The Horse’s Mouth

One of the really great things about the internet is that you often don’t have to rely on what a reporter has to say about the news. You can get it straight from the source. It’s a sad commentary on the state of so called journalism that they are usually very different things. I suppose that has always been the case. It’s just never before been quite so obvious, or so easy to check

That was brought home to me this month with reporting on the Initial Benchmark Assessment Report on Iraq submitted to Congress. You don’t have to read what some self important hack masquerading as a journalist thinks about the report. You can read the report. It’s right there on the White House web site. It’s about 25 pages so it isn’t for everybody but it’s written in readable prose and if you are interested you can form your own opinion. You might wonder whether any of the reporters who’ve had so much to say about it actually read it themselves. There are also position papers there on everything from the economy to health care. It really is a wealth of information and since so much of the news is politically oriented, it’s a priceless source.

The State Department has a pretty good web site too. If you want to know what the Ambassador to Portugal thinks, ask him. A half hour’s browsing two or three times a week just might give you a different perspective. They put their own spin on things but then so does the New York Times. All the federal agencies do something pertinent to their own area, some of them better than others but I give them all at least as much credence as the mainstream media or the various special interest groups. The factual data is usually reliable. If they get anything wrong somebody will challenge them on it.

Then there are the blogs, it’s true there is a lot of misinformation floating around but there again that’s a problem with the mainstream media too. Sometimes it rises to the level of disinformation as famously happened in the last presidential campaign when Dan Rather got caught using phony documents to smear George Bush’s service record. It was the blogs that pointed it out and it’s questionable whether the regular press would have reported it otherwise. Many of them agreed with Dan, a lie told in the service of a greater truth isn’t really a lie. The blogs have a correcting mechanism in Snopes. If you want to know if it’s true that the Post Office issued stamps commemorating Muslim holidays (they did) or that you have to register your cell phone number on the national do-not-call list (you don’t) just check it out on Snopes. When something fishy starts getting around somebody will likely spot it and report it. The regular media are largely left to police themselves and they are prone to “stand by their stories” even when they are obviously wrong. Rather still stands by his.

Wikipedia may be the best thing that has happened in the encyclopedia business since Denis Diderot published the first Encyclopédie in the eighteenth century. I get more search hits on Wikipedia than anything else, including when I looked up how to spell Encyclopédie. They get something wrong too every now and then but they are pretty good about corrections, it’s free, and there are carefully researched and well written articles in it on a greater variety of subjects than Diderot could ever have imagined.

Of course the problem with all this is that you have to be interested, and you have to have time. Most of us are so busy and so deluged with information that nothing more than a sound bite can get through. But if you are interested and can take the time the information is not only likely to be there, it’s easy to find. The implications are profound.

Warfare Old as the Ages

Thanks to my daughter-in-law I’ve finally gotten around to reading Colonel Thomas X. Hammes’ book The Sling and the Stone. Col. Hammes has drawn a lot of attention with his thesis that modern warfare has entered a new era. He calls it 4th Generation Warfare or 4GW and believes pentagon planners completely missed the change, focusing on high tech weaponry more appropriate for confrontation between two super powers than the low to medium intensity wars we are actually seeing. He thinks they’ve been ignoring the manpower intensive “boots on the ground” capabilities we really need in such conflicts. He gets it wrong. 4GW is just a catchy new term for something that should be old hat for anyone with a sense of history.

Not that the Colonel ignores history. He just thinks it began where he started reading. He credits Mao with inventing the strategy of avoiding a stronger enemy, protecting your army at all cost, and attacking only where your opponent is weak. Apparently he never played chess. He ought to read about George Washington if he wants to know how to win a war while losing all the battles. While he’s at it he could take up Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He might find Marshal Kutuzov’s campaign against Napoleon instructive. By the time Bonaparte withdrew from Moscow his army was already beaten. For that matter a little Russian history might be in order for any aspiring military strategist. Peter I became the Great using tactics not unlike Kutuzov’s to defeat a superior Swedish Army under Charles XII. He just kept falling back and scorching the earth until Charles was exhausted. Marshal Zhukov too capitalized on Russian capacity to endure suffering at Stalingrad, the single most important allied victory of WWII. The German 6th Army surrendered with 95 combat divisions, the same number the United States mobilized for the war. Russian winters didn’t win those wars. Russian armies did, and each time they beat enemies that were initially superior.

