War Adjectives

[Bill Moore]

Not to be a smart ass but could that mean that war is indeed war?

Yes

most people in the world resent our interference and 'help.' Strongly.

Frequently the reality to the host nation is that we're bullying our way in, we're assaulting their culture, and we're condescending. Determining how we assist to avoid these perceptions is as important as the amount of assistance we provide.

Thus, I suggest the real issue is not how do we get better at fighting a war; we can do that and we adapt pretty well -- the issue is what wars we get into and what the goals are.

The quote above doesn't nest with the quote below. I agree we adjust to the "fighting" piece pretty quickly, but borrowing GEN Giap's message to us, it doesn't matter if we won every battle we still lost. Our troops on the tip of the spear will generally out adapt the enemy in the tactical fight, but our operational and strategic adaptability is often left wanting. When we say war is war, we mean destroying the enemy directly in combat. It should be that simple, but unfortunately it isn't.

We don't have a good track record for wrestling because we've tried to box against wrestlers, judokas and karatekas.

the problem is that we clumsily create problems and don't intervene until it's too late and the problems have become unbelievably complex and not totally conducive to a military solution.

We don't have a political culture that encourages preventative action. We'll talk about it, we'll write about it, but it is a different story when it comes to resourcing it. Why spend money and dedicate resources to prevent a problem when we have a problem we need to solve? Our resources are finite, so it is hard to counter this logic.

A hard sell, but I agree we have to pick our fights very carefully, some simply are not winable. Assuming we get drawn into less fights in the future, we could focus more effort on isolating the trouble spots by focusing on preventative efforts on the periphery.

So I am reading you correctly here Ken, the Powell Doctrine is a good thing?

IMHO GEN Powell had good intentions (it is called the Powell doctrine, but several Vietnam Vets contributed to its development), but a doctrine that ignores reality is simply not functional. Despite howls of protest from the military we got involves in Bosnia and Kosavo, Somalia, stayed in Afghanistan after routing the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and the list goes on. How can the Powell doctrine be considered feasible as a guiding light for our military?

[Surferbeetle]

Frequently the reality to the host nation is that we're bullying our way in, we're assaulting their culture, and we're condescending. Determining how we assist to avoid these perceptions is as important as the amount of assistance we provide.

I would agree, it certainly adds to the frictions we face and does not help with accomplishing our objectives (short or long term).

When we say war is war, we mean destroying the enemy directly in combat. It should be that simple, but unfortunately it isn't.

My biology teachers taught me about some of the slow motion wars conducted by plants which have influenced my thinking. Use of shade, alkaloids in the soils to limit others, rapid growth, different types of photosynthesis, etc. evolved over long periods of time and allow different communities to obtain sufficient resources for their distinct systems while ensuring that other systems do not limit their needs...extinction does occur but there is a lot of living that goes on before that happens and I think there are many parallels to what we see...

IMHO GEN Powell had good intentions (it is called the Powell doctrine, but several Vietnam Vets contributed to its development), but a doctrine that ignores reality is simply not functional. Despite howls of protest from the military we got involves in Bosnia and Kosavo, Somalia, stayed in Afghanistan after routing the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and the list goes on. How can the Powell doctrine be considered feasible as a guiding light for our military?

SF, CA, FAO, GPF, and the many different interagency types are testament to the fact that although the Powell/? doctrine is sometimes desired, it does not fully address the realities of a very complex world.

There are alot of sharp people out there with good networks and insights

[George L. Singleton]

IF working with terminology and wording has the direct effect of better focusing practical, down to earth goals and objectives despite "how it used to be done in other warare in the good old days"...which era I come from...they wordsmithing and terminology are a huge benefit and sorely needed.

I would like to be hearing now from our Aussie PhD Sociologist on this topic and about Colonel Maxwell's remarks, as well as the two Generals remarks "against" high faluting words.

As an old school type, I am somewhat stuck with General Nathan Bedford Forrest's comment about how to win a battle and a war: "You get there firstest with the mostest."

Forrest, and Mosby, were in their day pretty good "irregular warfare" fighters. But, the didn't have to deal with terrorists using mosques as forts, suicide bombers, including the use of children for suicide missions, and all the gory process and mess the Taliban and al Qaida are using today in Paksitan, Afghanistan, and in Iraq.

Colin Powell... who may never have studied or read Forrest or Mosby (Powell is an ROTC product, whereas both Forrest and Mosby are taught I believe at West Point)... believed in overwhelming force. I was in Desert Storm I, remember, on this side running the whole airlift as the Assistant Deputy Commander for same, and know how many troops and support equipment, including tanks, we airlifted on C-5s.

