Surprised by Disaster
In re Afghanistan, why, you might ask, is the world’s hugest, expensivest, most begadgeted military unable to defeat a few thousand angry tribesmen armed with AKs and RPGs?
Easy: Character. The men running the war are mentally the wrong ones to do it.
Think about this for a moment. Suppose that your boss at the lab or law firm or newsroom demanded that, when he entered the room, you leapt spasmodically to your feet, stood rigidly erect with your feet at a forty-five degree angle like a congenitally deformed duck, and stared straight ahead until he gave you permission to relax. You would think, correctly, that he was crazy as a bedbug. If he then required reporters to stand in a square so he could inspect their belt buckles, you would either figure he was a gay blade or call for a struggle buggy and some big orderlies. This weird posturing is not normal, nor are those it appeals to.
Suppose you showed up for freshman orientation at Princeton and your professors bellowed at the tops of their voices, three inches from your face, “Your shoes ain’t shined good, puke. Get down and give me fifty.” (Pushups, that is, which in the military doesn’t mean the better sort of bra.) You would decide that the loon had lost whatever mind he had ever had, and call Domino’s for a cheese pizza, double Haldol.
Should you be so unwary as to suggest the foregoing in print, the response will usually be that militaries need discipline. True, and so do newspapers. However, there is a distinction between discipline and ritualized lunacy. At every publication for which I have worked, the editor was clearly and absolutely in charge. Yet I, seldom senior, could say, “Yeah, Wes, but if we do that, won’t thus-and-so bad thing happen?” His decision was law, but he was happy to hear from subordinates, who might know something he didn’t. Editors do not require vaguely sadomasochistic submissiveness.
This hoopla is not of use in combat. The Taliban seem to be doing rather well. Do you suppose their commanders check their beds to be sure that a quarter will bounce from their blankets?
Now, what kind of kid wants to go for robot training at West Point or boat school at Annapolis? Statistically these kids are bright, gregarious, “motivated” (a favorite military word), athletic, perhaps Eagle Scouts. Psychologically they want (need?) to live under a regime of rigid conformity and obedience that would appear as absurd as it is if we were not accustomed seeing it among soldiers. That is, they are autoselected not to think for themselves or question decisions from above. They are exactly what universities exist not to produce.
The service academies reinforce these unfortunate characteristics. Their schooling consists of four years of learning what to think, not how to think. There are hours of running in formation (“If I die on the Russian front….”), close-order drill, manual of arms (“Hen-spection…harms!”). Why? There is no military value in being able to shift your rifle from shoulder to shoulder crisply. Like the endless inspections of everything, all of this participation in the hive inculcates groupishness and a curious sense of safety in conformity.
The effects are remarkable and, from a standpoint of civilization, undesirable. Large authoritarian organizations make easier the compartmentalization of morality. A colonel typically will be a good neighbor, civic-minded, responsible, unlikely to steal your silverware or kick your dog. If the Pentagon tells him to bomb a city he has never heard of and has no reason to bomb, killing people who pose no threat to him, he will. He feels no individual responsibility for atrocious behavior ordered from above. “I vas only followink orders,” the Nuremberg defense, is the bedrock of military ethics, if any.
Men trained in conformist obedience can work marvels. They just don’t care whether the marvel is good or evil. If you need to handle some vast natural disaster, call on the military. They have the manpower, the aircraft, the medics, the co-operation to get things done now. They will stay on their feet for forty-eight hours without sleep. They take the “mission” (another favorite military word) seriously.
What they do not do particularly well is wage war. Why? Because they have in their minds a view of war that is partly that of offensive linemen—you close with the enemy and destroy him—and partly martial romanticism. They speak of duty, honor, country, bravery, fallen comrades, proving oneself. Military history is rife with silly pageantry, nobility of spirit, glorious charges, and impracticality. Having been trained to think rigidly, they do.