Colonel Hammes blames an American defeat in Vietnam on a pentagon that failed to understand the nature of the war they were fighting. He credits Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap with better generalship in orchestrating an insurgency. It isn’t true. Giap’s ultimate conquest of the south had to do with geography and history. The three American presidents involved in the Vietnam War all had it well within their power to quickly dispatch North Vietnam but for one small problem, a common border with China. They all remembered vividly what had happened the last time an American Army stood poised on a Chinese border. It is no stretch to say that South Vietnam’s fate was sealed in 1951 when a Chinese army crossed the Yalu into Korea. No rational American president wants a major land war in Asia. A clear cut victory in South Vietnam would have required an invasion of the north and none of them were prepared to take the risk of a significant unintended escalation.

So Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all opted for the only strategy available, a war of attrition. That strategy works only if you can convince your opponent he will eventually lose, and there is a limit to the price he is willing to pay. It has worked twice for American Presidents. It did not work in Vietnam, but not because General Westmoreland or his presidents failed to understand the war they were fighting. George Washington won because George III concluded the colonies weren’t worth the drain on his treasury. Louis XVI bankrupted his to support the American rebels and some historians think it cost him his head. Abraham Lincoln won when Robert E. Lee decided not to break up the Army of Northern Virginia into guerilla bands, surrendering instead at Appomattox. The American Revolution ended because King George thought the cost too high. The American Civil War ended because General Lee thought the cost too high. The Vietnam War ended because President Nixon thought the cost too high.

None of this is particularly insightful but it is worth remembering as we wage The Long War and continue to arm ourselves for threats that may arise in coming years. There are several lessons to be learned and relearned. One is that high tech weaponry comes in darned handy in any sort of war when you have it and your opponent doesn’t. It made short work of both Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar. I can imagine that our casualty toll in the insurgencies that followed the ouster of those two villains might be far higher without things like aerial reconnaissance drones and night vision equipment.

Another is that, nasty as they are, suicide assassins and guerrilla squads operating in twos and threes have far less military significance than conventional armies do. What lethality they can deliver tends to be against soft targets, most often their own people. That’s no way to win hearts and minds. That seems to be a key.

One more is that Ho Chi Minh had no personal price to pay, not even a political price, and was in a position to exact an unlimited price from his people. Modern terrorists are often willing to sacrifice their own lives just as common soldiers have always been willing to sacrifice theirs, but those who sponsor them should not get a free pass. We may yet pay a terrible price for allowing Taliban remnants to conduct raids into Afghanistan from a sanctuary across the Pakistan border. Syrian and Iranian leadership should also be called to task for their meddling in Iraq. They must be made to pay a price.

But it seems to me the most important lesson, and the most obvious, is that we cannot place American troops indefinitely in the forefront of counterinsurgency operations in a foreign country. It is the nature of such operations that they sometimes go on for decades, sometimes even generations. The American public will not and should not tolerate such commitments, not in low intensity conflicts such as Afghanistan or Iraq, and certainly not in the higher intensity conditions we faced in Vietnam. If we are to engage in these operations on behalf of a weak or failed government we must have mechanisms in place to enable them to quickly resume responsibility for their own internal security. If outside actors interfere we must be prepared to deal with them.