And, since Powell, who led the first President Bush into an early armistace to get out of Kuwait and Iraq War # 1, perhaps rightly fearing that the various Arab nations military participants would fall apart quickly if we persisted too long...here again we are into the Sunni governance systems vs. the Shia governance systems, this topic is unavoidable...then neither Powell or anyone else had a tie it down and settle it "plan" and we ended up with the long running UN Resolutions and sanctions against Iraq, which failed miserably. Now that was somewhat regular warfare.

Today's irregular warfare is religiously driven by Sunni extremist/terrorist fanatics who are controlled only when they are dead...not rehabitable in my book, despite the retraining schools Saudis are using.

Irregular warfare needs lots of focus, terms, definitions, and that in turn may help speed up the what, where, when, how, and/or get out and leave it alone as best as it "could be done" process.

Comments all of you have made are much more sophisticated than this, but I am simple and never hide this fact.

[Bob's World]

The quote above doesn't nest with the quote below. I agree we adjust to the "fighting" piece pretty quickly, but borrowing GEN Giap's message to us, it doesn't matter if we won every battle we still lost. Our troops on the tip of the spear will generally out adapt the enemy in the tactical fight, but our operational and strategic adaptability is often left wanting. When we say war is war, we mean destroying the enemy directly in combat. It should be that simple, but unfortunately it isn't.

I was thinking about this famous post-Vietnam conflict quote the other day and a "deep thought" emerged:

Yes, just as it was irrelevant to the big picture of the conflict in Vietnam that we had arguably won every battle, but lost the war; a similar logic could be applied to the Cold War as a whole. We attained a "Tie" in Korea and a "Loss" in Vietnam, the two conflicts that accented the larger Cold War effort to contain the Soviet Union: a "Win." So the fact that we never won a Cold War conflict is equally unimportant to the fact that they continued us on a course to win the larger competition they were a part of.

So, the deep thought for today is what is the bigger competition that we are trying to win today (i.e., what is our new national Grand Strategy now that the Grand Strategies of Containment are 20 years in the rearview mirror); and how important are achieving "wins" in Iraq or Afghanistan to attaining that larger victory? If we don't define what that larger victory is first we'll never know the answer; but once we do, I suspect that we may find that commiting too much National credibility, blood and treasure to attaining "wins" in all of the intermediate objectives, may well hinder our chances of grasping the big prize.

Much of the definitional drama that Dave describes is due to this lack of strategic focus to guide our efforts, and the resultant clamoring among the masses of self-appointed experts (myself included) to attempt to describe what all of this post Cold War struggle is really all about, and how the tools of globalization have affected the time proven tactics of dealing with such struggles.

Lets get a strategic mark well out in front of us so that we can all give way together. Once we have that, I suspect much of the confusion will begin to sort out, and we will be able to assess proper priorities where we need to "win", and where a "tie" or "loss" will suffice.

[William F. Owen]

When we say war is war, we mean destroying the enemy directly in combat. It should be that simple, but unfortunately it isn't.

I say war is war, but I mean it like Clausewitz did. It is violence for political purpose. Violence as an instrument of policy. What Giap was pointing out (if he actually said it, which I doubt) was that the US policy was defeated. In Vietnam, the US abandoned the fight, regardless of operational success.

Destroying the enemy (defeating the enemy) is only relevant to political objectives. It's rarely an end in itself. You only destroy armies to apply pain to the Government/Leadership and the people they represent. Once disarmed they are incapable of doing the same to you.

[Bill Moore]

Bob's World, most excellent point for consideration, one loss (Vietnam) and one draw (Korea), and we still won. However, looking at it from the Soviet perspective, they also had one loss (Afghanistan), so it was a tie militarily.

Wilf, I agree with your comment, but my underlying point is that we have a particular way of waging war, or a preferred way, which I suspect is largely shaped by our culture. Other nations and non-state actors may look at how they approach war entirely different. Regardless of how each opponent behaves and designs their strategy it is still war, but we generally tend to approach war in a threat centric manner, or using George's resurrected quote, get there the firstest with the mostest. I think the phrase spectrum of war is misleading, but it will have to do for now. We "tend" to have the same approach regardless of where we are in the spectrum of war (low intensity or high intensity).

I agree strongly with you and COL Maxwell's assertion that war is war, what I am wrestling with is what Selil hit on, the types of warfare. I believe there is some utility to categorize the types (conventional, irregular, unconventional, etc.), as long as one doesn't take himself too seriously. The type of training and strategy for fighting each one can be considerably different. Is there any disagreement with assertion? If so, please explain. I agree with Ken, we tend to try to wrestle with a boxer (bad analogy since the wrestler would normally win), thus my argument is not with the "war is war" argument, but over the types of warfare and how we organize, train and plan to fight them. In my opinion that is the so what of this discussion.