather, the absence of command structure is organic to the society which produced the insurgents.

As a consequence the ability of outside "donors" be they NATO or Arab League to make up the deficiency is zero.  Supplying weapons will not address the absence of command.  Ditto training.  The only way command and its concomitants, control and communication, could be provided in a timely fashion would be for some outside combat force to take over the ground operations.  Sure, some Libyans could be attached to the "foreign" combat units, but they would be simply there for the optics.

In the alternative, the US and other outsiders can hope that the charade of the no-fly/civilian protection zones can be continued long enough for the insurgents to realize they must develop and put into effective practice their own command, control, and communication system--that they must gain a genuine command structure which is generally conceded to be legitimate in the eyes of the fighters it commands and controls.

The US and other countries may well introduce black and special operations forces both civilian and military, but this alone will not provide sufficient command capacity to offset the advantage enjoyed by the Gaddafi units in a timely enough fashion.  Rather, the employment of these genera of capacities will provide some aid to the insurgents by allowing better coordination of air strikes and ground movement.  This will enhance the staying power of the insurgents so as to provide time for these people to discover they need a command structure.

Of course, this brings yet another risk for the US and the other Western powers.  The individuals most likely to realize that they need a command structure are those with prior experience fighting against the US and its allies in Iraq.

(After all,  if these Fearless and Mighty Men of Islam are at all honest and possessed of a capacity for self-examination, they have come to understand that the single greatest reason the Bearded Warriors of the Prophet (PBUH) had their collective posteriors kicked by the infidels and apostates was the greater effectiveness of the infidel and apostate command, control, and communication systems.)

This means the advocates of violent political Islam will come to greater prominence in the effort to topple Gaddafi with results in the post-conflict environment not likely to promote Western norms, values, or interests. The Gates' approach coupled with the indigenous failings of the Libyan insurgents will prove harmful to our longer term interests in the country and the region.

However, we have no real alternative.  Remember the Arab schizophrenia?  The other prong of this world view arises from the antipathy Arab Muslims have for the notion of infidels killing Arab Muslims.  As the pretended(?) horror expressed by the Arab League at the idea that Arab Muslims were dying downrange as the US and others imposed the no-fly/civilian protection zone showed dramatically, there is a genuine loathing aroused in the Arab mind at the killing of good Arab Muslims (even soldiers) by the infidels.

If the Americans or the British or the French put troops on the ground and these troops actually kill Gaddafi's fighters, the hatred will be both real and explosive.  There would be a replay of the dynamics of Iraq and Afghanistan.  There is no way around that.  It is an emotional reality which cannot be denied.  It can only be exploited.  And, exploited it would be.  Not simply by AQIM but by every advocate of violent political Islam in the world.  The wave of fear, loathing, and hatred would be ridden by others as well, by Muslim "moderates" eager to keep their heads above the political tide, by non-Muslims who are rivals, even enemies of the US and its Western allies.

That is why we cannot simply go in and square matters away.  Matters would refuse to be squared away.  The emotional sensitivities of Arab Muslims and their capacity to deny realities other than those conditioned by a narrative of religion would assure what should have been a simple, direct, and straight forward ending of a very nasty regime and its death squads would transmogrify into one more protracted war of religion and identity.

The Libyan Question admits of no good answer.  The approach espoused by Secretary Gates is no more and no less than the least-worst way of dealing with the Question while honestly admitting that we have no capacity to answer it.

The Libyan "Moment" Has Come--And Gone

Not that many years ago the phrase "cheese eating surrender monkeys" was applied by crotch-grabbing, red blooded, red meat eating, American hyperpatriots to the French.  The French government of the day had refused to go along with the Bush/Cheney Great Adventure in Regime Change in Iraq.  As a result, some of We the People were not only unimpressed, they wanted to rename French fries something more suitable.

Now the term can be applied to the West generally--provided the French and British are specifically exempted.  In diametric opposition to the stance adopted by President Obama and his "foreign policy team," the French have moved quickly to recognize the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya.  In conjunction with David Cameron, President Nicholas Sarkozy called for the immediate imposition of a no-fly zone days ago.

In short, the French are waving the banner of defiance in the face of the American surrender monkeys who evidently prefer to chomp political cheese while Gaddafi moves closer to victory.  In a stunning show of total indifference not only to the upcoming slaughter in Libya but core interests of the US and its allies, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton rejected a no-fly zone after having met with insurgent leaders in Paris.

The secretary waved the White House's white flag with the usual blather about the necessity of the UN Security Council authorizing any such action.  Ms Clinton knows that at least China will veto the idea.  The Russians are inclined in that direction as well but have preferred to use the stall approach demanding operational details before considering any resolution.

Any invocation of the Security Council in the context of the Libyan Question is akin to imploring the Great Ju-Ju with sacrificial maidens in order to avert a total meltdown of the incandescent reactor cores in Japan.  Ms Clinton knows this.  So does President Obama.  Both are simply looking for the safest way out of a very real dilemma.  They want the Libyan Question to answer itself so that Mr Obama will not have to abandon his successful political posture as being anything and everything George W. Bush was not.

