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Required Reading
Posted by Stephen Green · 28 January 2006
Ralph Peters: From Iraq's Sunni Triangle to China's military high command, the counterrevolution in military affairs is well underway. We are seduced by what we can do; our enemies focus on what they must do. We have fallen so deeply in love with the means we have devised for waging conceptual wars that we are blind to their marginal relevance in actual wars. Terrorists, for one lethal example, do not fear "network-centric warfare" because they have already mastered it for a tiny fraction of one cent on the dollar, achieving greater relative effects with the Internet, cell phones, and cheap airline tickets than all of our military technologies have delivered. Our prime weapon in our struggles with terrorists, insurgents, and warriors of every patchwork sort remains the soldier or Marine; yet, confronted with reality's bloody evidence, we simply pretend that other, future, hypothetical wars will justify the systems we adore--purchased at the expense of the assets we need. Read the whole thing already. Comments
TO: Stephen Green "Our prime weapon in our struggles with terrorists, insurgents, and warriors of every patchwork sort remains the soldier or Marine..." -- Stephen Green ...is only news to those who have never REALLY paid much attention to military history. Back while going through another pass at Benning School for Boys, every general officer who came to address the assembled classes of said school said the same thing.... READ Fahrenbach's This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness. I did. The pivotal chapter is #25, Proud Legions. In there the author, a public schools teacher and Army reservist called to war in Korea writes, The object of warfare is to dominate a portion of the earth, with its peoples, for causes either just or unjust. It is not to destroy the land andpeople, unless you have gone wholly mad.Posted by: Chuck Pelto at January 28, 2006 11:55 AM Yep the Democrats are doomed!! P.P.S. Sorry about not turning off the blockquote properly.... Posted by: Chuck Pelto at January 28, 2006 11:57 AMOK, lots of stuff there, most of which we already know. TO: John Anderson "Nope." -- John Anderson, on the two proffered solutions to the problem. What's YOUR solution? Regards, Chuck(le) Posted by: Chuck Pelto at January 28, 2006 02:39 PM*Comment edited to remove open HTML tag.* Posted by: Chuck Pelto at January 28, 2006 03:03 PMIn short, Peters is a moron. There are no "cherished rules of warfare". We know that. Posted by: Joe Peden at January 28, 2006 04:07 PMInteresting. Posted by: Joe Peden at January 28, 2006 04:10 PMclose your links! Posted by: hey at January 28, 2006 07:35 PM
Posted by: hey at January 28, 2006 07:36 PM
www.dell.com Posted by: hey at January 28, 2006 07:38 PMk well I can't manage to insert html to close chuck's link. If Steve or Will could please close the links and delete my comments. Posted by: hey at January 28, 2006 07:40 PMAs to the solution: be more ruthless. Identify the families of suicide bombers, wherever they are from, and subject them to collective punishment. Treat any sort of support for any jihadi linked groups as a capital crime. Be the Romans. Or simply build a useful state and wait out the enemy. And dust off the sedition act and start to use it vigourously. Everyone on staff at NYT for a start, and start settling old scores by going after Hanoi Jane. Give them the treatment they would love to meet out to us. Key sentence: "We are not (yet) at war with Islam, but the extreme believers within Islam are convinced that they are soldiers in a religious war against us." Islam is a civilization of One Billion people. As Peters has written elsewhere, the vast majority are perfectly sane and want nothing to do with this stuff. The 300 million Muslims in India vote in elections and do not do this kind of thing. The hundreds of millions of Muslims in Indonesia have shown very little inclination to support this kind of thing. It is a minority in the Arab middle east, and some from the Persian-speaking world who do this kind of thing. Let's not talk about "Muslims" generically as supporting this kind of thing. That is what our enemies want us to think and to do. How will it be stopped? By showing it is ineffective and refusing to give in to it, and punishing those who aid and abet it. It will be a nasty process and may take a long time. Posted by: Lexington Green at January 28, 2006 10:14 PMOdd that in all of the rambling about a war with China and our "addiction to trade" with China, there is no note that our GDP is nearly 7 times that of China's, that a far smaller percentage of our GDP is derived from trade than is China's, or that the trade deficit with America alone accounts for 10% of China's annual GDP. We are not the ones on the short end of the stick here. Posted by: MM at January 28, 2006 10:31 PMBlahbitty blahbitty blah. And if we