Two final points are pertinent for the still-mentally-in-the-Cold War U.S. elite when examining these six locations. First, five of the six are hosting Islamist militants armed with weapons that the RMA advocates have deemed obsolete and for which, as the Afghan and Iraq wars have shown, U.S. ground forces are neither armed correctly nor numerous enough to defeat. While never losing sight of potential nation-state threats, Washington must act to ensure that it has enough appropriately armed and trained U.S. ground forces to avoid defeat in the next Islamist insurgency that America confronts.
Second, the Islamist unrest and violence in all six locations is being driven by entities in Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, the other states of the Arabian Peninsula. Through Saudi-government-sponsored educational, religious, and social programs; the work of Islamist NGOs based in or supported by the kingdom; and the steady and large donations from wealthy Saudi individuals and families, Salafisim and Wahhabism are spreading in all six locales and in all but Europe appear to be supporting armed groups. In Europe the Saudis spread their militant doctrines from their embassies or through individuals or groups associated with their diplomatic and cultural facilities. Though both Democrats and Republicans regularly praise Saudi Arabia as an important ally in the war on terror, the truth is that these assertions are untrue and that outside the kingdom the goals of al-Qaeda and the al-Saud regime are similar, although of the two Riyadh is much more imperialistic, anti-Christian, fascist-like, and oriented toward the creation of a caliphate.
PART III
WHERE STANDS THE WAR?
There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain from the finite to the infinite.
Abraham Lincoln, quoted by W. H. Herndon, 1889
Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who have ever been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.
Niccolò Machiavelli, 1517
A country without a memory is a country of madmen.
George Santayana, 1906
It is no accident that, in early 2008, the United States is losing the war against al-Qaeda and Sunni Islamist militancy. U.S. leaders have ignored their own country’s history and that of Muslims; they have lied to Americans about their enemies’ motivation, size, and capabilities; and they have used the military forces for which Americans pay so dearly in such a sparing manner that our Islamist enemies not only have survived but also are flourishing and hold U.S. soldiers and Marines in contempt. Washington has no credible public diplomacy campaign to win Muslim hearts and minds (because it ignores the enemy’s claims about its motivations and maintains the status quo in U.S. foreign policy), and it continues to falsely claim that the many tactical victories scored by U.S. forces have moved the strategic situation in America’s favor. Not surprisingly, this litany of failures speaks directly to this governing generation’s lack of talent, worldliness, historical knowledge, and sadly, concern for genuine national interests. The leadership desert that exists in American politics mirrors the one that bin Laden has taken full advantage of in the Muslim world. Alas, America’s bin Laden has yet to emerge from its political-leadership desert.
In early 2008, the worldwide Sunni Islamist insurgency led, inspired, and symbolized by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are gradually accomplishing the war aims defined by bin Laden: bleed America to bankruptcy, and spread out U.S. military and intelligence forces. The former is being pushed toward realization because of the wars won by the mujahedin in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the latter by U.S. spending on those wars, on homeland security, and on bountiful bribes to keep U.S. allies in the war on terror. Bin Laden’s ability to send two mujahedin with an al-Qaeda banner to multiple spots on the earth, then sit back and watch U.S. forces deploy and spend money, most recently in Somalia, pushes forward the latter goal and assists in accomplishing the former.
CHAPTER 6
“The bottom is out of the tub”
Taking Stock for America in 2008
The greatest lie told in the last fifty years is that the world has changed so that victory is no longer possible. Victory is always possible. But it does not come to the irresolute…Time and again…the valor of our troops was undone by the cowardice of our political leaders…If we do not mean to fight to win, we should not fight at all.
Ralph Peters, 2006
I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.
George Washington, 1796
I consider knowledge to be the soul of the republic, and as the weak and wicked are generally in alliance, as much care should be taken to diminish the number of the former as of the latter. Education is the way to do this.
John Jay, 1785
In the first days of 1862 a weary and worried Abraham Lincoln surveyed the Union’s failing war effort against the Confederacy. In the face of defeat at First Manassas the previous July, General George McClellan’s idling away of the fall 1861 campaign season, and a deeply troubling economic situation, Lincoln said that “it is exceedingly discouraging…nothing can be done.” The disconsolate president enumerated the problems America confronted to his splendid quartermaster general, Brigadier General Montgomery C. Meigs, on January 10, 1862. “The people are impatient,” Lincoln said. “[Treasury Secretary Salmon P.] Chase has no money and he tells me he can raise no more; the General of the Army [McClellan] has typhoid fever. The bottom is out of the tub.”1
In early 2008 Americans again find that “the bottom is out of the tub.” The United States has been defeated, stalemated, or frustrated on every front on which it has chosen to engage al-Qaeda and the forces it leads and inspires. And despite this unfolding disaster, neither U.S. party in the 2006 midterm election campaign gave any hint that it saw defeat ahead: one urged Americans to stay the course, the other called for course corrections, and after the elections nothing changed. The hard reality is that the U.S. government and, more especially, the American governing elite have bitten off far more than the country can chew. At the most elemental level, that of population base, the Muslim world outnumbers America by nearly five to one, roughly 1.4 billion to roughly 300 million. A nation the size of America would be hard put to defend itself against such odds, and the United States today is operating under a doctrine that calls for offensive operations without limit. A counterinsurgency is said to require ten counterinsurgents for every insurgent to have a fair chance of prevailing. Even with the reintroduction of conscription, America could not field the number of military personnel needed to fight an offensive war in every place in the world troubled by Islamist fighters. In addition, the blind devotion of the Pentagon to an ever-increasing reliance on precision weapons and high-tech gadgetry spurs a coordinate growth in number of support personnel; a heavy tail coupled to a few sharp teeth is a certain prescription for defeat in an insurgency.
