Quote :

"When America invaded Iraq five years ago, most of the people who set American foreign policy believed two things. First, they believed that the U.S. military could not lose. From Panama to Kosovo, the Gulf War to Afghanistan, America had been on a wartime winning streak since the late 1980s. Our defeat in Vietnam seemed about as relevant as the War of 1812. Second, the policymakers believed that people in Iraq wanted us to win. Hadn't the Poles and Czechs celebrated when we defeated the Soviets? Hadn't Afghans cheered the overthrow of the Taliban? Swirling in the air in the spring of 2003 was an intoxicating blend of militarism and moralism. Our troops would destroy Saddam, and Iraqi gratitude would take care of the rest. Five years later, that combination has blown apart. John McCain is open to bombing Iran, but he doesn't claim the Iranians will thank us for it. Barack Obama wants to restore America's good name, but not with the 82nd Airborne. For the most part, militarists and moralists now occupy separate camps. In the coming years, America will try to export its values and may well use military force. But it won't try to do both at the same time. In many ways, this is what happened after Vietnam. Underlying that war were the beliefs that the communists in North Vietnam couldn't withstand our military might and that the noncommunists in South Vietnam wanted to be saved. The war shattered both assumptions. On the left, Jimmy Carter responded by making human rights the centerpiece of his foreign policy: America would stand up for liberty--but not militarily. Conservatives insisted that had we used more military force in Vietnam, we would have won. But as the world turned increasingly anti-American, they abandoned the conceit that when we took up arms, other nations would cheer. This gulf between moralism and militarism narrowed in the 1980s and '90s. Under Ronald Reagan, conservatives grew more optimistic about exporting American values as they saw democracy spread in the Third World. And under Bill Clinton, liberals became more warlike, backing humanitarian interventions in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. Today, however, it's the '70s all over again. Republicans still assume that force--or at least the credible threat of it--is all that regimes like Iran's understand. But you don't hear many conservatives echoing the grand Wilsonianism of Bush's Second Inaugural, in which he claimed that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one." The fastest-growing species on the foreign-policy right is what National Review editor Rich Lowry calls "to hell with them" hawks: conservatives who don't care how non-Americans run their societies as long as they don't threaten us in the process. Among Democrats, hawkishness is out of fashion, but humanitarianism remains strong. In a Foreign Affairs article last summer, Obama argued that many around the world associate Bush's freedom talk with "war, torture and forcibly imposed regime change." His answer: help freedom's march with money, not arms. That makes sense. Moralism and military force are both necessary to U.S. foreign policy, but the former shouldn't ride the latter into battle. The U.S. military can help stop ethnic cleansing, as it did in Bosnia and Kosovo, or safeguard the world's oil supplies, as it did in the first Gulf War, but it's not designed to build democracy. You can't do open-heart surgery with a chainsaw. Building decent, liberal societies requires strengthening parts of the U.S. government that don't carry guns. While our military patrols the world, our embassies increasingly cower behind barbed wire, disconnected from the societies they need to understand and help. America doesn't need to abandon the fervor that five years ago helped propel us into a disastrous war; we need to redirect it. Muscular moralism has had its day. The test now is whether we can effectively separate the two--carrying a big stick for self-defense but using less blunt instruments to improve the world."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1724402,00.html

3/24/2008 8:21:42 AM

The credible threat of force is an important piece of diplomacy and a strong military is worth having.

The problem lies with these 'half-assed' wars such as Vietnam and Iraq II: The Return of Bush. Politicians lack the political strength to allow the military to do what it's supposed to do: wreak havoc and destruction. As a result, we fail. In the case of Iraq, the military is also being called upon to rebuild a country and prop up a foreign government--something it was never designed to do.

The lessons of how political and military objectives need to align for victory is nothing new. Clausewitz has been telling us this since 1832. Too bad civilian leaders aren't required to do the same reading as military leaders.

3/24/2008 8:51:29 AM

Exactly, if the time comes to war it should be a situation where the majority of americans support it, congress declares it, and america mobilize into a full on war where we absolutely crush whoever we are against. None of this business as usual oh by the way we are at war.

3/24/2008 11:03:45 AM

Quote :

"something it was never designed to do. "

i know but its sooooo good for business. hmmm, what to do.....

3/24/2008 8:02:49 PM

I agree with TerdFerguson when it comes to war or things truly resembling it -- in other words, what we have in Iraq now. I'm confident that if we'd mobilized our full efforts towards this conflict as we have towards others in the past, something much more closely resembling victory could've been achieved by now.

However, I am not of the opinion that US military forces should only be deployed for full-on wars. A far lesser level of involvement seemed to do the Kosovars OK, whether they deserved it or not.

Quote :

"In the case of Iraq, the military is also being called upon to rebuild a country and prop up a foreign government--something it was never designed to do."

Our military is not purely designed for destruction and has, in fact, done a fair job of rebuilding foreign governments in the past. Surely I needn't remind you that it was an active general, Douglas MacArthur, who did a pretty fair job of taking poor bombed-to-hell Japan and turning it into both a democracy and a premier economic superpower. People all over the Pacific also have glowing things to say about the work that the Seabees did to improve infrastructure in their countries, if perhaps they did so with martial intent.

I don't mean to say that our military is particularly well-suited for nation building and certainly I don't think it should be used to the extent it has been in Iraq for that purpose. Even now, non-military means are being largely ignored, and to our detriment. Still, I worry that from time to time we forget that they're not just a sword, and that they are in fact competent in certain areas of "nation-building."

3/25/2008 3:07:47 AM

I can't speak for TerdFerguson, but I didn't mean to imply that the military should only be used in all-out conflict, or that Iraq should be a fully involved conflagration. By 'half-assed' I meant that conflicts are not given both the political and military attention that they deserve, i.e. not ensuring that conditions are conducive for victory both politically and militarily. In the case of Iraq, political needs (minimal number of troops, restricted budget, minimal casualties) have diverged so far from military needs (more troops, more resources, and a freer hand in dealing with insurgents) that failure has become a much more realistic outcome than victory.

MacArthur and Japan are certainly a nation building success story, but I'm hard pressed to think of another example. Regardless, I believe the initial conditions that lead to the successful rebuilding of Japan (namely our demonstrated willingness to use whatever force necessary and the destruction of Japan's social, political, and economic structure) are not present in Iraq.

Quote :

"Still, I worry that from time to time we forget that they're not just a sword, and that they are in fact competent in certain areas of "nation-building.""

I worry the opposite. The military does have many uses and talents but, at the end of the day, it is still just a sword. It may be able to do a job, but it's not always the best tool for the job. Kinda like a screwdriver...

3/27/2008 10:47:46 AM

bttt

5/21/2008 10:30:10 PM