Just a little slice-of-life from Washington today. I’m listening to it myself as I post this. Here’s a release Wilson sent out with the clip:
WILSON: PRESIDENT NEEDS TO DEVOTE MORE ATTENTION TO ISIL
(Washington, DC) – Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel Joe Wilson (SC-02) issued the following statement after questioning Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel about the Administration’s strategy and military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Middle East.
“The complete and systematic defeat of ISIL is imperative for the United States’ national security and the safety of our allies around the world,” Chairman Wilson stated. “Achieving this outcome is growing increasingly difficult due to ISIL’s changing tactics and the President’s reluctance to listen to the advice of his experienced military advisors. After today’s hearing, I am further convinced that the President needs to devote more resources and attention to effectively destroy ISIL. Additionally, I believe that a comprehensive plan, which considers all options presented from our military leaders, is critical to complete our mission, protect our national interests, and bring peace to Iraq and Syria.”
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In case you’re wondering about that Band-Aid on Hagel’s cheek:
In answer the congressman’s question whether ISIS constitutes an “imminent threat” to the US, I do not believe it does. And I note that Sec. Hagel did not choose to characterize it that way, either. This is more than a matter of mere semantics. I see it as unfortunate that the sort of hyperbole engaged in by Rep. Wilson is driving much of the debate about how to deal with ISIS, which poses an imminent threat only to those in its direct line of fire. How we perceive a threat has a direct bearing on how we respond to it. Existential threats will elicit greater efforts than lesser threats will, which is clearly how it should be.
It is also important in this debate to appreciate how this threat, regardless of how one characterizes it, arose. The view in some circles is that it arose primarily as a result of our absence. I do not believe that is the case. ISIS arose because of the political inequities internal to the Iraqi regime. Therefore, the response should be primarily political — and must come from within Iraq itself, not from outside. There will be a military component, of course. The US, together with the other elements in the air campaign, have, for example, significantly degraded ISIS’s oil-production capacity, an important source of revenue. “Destroying” ISIS, however, will mainly be accomplished through efforts to peal off the other groups and organizations that have allied themselves with ISIS. That is primarily a political effort, not a military one.
Well said!
M., I believe the political situation that arose, in which the Sunnis no longer saw their government acting in their interest, was also a function of our absence. While we were there and engaged, we were constantly using what leverage we had (and we had none after we left) to push the Shi’a to share power with the Sunnis and Kurds. We still might have failed in that, but while we were there, we at least had a chance.
And as long as our military was still there and still working with local Sunnis in their areas, it would have been nearly impossible for ISIL to get a foothold.
You are right that EVERY aspect has a very significant political component, which we neglect at our peril. But when you say “That is primarily a political effort, not a military one,” everyone on the left (and the Rand Paul right) applauds, because they read that as requiring NO military effort, which is what makes them feel good.
You can’t leave anything out in these situations — diplomacy, economic engagement, intelligence gathering and military involvement. At some moments some more than others. The acronym is DIME…
Our leverage over the Iraqi government had waned well before we pulled out our troops. But, yep, I’m familiar with “DIME”. And, yes, there should be a military component in our efforts against ISIS. But, again, my feeling is that too much focus is being placed on the M and not enough on the D, I, E — yeah, I know, an unfortunate combination, but then the results of our past efforts have been equally unfortunate. As fmr. Gen. Bolger writes:
“Here’s a legend that’s going around these days. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and toppled a dictator. We botched the follow-through, and a vicious insurgency erupted. Four years later, we surged in fresh troops, adopted improved counterinsurgency tactics and won the war. And then dithering American politicians squandered the gains. It’s a compelling story. But it’s just that — a story.
The surge in Iraq did not “win” anything. It bought time. It allowed us to kill some more bad guys and feel better about ourselves. But in the end, shackled to a corrupt, sectarian government in Baghdad and hobbled by our fellow Americans’ unwillingness to commit to a fight lasting decades, the surge just forestalled today’s stalemate. Like a handful of aspirin gobbled by a fevered patient, the surge cooled the symptoms. But the underlying disease didn’t go away. The remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgents we battled for more than eight years simply re-emerged this year as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.”
He continues elsewhere:
“Some might blame the elected and appointed civilian leaders. There’s enough fault to go around, and in this telling, the suits will get their share. But I know better, and so do the rest of the generals. We have been trained and educated all our lives on how to fight and win. This was our war to lose, and we did.