Unfortunately in the aftermath of the Vietnam debacle we were so caught up in political recriminations we never made a cool headed review of what went wrong with the South Vietnamese government or how we might have prevented it. By the time American combat forces had been on the ground for seven years (or longer depending on what forces you count) RVN troops should have been prepared to defend the country. Why weren’t they? The military took long hard looks at their respective combat performances but if anyone took overall responsibility for the (more important) political and economic factors it isn’t clear to me. We seem to be paying more attention to those issues in the two current conflicts but after more than four years it isn’t clear that we are being any more successful.

But it isn’t really anything new. We’ve been talking about “nation building” for years. Two hundred years ago the solution was based on Empire. Empire is no longer acceptable but what do we replace it with? War hasn’t changed. Politics has, unless of course you accept Clausewitz’ idea that they are the same thing. Still, nobody that counts has really missed it. The question at hand is what do we do about it?

The good news is that although both Iraq and Afghanistan are bordered by meddling neighbors, none are prepared for direct military intervention as was the case in South Vietnam. Excepting Pakistan none of them happen to share a border with China. That means they have to be careful just how far they push the US. It may be possible to produce stable governments with only internal security to worry about. If South Vietnam had faced only the Viet Cong they might well have survived. They could not stand alone against an invading army from the north. Despite Iranian posturing, not even a nuclear armed Iran is likely to commit its army in a high risk attempt to dominate either Iraq or Afghanistan. Syria is in no position to intervene. Turkey is a greater potential threat but they are interested only in pacifying Kurds who threaten their own border security. Besides, Turkey wants to be admitted to the European Union, a very strong brake on any Turkish military adventurism. There is nothing 4th generation about any of this either. Genghis Kahn would have understood these politics.

Today’s generals seem to understand too. So do the other major players except for those who don’t wish to understand. Looking at a map of Iraq showing the progression of territory where responsibility has been slowly but steadily turned over to Iraqi forces over the past eighteen months is encouraging. If it continues, and that’s a big if, the US could conceivably begin substantial and orderly troop reductions early next year. If that is not possible by the time George Bush leaves office in January, 2009, a new president may very well order a withdrawal regardless of the consequences.

Either way the Long War is likely to continue until one side or the other decides it isn’t worth the cost. I have always thought economic factors would ultimately dictate the outcome. Since the final goal of Muslim extremists is world domination and destruction the West may concede a battle or two but will never accept final defeat. Most of the Muslim world remains mired in third world poverty. To escape it they will have to impose order among themselves. Prosperity is mushrooming all around them. Sooner or later like Lee, even Palestinians will conclude the cost is too high.