The fear of losing his identity as I-Am-Not-George-Bush, the Clueless Guy in the Oval is quite willing to see Libyans die.  Worse, he is willing to place the present and future national and strategic interests of the US in peril--great peril.

There is no doubt but Mr Obama and the rest of his "team" will soon embrace the new narrative being written rapidly by assorted members of the American and European "elites."  The new version of life in Libya has the Colonel "winning" so quickly and convincingly that the imposition of a no-fly zone would be too little and too late to be of value to the insurgents.

There is a good deal of truth to the "new" narrative.  As the Geek has noted in several previous posts, the insurgents' initial buoyant optimism was unwarranted in the extreme.  Their attempt at victory through a rapid escalade were doomed to fail and then time would be on the side of Gaddafi and company.  As has been obvious from the beginning, Brother Leader's forces had better organization, better training, better equipment, and a high degree of motivation which extended from the top down.  In comparison, the insurgents were a disorganized, badly equipped mob with an attitude.

Gaddifi may speak and act like a nut job, but he falls in the old cliche of "crazy like a fox."  He has shown a very real talent for manipulating perceptions in the West as well as playing the divide and conquer game domestically.  As he has a total disregard for the lives and well being of the Libyan people, there has never been any doubt about his willingness and ability to keep power while standing on a mountain of bodies.  In short, he can kill his way to victory--at least a temporary victory.

Even if his continued tenure in office is measured in months, or a couple of years at most, his capacity to do damage, even create havoc should and must not be underestimated.  At present--in largest measure due to the need of President Obama and many other Western leaders such as Ms Merkel for a spine transplant--the Colonel is going to emerge victorious.

Over the longer haul the combination of economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation will fatally weaken the Gaddafi family enterprise.  The weakening will occur faster if the insurgents are able to switch to a guerrilla war operational doctrine.  Assorted Western analysts have concluded this is what the future bodes.

Perhaps.  The Libyans of the western region have a history of effective and prolonged guerrilla war.  The campaign against the Italian occupiers was centered in the region surrounding Benghazi, Cyrenaica.  In the end, of course, the Italians prevailed, largely because they were willing and able to kill their way to victory.  Given the resources available to the Gaddafi regime, there are good reasons to assert the government today can do the same only much faster.

This is not to say the insurgents cannot successfully attack the overextended government forces and their very long and highly vulnerable land line of communication.  They can mount attacks.  They can inflict damage and casualties on the Gaddafi loyalists.  They can prevent the Colonel's killers from enjoying unquestioned success, of sleeping soundly after the victory party.  Still, the probability of toppling the Gaddafi regime by means of guerrilla war is slim.

No matter how the cake is cut, the result is the same.  Without foreign assistance, the insurgents will lose.  This means Gaddafi will be back--bigger and badder than ever.  He may not last that many months, but he can make those months pure hell for Libyans--and others as well.

This implies with strength and vigor that some country among the civilized states must take the lead.  It is no use invoking the magic of the United Nations.  The UN Security Council due to the domestic policy considerations so critical to both China and Russia will remain the "god that failed."  NATO is also a non-starter given the position adopted by the Merkel government and supported in principle by other countries as well.  The same applies to the European Union.

Nor can the Libyans and the world look to the US.  President Obama is a genuine "cheese eating surrender monkey" quite willing to sacrifice the national interests of the US on the alter of personal ambition and before the totem of fearing to be seen as one more George W. Bush.

And so the world spins.  Downward--at least from the perspective of the US and other civilized states.

Bring On The Clowns

The Libyan Affray has a magnetic appeal.  The confrontation between a dictator seemingly unmoored from the consensually agreed upon objective reality and a large, growing group of terminally fed up people has the elements of drama and tragedy which attracts interest and seemingly demands engagement by governments great and small.

One of the more intriguing, not to say potentially amusing, gambits of late has come from the Arab League.  The League, whose director, an Egyptian politician named Moussa, who is seeking the office of president in that country, has stated it is willing to enforce a no-fly zone in Libya.  The Arab League added it would do this in conjunction with the African Union.

The idea originated with Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi expat who was briefly "our man in Baghdad" before the Great Adventure in Regime Change.  He argued the League could do what the US and its allies did in Iraq after the Kuwait War.  The Arab League picked up on the idea as both the UN and NATO showed a profound lack of interest in ordering or enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya.

There is no doubt but some politicians including UK prime minister David Cameron have exhibited a zeal for imposing a no-fly zone which is not widely shared by the respective military forces and their chiefs.  Leading the opposition in public has been Robert Gates.

