Ruminations, December 21, 2008

And a child shall lead them

Sometimes, Christian evangelists can be annoying. I have seen them stand on corners and shout at passers-by, “Jesus loves you!”

Or course, even more annoying are atheist evangelists. They take out ads, most often during the Christmas season, that blame believers for mass killings and describe believers as “not bright.”

I have a colleague who is an atheist but not the evangelical kind. His wife, naturally enough, is an atheist also. They are raising their son without religion.

One day, as he tells it, his five-year-old came home from school and the conversation went something like this:

“Dad, some of the kids at school were talking about God.” Then with a look that implied deep thought, he added, “I don’t think that God is real.”

“Yes son, I agree with you.”

“But Santa Claus is real, isn’t he?”

“Of course he is.”

Can we learn something from a five-year-old? In this case, I think so. I would like to remind all the atheist evangelists that although you may not believe that God is real, Santa Claus and his spirit are real and live across the country. That spirit may be based on God and/or it may be based on the goodwill of all people. And so, in that spirit, I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy Kwanza, Happy Festivus, Season’s Greetings and Happy Holidays.

Calling all czars

“Czar” was title of the autocratic rulers of Russia who reigned from 1547 to 1917. Czars had a history of being of the elite class, out-of-touch with the general public and had a propensity for being the targets of assassins.

Why is it then that the United States, with its democratic tradition, insists on investing members of its government with the informal title of “czar”?

While many on the left have accused the Bush Administration of being autocratic, the tendency to use the title “czar” has become more pronounced in the incoming Obama Administration. For example, Carole Browner has been named energy czar (although the proper title her case is probably czarina we’ll go with czar), Adolfo Carrion will be urban affairs czar, Paul Volker is economic czar, Tom Daschle is health czar, Jim Ramstad is drug czar, and there evidently will be a car czar and a cyber czar. By the way, the music writers and singers want Obama to appoint a copyright czar. And there is speculation that Obama may name a climate czar.

One wonders what the Russians will make of all these czars. The last time Russia had a czar, their country was in economic turmoil and there was an unpopular war going on. Hmmm. As a bit of political intrigue, in 1917, the Russian people thought that the monk Rasputin was unduly influencing the czar so they got rid of the czar.

If someone starts referring to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright as a “mad monk,” all bets are off for a successful Obama presidency.

Winning and losing wars

A popular history of the 20^th century will tell you that the United States lost the Vietnam War and won the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Is that right? Could it be the other way around; the US won the Vietnam War and lost the Persian Gulf War? It depends on how one defines winning and losing.

Karl Von Clausewitz, in his 19^th century classic book On War, tells us that “War is the continuation of policy by other means." The implied corollary to that statement is: to win, a military victory is neither necessary nor sufficient – you must satisfy the political objectives that were the base of the war.

While it sounds straightforward, political objectives are not always clear – not even to the participants. For example, the American Civil War was ostensibly fought (from the North’s perspective) to preserve the Union and/or (from the South’s perspective) to maintain the constitutional rights of states. Looking back, it we can see it was fought over slavery; had slavery not existed, the surface issues (Union preservation and states rights) would not have been a problem, but that was not fully recognized when the war started.

In their 2005 presentation at the Naval War College, Dr. Christopher Bassford and Colonel William Andrews identified the following examples of broad categories of war objectives: intimidate the opponent, cause change in policy, reduce enemy military capacity, take a slice of territory, change regime, change form of government/ruling class, or effect conquest/absorption, or genocide/extermination. They also make the point that this list is by no means exhaustive: The number of objectives is infinite and the objectives are not always distinguishable from one another.

So, what were the objectives of the Vietnam War? At the time, we thought they were to prevent communist aggression and allow the free and independent Republic of (South) Vietnam to survive. Neither was achieved. Furthermore, although some argue that the United States militarily defeated the enemy on the battlefield, the fact remains that the U.S. military withdrew from Vietnam leaving the North Vietnamese in control. So, how in the ever-loving, blue-eyed world can we even entertain the idea that the United State s won?

Let’s take another look at the objectives – it could be that they were not clear at the time. In retrospect, if our two primary objectives were to prevent a communist Vietnam spreading communism by force to other Asian nations (the domino theory) and to defeat communism in the cold war, then we were largely successful. (In Bassford/Andrews categorization, we could say that our objectives were to reduce enemy military capacity satisfying the first objective, and change the form of government/ruling class satisfying the second.)

After the long war with the United States, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam had so thoroughly depleted its military manpower, its treasury and infrastructure that it did not have the resources left to move through Asia. Thus we achieved the first objective.