Before Agincourt, there were things the French might profitably have learned about long bows, but didn’t bother because chivalry didn’t concern itself with peasants. It was the glory of the thing, not whether they were committing suicide. English generals killed 20,000 young Brits in one day at the Somme; they hadn’t compared the ideas in their heads with then-current military reality (such as that infantry charges over long distances against massed machine guns, artillery, and barbed wire are not especially productive, unless you manufacture embalming fluid.) Authoritarian group-think, love of ritual, romanticism, inattention: not a happy brew.
Further, military service encourages an often-catastrophic sense of masculine potency. Running in formation with fifty other men (“lef-rye-lef-rye-lef-rye-layeff….”) or watching a fighter cat-shot from a carrier deck—the thrill is gonadal, appealing to something deep in the male psyche, a challenge flung at life. It is wonderful, but not a sound basis for judgement.
A consequence is a tendency for militaries of the First World to gravely overestimate themselves, and thus underestimate their enemies. This is why they usually expect wars to be far shorter and cheaper than they turn out to be. As recent examples, the French did not expect those slanty-eyed little zipperheads (les jaunes) to win in Viet Nam, nor did the Pentagon have any idea they the US could possibly lose 60,000 dead and the war in that country, Iraq would be a cakewalk, and those louse-infested towel-heads in Afghanistan had no hope against American swoosh-kerpows. The US military in particular has a compulsory can-do attitude, with slogans like “The difficult we can do today, the impossible takes a bit longer.” This substitution of morale for comprehension is regularly disastrous.
Having no idea what they are getting into is almost doctrine among professional officers. A major does not become a colonel by saying, “General, the French didn’t do all that well at Dien Bien Phu. Maybe we ought to, you know, do something else. We could invade Vanuatu.”
America’s problem is not that its generals prepare for the last war, but that they don’t prepare for it, and then fight it again the same way.
More Fred here.
More Scurrilous Commentary by Fred Reed is available at http://www.fredoneverything.net | More from Fred Reed
Stumble It!
October 27th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
U. S. official resigns over Afgan war. Washington Post, Drudge Report
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603394.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009102603447
October 28th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Hmmm, while I understand and agree with the sentiment of many of your articles, I’d have to say the above is poppycock.
I am not in the military, not in the police force, and do not come from a “military” family. I am not pro-war, hawkish, or excited by the smell of blood. I am a corporate slave now, although most of my life has been in academia, and I do detest being told what to do and how to think (although I listen to others and consider their advice to the degree I believe they are knowledgable and sane). I believe the term “slacker” would have applied for a decent portion of my life. I would be eaten alive in the military.
Nonetheless, each machine must function to fulfill its purpose. The military’s purpose is to protect my country (yes, I understand that’s a pipe-dream). In order to do so, it usually must kill or threaten to do so. Military protocol and living serves to build the bond between its members and render it an efficient killing machine. Not to produce philosophers.
America can no longer win wars because of an entire culture’s lack of political will and absurd devotion to “non-violence.” Worms like Obama and LBJ, and fools like G.W. Bush, send our military into the stenchpits of this world without the one clear order it needs: “Do everything you have to to win this war and then come home.” Instead, it adds, “…except you need to consult this list first, and then you need to identify your intention to pull the trigger, and then you can’t fire upon mosques, men dressed as women, men with guns who’ve just put them down to brey to Mecca, and then you need to call us, and then you need to say ‘Mother may I.’ And then you can’t”
We have the power. But we do not have the wisdom. And once our foolishness has taken hold, we do not have the balls. That’s why we can’t win wars.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Huffingotn Post: Hidden Cost of War for Vets; Link
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-mendelson-md/the-hidden-costs-of-war-v_b_334112.html
October 29th, 2009 at 2:34 am
Overly simplistic and off the mark. Another case of “blame the warrior for the war,” not unlike the late ’60s, except these days its politically incorrect to call GIs baby-killers. I’m sorry, but over the last 30 years, “Fred” has morphed from a pro-military journalist into a flaming liberal who hides out in Guadalajara. The only thing we have in common with him on this website is our mutual disgust for the western woman.