Baltic Cruise

Opera, ballet, symphony, art, architecture, royal gardens, history, and exotic cuisine: if Lynne and I absorb any more culture we will begin to mold. My daughter-in-law tells me I may have to reset with a little redneck activity, maybe some barbecued goat washed down with light beer. The big surprise for me on our cruise was Stockholm, where we embarked. My image of the city was of a dark, cold, and misty seaport with fog horns sounding through the gloom. It may be like that for much of the year but at the end of June it is a beautiful place, a clean city with almost no night, lots of fun walks, green hills, waterways, and stunning views. There was none of the waterfront eyesore I associate with harbors. They must have it but we didn’t see it. We ate reindeer steaks and Swedish moose balls and drank Wormwood snaps. The Wormwood isn’t going to make our list of favorite aperitifs. I was the only one in our group who would try the herring, a Nordic staple. Departure involved a trip through a long series of gorgeous islands and channels. The ship was fantastic, small by cruise standards with only 382 passengers but as luxurious as anything I can imagine. We were welcomed with champagne and hors d’oeuvres, escorted to our room and, since we had made our own transfer arrangements and got there a few minutes ahead of the crowd, our luggage was waiting. The room was spacious with a walk in closet, more storage than we needed, a sitting area, and private balcony. The shower was small but adequate and there was a separate tub. There was also a bottle of champagne. Most nights we had a glass before we went to bed and would find a new bottle in the refrigerator the next day. It was like that as long as we were aboard. Food and wine were excellent and inexhaustible, complete with 24 hour room service, all included. I have a piper to pay now that we are home. My favorite stop was St. Petersburg. Four things really stand out in my mind; the gardens at Peterhof, the amber room at Catherine’s summer palace, the copy of Raphael’s loggia at the winter palace, and the ballet. You can’t go to Russia without seeing a ballet, now can you? The Peterhof gardens are as elaborate as those at Versailles and the fountains more impressive. The amber room is as interesting for its story as for the art. Germans stole the original amber panels during WWII and they are lost. After decades of futile search Soviets decided to recreate them but the craft was lost too. There was no school to send workers to and no manuals, just pictures and descriptions of the originals. So they experimented, spent many years, made a lot of false starts and mistakes, and built a thing of genuine beauty. The room glows. Rafael’s loggia (his bible) has a story too. The original is in the Vatican. Open on one side, it was designed as a gallery where the Pope could walk and enjoy his private garden during inclement weather. It is wooden with ceiling and walls decorated in mosaics of biblical scenes. Catherine the Great got permission and had it copied, replacing the mosaics with painted murals. They say the original is badly weathered and if you want to see what it really looked like, you have to go to St. Petersburg. Catherine installed hers indoors and, since Germans never occupied the city proper, it was undamaged during the war. It looks as it did in the 18th century. Like the amber room it is a thing of beauty. I could spend hours there. The one disappointment I would express is there was hardly any mention of the Russian revolution in the city where it occurred. The rooms in the Winter Palace where the provisional government assembly met, and where Karensky was arrested, were closed. It was as though history ended in February, 1917, when Nicholas II abdicated. The WWII siege of Leningrad got more play, especially the destruction and subsequent rebuilding in the suburbs. (Peter I founded the city, made it his capital and named it St. Petersburg, Nicholas II changed it to Petrograd because he thought it sounded more Russian, Stalin renamed it to honor Lenin, and it is now St. Petersburg again.) On our trip to Catherine’s summer palace our guide had the bus stop at a massive monument to the heroes of the siege and told us her family’s story. A million Russians died at Leningrad between 1941 and 1944, mostly from starvation, more than the combined US and British dead for the entire war. The guide’s mother was ten years old when Germans surrounded the city and cut it off. Her aunt was nine months. Her grandfather went to the army and never returned. That winter was the harshest ever recorded and they had no fuel. The mother of the two young girls had frostbite in her legs so severe she could not get out of bed. The ten year old took charge of her baby sister and they survived on a ration of 100 calories a day, supplemented with crushed tree bark to add volume. Today, every year on her sister's birthday, the aunt toasts her for saving her life. During the siege people threw babies away. It is a moving tale. There were other stops, Stockholm and St. Petersburg were just the highlights. Helsinki is pretty but small and we were there only briefly. Tallinn, in Estonia, was the most picturesque. Lynne stopped a young girl selling soft drinks to ask her what language she spoke. English was her answer. No, what language do you usually speak? English; she occasionally speaks Estonian with her parents but uses English almost exclusively with her friends. One last day and night at sea marked the end of our cruise and then we had two days in Copenhagen to unwind. We walked around a lot, saw the little mermaid and the main street featured in postcards, had dinner at two really good restaurants, and went to one art museum but decided to pass on the palaces. They would have been more of an attraction at the beginning of the trip. On the last day we just went for a last walk along the quay behind our hotel, packed and took a taxi to the airport for a long tiring trip home. There were crowds and lines everywhere. It’s a shame such a wonderful trip has to have such an ignominious ending but I’m not sure there is a better way. Let’s just say it was well worth it. This was a dream vacation for us, more my dream than Lynne’s really but she will look back on it as one of our best too. It could not have come at a better time. We celebrated her retirement in style, put all our cares to one side, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Lynne not having to go back to work took the edge off even the long plane ride. Now we will take a day or two to relax and get our sleep cycle back in order, start to work out how we will adjust to a lot more time at home together, try to stay out of each other’s way, and begin to dream about the next trip.