The geographic dispersal of our Islamist enemies also poses a daunting and nearly insurmountable obstacle to U.S. victory. The Sunni Islamic world circles the globe, and Sunni militants can strike U.S. interests and personnel almost anywhere on earth. As important, the presence of Sunni communities in virtually every country creates a milieu in which the fighters of al-Qaeda and like-minded groups can safely reside, work, transit, and plan. Many U.S. and Western leaders have declared that al-Qaeda’s attack on September 11, 2001, was a failure because the Muslim masses, the much-vaunted Arab street, did not rise up in support of bin Laden, overthrow their governments, and drive every last vestige of the U.S. presence from their world. This assertion misses the mark twice. First, there is no evidence in the pre-or post-9/11 rhetoric and writings of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, or their lieutenants that they believed the attacks would prompt such a reaction. Western l
eaders are rightfully relieved that a civilizationwide rebellion did not occur, but they can identify this nonrevolt as a defeat for al-Qaeda and the Islamists only by falsely claiming that the 9/11 plan meant to spur such an uprising. Indeed, no one knows better than al-Qaeda’s leaders and their allies the absurdity of attempting to motivate the largely unarmed Muslim masses to man the barricades against murderous police states backed unequivocally by the planet’s only superpower.
The second miss is more dangerous for U.S. security. Whatever the immediate post-9/11 reaction was in the Muslim world, Western polling firms, as noted, have since detected only increases in the level of hatred for the same U.S. foreign policies that al-Qaeda has identified as constituting attacks on Islam and its followers. As noted earlier, nearly 80 percent of Muslims worldwide deem the United States Islam’s foe.2 Thus the countries dominated by or hosting Sunni communities, within which Islamist fighters can live and move, are at least indifferent to their presence and activities and at worst more than willing to shelter and assist these defenders of the faith. At base, al-Qaeda at this stage of its activities does not expect or require (though it surely would not oppose) a popular, multistate Muslim uprising. It simply needs the broad acquiescence of its brethren. And while the current status quo of U.S. foreign policy continues, they will have it.
Numbers and a globe-straddling dispersal are major advantages for al-Qaeda and its allies in their contest with the United States, and given the growth rates of the world’s Muslim population compared to that of America, both of the Islamists’ strategic pluses will only grow with the passage of time. Unfortunately, these two issues are only the tip of the iceberg toward which the good ship America is blithely sailing. Other problems fall into the military, Western unity, public diplomacy, and leadership categories.
The Cost of Our Military Burlesque
While it does not yet seem to be sinking into the minds of Americans, our al-Qaeda-led enemies have become confident that the main characteristic of the U.S. military—the strongest that the earth has ever hosted—is that it never wins any war it fights, whether against a strong or a weak enemy. Among Islamist fighters, the appropriate motto for the U.S. military probably is a wordy paraphrase of Caesar’s: “We came, we saw, we claimed to conquer, and we left defeated with the enemy intact and reinvigorated.” Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans are all places where this motto can be accurately applied, although the Balkans are now hovering in a holding pattern until we and the Europeans leave and that religiously motivated war of all against all can resume.
As bad as these examples of past mediocre military performances are, the coming defeats of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan will be much worse. The pride and specialty of post–Cold War U.S. military power has been the projection of that power to even the most remote locales on the planet. Our military’s exercises with NATO members, with India, Israel, the Philippines, and Latin American states, and with a host of other nations are designed to perfect the projection of power and to familiarize all military personnel, from the general to the foot soldier to the logistician, with foreign militaries we may one day have to fight with or against, as well as with often barely known topographies. All told, we have learned to project military power with breathtaking speed—and yet we never win. Getting there, as the saying goes, may be half the fun, but in war there is really no point in going if you do not intend to do whatever it takes to win an unambiguous victory after you get there. And what is winning? Three things: first, setting out with clear and achievable goals; second, using whatever force is necessary on arrival; and third, leaving immediately when the job is done.
