Reject Peace in Our Time

Major Mike

Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.” In business, this meme is used over and over by process improvement engineers to drive change, improve the product, and ensure success.

The key is …changing the formula in a way that can affect the results. There are many moving parts to a manufacturing process, some process changes will affect the results, some will not. Some factors are key drivers, and some remain relatively stable regardless of how they are manipulated. The essence for true change-agents is making adjustments that affect the results, and leaving the stable processes alone.

Mort Kondracke has an excellent post today entitled… “Vietnam-like Defeat in Iraq Will Have Far Worse Consequences.” Morton’s take is excellent and the key paragraphs are quietly hidden in the middle of the piece.

“I think history shows that the United States and South Vietnam might have prevailed against the North but for the flagging will of the American people and opposition from the media and Congress.

For sure, as recent commentary has reminded us, the 1968 Tet offensive was a colossal military defeat for the communists -- 58,000 killed in two months -- even though it convinced Walter Cronkite and American elites that the war was unwinnable.

And so, it became unwinnable. Once Gen. Creighton Abrams took over as U.S. commander in Vietnam in 1968 and instituted new tactics, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces began winning battle after battle, but, as Abrams complained to his staff, "we never get a break from the umpires" in the media or Congress.” (my emphasis)

As I pointed out in my third post ever on my retired Major Mike site… “Iraq is Not Another Vietnam.” Not in the ways that would make a difference militarily…terrain, equipment, tactics, firepower…all even more in our troops’ favor than in Vietnam. As in Vietnam, we have yet to suffer a military defeat, yet again we find ourselves on the precipice of a national humiliation…and why? Which parts have changed…which parts are being manipulated in the same way as during Vietnam? Which part of the process is delivering the same results?

As in Vietnam, some strategic and tactical miscalculations have been made on the ground in Iraq, but they are not severe enough to warrant throwing in the towel. Our strategic and operational planners have the ability, and the resources to solve the difficult military and political issues in Iraq, and produce satisfactory results…results that would look, smell, feel, and taste like victory.

Abrams was right, and Kondracke is on the verge of being right. There are only two groups advocating a policy that ensures defeat in Iraq…the press, and those political animals that feel that an anti-war stance will give them a better chance to get elected in this, and possibly the next, election cycle. These are the insane ones. They are the ones driving home a defeat. A defeat they are engineering via, their biased reporting, their defeatist interpretations and their narrow reporting of the actual events on the ground in Iraq, their wholesale rejection of the views of the American fighting men on the ground, and their continual hammering away at the will of the American people for their own, short-term goals.

Each war needs to fought in the manner that it takes to win. The Napoleonic stalemate of World War One was finally breached with the onset of mechanically driven, maneuver warfare. World War Two was won the through massive supply and logistics effort this country was able to muster to support troops on two disparate and massive fronts. Korea was stabilized by the efforts of determined and experienced WWII vets, and it taught us a lesson about malaise and complacency. Vietnam was lost at home…as Kondracke aptly points out…by politicians and by the press.

We won Desert Strom through superior firepower and brilliant strategic thought. We won the invasion of Afghanistan through righteousness of cause, and tactical superiority. We overcame serious geo-political obstacles to free 25 million people from tyranny, and eliminate the production (proven) of WMDs that were being developed by a sworn enemy of the US, a dictator who had previously used them.

Yet we find ourselves in a phase of war, in both Afghanistan and in Iraq, that we, as a country seem incapable of fighting. Our military is more than willing, and more than capable of fighting this phase. This is the pacification and democratization phase, and it will not be short lived. It will be long and arduous. And it will cost, daily, American and Iraqi lives. And it will be continual fodder for opportunistic politicians and the pathetically anti-American press…running the defeatist plays of the Vietnam era. The duration of this phase will not be clearly understood by the uneducated, and it will be exploited by the opportunists. This is the similarity with Vietnam that Kondracke notes…Congressional opportunists, fueled by an anti-government (anti-Bush in this case) press, will consciously, or sub-consciously conspire to undermine the will of the American public, for their own, selfish purposes. We seem powerless to win wars that extend beyond two election cycles. It is ominous.

And in the end, our military will be saddled with another “defeat,” brought on, not by the enemy, but by forces within our country that are integral pieces to our very democracy. In essence, we will be defeating ourselves. And once done, we will replicate the finger pointing and blaming that occurred post-Vietnam, but in truth, as Kondracke points out…the defeat will need to be blamed on the intangible erosion of the American will to pursue and fight a determined enemy…a will eroded by our press and our politicians.

The major difference between this defeat, and the defeat in Vietnam, however will not be the overrunning of a single fledgling democracy, but this defeat will result in a wave of assaults on democracies across the globe. Emboldened Islamacists, and indeed, anti-democratic forces worldwide, will recognize that will is the Achilles’ heel of democracy, and they will exploit that fact ad infinitum.

The struggle for peace in Northern Ireland came at a great cost, and after nearly 30 years, but the results are overwhelming worth the price. True, sustainable peace, can only be won through the lengthy and determined efforts of a society that has the wisdom to do what is right, and the will to see it through.

Have the will to see the right course of action through to its just end. Reject peace in our time; support peace in your children’s time… Vote Republican

© Michael McBride 2006