didn't have network centric warfare? In a high stakes, quick decision environment, usually the tiny entity outperforms the huge one. The advantage for the huge group is scale, and in warfare, numbers. If you gave Warren Buffet 1 Million, he could double it in a year easily. However, he could not turn 100 billion into 200 billion within a year. I think Peters goes off the rails when he starts talking about China. All the advantages, such as they are, of transnational gangs like al Qaeda -- their lack of fixed assets to strike at, the institutional inability of the international system to see them -- do not apply to China, which is a standard-issue nation-state complete with all that 1940s stuff: armies, command-and-control centers, populations, an economy, supply lines, et cetera. If a war ever did happen between the USA and China, those things would become targets like they always have, and their loss would hurt China the way such losses always do. And any attempt at a Chinese campaign of actual sabotage and terrorism in the mainland United States would turn into war in about two days. God knows there's lots of good reasons to hope there's never a war between America and China (and I really don't expect such a thing to ever happen) but "we'll be helpless before their fourth-generation techniques" is not one of them. Posted by: M. at January 28, 2006 11:12 PMOk, I read the whole thing. Now what? Was there a fact hidden in there someplace that I missed? Posted by: chuck at January 29, 2006 12:21 AMOk… Ralph needs to find himself an editor. He has some very good points… But what does this have to do with the fact that someone who blows themselves up along with innocent men women and children in the name of God has less to do to with religion, and more with the fact that these people are brain washed psychopaths that need to be sent to hell via a 500 pound laser guided weapon? I understand its not that simple, but it aint that damn complicated either. And on China. I hear all the dooms dayers talk about China, and what if that they stopped manufacturing for us? What if they called in all of their debt they hold? On the latter, if they “called in their debt”, we would do what we always do: Sell more T-bills. China can only affect interest rates. Is there any indication that capital around the world is in short supply? If china sells them, someone else will buy them, albeit at a higher yeild, raising rates, econ 101... And on manufacturing? Perhaps the 50 million Afghans and Iraqis looking for work would be happy to build our cell phones and coffee mugs for us. Not to mention India. Besides, how much longer do you really think China’s communist system will last? I give it a decade or less. China can support 1 billion starving people forever. They can not support 1 billion people starving for prosperity. -The American Patrol TO: The American Patrol "I understand its not that simple, but it aint that damn complicated either." -- The American Patrol True. It's simple from one perspective; that of tech being able to make it easy to kill the enemy. On the other hand, it's complex in the matter of teaching our young men and women to be prepared to and willing to fight for the ideals of our country. And herein we get to why I think Ralph thinks it will be difficult.... People who have no 'faith' are fighting at a disadvantage against people who have a 'faith'. For all intents and purposes, they are going into the fight armed with a slingshot when the other guy is armed with a sword and shield. I think I've mentioned this around here before. Peters writes... Against terrorists, we have found technology alone incompetent to master men of soaring will--our own flesh and blood provide the only effective counter. But I notice Stephen doesn't address THIS. And I wonder why. It's the elephant in the living room that atheists politely ignore. Peters goes on to say... Our intelligence systems cannot locate him, our arsenal cannot deter him, and, all too often, our soldiers cannot stop him before it is too late. And, in a manner of speaking he is perfectly correct. He's motivated by his understanding of HIS god. [Note: It isn't mine. And I can prove that. But that's another issue.] Whereas athiests have only their own motivation, which is pretty dismal compared to the flame in the heart and soul of someone who is thoroughly convinced of their god being on their side. It's like a football game where one team is perfectly confident and the other team is only partially confident. Even though the teams are evenly matched. Even though the less confident team has better equipment and better training. Three guesses as to who will win. As Napoleon put it, "Morale is to physical as 9 to 1." And that is proven throughout history on all too many battlefields. And make no mistake, Iraq IS a battlefield. Atheists fear death more than someone who is convinced they are going to heaven when they die. And that gives the believer, good or