We should have known better. In the military schools, like West Point, Fort Leavenworth, Quantico, and Carlisle Barracks, soldiers study the work of the great thinkers who have wrestled with winning wars across the ages. Along with Thucydides, Julius Caesar, and Carl von Clausewitz, the instructors introduce the ancient wisdom of Sun Tzu, the Chinese general and theorist who penned his poetic, elliptical, sometimes cryptic Art of War some twenty-three centuries ago. Master Sun put it simply: “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.” We failed on both counts. I know I sure did. As generals, we did not know our enemy — never pinned him down, never focused our efforts, and got all too good at making new opponents before we’d handled the old ones.
We then added to our troubles by misusing the U.S. Armed Forces, which are designed, manned, and equipped for short, decisive, conventional conflict. Instead, certain of our tremendously able, disciplined troops, buoyed by dazzling early victories, we backed into not one but two long, indecisive counterinsurgent struggles ill suited to the nature of our forces. Time after time, despite the fact that I and my fellow generals saw it wasn’t working, we failed to reconsider our basic assumptions. We failed to question our flawed understanding of our foe or ourselves. We simply asked for more time. Given enough months, then years, then decades — always just a few more, please — we trusted that our great men and women would pull it out. In the end, all the courage and skill in the world could not overcome ignorance and arrogance.”
And yes, the key would appear to be Sun Tsu. These are definitely not Clausewitzian foes. It’s been a long time since we faced one of those. We could use a nice, satisfying war game against the Germans. Something to cleanse the palate, between all these ankle-biter enemies. There’s just nothing like a foe who knows how to surrender and mean it.
And to answer your point above — there will ALWAYS be more focus on the M than on the rest of the DIME, because it’s always the controversial part. It’s what we contend over, in our internal politics. We hardly discuss the rest.
And the most pertinent part of what the general said is that we were “hobbled by our fellow Americans’ unwillingness to commit.”
I’m always being asked by my ideologically correct friends whether I’ve seen the error of my ways in advocating our Iraq incursion — because that’s what good people are supposed to do, right? The most I can say along those lines is this: If I had known how quickly the American people would turn against the enterprise, I would have been against it. And perhaps I should have seen that, but I didn’t…
I supported our enterprise in Iraq while living in a country, Germany, where that operation was viewed extremely critically. However, our roughly 8-year military involvement there could hardly be called short-winded. While I knew that particular phrase would catch your eye, when read in combination with the rest of what the general wrote (esp. “two long, indecisive counterinsurgent struggles ill suited to the nature of our forces”), I don’t think the general meant it as a criticism of the American people’s lack of will. Instead, it is a recognition that e as a country, and therefore our military as well, are ill-suited to shooting wars that potentially could last for decades.
Sorry to be so predictable.
But I’m serious when I say that I reckoned without our lack of long-term resolve. I also, of course, reckoned without WMD not being found. I recall being uncomfortable that WMD were mentioned so much in the runup to the invasion. I even had the crazy thought, “What if, in some bizarre twist, we can’t FIND the WMD?” I didn’t think that was really possible, but I was trying to imagine the worst thing that could happen. I remember thinking that if people thought WMD was the reason to go into Iraq (which it wasn’t, which is why I hated to hear it mentioned so much), and the weapons weren’t there, we were into another generation of America being unwilling to use military resources, like after Vietnam.
Well, it wasn’t quite that bad when the unthinkable happened. We’re still willing to use force in certain circumscribed, low-risk situations. But it was very damaging to our ability to consider the M dispassionately along with the rest of DIME.
TWO things went wrong in Iraq, and I didn’t foresee either of them: First, the Bush administration didn’t prepare for the postwar situation AT ALL. I thought, you know, our military had institutional memory. Why else do we send officers to the War College, etc., if not to learn about such things as how we administered Germany and Japan after the war? We had Public Affairs units. Weren’t they expert in this sort of thing? I reckoned without the hubris of civilians like Rumsfeld, thinking we could do it on the cheap. I was listening to people like Lindsey Graham who was always going on about how hard it would be to build civil institutions in Iraq, and what a long slog it would be. That was the way I saw it, too.
The second thing was not foreseeing the collapse of political will here.
M., I take it that you have decided since that you were wrong in supporting our going into Iraq back when you were in Germany.
So… what do you think YOU got wrong, in hindsight?
The problem is that a lot of people on both the left and the right think there has to be an imminent threat to the U.S. for us to commit military resources.
