Veteran's Day - November 11, 2009

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work--

I am the grass; I cover all

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?

Where are we now?

I am the grass.

Let me work.

Carl Sandburg

“It Feels a Shame to Be Alive”

It feels a shame to be Alive—
When Men so brave – are dead—
One envies the Distinguished Dust—
Permitted—such a Head—

The Stone—that tells defending Whom
This Spartan put away
What little of Him we—possessed
In Pawn for Liberty—

The price is great—Sublimely paid—
Do we deserve –a Thing—
That lives—like Dollars—must be piled
Before we may obtain?

Are we that wait—sufficient worth—
That such Enormous Pearl
As life—dissolved be—for Us—
In Battle’s—horrid Bowl?

It may be—a Renown to live—
I think the Men who die—
Those unsustained—Saviours—
Present Divinity—

Emily Dickinson

Mesopotamia

1917

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave;
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied them from day to day;
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?

Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide—
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employment as of old?

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors , and take counsel with their friends,
To confirm and re-establish each career?

Their lives cannot repay us—their death could not undo—
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?

Rudyard Kipling

To the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Say of them

They knew no Spanish

At first, and nothing of the arts of war

At first,

How to shout, how to attack, how to retreat

How to kill, how to meet killing

At first,

Say they kept the air blue

Grousing and griping,

Arid words and harsh faces. Say

They were young;

The haggard in a trench, the dead on the olive slope

All young. And the thin, the ill and the shattered,

Sightless, in hospitals, all young.

Say of them they were young, there was much they did not

Know,

They were human. Say it all; it is true. Now say

When the eminent, the great, the easy, the old,

And the men on the make

Were busy bickering and selling,

Betraying, conniving, transacting, splitting hairs,

Writing bad articles, signing bad papers,

Passing bad bills,

Bribing, blackmailing,

Whimpering, meaching, garroting,--they

Knew and acted

understood and died.

Or if they did not die came home to peace

That is not peace.

Say of them

They are no longer young, they never learned

The arts, the stealth of peace, this peace, the tricks of fear;

And what they knew, they know.

And what they dared, they dare.

Genevieve Taggard

Fight the Battle, Not the Game

In his discussion of the desirable attributes for a battlefield commander, Clausewitz wrote of the importance of “coup d’oiel” – perhaps best described as the ability to quickly recognize a truth that would ordinarily be missed or perhaps only perceived after long study and reflection. Whatever his other virtues, President Obama’s approach to his decision about what to do in Afghanistan clearly demonstrates that he is not choosing to rely on any personal sense of coup d’oiel in this instance. Given that we are already in October and what Clausewitz would have called the campaigning season is nearly over in Afghanistan, this deliberative process need not be considered a fatal flaw.

This morning (October 26), the Washington Post and other news sources are reporting that Obama’s deliberative process has included at least two war games exploring different US troop commitment levels. Given that the history of war gaming as a tool of military study and analysis (as well as an entertainment) is strewn with tales of political and military decision-makers mislead by war games, one can only hope that the decision makers have actually heard the cautionary voices of any professionals associated with these games.

In the most infamous war game incident, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) tried out its plan for the attack on the island of Midway in a war game in which the “American” side sank four JN aircraft carriers. The game directors restored the four carriers to the IJN side and the game proceeded to the anticipated Japanese victory. However, as naval historians and others will recall, at the actual Battle of Midway, the US Navy – aided by its ability to read Japanese communications – did go on to sink four IJN carriers and turn back the invasion force. (Many tellers of this story fail to point out that the game directors were not wrong in restoring the carriers because every war game has a whole list of questions to examine and in this case the game had to go on to examine them. The error would have been in the IJN failing to take note of the fact that the USN was still a potentially dangerous foe.)

However, this story also reflects a harsh reality about war games as an analytical tool – no matter how much data is piled up and analyzed for inclusion in the game, the war game is not predictive or prescriptive. A well planned and well conducted war game can clarify issues associated with a proposed course of action, but it cannot guarantee a specific real world outcome. In fact, the Prussian Kriegsspiel, a common ancestor of modern war games was no more than a tool that allowed Prussian officers to practice decision-making. It was not considered a valid or useful tool of analysis or for predicting the outcome of a military operation or campaign. (History also tells us, however, that even the Prussians would eventually attach almost mystical faith in their war gaming of various military plans and options.)

There are several reasons for limits upon what war games can tell us. One can be described in a paraphrase of the words of Chief of the General Staff Count Helmut von Moltke – “No war game scenario survives contact with the war gamer.” Or in the words of many a modern field grade American officer, “The enemy gets a vote.” No matter how well educated, informed, and talented they are, the war gamer will not exactly replicate the battlefield decisions that will be made by the real opponent. I know that many hobby and professional war gamers have designed a war game or a war game scenario only to find their expectations for that design shredded by the completely unforeseen and unexpected decisions of a war gamer seeing it for the first time.