Dr Gates correctly points out that the imposition of a no-fly zone is both complex and resource intensive.  He is also correct when he warns that establishing a no-fly zone requires waging war, admittedly war of a severely limited sort.  The starting gun announcing the beginning of a no-fly zone is an attack upon the air defense system of the target country.  Missiles would be launched.  Bombs would be dropped.  Men would die down range.  That, bucko, is war no matter what name is put upon it.

He is being disingenuous when he emphasizes the size of Libya and implies that its geographic extent would render the imposition and maintenance of a no-fly zone more complex and resource demanding than the earlier efforts in Bosnia and Iraq.  The critical regions of Libya, the areas where fighting is occurring and where people live and air bases are located are found in a narrow band along the coast.  While there are bases deep in the desert wastes, these can be kept under surveillance by long endurance UAVs or satellites with manned platforms being deployed only as required.

There is one good reason why the US and Western European countries will not establish a no-fly zone.  In the current political climate there is a requirement for UN Security Council authorization.  No such authorization will occur.  Period.  China stated categorically that it would veto any resolution which included the establishment of a no-fly zone.  Russia did the same albeit in less blunt wording.  Both states have held a policy opposing any UN intervention in any matter which can be defined as "internal" for many, many years now and will not make an exception for Libya.

The Arab League and the African Union would not be restricted by the political considerations which make UN sanction so necessary for any Western nation to take action.  For reasons intrinsic to regional politics, either organization can go the no-fly zone route without UN permission.  As the Arab League has resolutely opposed any "foreign" intervention, the stage has been set politically for the League to go ahead with an intervention of its own, presumably including or starting with the imposition of a no-fly zone.

The question is can the members of the League pull it off with or without the aid of states from the African Union.  This is a fascinating matter.  As has been noted in many fora, the conduct of a no-fly zone is complex, resource intensive, and constitutes genuine war.

Neutralizing Libyan air defenses is not a trivial consideration.  The air defenses of Libya are predicated upon Soviet systems delivered and installed over a quarter century ago.  In the US strike back in 1986, the defense was able to shoot down an American aircraft.  Since then there have been upgrades and modifications.  There has also been a degree of system degradation.  Excluding the remaining Soviet and French fighters, the net capacities of the ground based missile and tube defenses would be rated minimal against US or other NATO assets.  The same cannot be said when considering attacks made by forces of either the League or the AU.

The probability of attacker losses is much higher when factoring the capabilities of equipment and personnel of League or Union forces.  This implies that the attacker must have additional assets for flack suppression and combat search and rescue.  It is worth noting that none of the League states have a dedicated combat SAR capability.  Also it is questionable if the League even with AU support has a large enough inventory of requisite aircraft to accept the virtual attrition imposed by the existence of a moderately competent air defense system.

It is worth mentioning that the US and other air forces which imposed the no-fly zones in Iraq and Kosovo had combat experience of recent vintage.  This experience was essential in translating the theory of training into the realities of the field.  In sharp contrast, no Arab League and no African Union member state's air force has combat experience in recent years.  Looking back, the experiences of some League members such as Syria and Egypt in operations against Israel are not such as to engender confidence.

Even giving the most generous assumptions, there is no reason to conclude that the combination of Arab League and African Union assets in fact could establish and maintain a no-fly zone.  Rather, it is probable that the initial losses would provoke escalation terminating in the introduction of ground combat forces.  Of course, such an introduction would require time, probably significant time given the difficulties of establishing a consensus and the complications introduced by the ongoing nature of internal political factionalization afflicting so many of the member states of both organizations.

Time passing would assure an increase in two aspects of the internal war in Libya.  The political will of the regime would be enhanced by the external threat.  The body count would grow as both sides sought a conclusion before outside forces arrived to complicate the situation.

The ground truth is simple.  The Arab League may be long on rhetoric but it is very short on the capability to back words with effective action.  The African Union is, fortunately, more economical with words.  This implies that there is little if any chance of a combined League-Union move on Libya.  This means that the League's threat is empty.

This means the League has to resort to the diplomatic option which originated with Hugo Chavez, who has been a long time associate of Brother Leader.  He has supported the Colonel without reservation since the start of the protests in Libya  He has strongly urged the Arab League to "mediate" the crisis.  And, the League's director has accepted the idea.  So has the incumbent regime.  The anti-government group has rejected the move.

There is nothing to "mediate."  The gap between the Gaddafi family enterprise and the insurrectionists is too vast and deep to bridge by any conceivable effort at mediation.  The years of repression and corruption and the alienation of the majority of the population from the current government admit of no compromise now that the battle has been joined.  Every rebel who is killed and every non-combatant who is caught in the crossfire serve to assure that nothing less than total victory will be acceptable to the insurgents.

What Sr Chavez, Director General Moussa, and Brother Leader do not understand is that the dead are dictating policy.  The corpses of those killed by the government forces along with those who died over the years at the hands of the Gaddifi security forces demand nothing less than a total restructuring of Libyan polity and society.  It is offensive insurgency of the most classic sort.