Though I agree that Afghanistan is unwinnable, and certainly not worth one more American life. I’d like to see all the GIs come home….NOW. Sure, the death-cultists will take over but, so what? We’ll be watching them this time.
I like the unmanned drone approach. There won’t be anymore jihadist training camps….above ground, anyway. Every time a group of five or more “towel-heads” gather, or a building rises higher than 12 feet, we incinerate them. Make them think about martyrdom when they go to sleep at night. And after each terrorist event, anywhere in the world, let them know payback is coming…..times ten, within 24 hours. Strength, pain, and death.
Lets re-acquaint them with the 7th century.
October 29th, 2009 at 3:36 am
@ Joe P.
Fascinating. I have changed quite a bit in the last 30 years myself. For instance, in 1985 I was pro-feminist. Then, as I matured and gathered information, I changed quite radically.
For some strange reason, those changes were not limited to gender politics. I have also, in that time, taken a rather strong dislike for getting our sons killed in the name of better commerce.
I have also gained the ability to add two and two and get four. Here is an example:
After Iran moved to nationalize it’s own oil, our CIA overthrew the government there and installed the Shah, who then spent the next 25 years torturing and murdering anyone who got in his (our) way.
Then they had a revolution, over ran our embassy and took a bunch of people hostage.
Duh.
That was OK, though, we got those people freed by making a secret arms deal with them.
And of course, I suppose I must be a flaming liberal for thinking any of this had to do with our policies rather than just “evil doers” half a planet away plotting harm on us because they hate freedom.
I didn’t see Reed’s piece as blaming the warrior for the war at all, but rather blaming the thoughtless orthodoxies and rigid mentality of people who are supposed to think and don’t.
I’d say he stated it pretty well, as usual.
That automated posturing doesn’t just take root in the military. It can be seen in the repeating of countless failed policies and in the mindset of people who advocate genocide as an extension of American ideals.
It can also be seen in the Media as we watched in the last election, with Hannity, et al, casting dispersions on Ron Paul or anyone else that dared to say we need to reexamine our policy in the Middle East.
We give quite a bit of latitude to our readers here in the comment section, but I do have to say that I was challenged not to delete your post. In the end, just as it often is with feminist or other hateful ideologues, it is sometimes better to let their words hang out in the very vacuum of reason they create.
If I were advocating that we murder, excuse me, incinerate people in foreign countries simply for having a family picnic, or wedding, or school graduation, or any other freedom we take for granted, just because it means a gathering of five or more people, then I would not be quick at all to judge who “we” have things in common with.
I think Hitler would be proud of your ideas, as an MRA, and more importantly as a human being, I find nothing but shame in them.
October 29th, 2009 at 10:59 am
In the above post, didn’t mean to completely dismiss what you say. Yes, you are right: “Having no idea what they are getting into is almost doctrine among professional officers,” but I would more forcefully apply that to the politicians and even much of the populace. Overeducated (or perhaps better–overtrained) eggheads with an AM, PM, and afternoon pill for every occasion–and no understanding of history or the importance of tending one’s own garden.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Hitler, my ass.
Like most liberals, Paul E. is ashamed of living in a superpower. Like most liberals, he claims to love America while meticulously point out his country’s historical faults, not knowing what the men in the Oval Office knew during those times. What he really loves doesn’t and can never exist thanks to that pesky reality called human nature….but for liberals, naivete trumps common sense every time.
Was Paul beat up a lot as a kid? Don’t know. What I do know is that the incendiary bombings that killed 100,000 civilians in Tokyo and the atomic bombs that killed even more….WON a war that liberals surely would have lost and that both countries went on to unprecedented prosperity. Imagine a world today with an imperial Japan that was “left alone” to retool as Paul would have us do in Afghanistan.