Designers of (both hobby and professional) war games are familiar with the limits upon any attempt to model battlefield reality. Every one of them can tell of having presented the latest and most complex simulation to date, only to have someone point out how the design overlooks the extremely important factor of “X.” The reality is that there are just too many factors affecting and influencing a battle and its related decision making process to be captured in any war game.

I do wonder whether these war games factored in what is likely to be the real “schwerpunkt” or decision point of any renewed or expanded American military effort in Afghanistan: American public opinion. The Administration will have to do a very good job of selling its Afghan war strategy to the American people if it is to be given time for that strategy to bear fruit. Clearly, ongoing events in Iraq will color popular reaction to plans for Afghanistan. The US has the option to try and push the reset button in Afghanistan but they will not be able to reset public opinion on the conflict in Afghanistan without the investment of major political assets.

Note: Similar stories can be found about the use of war games during World War II by the German High Command as it pondered decisions on the Eastern Front. In a related note, it is ironic that as the Allies began the D-Day invasion of France at Normandy, many senior German commanders were out of position because of a scheduled German Army kriegsspiel on the subject of a possible Allied invasion.

A Rock and a Hard Choice

Last week the CATO Institute held its conference on the subject of Afghanistan and what the U.S. should do in the ongoing war there. The panel and conference were moderated by Christopher Preble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Panel members included Malou Innocent, Foreign Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute and co-author of Escaping the 'Graveyard of Empires': A Strategy to Exit Afghanistan; Celeste Ward, Senior Defense Analyst at the RAND Corp.; Patrick M. Cronin, Director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University; Robert Naiman, National Coordinator, Just Foreign Policy; and Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute, and co-author of Escaping the 'Graveyard of Empires'. You can see a podcast of the event at the CATO website. The two most striking points of the conference were the surprising degree of civility and the agreement that we need to do something different in Afghanistan (though without unanimity on what we should do differently) and we needed to start doing this something different soon.

My own thinking on the subject has recently been influenced by Death of a Myth by Bob Snelson on General Custer’s defeat at the Little Bighorn, published in 2005. I was struck by the author’s point that Custer’s battlefield decisions reflected how little he in fact knew or understood (beyond the tactical level) about the Native American peoples against whom he was making war. The army’s objective in this expedition was to attack the Sioux and the Cheyenne until they either moved onto the established U.S. government Indian reservations, or were annihilated. In essence, the U.S. Government had decided to use its military resources to compel these tribes to abandon their traditional way of life and its associated values and mores. Custer knew that the Indians would attempt to evade contact and combat with his force unless they perceived some advantage in fighting or a strong threat to the village and tribe that had to be countered. This understanding appears to be what led Custer to keep dividing his small command in order to cast a wide net that would force the warriors to come out fight.

The conflict between America’s Native peoples fighting to preserve their traditional way of life and an American government determined to see them acculturated or eliminated lasted for decades. It in fact resulted in the destruction of much of the traditional ways of Native Americans while many of the survivors were denied full membership in American society and ended up marginalized in their own homeland.

The United States deployed military forces to Afghanistan in pursuit of Al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors. Having brought down the Taliban regime, the efforts of the U.S. and its Allies moved away from military confrontation with and defeat of residual Taliban and Al Qaeda forces and forces were even removed from Afghanistan and sent to Iraq for the new war there. Our forces and assets remaining in Afghanistan became increasingly focused on social engineering and national building issues with the general ambition of building up a modern western-style nation state – to the detriment of Afghan elements still clinging to the more traditional system based upon clan and tribe. In the view of many Afghans, the U.S. goal is to compel them to abandon their traditions, their religion, and their entire culture.

It is increasingly clear that eight years after U.S. forces arrived in Afghanistan, the American people are unwilling to see the U.S. increase or prolong its commitment of time and resources to further push for any long term reshaping of that country. The Afghans themselves appear at least if not more reluctant to accept the sweeping changes pushed for by the U.S. and its allies, such as the elimination of poppy cultivation and full equality for women, among other things. Against the background of conflict between Al Qaeda/Taliban and the U.S. and its allies, too many Afghans are choosing the former as being less of a threat to traditional values and way of life. We need to decide that our most important objective is to deny Al Qaeda any sanctuary or presence in Afghanistan that would contribute to its terrorist plans and operations. Everything else must be considered a secondary and more long term goal. For the immediate future, the U.S. needs to decide now exactly what resources and forces it can commit and for how long – and adjust its goals accordingly.