The United State’s leaving Vietnam contributed indirectly to the other objective: defeating communism in the cold war. Our leaving Vietnam caused the Soviet Union to believe, according to Vasili Mitrokhin, senior officer in the Soviet KGB’s Foreign Directorate, that “the world was going our way.” This contributed to the Soviet Union’s overreaching and expanding its activities in Africa, Latin America, the Mideast, Cuba and Afghanistan. When Ronald Reagan became the American president and accelerated an economic war against the Soviet Union, the Soviets had so depleted their resources in expansion that the economic pressure that Reagan exerted caused it to disintegrate.

So, although we withdrew from Vietnam in defeat, it could be concluded that in terms of political objectives, it was an American victory.

But what of the Persian Gulf War in 1991?

The short history is that in 1991, Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, invaded and conquered Kuwait and threatened to annex it. Its objective was clear: conquest/absorption.

The United States then, with the cooperation of some three dozen members of the UN, issued Iraq an ultimatum. When Iraq failed to respond, the coalition attacked Iraq with an air assault beginning on January 17, 1991. On February 24, the ground assault began and ended 100 hours later on February 28 – the Iraqi military had been thoroughly routed.

Why did we stop there? Why didn’t we move on and take Baghdad? What was the rationale for halting when we did? It wasn’t an arbitrary halt. There were reasons for stopping including:

• We had achieved the objective of forcing Iraq out of Kuwait.
• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell said, “You don't do unnecessary killing if it can be avoided. At some point you decide you've accomplished your objectives and you stop."
• From a realpolitik perspective, it was seen as desirable to have a balance of power between Iran and Iraq in the region. A weakened Iraq could shift the Mideast balance of power toward Iran.
• Arab members of the coalition might have abandoned it had the war moved into Iraq.
• President George H.W. Bush and his Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft thought continued action into Iraq would fracture the coalition and entail high costs in lives and political capital.
• Then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said, “I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel [Saddam] from Kuwait, but also when the President made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.”

That sounds reasonable. As a punctuation mark to the conflict, in March, UN Resolution 687 called for a cease-fire (note that this was not a surrender or peace treaty). The provisions of the resolution allowed that:

• Iraq could keep its armed helicopters.
• Iraq could keep the Republican Guard.
• Saddam Hussein could stay in power.
• Saddam Hussein would avoid facing charges at the World Court.
• Iraq was prohibited from flying fixed-wing aircraft in “no-fly zones.”
• Iraq was forced to recognize the “territorial integrity and political independence of Kuwait.”
• Iraq “unconditionally accept[ed] the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of: All chemical and biological weapons… [and] All ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometers."
• Iraq was prohibited from acquiring and developing “nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material” or performing related research and development.
• Iraq would have to pay the debts it incurred prior to the Persian Gulf War.

It would seem that we achieved our objectives and won the war. But as Bassford and Andrews pointed out at the Naval War College, sometimes a participant in a war “may not know his objectives.” Did we know our objectives? Some think not:

Saddam Hussein, on the 10^th anniversary of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, said of it, "Iraq has triumphed over the enemies of the nation.” It sounds like he didn’t think it was over and, if it wasn’t, we had not achieved our objectives.

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said, "We believe in what we said 10 years ago: We are victorious. Victory can be achieved through the strategic results of any confrontation, and we are confident that we gained victory in that struggle, which lasted 10 years and is still going on."  (Emphasis added.) Did Iraq really achieve their “strategic results” and did we fail to achieve ours?

Probably the person who most accurately judged the situation was the former Prime Minister of Britain Margaret Thatcher — who was astounded that Saddam was left in power. Reflecting on the war some ten years later, she said, “I think [the United States] stopped, rather too soon. … Half measures never work, you've … got to do the job properly and show the world you're serious so they better not let it happen again." Then she added, “Saddam Hussein, still in power. There is the President of the United States, no longer in power. There is the Prime Minister of Britain …, no longer in power. I wonder who won.”

Clearly, with hindsight, the objective of the Persian Gulf War of 1991 should have been “change regime [and] change form of government/ruling class.”

It is counter-factual to speculate, but had Saddam been deposed in 1991, the Iraq War that began in 2003 would not have occurred. (A reading of the USJFCOM Iraqi Perspectives Project [http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2006/ipp.pdf] leads one to conclude that had the second war not occurred in 2003, then there is a strong probability that it would have occurred in 2004, 2005, or sometime later; given the state of world politics in 2003, war with Iraq was inevitable.) The fact that it did occur and was a direct outgrowth of the war of 1991 indicates that we did not achieve what should have been our political objectives. Failure to achieve political objectives means failure of the war.

Lots of people may disagree with the assumptions and the conclusions outlined above: That we won in Vietnam and lost in the Persian Gulf. If you determine the winner as you would in a football game, where the immediate results on the field are the measure, they’re right. But if you measure war as a means of achieving political objectives, as did Clausewitz, Bassford and Andrews, then the victor is not as clear.

Robert J. Kulak

West Hartford, Connecticut