ill, a morale advantage the atheists will never have. I don't know Peters' religious beliefs, but I get the idea that is keenly aware of the advantage that morale, e.g., morality, has over the amoral multiculteralism that is prevelant today in the West. And we've been teaching our kids to be oh so 'moral' in the public education machine these last 20 years. More on that later.... Regards, Chuck(le) Chuck: I think you overstate the impact faith has on morale. Morale has several components: love of God (faith), love of country, love of comrades, and love of family. Of these faith is probably the weakest motivator. It results in sloppy thinking and planning that assumes victory because "God is on our side". The reality is that God seems to be, more often than not, on the side with more tanks. Patriotism and a desire to protect friends and family are sufficiently strong motivators and maintain a fear of death that encourages conservation of human assets. A dead soldier may or may not go to heaven, but he sure isn't going to kill any more of the enemy. You may find it hard to believe, but it is possible to formulate a morality independent of faith. I and countless other atheists have done so. It is not the place of schools to teach morality, that is the job of parents. Posted by: MMDeuce at January 29, 2006 09:31 AMTO: MMDeuce "I think you overstate the impact faith has on morale." -- MMDeuce
Having been an infantry platoon leader and company commander, I know a lot about the affect of morale on people. "Morale has several components: love of God (faith), love of country, love of comrades, and love of family." -- MMDeuce Good start, there. "Of these faith is probably the weakest motivator." -- MMDeuce Spoken like a true unbeleiver. "It results in sloppy thinking and planning that assumes victory because "God is on our side". The reality is that God seems to be, more often than not, on the side with more tanks." -- MMDeuce It can. Just look at what happened to the Imperial Japanese in WWII. But, on the other hand, it can be a real motivator. Again, look at the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII. We didn't take many prisoners of them. Instead, we had to fight them, digging them out of one hole after another and we took considerable casualties in the process. If you want to get a good idea of how difficult their morale, despite the fact they KNEW they were losing, was to overcome, read the rules of ground combat in Victory Games Pacific War simulation. That'll put things into perspective. In order to overcome that kind of morale you need both tech AND a morale that is on a par with it. The tech advantage gives you the necessary edge in the overall battle. The morale advantage gives your people the will to fight on, even if things look like you're not going to 'make it' out of an engagement alive. People who have no 'faith' are more likely cut and run because all they have keeping them going is merely themselves. Regards, Chuck(le) I agree that Mr. Peters does need an editor - the article would have been much better if everything related to China had been removed. My take-away quote: But the enemies we face are burning with belief, on fire with their vision of an immanent, angry god. Our intelligentsia is less equipped to understand such men than our satellites are to find them. I don't believe that is a necessary state of a community of non-believers. I believe (probably unlike Chuck) that it is possible to understand belief, faith, and revelation without being a believer. I think we just have an "intelligentsia" that is ridiculously biased against religion. It is not that they cannot understand. It is that they will not understand. Of course, that doesn't help solve the problem - they are still blind, regardless of why. Posted by: mrsizer at January 29, 2006 10:14 AMFor an interesting case study in what might happen if we China "boycotted" selling to us or we had to stop buying from them, check out wooden furniture. We put heavy duties on their factories for these items. What happened was the Taiwanese owners of factories in China immediately opened plants in Vietnam...even using Chinese managers! Not to mention Vietnamese domestic suppliers. The buyers flocked there, and yes, there are bottlenecks, but the market did not collapse in disarray with no viable suppliers left outside China. Posted by: Aaron at January 29, 2006 11:12 AMTO: mrsizer "I believe (probably unlike Chuck) that it is possible to understand belief, faith, and revelation without being a believer." -- mrsizer One can understand it. However, are you talking about understanding 'faith' from a nonbeliever, i.e., someone whose life is based on the idea that there is no such thing as God? Or from the perspective of someone who knows there is a God and understanding someone else who has the same knowledge, albeit dramatically different? I submit that the former cannot fully understand. Whereas the latter understands all too