Men at War

...Well, that was then, this is now. The war in Iraq demonstrates that those who believed that information technology would transform the nature of war were deluding themselves. War is shaped by human nature, the complexities of human behavior, and the limitations of human mental and physical capabilities. Any view of war that ignores what the Prussian “philosopher of war” Carl von Clausewitz called the “moral factors,” e.g. fear, the impact of danger, and physical exhaustion, is fraught with peril: “Military activity is never directed against material forces alone; it is always aimed simultaneously at the moral forces which give it life, and the two cannot be separated.”

In Iraq, our opponents have chosen to deny us the ability to fight the sort of conventional war we would prefer and forced us to fight the one they want—an insurgency. Insurgents blend with the people making it hard to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant. A counterinsurgency always has to negotiate a fine line between too much and too little force. Indeed, it suits the insurgents’ goal when too much force is applied indiscriminately...