My reaction to Gen. Petraeus's dissertation...
Hi everyone,
I think this would be the right place to post a thread regarding history, since this is my reaction to reading Gen. Petraeus's dissertation so far, which explores the use of military force in the Vietnam war. I'm only on the first part of it, which explores how the Korean war influenced the thinking of senior military leaders in the Vietnam war.
First off, it is insightful and refreshing to read a scholarly work that is outside the typical liberalism of academia. I've been learning how traumatic isolated land conflicts were to the esteem of American forces caught up in them. The trauma then becomes a part of the collective memory the armed forces, internalized even by those who did not experience them directly, according to Petraeus. Not just the military, but other institutions have memories that define them.
The literature I have read for school talks about how museums, libraries and archives have insituitional memory as well. But never in my entire academic career have I heard the words "military" and "institutional" memory together in the same sentence. Yes, a lot of the anti-war protesters had trauma in their lives during the 60s, and many, no doubt, became the liberal professors in universities today, but through Gen. Petraeus's work, I have learned there is another side to the story. That is the trauma internalized by the senior military leaders who became cautious, if not indecisive, unless they were fighting conflicts they were positive they could win.
I think the reason why senior military leaders were hesitant to use counter-insurgency/unconventional war back when the invasion of Iraq first began, was due to painful memories still left over from Vietnam. Gen. Petraeus describes the inclination of "an all or nothing victory" in warfare as a reaction to avoiding another Vietnam. That might be why the US first went in with the heavy artillery and tanks back in 2003/4.
I am still studying the effects of Vietnam on US culture and Iraq today in this series on global conflict. I do not know as much as someone who lived through Vietnam, because I was not even born then. I am trying to understand the perspective of my professors, as well as my parents' generation as a whole. To me, it is 9/11 that holds real significance. Gen. Petraeus said that if an individual experiences a traumatic event in their formative years, then it impacts their psyche deeply throughout life.
I was studying at the University of Hawaii when 9/11 happened. I saw my fellow students cry at a candlelight vigil held in the dorms that day, when they discovered some of their loved ones had died in the World Trade Center. Even now, as they shed their tears, reciting the Lord's Prayer, their pain as fellow students of my generation is burned into my memory. I felt helplessness, pain and anger at those who attacked America. I saw that Waikiki was completely empty and tourists were stranded in Hawaii. Commerce in Hawaii was completely dead. No airplanes flew after 9/11 hitting Hawaii hard, as it is an island. Those were the firsthand effects of terrorism I experienced in my formative years, in Hawaii.
I can only imagine that is what my parents' generation experienced in Vietnam. About 1 month ago, when I mentioned being an Army civilian at a local coffee shop where I live, this man in his 60s got so angry at me, when he heard the word "army," and nearly yelled at me, I was guessing because it was anger at the Vietnam war. He didn't understand 9/11 is to my generation, what Vietnam was to his. I could mention many reactions I had while reading Gen. Petraeus's dissertation, but I thought I would share what I felt.
Naomi
institutions as incentives
I thought I would respond at length to this thoughtful post. You see, I was an 25th Infantry (Hawaii's own) platoon sergeant during the 1968 Tet Offense that came in the middle of the first 'long war'. Later I went to college and went back to Asia with USAID and the UN. I have lived in Asia (and some in Africa) ever since I left the East West Center in Honolulu in 1981. I just finished 3 years with the UN in Afghanistan and am now in Pakistan. I guess Petreaus is right, trauma early in life stays with you. ;-)
Institutions are not libraries, but are understood formally as complex configurations of formal and informal rules, beliefs and attitudes that evolve over time to influence human behavior. A review of the literature of New Institutional Economics (Douglass North is the godfather of the doctrine) and complexity science (see Mitchell Waldrop's early (1992) history of this scientific discipline) are both fundamental to understanding the distinction between institutions as the rules of the game and organizations (like the Senate, Army, and libraries) as the players. However, institutions (as social incentive structures) are conservative forces that support the status quo and change slowly (see North's work for about 8,000 years of evidence). Understanding institutions as socio-cognitive incentive structures is critical to understanding how societies, organizations and individuals learn.