well. Regards, Chuck(le) Posted by: Chuck Pelto at January 29, 2006 11:14 AMTO: mrsizer "It is not that they cannot understand. It is that they will not understand." -- mrsizer That is precisely what I'm getting at. They cannot understand because such understanding is anathema. Regards, Chuck(le) Posted by: Chuck Pelto at January 29, 2006 11:16 AM"We didn't take many prisoners of them. Instead, we had to fight them, digging them out of one hole after another and we took considerable casualties in the process." And yet strangely, we did... Posted by: richard mcenroe at January 29, 2006 12:13 PMTO: richard mcenroe "And yet strangely, we did..." -- richard mcenroe We did. And, we withstood the massive Banzai charges which repeatedly overran positions, killing every American soldier and Marine who decided it was better to stand and fight, and if necessary die, than run away. I'm reminded of Aragorn's speech to his men before the gates of Mordor. Did we have more 'faith' then than we do now? I think we did. And, subsequently, more 'confidence'. We may still have enough. But someday, at the current rate, we may not. And woe is US when that day arrives. You see, the kind of 'faith' that wins battles and wars and decides the fates of nations is based more on the idea that it is greater to serve than it is to be served. Christianity is based on the idea that everyone else is more important that I am. Atheism is based on the idea that I am more important than any other person....unless I, personally, decide that someone else is more important that I am. There IS something of a 'difference'. Regards, Chuck(le) Stephen, Intersting article and interesting comments. For the most part Ralph Peters is dead on, but I disagree with his assertion that, "The suicide bomber may be the weapon of genius of our time." He is correct that the suicide bomber is cheap, almost impossible to detect, impervious to much of our hi-tech arsenal and their impact on today's media centric world can't be underestimated. However, looking at Iraq, the suicide bomber's indiscriminate targeting of Iraqis is seeming to backfire and is making enemies of former allies and sympathizers. The shift to targeting of fellow muslims and other soft targets also seems to belie Peter's assertion that we have no effective counter to this 'wonder weapon.' I think that perhaps the lessons that there are no substitutes for boots on the ground is not going unlearned though. But boots that are well trained, smartly led and have the technology behind them are in my opinion better than sheer numbers. He's also right about morale. Again I think that our biggest problem is from within and itis something that we will have to eventually deal with one way or another. I disagree with a lot of the commenters that thought he was straying in his discussion of China. He was dead on in many ways. The smug thinking such as this quote, " our "addiction to trade" with China, there is no note that our GDP is nearly 7 times that of China's, that a far smaller percentage of our GDP is derived from trade than is China's, or that the trade deficit with America alone accounts for 10% of China's annual GDP." Misses a really big point. Much of our heavy industry has migrated overseas in the last 50 years. In a war, it is that heavy industry that will be producing the material of war. We have morphed into a service economy and our heavy industry no longer exists in sufficient capacity to make us the "arsenal of democracy" that we were in in the first half of the 20th century. Our GDP may be larger than China's but if you look at our manufacturing capacity, the picture is not so comforting. In short, if a major war occurs just what manufacturing capacity do we have to convert to military production? Silicon Valley? More on China, "China’s gross domestic savings rate, after averaging 40% or so of GDP for most of the 1990’s, has grown over the past couple of years to close to 50% of GDP. This is an unprecedented number, and while a portion of this saving has been invested abroad in US Treasury bonds – thus funding the US current account deficit and keeping US interest rates low – the vast majority has been invested in the domestic Chinese economy." It's not all gloom and doom though, but Peters raises a good point with China, one he's discussed before. We ignore China at our peril. An interesting article in China's economics; http://www.econstrat.org/blog/?p=25 Posted by: Tim P at January 29, 2006 12:41 PMTO: All How many here would submit to the draft, were it reinstituted? Considering the Army has upped the enlistment age to just under 40 years, that would make quite a few of the people here, including our esteemed host, eligible. Think about it. And consider how many responded to the draft in WWI and WWII. Think there's a difference between those men and the men we are today? If there is, and it's more opposed to responding to a call to serve, what does that mean? Regards, Chuck(le) Posted