The Arab League, the African Union, the UN would be well advised to limit their involvement in Libya to the humanitarian aspects of the conflict.  The same applies to the EU and US.  Unless the Gaddafi forces resort to their stockpile of mustard agent which, while not in weaponized form, is not unusable, the West should restrain itself from any action beyond the humanitarian.  The Libyans started this affray for and from reasons which are organic to the country.  They will have to finish it.  Anything else will distort the process probably with consequences which will prove even more bloody and prolonged.

It is hard to write that.  The emotionally satisfying approach is that of a quick invasion by competent Western forces with the result that Brother Leader and company would be laid out by the heels rapidly and decisively. But, emotions don't count.  The reality is that the mess was made by Libyans.  It can only be cleaned and rectified by Libyans.  Only the Libyans can build a nation--if they want to.

This means that the professionals and clowns alike must restrain themselves.  They must do the hardest of hard jobs--standing by and limiting the human suffering to the greatest extent possible without seeking to impose a fast track solution on the situation.

What Kind Of War Will We Be Fighting?

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently called for an evaluation of the role, mission, and configuration of the Marine Corps. At roughly the same time he suggested the Navy needed to reconsider its needs and, presumably, its role in future wars. While being less direct (in recent weeks) regarding both Army and Air Force, the soon to be outgoing SecDef has clearly questioned the current postures and mission orientation of both services.

The subtext of Dr Gates' push to reconfiguration consists of two questions. What kind(s) of war will the US be fighting in the next couple of decades? What is the current and projected state of play regarding the relative supremacy of offense and defense?

No aspect of human endeavor better fits the Hegelian dialectic then does the relation of offense and defense in warfare. Every new thesis of offense calls an antithesis of defense into existence. And, the new defense summons a synthesis of offense. So the wheel turns.

The celebration of the defense got a boost recently with the widespread and breathless discussion of the new Chinese wonder weapon, a highly accurate anti-ship ballistic missile. The couch potato admirals, not all of whom were Chinese, gleefully decided the new, untested missile would make US naval force projection utterly impossible within a thousand klicks or so of the Chinese landmass.

Any number of pundits who have never heard a shot fired in anger weighed in with a pornographically precise description of just how the new system would neutralize the Nimitz class carriers should any make so bold as to come over to the Chinese half of the Pacific Ocean. The first incoming conventional warhead would "kill" the Nimitz class as a weapons system by wrecking its capacity for air operations. The second would nail the ship's propulsive system turning the monumentally expensive and complex ship into a umpteen thousand ton hulk. Then, missile number three would speedily dispatch the hulk to Davy Jones' locker.

Badda-bing! That's all she wrote. End of the US as the number one maritime power. Might as well surrender to the Trolls of Beijing now and avoid the mess later.

Of course this dystopian view depends upon a number of assumptions--all of them quite questionable.

The first is that the US Navy knows utterly nothing about how to play hide-and-seek in the vast expanses of the ocean. Next, the it's-all-over-with crowd seems to believe that there is no way the US could possibly exploit any of the numerous opportunities to perturb, spoof, spiel, or otherwise degrade the extensive C4ISR system(s) which would be required to support the missile. Finally, the proponents of imminent American naval defeat ignore the demonstrated ABM and ASAT capacities of the Aegis supported Standard missile as well as the improvement curve expected over the next few years.

(Oh, yes, they also failed to note the status of directed energy weapon research, development, and deployment as if that is somehow less relevant than the still far from IOC ready Chinese ship-killer.)

The saga of the Chinese super-weapon or at least its portrayal in assorted American and foreign media should be seen as an excellent illustration of an important ground truth. The Hegelian dialectic, the yin and yang of offense and defense is never a finished process. It is always the big wheel that keeps on moving.

The same is true with respect to amphibious forcible entry. In his assessment of the Marine Corps need for a review of its main missions, Dr Gates contended that the days of storming the beach were over. The secretary averred improvements in anti-ship missile technology assured that an invasion force would have to "away all boats" forty or more miles offshore. This, of course, was an order of magnitude greater distance than required during WW II or, sixty years ago next month, the last great amphibious operation in US history, the one at Inchon, Korea.

To Dr Gates the takeaway was self-evident. The distance, and the time required to transit it would be too great. In the future, large scale operations across a contested beach would be impossible at any acceptable loss rate.

Surely with his vast experience, Dr Gates knows better. He has both seen enough and, in all probability, studied enough to understand that there is no such critter as a stasis imposed by the unconquerable defense or the irresistible offense.

Being a contemporary of the Geek, the secretary must recall, for example, the confident expressions by experts of high rank and great experience of a belief that the helicopter was too slow, too low flying, too fragile to survive in a combat zone. He should remember the pronouncements to the effect that the Marine's doctrine of "vertical envelopment" would prove impossible at any acceptable loss rate.

The experts were wrong as battlefields from Vietnam to Afghanistan have shown. The great wheel of offense versus defense rolled on. Improvements in one drove improvements in the other. There is no reason to believe this dynamic will suddenly and abruptly change.