The Army is an organization with an internal set of incentives, deeply embedded in the larger American institutional context, that have a tremendous influence on soldiers. No one wants to die or to be labeled a loser for not following a winning approach. Before Vietnam, America had NEVER lost so the lessons learned were easy to track and deemed to be universally applicable. Today's Army has a modern knowledge management system that effectively translates lessons learned into doctrine. The lesson in the failure of Gen McKiernan to adapt to the new COIN doctrine in Afghanistan is less a failing of an old soldier who couldn't learn than a recognition of the time it takes for social incentive structures to change in any organization so that doctrine can be consistently translated into strategy and tactics (human behavior).
On a higher level, contrasting the impact of Vietnam and 9/11 on American institutions provides an interesting case. Not all trauma are alike, certainly not in their long-term effects. Vietnam dominated life in America for 10 years, but its lasting impact has been far different from that of 9/11 (but somewhat similar to that of Iraq). The Vietnam experience undermined long-standing institutions and led to the decine in public confidence in the government and the Army. Vietnam pitted Americans against Americans more intensely than anytime since the Civil War. In contrast, 9/11 was a cathartic experience, more akin to Pearl Harbor, that actually served, for a time, to bring most Americans together, but it also galvanized a form of neocon patriotism that strengthened government control over the lives of citizens.
Now, if you have read this far, please tell me how I can get a copy of Petreaus's dissertation.
Aloha,
Paul
Naomi, I wouldn't necessarily assume
that the "jerk" you talked to was a Vietnam vet (not that you did but Schmedlap thought you did). He certainly was traumatized by something about the Army and Vietnam. That said, Schmedlap is right that most Vietnam vets went about their business without a lot of trauma (as did most of the protesters of the war).
While Vietnam did shape American attitudes and the attitudes of a generation of military officers it was not the cause of the preference for conventional warfare; it merely reinforced that peference. Rmember that the American military has spent most of its history fighting small wars. From the American Revolution on, we have fought only 9 predominantly conventional wars by my count - less by some others. And those all had significant small wars going on inside the big wars. Interestingly, a big war seems to come along once in every generation which allows the military as an institution to justify its determination to prpare for those wars and ignore the small wars that we always have to fight.
The most articulate current spokesman for the big war point of view is COL Gian Gentile who writes here a lot - mostly debating John Nagl (and many of the rest of us.)
Cheers
JohnT
Not sure precisely what Pakphile meant but
I am sure that his statement is correct. "...the time it takes for social incentive structures to change in any organization so that doctrine can be consistently translated into strategy and tactics (human behavior)." is always a problem -- and that really amounts to "failure to adapt to a doctrine." In this particular case it is because the 'doctrine' has to overcome more than 30 years of inertia, fight a bureaucracy that is inimical to that doctrine, force change to deeply embedded training and education practices and is not accepted as totally correct by many in the institution to whom the doctrine nominally belongs.
In other words, there are a lot of people fighting the problem instead of the supposed enemy...
We need to get over the myth that COIN and allied efforts are exotic efforts requiring special training, education, practices or people. It is simply a part of the job. A part we elected to ignore for years because it's dirty work; more importantly to that neglect, it's also tedious work and does not provide instant feedback (bad ju-ju for impatient Americans who like quick results...). Effective training will produce people competent -- and willing -- to do what the job requires.
On Petraeus's dissertation
The common theme I see in Petraeus' dissertation and his recent speaking is a focus or specialization on the political aspects of military command. In seattle July 9th he spent more time reciting the names of people, relationships and their accomplishments than on Afghanistan, for example. (Time it.) The dissertation speaks frequently about *who* advised the President and political leaders, in various ways, in many conflicts, who those civilian leaders were, and who agreed or disagreed with whom.
In his Seattle, he talked about State and political leaders in fairly long passages but barely mentioned the name McCrystal or Odierno. There may have been operational reasons or relationship reasons for not focusing on his subordinates, but the extensive discussions of political and military figures was prominent.
The reason I mention this is, that it illustrates Petraeus and perhaps other general officers' excessive focus on things other than *why* we engage a particular war, or *alternatives* to the particular war, or its morality, legality under treaties, or its justness. Naturally, an officer's career is more successful if he focuses on the "How" rather than the "Why". I'm not even sure where one blends into the other. For example, you can hardly be excellent at answering the question "How", without a definition of the goal, and the goal in turn, is inevitably a part of the larger picture-- the whole picture of what we are trying to accomplish, in the world.