That’s not true, of course. There are many reasons to use military assets in many different ways in very different situations around the globe. We didn’t think Saddam was going to attack the United States after taking Kuwait. But we acted to turn him back, and we should have. We didn’t think the Serbs were going to land on our beaches, but we acted to stop the killing in the Balkans anyway, and we should have. Even in WWII, there was minimal chance that either Japan or Germany was going to land in the actual United States. Of course, since Japan attacked our fleet at Pearl Harbor, that’s a fairly moot point. The First World War was probably a better example of what I’m talking about.
A lot of people, perhaps most people, don’t think that way. So we’re always couching the need for action in terms of an imminent threat. So it was that the Bush administration overemphasized the WMD before going into Iraq. There were plenty of other reasons, sufficient reasons, to act in that case — removing Saddam was enough for me. But they didn’t connect viscerally the way WMD did.
So you get this kind of rhetoric…
Americans have trouble articulating why we fight even when we get to the point of actually fighting. We always get rhetoric about doing it for “freedom,” or “democracy,” when we very seldom find ourselves in situations in which OUR freedom or democracy are threatened (although we’re frequently standing up for basic freedoms for others).
We might find ourselves in a situation in which we really need to be engaged for a host of reasons having to do with out national interests and ideals and those of our allies. But those reasons seldom would fit on a bumper sticker…
Me: I completely concur. I was simply pointing out that the nature and extent of the threat (whether it be to us directly or to international norms) will determine the extent and nature of our response — with existential/imminent threats resulting in more and longer-lasting commitment than lesser threats. As I say, I see the threat posed by ISIS in one of the latter categories.
Moreover, I think we have gotten ourselves rather too much in a tizzy when it comes to al Qaida and terrorism in general and as a result have ramped up our national security apparatus far out of proportion to the threat these groups actually pose. Non-state actors like al Qaida did not and do not present anything like the sort of threat posed by Imperial/Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union, among others. They may attack us, they may kill a few of us, but they cannot threaten us as a country. A confident, self-possessed country is able to absorb these blows – and move on. We should be strengthening our sense of levelheadedness and prudence, not our national security machinery.
That’s leaving aside the question of whether or not our military even has the capacity to deal with the non-linear situations we face overseas. I find myself in agreement with Gen. Bolger on this: Our military is not designed, constituted or trained to deal very effectively with long-term engagements against determined insurgencies. Much has been learned over the course of our involvements in Iraq and, particularly, Afghanistan; anybody who looks into publications like Small Wars Journal can see that. But those adjustment have been largely tactical in nature. They have not resulted in a large-scale redesign of our military structures or a reorientation of how our military sees its mission. There’s been a lot of debate about that in military circles and we could, perhaps, develop a military that would be able to serve a constabulary role, but we cannot do so on the fly. So we should not talk or act as if our military can do anything, anytime, anywhere – if only we would show the proper determination.
Yes, the day-to-day threat posed by al Qaeda does seem pretty insignificant alongside Germany and Japan in the past, or maybe China or Russia in the future.
Except… when you contemplate what happened on 9/11, when they managed to do quite a bit more than “kill a few of us.” We may reassure ourselves that, thanks to our efforts to degrade and disrupt the network, al Qaeda is no longer capable of an attack on that scale. But then, we had not conceived of such an attack before 9/11. Which makes you wonder what else we haven’t been able to imagine.
It seems to make all the sense in the world to say, ” they cannot threaten us as a country.” I find myself nodding. But again, I return to 9/11, which for several weeks managed to disrupt our economy in significant ways.
And I wonder, what would a better-organized, smarter, more enterprising al Qaeda be able to accomplish? How well would we deal with a series of attacks on a 9/11 scale? Would we bounce back effectively? (Our reaction to the relative non-threat of Ebola doesn’t reassure me.) How much damage could be done to our already-weak economy?
The irony is that, as big and bad as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and the Cold-War-era Soviets were, they never managed to come to the United States itself and kill thousands of Americans just going about their daily routines. Unless you count Pearl Harbor, which wasn’t actually a part of the U.S. at the time. And even then, they only managed it once. We never let them get close enough again.
And maybe our countermeasures since 9/11 have ensured that neither al Qaeda nor ISIL can get close enough again. But to what extent can we maintain that hold-them-off approach without, as you say, remaining in something of a “tizzy” with regard to them?
Our modern economy depends on the kind of openness and accessibility that al Qaeda exploited so dramatically 13 years ago. Seems to me they retain a certain potential to cause serious disruption again.
That they have not is wonderful. And to the extent that our security and military efforts have prevented it, we can take a measure of satisfaction.