History is filled with other examples, very well known examples. The combination of artillery, machine guns, field fortifications, and barbed wire made ground offensives impossible. Sure, until the armored fighting vehicles were developed. The battleship was supreme. Sure, until the airplane and submarine proved otherwise.

Submarines were queens of the sea. You bet. Until effective technologies of detection and engagement were developed. The bomber would get through. Yes, until radar, controlled figher interception, and surface to air missiles arrived on the scene.

Technological lurches in and off themselves are not necessary and sufficient reasons to demand a review and reconfiguration of missions and mission postures. The only truly necessary and sufficient reason for this to occur is found in the nature of the wars most likely to be fought in the next few years, say the next couple of decades.

Way back when, well, at least before 9/11, a faculty member at the National War College challenged the Geek to make one of his (in)famous "fearless predictions." The Geek obliged, opining that the most probable type of war for the US over the next generation or two would be that of an interventionary nature. The kind of war now called "overseas contingency operations."

While the probability of a peer-to-peer conflict with, say, China could not be ruled zero, such was diminishingly small. Rather it was likely to highly likely that the US would find it necessary to involve itself in messy little, frustratingly inconclusive interventions ranging from the punitive to the humanitarian to the stability enhancing to the counterinsurgent. Nasty little wars of policy which would be critical to national and strategic interests but not in themselves existential or total.

To date the prediction has been borne out. Further, there is no reason to see the situation altering in any fundamental fashion for the next two decades. Not even an attack on Iran would result in a total war of national survival for the US. The probability of a peer-to-peer mid- to high-intensity war with China or Russia is no more probable today than it was fifteen years ago. Nor, absent some form of unilateral disarmament is such going to loom larger in the real world over the next two decades.

This global reality does demand a more effective configuration of American forces: Marines, Navy, Army and Air Force. The necessity and desirability of such a reconfiguration has gained greater salience from the experiences of the past ten years. Further stimulus comes from the only partially acknowledged fact that the advocates of violent political Islam have not lost their appetite for armed confrontation with the US and other civilized states nor their ability for horizontal escalation.

The Marine Corps can be employed as an example of the necessary reconfiguration of doctrine, force structure, and posture. It should be recognized that the Marines are quite unlikely to be engaging in amphibious forcible entries in the next few years. This assertion is based not on changes in anti-ship missile technology or the increasing availability of inexpensive, effective anti-ship missiles but rather on the nature of likely wars.

In this context it is necessary to remember that the Marine Corps has a wide, extensive, and highly successful experience with interventionary operations, particularly counterinsurgency. For most of the past one hundred years, the Marines have been more often employed in low intensity interventionary operations than in assaulting heavily defended beaches. To put it in perspective, the USMC spent less than three years seizing beaches during WW II and Korea while Marines fought for six years in South Vietnam and nearly that long in Iraq or Afghanistan.

In South Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan as in the earlier "Banana Wars" of the Twenties and Thirties, the Marine Corps demonstrated the value of its tightly disciplined, flexible, down and forward approach to leadership in counterinsurgency. In all these deployments the Marines demonstrated a very rapid learning curve, a high degree of innovation, and a genuine competence at working with indigenous forces. The Marines have often exasperated higher command with their independence ("hell, the Marines are fighting their own war out there,"), but none have questioned their effectiveness.

In other interventionary operations, the Marine Corps' combination of high discipline, unit coherence, and integrated air and ground capabilities provided the necessary combination of lethality and restraint to accomplish difficult missions. (In this context it is helpful to remember the Marine operation in Lebanon in 1957.)

Had a Marine force been tasked with the neutralization of Somalian warlords in 1993, there would have been no possibility of the mission destroying "Blackhawk down" debacle. The very nature of Marine force posture and doctrine would have prevented the mounting of such a poorly planned and inadequately supported operation as that undertaken by Special Forces personnel at that time. (All that is necessary to keep in mind is that the Marines have organic armor, rotary wing and fixed wing as well as the necessary integrated command, control, and communication capabilities.)

In short, the Marine Corps brings to the table all the features and capacities necessary for short, sharp, constrained lethality operations. For humanitarian relief operations when risk of armed opposition exists, (bare in mind that Pakistani Taliban has threatened attack on relief personnel during the current flood) or a punitive expedition (such as the invasion of Afghanistan should have been) or stability enhancement deployments such as Lebanon in 1957 (or, absent the critical mistakes of mission definition and rules of engagement, Lebanon in 1982), the Marine Corps should be the lead force.

True, leaning on the Corps would violate the totem of "jointness" which has ruled supreme for the past several decades. If Dr Gates is serious he should kick start a review on "joint and combined operations" with a goal of eliminating those which are not genuinely required by the nature of the operation. He knows, (it is flatly impossible that he doesn't) the "joint and combined" fetish is driven not by any real strategic, operational, or tactical requirements but rather by the budgetary process.