I don't think the compartmentalization, or professional specialization, among general officers is appropriate at their rank and scope of responsibilities, especially in this era of nation building (or "stability operations", or the"administrative force" described by Thomas PM Barnett.) It is frankly stupid, and I share Fallon's assessment of Petraeus as an ass kisser.
Petraeus speech in Seattle
Pakphile - the Seattle speech July 9th is at http://tvw.org and search for Petraeus.
It is also in the archives on CSPAN2.
Petraeus states many times in his dissertation that the military has adopted, since the close of the Vietnam War, a consensus that no war should be fought unless it is 1) supported by the Americn People, 2) has clear objectives that are achievable in a fairly short period of time before the country loses support, 3) the military is provided the resources and the freedom of tactics to win the war.
I (and others in the antiwar movement) have been saying for decades, they need to add several more requirements, 1) that the war ought to be lawful under both domestic law and treaties we have signed; i.e., the military should not obey illegal orders from the President, AND, 2) that the war ought to be, furthermore, a just war under some comprehensible scheme that would be discussed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war)
And of course both of these new requirements imply an end to wars other than self defense of the territory that is our jurisdiction, wars for economic reasons, or so-called "national interests". Both of these would repudiate the very longrunning tradition and practice of preemptive war (containment of communiism, domino theory, or today's preemptive "GWOT")
So, I would hope that some future Petraeus will write dissertations on the Iraq Syndrome, just as the Vietnam syndrome appeared, and that we succeed in defining it, instead of the neocons or whoever their successors may be in the military and policy establishment. Because, these are the reasons we are opposed to US wars-- they are immoral and cruel, and motivated by greed. They don't reflect my moral values and I oppose them. And so does most of the world.
In the absence of a constitutional collision ...
between the Executive and Legislative Branches, the Jus ad Bellum question (whether it is or was "illegal" to go to war) will be regarded as a "political question" and the legal action will be dismissed.
Here is the bottom line in Doe v Bush (1st Cir 2003), pp. 3 & 24-25:
Quote:
Plaintiffs are active-duty members of the military, parents of military personnel, and members of the U.S. House of Representatives. [1] They filed a complaint in district court seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the defendants, President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, from initiating a war against Iraq. They assert that such an action would violate the Constitution. The district court dismissed the suit, and plaintiffs appeal. We affirm the dismissal.
[1] The military personnel and some of the parents are proceeding under pseudonyms, pursuant to an order by the district court that is not before us. The members of the House of Representatives are John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Sheila Jackson Lee, Jim McDermott, José E. Serrano, Danny K. Davis, Maurice D. Hinchey, Carolyn Kilpatrick, Pete Stark, Diane Watson, and Lynn C. Woolsey. We also acknowledge the assistance provided by amicus curiae on behalf of the plaintiffs.
....
It is true that "courts possess power to review either legislative or executive action that transgresses identifiable textual limits" on constitutional power. Nixon, 506 U.S. at 238. Questions about the structure of congressional power can be justiciable under the proper circumstances. See, e.g., Clinton, 524 U.S. at 428-36; Chadha, 462 U.S. at 941-44. But courts are rightly hesitant to second-guess the form or means by which the coequal political branches choose to exercise their textually committed constitutional powers. See Orlando, 443 F.2d at 1043. As the circumstances presented here do not warrant judicial intervention, the appropriate recourse for those who oppose war with Iraq lies with the political branches.
In short, organize and mobilize to elect antiwar candidates; but leave us (the courts) out of the political action. The position of the courts is similar to that of the military on Jus ad Bellum questions (it's not the province of the military to second guess a presidential-congressional decision to wage war).
The same doctrine of judicial restraint may or may not apply to specific Jus In Bello questions (whether an act in warfare is or was "illegal"); e.g., on the rights and duties of individuals to disobey manifestly illegal orders.
Thou hast an inquiring mind ....
which will be rewarded by some Googling. Here is a start for that task.
The basic idea to challenge a war legally (positing that the President and Congress are more or less on the same page) is to resurrect Nuremberg and Tokyo.