I wonder what personal ordeal in Paul’s life caused the one chink in his progressive armour…..feminism? Whatever it was, he should take a bow and give all MRAs a mea culpa for being one of the original enablers of this “hateful ideology” and slippriest of all slopes.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
It really is too bad you feel this way. Joe. But I understand where you are coming from. Yours is the histrionic battle cry of the ersatz conservative. All guns and glory, success measured in body bags and barrels of oil. And of course anyone who disagrees with you is a liberal ashamed of his country.
I have to say, as a fiscal and foreign policy conservative that I am quite saddened and frequently amazed to see what passes for conservative these days. Anymore the one real qualification seems to be a willingness to drop bombs, even when asserting such a morally indefensible position as you take here.
Quite simply, your citing of Japan was wholly disingenuous and utterly transparent. You were not advocating rebuilding Afghanistan as we did Japan. You say that you believe a war in Afghanistan is “unwinnable” and that your policy was quite clearly to leave Afghanistan “NOW” and just keep destroying any emergence of civilized society by incinerating them any time there were (quote approximate) “five or more people in one place or a building more than 12 feet tall.”
You want, in your own and final words, to “…re-acquaint them with the 7th century.”
In other words, you just want a policy of extermination.
It is an attitude and an ideology so morally bankrupt and intellectually deficient that it would be laughable, were it it not so patently and completely repugnant.
October 30th, 2009 at 12:20 am
What’s repugnant is your feminized view of the world. That “all you need is love,” despite an endless list of examples that these particular adversaries would just as soon cut your head off as look at you. And you know damn well I was referring to five TALIBAN and THEIR structures. What would be morally bankrupt about making mosques or training camps (where there are no women and children anyway) a little less secure as payback after yet another one of their atrocities?
Is there ANYTHING worth fighting for to liberals? What does it take to piss guys like you off? The simple truth is that your non-confrontational weakness, your misplaced humanity, gives aid and comfort to the enemy….and they’re counting on it. It gives them strength, not to mention a few guffaws around the campfire.
October 30th, 2009 at 8:09 am
“Is there ANYTHING worth fighting for to liberals? What does it take to piss guys like you off? The simple truth is that your non-confrontational weakness, your misplaced humanity, gives aid and comfort to the enemy….and they’re counting on it. It gives them strength, not to mention a few guffaws around the campfire.’
Please spare me the chest beating. Thougtfulness is not weakness. Sun Tzu teaches us that. Going willy-nilly into foreign countries with guns blazing is the opposite of an informed military leader. Holding ground is far harder than taking ground. Neo-cons had no exit strategy. Rumsfield thought a smaller, more nimble, more high tech army would win the wars of the future. Please.
“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved. ” -Sun Tzu-
“For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. ” -Sun Tzu-
“He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious. ” -Sun Tzu-
“He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious. ” -Sun Tzu-
“There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited. ” -Sun Tzu-
“Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory. ” -Sun Tzu-
I could go on, but you get my point. You no nothing about the complexity of real world geo-political politics and the high cost of war.
October 30th, 2009 at 11:54 am
The Baltimore Sun Editorial: True Price of War:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bal-ed.afghanistan30oct30,0,4408520.story
According of the editorial, the Soviets withdrew after losing 15,000 soliers and 800,000 Afhgans dead.
Vietnam which was fought because it was the “rice bowl” of far east ended after “War of Attriton” with over 58,000 Americans and 3 millon Vietnamese dead.
The Gulf War was fought according to Rush Limbaugh to “Free flow of oil at market prices” The sequal “Operation Enduring Freedom” was declared “Mission Accomplished” by then- Commander in Chief almost 8 years ago.
October 30th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Its head-shakingly sad, but understandable, that there are so many pacifists on this, of all websites. The refusal to fight back. Its a mindset that took root early in your bullied childhoods, and undoubtedly carried over to your relationships with women….who, in spite of feminist propaganda, loathe weak men. Call it “thoughtfulness” or give it some other wishy-washy moniker but it amounts to the same thing….a guy who gets little respect except from his equally soft acquaintances.