But how much longer CAN we go without a major attack? I don’t know…
Once more unto the breach:
With respect to 9/11, I’d suggest taking another look at what happened. The central thing to bear in mind is lack of sustainability — the attacks were not sustained. Al Qaida and like-minded groups did not and do not have the capacity or the platform to engage in sustained attacks of that scale. Nor is it so much a matter of where the attack occurs (I refer here to your comment about NYC, Pearl Harbor, etc.), it’s whether an enemy has what it takes to follow one attack with more, or whether it’s basically a one-shot deal. Only sustained attacks (or very broad-based attacks, such as massive cyber attacks) actual pose real threats to the country. When it comes right down to it, anything less than that is just a (very serious) inconvenience. And if the objection is: Oh, but civilians will die, I ask: In this sort of conflict or, really, any conflict, why should the death of civilians count for more than the death of soldiers? And shouldn’t we be prepared to absorb a blow, which means taking some civilian casualties?
Terror is like guerrilla war: it does not attempt to take or hold territory, engage the opponent’s main force or seek victory in any conventional sense. It’s main target is the mind of its enemy. It wants to get inside our heads. So to the extent we make it the central focus of our collective consciousness and a centerpiece of collective national effort, we lose.
Sure, another major attack may well occur. Let’s say a suicide bomber blows himself up in Metro Center in DC. Or sets off a car-bomb in Times Square. Yes, it would be horrific. But what larger effect would it have – if we didn’t allow ourselves to obsess over it? Round up anyone involved. See if there are overseas connections and, if so, respond appropriately. And otherwise remain vigilant. Mourn – but then move on.
(Folks like Max Boot are advocating sending at least 10,000 and as many as 25,000 US troops back to Iraq. I think that’s the wrong way to go. It’s an expression of a view that still insists, even after 10 years of less than stellar results, on focusing almost to the point of obsession on applying primarily military solutions to the challenges we face.)
I’m not proposing turning the other cheek. I’m suggesting a kind of mental inoculation, a change in attitude about terror, based on the realization of what the terrorist’s real target is: our attention, our perceptions, our imagination and our spirit. I’m calling for a change in mentality, in how we see ourselves in relation to threats. I’m advocating a genuinely mature sense of national resilience in the face of terror. That, it seems to me, is a genuinely strategic approach, as opposed to the mostly short-term tactical view we’ve taken up to now.
I will give you this, though: the fear-mongering and hysteria over Ebola (and I’d also include our response to the Boston bombing here, too) does not indicate that this is the response we’re likely to exercise. I’m only saying that I think it would be the better one.
One thing’s fore sure, this has taken us a long way from contemplating the Band Aid on Hagel’s cheek.
Interesting thing about sustainability… after the attack on Pearl Harbor and those timed with it, in the Philippines, Wake Island, etc., the Japanese were never again really successfully on the offensive.
Or at least, they weren’t after Midway. Sure, they had some tactical victories, but they were never again able to reach out toward America itself as far as they did on 12/7/41.
Pearl Harbor was a risk-everything-on-one-throw-of-the-dice deal. Yamamoto was counting on catching our carriers in port. It failed. Consequently, those carriers were available to defeat the Japanese fleet at Midway, and then begin the long process of rolling back the Japanese gains across the Pacific…
By Yamamoto, of course, I mean the admiral, Isoroku Yamamoto — NOT George Yamamoto, who was principal of Radford High School when Burl Burlingame and I were students there.
In his underground newspaper, Burl called the principal “the ghost who walks,” as few students ever saw him…
Except of course on the days a couple of their submarines shelled the Continental US – and the days after these attacks when their balloon bombs landed across Western North America.
The Germans also sank ships within sight of the East Coast.
Of course these weren’t really consequential; but they did inflict fear and uncertainty across America.
And of course, I was thinking of consequential attacks…
Interestingly, my ADCO work crossed paths with the whole hunt for Nazi subs, spies and saboteurs along the East Coast. Ernest Hemingway wasn’t the only famous civilian guarding our coast.
Belle Baruch, the daughter of Bernard Baruch who left Hobcaw Barony to a foundation that keeps it in a natural state and allows universities to study it, helped catch a Nazi spy or two. She got a thank-you note from J. Edgar Hoover (which you can see at Hobcaw) and everything…
That’s really cool. A thank-you note from J. Edgar Hoover is a pretty awesome souvenir to have.
Unless you’re Martin Luther King and Hoover sends you a letter suggesting you kill yourself.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/18/the_fbi_vs_martin_luther_king
Exactly, Doug. His ratio of “threatening” letters to “thank-you” letters is probably pretty high.
Accordingly, my assumption is that a thank-you note from him would be a somewhat rare thing.