Those trials, besides "normal" war crimes, alleged Crimes against Peace (waging "aggressive" war) and Crimes against Humanity (genocides), as well as conspiracies to commit the basic charges. Crimes against Peace present a Jus ad Bellum question. Crimes against Humanity present a Jus in Bello issue.
There is no point in me going beyond that. And, it has been done by others (with whom, Mr Boyle will no doubt agree). As to Gulf I, Ramsey Clark did a full mock trial - A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq, etc. As to the current armed conflicts, you can ruminate in the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center War Crimes Research Portal.
In the latter source, you will find many links to Mr Boyle's arguments - Just War, etc.
The probabilities of any of those argumernts working on SCOTUS (in a Jus ad Bellum case) range between nil and null.
PS: looks like some of the Cox links are broken.
Need formal intro or look elsewhere to post political opinions
From time to time folks come onto the SWJ without introducing themselves which leaves their comments without a foundation of exactly where they are coming from.
Being 'anti-war" says you are in the wrong place to start with to write on SWJ. Warfare is a means and arm of foreign policy, always has been, always will be. The world of reality tells you and all of us so. Fact.
For example 9/11, coupled with my 31 years in the active and reserve forces, and some years in NYC international banking, and writings in overseas newspapers and academic journals (foreign and domestic) were spelled out in my self intro when I first came onto SWJ. I served in Pakistan, as an example, from 1963-1965, as a young USAF officer at the old US Embassy in Karachi, as the Liaison Officer for the then US Air Base at Badabar, just outside Peshawar, and traveled years ago in Afghanitan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Libyia, too, etc, etc.
Mr. Boyle, as Mr. Owen wrote in the open you, too, like us all, need to do a courteousy background introduction. But if you just want to slap on some opinions without the courteousy of an introductory hello first, perhaps you do need to find another venue instead of SWJ, whose clear and polite norms are the same for all of us, me included.
In terms of pure political science, international organizations and standards stand first upon any nation's, including the US, political objectives, goals, and needs related to the total global scene, not vice versa.
Foreign or even internal attacks on law and order and civilizied society such as 9/11 require no justification for self defense and pursuit of the attackers beyond what the world has from 9/11 to this day seen to be the case.
If you want to help mankind, find the means to stop the Islamist driven maniacs who are murdering fellow Muslims and all others worldwide today "in the name" of a religion whose defintion is "peace" but whose misguided practice by some Islamists is "sheer violence, murder and havoc."
The norms of world society do not allow for such and maybe you and any fellow thinkers of your view(s) need to get over there and show them how to observe, obey, and follow the international treaties and norms of world law and order you wish to have in place where the fighting is now.
By the way, be careful not to step on the bodies of young boys and girls used as suicide bombers, of school teachers murdered in the girls schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan...which schools back in the 1960s operated safely in a law and order society over there. And be sure not to polute the environment when your body is blown to bits by terrorist planted and detonated IUDs along the public roads, where many innocent civilian body parts are found all too often. This really messes up public cleanliness and santitation.
St. Edmunds Episcopal School in Peshawar educated Khan Abdul Ghaffer Khan the Muslim leader of the original 20th century Pakhtuns, if you will, "freedom movement" without any attempt to proselite him into being a Christian. He remained a Muslim of the peaceful sort as was Mr. Ghandi in India. You remember Mr. Ghandi, who was murdered by a religious terrortist?
George L. Singleton, Colonel, USAF, Retired
Miscellaneous history of Burma 1964
While stationed at the US Embassy in Pakistan, in the pre-MATS/MAC, et al world, when we only had Air Logistics Service, I controlled all US Air traffic in behalf of the upcountry base at Peshawar into and out of West Pakistan.
Thus I occasionally, only a Lieutenant (non-rated) you understand, manifested myself to inspect and check out the routes.
Thus I was able to take an ALS flight into and back from Rangoon, then Burma, the last such flight before they closed Burma to the rest of the world. Bought some nice narrow width 100% silk ties, was gawked at by a bunch of local military folks (guards etc.) and did not RON there...Burmese military wanted us in and out same day.
Not worth much but an odd bit of old history vs. today's still closed to the outside world "Burma" in it's renamed format.
Just War theory is full of fail
I may only fifteen but has this theory that romans came up with even follwed by them ? This reminds me of the hilarious stance of some that war should be proportional (recent gaza conflict).