And, that, bucko, is a very, very poor way to plan and conduct military operations.

While the Deep Thinkers of the national security community are at it, they might consider the need for reconfiguring the American special and black operations capacities. As events of recent vintage in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and North or Northwest Africa have shown, there is an increasingly blurred line between the operational divisions of CIA and the blacker portions of the Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Complicating this is a corollary merging of the intelligence collection functions of CIA's HUMINT component and the equivalents in SOCOM.

Blurring, merging, overlapping between black or paramilitary operations and HUMINT collection is both dangerous and counterproductive. Almost as bad is the insensible, unplanned and reactive melding of the Agency's paramilitary or black operations capacities with any similar capacities in SOCOM. Clear lines of command, responsibility and tasking are necessary for effectiveness. So also is common doctrine, shared mindset and world view.

The separation with careful coordination between intelligence collection and operational execution is also utterly essential. As the record of WW II in Europe demonstrates convincingly, a carefully orchestrated and coordinated separation of intelligence and operations is utterly essential. Otherwise the spooks and the black ops types not only step on each others cloaks, but get stabbed with one another's daggers.

There are many other areas where our forces doctrines, structures, orientations and postures can be and should be re-evaluated and reconfigured. Dr Gates is definitely on the side of the angels when he urges such.

However, it is mission critical that any review, any reconfiguration, any structure, posture and doctrine changes be based not on changes in technologies, new turns on the wheel of offense and defense but on a realistic understanding of the nature of the wars we will be fighting in the years to come. To suggest otherwise is to assure an ultimate failure in the process.

The bitch of it all is the failure will not be evident until too many body bags come home in a war not yet fought. And, by then, it is way too late.

ADMIN NOTE: Comments are invited, welcomed and will be posted but due to spam comments the Geek has been forced to take defensive measures. He apologizes for any inconvenience or frustration.

Let's Give It Up For The Shoe Tosser!

Muntader al-Zaidi might have been acting out some personal type of rage and frustration as he hurled his shoes and insults at George W. Bush. His action has made him a form of hero to many folks in the Mideast (and probably elsewhere.)

The Geek is of the view that al-Zadi's up front gesture of scorn and anger raises an important question or two. While the 29 year old TV journalist may have been a bit over the edge with his demonstration, it deserves to be considered as something other than a mere juvenile outburst. It also requires an assessment which goes beyond placing politically expedient labels.

Al-Zaidi has been adopted as a poster boy by people on the Left: See, the Iraqis hate us and our imperialistic ways. He has received a similar sort of bogus sanctification by those on the Right: See, it proves Iraq is "free." No person could do the same in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or pre-2003 Iraq.

Arguably both labels have a degree of truth in advertising. More importantly, neither does service to what probably lies behind not only al-Zaidi's pitching arm, the applause he has received, and the reaction to the Zaidi-throws-and-Bush-ducks episode.

To the Geek, the tossing of shoes and hurling of epithets demands an examination of what the US invasion of Iraq has brought about. This requires asking a simple question which is very difficult to answer--or, at the least to formulate a coherent response upon which a consensus can agree free of ideological bias.

The purpose of war is to bring about a better state of peace. All forms of war, aggressive, defensive, insurgent are waged in order to establish a post-war regime which is superior to that which existed prior to the cannon's roar. Not surprisingly, the details of what constitutes a better state of peace differs between aggressor and defender, insurgent and counterinsurgent. That difference is why the war is being fought.

Interventionary wars such as those being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq lay a special burden on the intervenor--that is the country which starts the war--not only to define but to achieve a state of peace which is demonstrably superior for both the intervenor and the target nation. Let's walk through that again. It's important.

The only consideration which raises an intervention above the level of naked and perhaps unprovoked aggression is the outcome. Does the outcome provide a better state of peace for the country being invaded? If the answer is yes, then the war is ethically justified. If the answer is no, then the war is nothing other than naked aggression for the benefit of the invader.

The Administration of George W. Bush and its supporters among We the People argue that removing Saddam Hussein and opening the possibility of democracy to the Iraqi people is, in and of itself, a better state of peace. Those who have opposed the war state that the results to date constitute a worse state of peace.

The proponents of the invasion having resulted in a better state of peace point to the elections in Iraq, its demonstration of effective sovereignty as embodied in the recent Status of Forces Agreement, and the trials of Saddam, Chemical Ali and others for both war crimes and crimes against the Iraqi people as proof that a better state of peace exists today. They point to al-Zaidi's actions as a clear example of the current state of Iraqi freedom.

Opponents of the American adventure in regime change note the several million internal displaced persons as well as the large number of Iraqi refugees in adjacent countries. They also note the ruined infrastructure, the destroyed neighborhoods, towns and villages. And, the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis who would be alive absent the American invasion. To the people holding this view, al-Zaidi was a symbol of the bitter resentment, not to say hatred, resident in the Iraqi victims of American aggression.