In projecting U.S. military power into Iraq and Afghanistan, we have proven once again that America’s stunning ability to rapidly deploy military force abroad is an expensive and self-defeating exercise because U.S. political leaders have neither achievable war aims nor an intention to win. Most U.S. general officers, moreover, are unwilling to object to that reality, preferring safe routes to promotion that are paved with the waste of their soldiers’ lives and their nation’s resources. We have taught the Islamists that if they can ride out the initial U.S. air campaign—the childish shock-and-awe part—they have little to fear from the U.S. military.3 By 2008, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the host of Islamist insurgent groups in Iraq have rightly concluded that they have survived the best shot U.S. leaders decided to deliver (though certainly far from the best they could have delivered) and that they are now well along in the process of sending the U.S. military home with its tail tucked between its legs. To paraphrase Alexander Hamilton writing in Federalist 15, when our Islamist foes look on the post-Iraq U.S. military, they see not a genuine and irresistible military power but a mere pageant of mimicked military power neutered “by the imbecility of our government.”4
Why is this the case? Again, there are two answers, both of which emanate from the extended duration of Washington’s Cold War hangover. In the Cold War world peace was maintained because the Soviet Union’s leaders not only knew the strength and survivability of our nuclear arsenal but also truly believed that Washington would use those forces to annihilate the USSR if Moscow launched a first strike on the United States. In large measure the U.S. deterrent consisted not only of its land-sea-air nuclear triad but also, as important, the Bolshevik chiefs’ conviction that U.S. nuclear weapons would be used if a situation warranted their use. Moscow projected the same nuclear reality and demeanor in response and thereby happily locked the world into the peaceful era of Mutually Assured Destruction. So strong was the Soviets’ belief that U.S. leaders would complete Armageddon if it was initiated by Moscow that even Washington’s abject failure to use the full force of U.S. military might to prevail in Vietnam (a crystalline reality in Moscow, notwithstanding the efforts of Nixon, Kissinger, and many U.S. generals to disguise their sellout of the U.S. military) did not fatally shake Moscow’s faith in Washington’s willingness to use nuclear weapons.
This happy era of deterrence crumbled simultaneously with the Berlin Wall. Soon thereafter America began to encounter Islamist enemies who were unafraid of the U.S. nuclear and conventional deterrents and unconvinced that we would use them with definitive effect. Our current Islamist enemies used the 1990s as a decade-long educational exercise in which they kept pushing the envelope to see how much pain they could inflict on the United States without triggering an annihilating U.S. military response. Al-Qaeda’s attacks on U.S. targets in Yemen (1992), Somalia (1993–94), Saudi Arabia (1995–96), East Africa (1998), and Yemen again (2000) proved what bin Laden had anticipated: America was a paper tiger that could be attacked with impunity and declared war upon repeatedly (1996 and 1998) and whose response would be “proportional” (another word for ineffective) and designed to please international opinion, antinational organizations, and the just-war theorists. Bin Laden was right. The net U.S. military response over the 1992–2000 period was the August 20, 1998, launching of seventy-five cruise missiles against training camps around Khowst, Afghanistan, which cost the Islamists fewer than forty dead and at most a few weeks’ delay in training cycles.5
It was, then, in this context that al-Qaeda launched the 9/11 attack. Bin Laden had not—as then-DCI George Tenet and other senior Bush administration officials claimed—underestimated the ferocity of the U.S. military reaction to the attack but rather had gambled, on the basis of a decade’s worth of feckless U.S. military responses, that the odds were in his favor, that America would respond in a way that would leave al-Qaeda and the Taliban intact to fight another day. The gamble paid off: President Bush, senior officials in the administration and Intelligence Community, the neoconservative clique and their media acolytes, and Democratic Party chieftains swaggered as if simply possessing a huge nuclear arsenal and the world’s most powerful conventional military would so frighten the Islamists that a relatively mild application of lethal force in Afghanistan would destroy the enemy physically and induce an abandonment of their jihad. Clearly this conclusion merited
at least one more serious think-through before being implemented, but no careful second review occurred, and the same losing modus operandi was applied in Iraq.
U.S. political leaders, policymakers, and generals must now face up to the fact that as far as America’s Islamist enemies are concerned, the United States has no credible military deterrent. Al-Qaeda and its allies believe that the attacks of 9/11, in and of themselves, destroyed the concept of deterrence. This conclusion is only partially accurate. The 9/11 attacks pushed the already weakening believability of the U.S. deterrent to the edge of a deep abyss, but it was the anemic and ineffective military invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq that put deterrence flat on its back at the pit’s bottom. Too few troops, too little boldness, far too few enemy corpses, too tight rules of engagement for U.S. soldiers and Marines—all these have proven that America’s bark is loud and its bite virtually toothless. Today America possesses no deterrent in the minds of al-Qaeda and its allies and at this late date must seek to reestablish one.6
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