What does some ancient Chinese philosopher or the Viet Nam debacle have to do with protecting ourselves from a religious cult that wants to kill us…..NOW? The United States could bring home every GI on the planet, close all its embassies, and seal its borders…..and nothing would change. These people want us dead and are ‘instructed by God’ to make it happen.
If I’ve been abrasive, antagonistic and insulting, well….good. If it gets a rise out of you marshmallows, maybe you’ll enjoy the sensation and begin playing hardball against the feminist beast.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
@ Mr. K,
Good link and article. It may signal that the pass the liberal media has given Obama on his expansion of the war so far is nearing an end.
Perhaps at some point, with the adolescent rants of thug politicians being called to task and forced into the background where they belong, we will actually start a more objective analysis of the policies that have resulted in blow back that has hurt us.
The Cato Institute, a great source of conservative and libertarian literature has the following piece if you haven’t read it.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1019
As an MRA, I am gravely concerned with the exploitation of our young men. And frankly I am getting quite sick of government sociopaths sacrificing them life and limb, and lying to all of us about the reasons.
I am still involved with an activist project over the next week or two, but after that is done I intend to write a piece on how many young men have been sent to their deaths since the end of WWII, all of them sacrificed to line the pockets of of corporate masters.
This will include not only the 58,000 that died in Vietnam, but in the 60,000-100,000 Vietnam vets that have committed suicide since the end of the war. All for the fake idea of stopping a communist domino effect that never happened, and from a war where Johnson and McNamara had simply lied in order to have a reason to escalate the conflict:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Incident#Distortion_of_Event
Sound familiar?
As much as I am tired of seeing men get the shaft in media, family and criminal courts, I am really, really getting tired of seeing them killed, mutilated and dead at their own hands because it serves corporate interests.
Wrapping a flag around all that is getting old.
November 2nd, 2009 at 11:18 am
“Its head-shakingly sad, but understandable, that there are so many pacifists on this, of all websites. The refusal to fight back. Its a mindset that took root early in your bullied childhoods, and undoubtedly carried over to your relationships with women….who, in spite of feminist propaganda, loathe weak men. Call it “thoughtfulness” or give it some other wishy-washy moniker but it amounts to the same thing….a guy who gets little respect except from his equally soft acquaintances.”
I beat the sh-t out of bullies for sport my whole life. I’ve been in over 25 street fights. I currently practice brazillion Ju-Jitsu under a world champion.
My wife is also hot, into rough sex, and massages my feet when I come home from work.
Fighting smart, and fighting when you are assured victory, is not being a pacifist. The fact that you would defend your weak intellectual position is a sign of the same stubborness that would of gotten you killed in any real combat. I’m sure you’d be the first to charge a highly defensible hill. You’d make great cannon fodder. Why don’t you go join up.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Reed obviously knows as much about the military and Afghanistan as I do about the Ugandan army (which is absolutely zilch). Of course he is entitled to his opinion, which is what the article is because there are very few facts in it. He knows nothing about the insurgents in Afghanistan. A few thousand angry tribesmen? First of all, they number somewhere in the range of 50,000 – 70,000, and have unlimited supplies of recruits. Second, they are not doing “rather well”. We kill/capture them by the thousands, despite the fact that they hide amongst the population and are virtually indistinguishable from non-combatants. And they are not armed with just “AKs and RPGs”. Whenever they confront us in battle head on, they do very badly, losing most of their combatants compared to our very few casualties. The insurgents most effective weapon against us is the IED, which they have become masters at concealing, and we don’t usually know we are upon them until they blow up. We are successful at detecting a lot of them, but there are so many out there, we just can’t find them all no matter how technologically advanced we are. So I would say we are doing rather well, if we you want to compare combat death ratios, not them. As for his opinion about our military and military training – whatever…