From the Geek's historically driven perspective, the American experiences in both the Philippines and Vietnam provide a guide for assessing whether or not the US effort in Iraq has been ethically justified as bringing about a better state of peace. He would like to take a brief look at both guiding cases.

In the Philippines, the US defeated a well developed, broadly supported indigenous independence movement. The cost of this was high in both American and Filipino lives. The military success was predicated not so much on the skill of American soldiers or the quality of their weapons and tactics as it was on distorting the political process which existed within Filipino society.

The same distortions continued during the long years of US occupation. They were exacerbated not only by the Japanese invasion and occupation of the islands but by the years of US backed counterinsurgency efforts against assorted communist insurgent movements during the decades which followed Filipino independence.

The distortions continued even after the communists were defeated and have done much to assure the rise and continuation of an Islamist separatist insurgency, which is both slow motion in pace and bloody in action. A close examination of the forces at work in Filipino society and politics indicates that the same basic trajectory of class based politics and internal divisions would have existed absent the American invasion, conquest, and occupation.

However, the trajectory would have been neither so long in duration nor bloody in its effects had the American government accepted Filipino independence at the end of the Spanish-American War. The American presence was like a heavy weight put on an elastic surface--it made the distortion deeper with the inevitable consequence that it took longer for the elastic to return to normal following the removal of the weight.

The same general pattern can be seen within Vietnam. The conflicts between North and South existed for centuries before the French Indochina War. The attempts by the French to reestablish colonial authority worsened this pre-existing trajectory as did the later American support of the South Vietnamese regime.

Following the defeat of the US, the North gained operational dominance over the entire country. This was as expected. But, as Hanoi has found out, there is a whale of a difference between operational dominance and unquestioned political authority.

As a result of changes both within and outside Vietnam, the county may continue as a one party state with strong authoritarian aspects but has increasingly been acknowledging the necessity of freer enterprise, a more liberal approach to the rights of the citizens, and the strong necessity of something akin to a rule of law--not party or regional connections and prerogatives.

In short, the long resident trajectories of Vietnamese society have continued. Vietnam today is what Vietnam would have been in any event had there been no American war in the country.

Leaving aside minor quibbles such as American public health measures in the Philippines or the necessity of global containment, the results of the American efforts in both venues were failures. Neither brought about a state of peace better than that which would have emerged without the US military involvement.

Rather than bringing about a better state of peace in either country, the US wars and occupations delayed the arrival of the better state. Neither American effort was ethically justifiable.

Looking back it is clear that the "golden moment" for effective and low cost regime change with a meaningful chance of bringing about a better state of peace in Iraq came and went in 1991. The halting of Coalition forces on the approaches to Basra might have been tactically and logistically justified. The standing by with folded arms as the Shiite uprising was bloodily crushed was not.

That suppression coupled with the years of sanctions and "No-Fly Zones" neither constituted a better state of peace nor a meaningful push for internal Iraqi-driven changes. Rather, the long years of deprivation, repression and collapsing economy made the achievement of internal stability now all the harder.

The regime of Saddam Hussein would not have lasted many more years had the US and other troops stayed at home in 2003. Yes, the death of Saddam would have brought internal power struggles, deaths, and the emergence of yet another authoritarian regime.

Such a pattern is not foreign to the Iraqi social and cultural experience. A transition to another, probably slightly less obnoxious regime would have been both accepted by and acceptable to the Iraqi public generally. The strongman, the oligarch, is completely in keeping with the culture, the history of Iraq, and the region generally.

To sum it up: The American invasion of Iraq was not justified. It did not--could not--bring about a better state of peace. All the invasion has done--could have done--is delay the organic emergence of a better state--as defined by the Iraqis.

George W. Bush, and the world, should be grateful that all al-Zaidi had to throw was his shoes. He (and many Iraqis) probably would have preferred a grenade.

Interventions Really Suck!

The Geek has spent nearly his entire post-pubescent life either practicing or studying interventionary war. He's lectured on it. He's written on it. He's taught it. He's read it. And, he's fought it.

His conclusion?

Interventionary operations are a bad idea. Outside of a few, well delineated situations, military interventions are as bad a concept as tossing down a botulism cocktail.

Our two current adventures in intervention prove the case for the limited applicability of this mode of war. Even though the battlefield situation has improved in Iraq to the extent that one can say with a high level of confidence that there is little chance of the US not achieving the minimum necessary goal of not losing, there can be no justification for the intervention in the first place.

In Afghanistan where the potential for the US to lose the war on the ground still exists, the same conclusion of non-necessity is easily justified.

The original goal of the Afghanistan invasion was two fold: Topple Taliban. Capture or kill Osama bin Ladin and others of the al-Qaeda leadership cell.

Had the original goal been kept firmly in mind during the short duration planning phase leading up to the invasion, the intervention might have been both justifiable and successful. But, as is so often the case in interventions the phenomenon of mission creep was at work even before the first American Special Forces and Marine boots were on the ground.