by: Chuck Pelto at January 29, 2006 12:48 PMFrom Peters' article... > ... Secular societies appear increasingly fragmented, if not fragile. The angry gods are back. And they will not be defeated with cruise missiles or computer codes. We've used Advanced Technology to defeat Suicide Bombers before. Their leader's will to fight was broken at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Posted by: Arthur Kimes at January 29, 2006 01:14 PMWithout casting aspersions on Peters (every branch of the service believes, incorrectly, that they are the One True Military, and believes all the others are at best mooches upon their rightful funding), this kind of piece makes me very, very grateful for the wisdom of the Goldwater-Nichols Act. Look it up. Posted by: Will Collier at January 29, 2006 01:20 PMTO: Will Collier "Without casting aspersions on Peters (every branch of the service believes, incorrectly, that they are the One True Military, and believes all the others are at best mooches upon their rightful funding)..." -- Will Collier I must have missed that one, in my reading of Peters' article. Frankly speaking, I don't think that is the case. As a line-battalioin officer I'd have given dear parts of my anatomy to have an ANGLCO or FAC assigned to me in a combat situation. The former being able to rain down 16" "Grid-Square In the Open" fire from a battleship. The latter able to bring in an ARCLIGHT, i.e., carpet bombing by B52s. Whoever thinks that people on the line think so parochially is wrong. However up in the etherial, i.e., flag-grade, there may be a bit of a problem. RE: Peters' Point I don't see Ralph focusing so much on inter-service/inter-nicine fights as on the difference between tech and fighting spirit. Anyone can be a warrior, if they have the spirit to be one. That's hard for 'tech' to deal with. And, it's one of the things that the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States is counting one and supports. What Peters is pointing out is that unless we have the gonads to face our enemies and are more willing to resist them then they are to resist US, we're doomed. We can have all the tech we can think of, but if we don't have the balls to use it and the brains to use it well, we're history. Look at Egypt. Look at Rome. Look at England. Look at every other nation in history. Once they have lost the will to survive, they no longer survive. Even Carthage. Carthage had Rome by the gonads. Yet it lost. And the people are no more on the face of the earth. Why? I suspect because of internal politics and selfish politics overruling logic. We can go the same way, if you prefer to be politically correct instead of effective. Tech is just one side of the coin. Fighting spirit is the other. And our public schools have not been serving us well in that area. What's this about eliminating dodge-ball? Or other games of competition because EVERYONE is not a 'winner'? Regards, Chuck(le) TO: Arthur Kimes "We've used Advanced Technology to defeat Suicide Bombers before. Their leader's will to fight was broken at Hiroshima and Nagasaki." -- Arthur Kimes But it took their leaders to call upon their fighters to stop fighting. And in the name of the Emperor. This situation may be a tad different, as there is no Emperor, no National Command Authority (NCA) to tell the individuals to lay down their arms. Let me make this PERFECTLY clear. I am NOT a defeatist. But I can recognize the enemy for what they are; their advantages and disadvantages. And, if we want to defeat them and eliminate them as a threat to ourselves and our posterity, we'd better 'gird up our loins'. This is a long fight. This is just another phase of the overall war. It's been going on since 700 AD. It's the truth, whether you like it or not. And, unless you've got something more induring than your personal godhead of your personal household/life, you ain't gonna win it. Regards, Chuck(le) Posted by: Chuck Pelto at January 29, 2006 01:55 PMWill's got a good point. I've found Ralph Peters a fascinating commentator, and a fantastic novelist, but at times he seems too wedded to parochial Army interests - not least in his criticisms of Don Rumsfeld. So I look forward to his pieces but I carry my own salt. Posted by: Robin Roberts at January 29, 2006 03:26 PMTO: Will Collier ...are you of the opinion that the ground combat forces claiming that only THEY can 'hold ground' is a statement of overweened inter-service pride? Regards, Chuck(le) Posted by: Chuck Pelto at January 29, 2006 03:32 PMWell, it may take a generation but I think the answer is to cultivate international law and order. The computer and the net are just perfect for world wide 911 service. Posted by: Augurwell at January 29, 2006 08:24 PMTO: Augurwell "The computer and the net are just perfect for world wide 911 service." -- Augurwell Ghostbusters? Regards, Chuck(le) Posted by: Chuck Pelto at January 29, 2006 09:41 PM |
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