This is the same Joe Wilson who thinks Hamas is going to infect a suicide terrorist to come infect our subways. Despite the fact that Hamas is all about Israel….
One aspect of any fear of ISIL/al Quida being a threat to the US is the spectre of 9/11 still haunting so many Americans. We ignored the warnings to our own peril and on 9/11, 3,000 lives were lost along with our innocence about an attack on our soil. When Billy Mitchell warned of the pending threat of an armed Japan and the potential of an attack, he was ignored. On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan and America lost close to 3,000 lives along with most of our Pacific naval fleet.
Personally, I am more concerned with the driving habits of locals than the potential of a terrorist attack at the local WalMart. But, it not a remote possibility anymore when we consider the attacks in London and other countries that believed they were immune.
Ignoring and minimizing a radical element who is capable of a terrorist attack us by a few is once again, doing so at our own peril. While Wilson may seem to be a little too preoccupied, maybe his preoccupation is not a bad thing and Hagel should be asked pointed questions.
It is difficult for me to harbor irrational fears about anything but at the same time, it is also difficult for me to dismiss the potential of bad people doing bad things by not at least being aware and alert to the potential.
Sure, but the most dangerous irrational people in my life are folks texting or being intoxicated while driving. We are extremely more likely to die in a traffic accident than a terrorist event!
Can you imagine someone who has been drinking also trying to text while driving? It is bad enough to drive and talk using a hands free bluetooth but texting, absolutely irresponsible and selfish.
Ok, I wasn’t going to say anything more on this subject. I’d already said too much. Plus there was no reply button and this string is getting old and has slid well down the page. But since you asked a direct question, I’ll respond.
No, actually I haven’t decided that I was wrong in supporting our invasion of Iraq. It seemed the right thing to do at the time and there’s little point in going back to re-argue that whole matter. I still like to think that history will prove that our sacrifices and investments there were worth it. But I have to admit that I may be just fooling myself.
But as for lessons learned, I’d say this. I used to think more as you seem to. I let my Wilsonian impulse get the best of me. I listened to folks like Fouad Ajami and Bernard Lewis, among others, scholars I respected and still respect, and thought our project in Iraq might be easier than it turned out to be, more like Germany and Japan than Vietnam. That enthusiasm has been tempered by hard experience. Too many mistakes were made early on – largely out of lack of proper preparation and too much focus on the purely military side of the equation and not enough on the political factors involved. (Plus, many in our military just don’t like the messy wars that insurgencies are and prefer to fight the kinds of big wars that our military is designed for.) Once errors were made, however, it was hard, even impossible, to go back and fix them. Instead we kept banging away at the nails our hammer was made for. Perhaps that’s in part a consequence of our fast-moving world. We had 3-4 years to prepare for our occupations of Japan and Germany (and still had to improvise and adapt once we got there), but only weeks or months to formulate plans for postwar Iraq. On the other hand, likely no amount of preparation could have equipped us to deal with helping refashion a country while still engaged in combating an insurgency. After all, Catholics and Protestants were not at each others’ throats in postwar Germany, nor did we have to contend with Nazi die-hards continuing to actively resist occupation. There’s only so much you can deal with at any one time and engaging in futility is not a form of heroism.
In any event, I now believe that our conflict with Muslim extremism will be long, but only occasionally military in nature and mainly at the margins. No GWOT but rather something more akin to the Cold War, conducted largely in the realms of politics, policing, intelligence and culture rather than through actual combat. Fundamentalist extremism isn’t really all that much about us anyway. It’s an internal struggle within Islam in which attacking or threatening to attack us (the US, the West) serves mainly as a means of gaining cred with some in the Muslim world. In some cases we may need to assist in undermining fundamentalist resolve, but it’s primarily their credibility that must be challenged. And that’s not something we can attack militarily. We cannot kill our way to victory in this campaign.
Good comment. It was and still is my contention that post invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the administrator should have used the assets at hand and not allowed the regular army and civilians who actually ran the limited infrastructure to disband. Sun Tzu made a good point about using your enemies resources to your own advantage. Unfortunately, anarchy reigned for weeks after the invasion and much of the historical treasures and antiquities of Iraq were looted from museums by uncontrolled residents of Bagdhad.
By the time the chaos started to subside, insurgents had already formed alliances and the rest is history. The power vacuum was ignored at the civilian level and based on stories and information about the way ISIS has handled civil and basic humanitarian matters in captured territories should be a lesson for us. Even though the penalty for disobedience is death, when the belly is full, a roof over your head, and a sense of safety from danger other than ISIS has been enforced, some stability will be the result.