One good reason for intervention is the ruthless pursuit of a narrowly defined national interest. In Afghanistan that narrow national interest was not only to kill or capture the al-Qaeda leadership cell, but to show governments who harbored killers of Americans that there would be severe negative consequences involved.

One of the worst, if not the worst, reason for intervention is epitomised by the statement of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson making reference to the landing of Marines in the Mexican city of Vera Cruz. "I shall teach the Mexicans to elect good men."

The siren song of Wilsonian morality played loud and clear in the ears of the current administration as they looked at Afghanistan. It would not be enough to seek the heads of Osama et al, or to topple enough Taliban occupied mudhuts. It would not be enough to kill a sufficient number of Taliban and al-Qaeda personnel quickly and cleanly so as to inflict condign punishment upon the organisations.

No.

The neocon reincarnations of the every-so-progressive Wilson (Doesn't the irony tickle your innards? It does the Geek's.) concluded that the US must mount a crusade for democracy, pluralism and equal rights in a society which had no historical experience with any and no seeming desire to enjoy the benefits of American style democracy and free enterprise.

This conflation of a realpolitik approach and the fantasy of implanting US approved institutions by force made damn sure that the intervention in Afghanistan would not only be endless miles of bad road but would ultimately come a cropper.

The confusion between fantasy and the legitimate ends of showing that support of outfits like al-Qaeda doesn't pay in the long run assured that our planning and execution of the endeavor were both fatally flawed.

The planning was flawed because it was impossible to focus on an achievable goal--neutralising al-Qaeda's leadership cell and slapping Taliban hard enough so that no hostile government could fail to catch the message. The demands of the Wilsonian mission creep combined with the political need for rapid action and the limitations on forces which could be readily and quickly employed assured we would have an incomplete success at best,

A very incomplete success as the last several years generally and the past eight months in particular have shown.

True, Taliban fell as a government. But that was all that happened. Taliban lived on as an evil incubus waiting to grow again battening on the blood and devotion of human shaped empty shells wanting to filled with the ecstatic brew of True Belief. So it has happened. Safe in the mountains of Pakistan's FATA and aided by factions within the Pakistani ISI and military, Taliban has grown in numbers and military competence.

And, of course, the US did not capture or kill Osama bin Ladin even though other key personnel of the leadership cell have been removed from the board by either death or capture over the past several years. Al-Qaeda did not die. If anything it grew.

Perhaps it did not grow in direct institutional size. It did grow in mythic power. It may not be a global terror machine as some "experts" would have us believe in the sense of exercising direct command and control over tactical actions. Al-Qaeda did increase greatly in its ability to seize the imagination and the commitment of empty shells of men seeking fulfillment and completion through Belief. More accurately, completion through action emerging from Belief.

Now the US has only two viable options, (The Geek considers an indefinite occupation of Afghanistan to be a viable course of action.) One option is simply to leave. The other is to deploy enough forces on the ground along with taking necessary actions into the sanctuaries of FATA to assure that we do not lose the shooting war.

Neither option is good. The first is disastrous. The short and long term effects of withdrawing might not be predictable in detail, but the general outline is dismal at best and catastrophic at worst.

The second option would allow the US to achieve, at best, a stalemate in the armed conflict which would allow retraction from the theater without necessarily horrible consequences. (Yes, this implies that even under the best circumstances, the outcome will be far worse than if the Wilsonian mission creep had been strictly eschewed.)

There was no justification for the Iraq operation. The Geek isn't even willing to put that war into the category of interventionary operation. Sure, there were anti-Saddam elements in country as well as Kurds who were quite happy to see American tanks on the ground and fighter-bombers overhead. Even more there were any number of expat groups eagerly pawing the ground in hopes that the US would do something.

None of these make the invasion an intervention. They make the invasion an invasion, an act of aggressive war thinly covered by UN Resolutions.

Later operations on the ground in Iraq were counterinsurgent, and counterinsurgency is a primary form of interventionary warfare. It should be noted that insurgency is the expectable consequence of an exercise in regime change. The fact that the US was not prepared either in its military or civilian plans either to preclude or to mitigate the possibility of insurgency shows that there was little, if any, realistic understanding of the nature and character of interventionary warfare.

Or, if there was some appreciation somewhere within the massive bureaucracies of the national security community (as the Geek knows there was), these were overridden by the winds of Wilsonian hallucinations in the heads of the neocons.

Interventions can work effectively. Interventions can be justified by both results and motives. The landing of the Marines in Lebanon in 1957 shows that as do some of the operations in the wreckage of the Wilsonian policy artifact once called Yugoslavia.

To work, to be justifiable, interventions must meet two criteria. The goal must be limited. The goal must be kept firmly in mind at all times of planning and execution by all hands at all levels from the White House to the grunts.

Most of all the Ghost of Wilson must be left in the crypt of bad ideas.