Professor claims war too long
Hugh White, visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute, professor of strategic studies at ANU and anti-Bush/Howard/War advocate attacks the management of the War on Terror from his chair at ANU.
WHEN he sent our forces to help invade Iraq, John Howard was sure they would not be there long: months, not years, he said. Last week his new Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, was visiting the troops still in Iraq three years after the invasion. And he made it clear he expected them to stay a lot longer still.Different phase, Hugh old chap. When the Coalition invaded Iraq as a part of the WOT it was a short campaign and at the end of that phase the SASR and RAAF F-18s we had deployed in Iraq came home. Now we are talking about a different phase of the war. Different troops doing a different job helping to democratize Iraq. This phase is not over and nobody in their right mind would imagine it is going to be quick. Hugh White is obviously an educated man so why is it that he expects a nation like Iraq with its history, location and other baggage to be turned to democracy in a month or two. Did the academics of the 40s harp on about how slow the US were at turning Japan and Germany into democracies? For that matter were they carping about how long it was taking the Allies to win World War 2?. Is this reaction a part of the instant gratification society that we live in? I don’t know the answers but I never expected the War against Terror to be over in months; I would expect it to take many more years and I would point out that Iraq is only a part of that war.
Our leaders claim that we can make a difference by training Iraq’s security forces, so that Iraqis can defeat the insurgency and then get on with forming a government and a cohesive state. I’m sceptical. At the practical level, how can the coalition forces teach Iraqis to fight the insurgency when it is so clear that they cannot fight it effectively themselves? But more fundamentally, Iraq can’t build an effective army before there is an effective government for it to serve. Iraq’s security forces will do nothing to stabilise Iraq until they have an effective, legitimate and broadly supported government to follow.…so that Iraqis can defeat the insurgency and then get on with forming a government and a cohesive state. As phases often run in parallel, not in sequence, there is nothing to say that the insurgency has to be defeated before forming a government and a cohesive state. ….how can the coalition forces teach Iraqis to fight the insurgency when it is so clear that they cannot fight it effectively themselves? Well thats a subjective statement and not universally accepted as true. Whatever people like Hugh White may say the situation is progressing toward full Government by the Iraqis notwithstanding the fact that the doomsayers have predicted failure for every step. Iraq can start building an effective army before there is an effective government for them to serve. What does White suggest; that we wait until the day after to even start training the troops. Not smart.
The conception at the heart of this enterprise was that, if a fully functioning liberal democratic Iraq did not spring spontaneously from the ashes of Saddam’s dictatorship, it could be speedily and efficiently conjured by the application of American power. Especially military power; the whole project was, after all, a Pentagon initiative.
This misconception was powered by a misunderstanding of the nature and limits of armed force. Armies are good at fighting other armies, but they are of limited use for anything else. The contrary view is the beguiling illusion that military force can be used to achieve political goals and promote values, rather than secure purely military objectives.Military force has been used to achieve political goals for as long as we have recorded history as often a precursor to achieving political goals is the destruction of the enemies ability to wage war. If, as White suggests the insurgents are still active, and they obviously are, then there is a continuing role for the military, but his statement seems to suggest that the military are the only agency in place – they aren’t. The US aren’t using the miliatry to advise on how to run elections, how to set up beauracries, how to establish and maintain utilities. They are using the military to keep the terrorists back while civil servants and beaurocrats do their thing. It’s easy to say Iraq is a “mess” but this perception is fed by the media and it’s attraction to ten second audio and video bites of bombings and kidnappings. There is a lot more to see if you look and I’m not convinced Hugh White looks for anything that would challenge is preconceived opinion of the war and Bush and Howard.
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It seems that there are two dominant camps in the Iraq argument and I camp with neither.
I was in favour of the war, and our involvement in it, but I have no faith in Iraqi democracy. I think it is a mistake to draw comparisons with the reinvention of Germany and Japan unless you are prepared to apply the same medicine.
Germany’s civilian population was bombed night and day, and not just with high explosives. Dresden and other cities were fire bombed to maximise civilian casualties. Likewise, Tokyo and other Japanese cities were fire bombed and Hiroshima and Nagasaki copped an atomic bomb apiece. Much of the attack on these two countries was to change the hearts and minds of the civilian population; a necessary precondition, in my view, to change attitudes about the local death cult.
“Virtually no casualty wars� look great on TV and appeal to liberal democracies. They proceed on the assumption that our enemies will recognise how good we are and then fall over themselves to join our system. This is a fatal mistake to make when dealing with fanatics and does not impress the mass of arab moslems, it is seen as weakness.
I look at the best scenario – Iraqi democracy with a Shia majority that is deeply theocratic. This gives me no comfort at all. These people are anti Semitic, anti west, misogynist fruit cakes.
My suggestion (because I hate anti war idiots who just carp about how bad the war is and offer nothing else)withdraw immediately from all civilian areas and let the civil war begin. Bomb the crap out of the place if coalition forces are even looked at sideways, destroy all mosques, shoot all Imams establish 10 or 12 strategic bases (already being done at least, and the major benefit of the war) and batten down for the long shit fight with Islam.
I’m a believer in forced and subsequent compliant democracy being an anwer in the ME as I think it’s the only way the fanatics can be outvoted. Education, a great way to rid us of fanaticsm is not going to work unless the locals are forced to live in the current age and stop pushing hatred down youths throats.
I take your point on Germany and Japan although I was really referring to McArthur’s occupation and the Marshal Plan and occupation in Europe.
In the original war they defeated Saddam but that was only in Iraq. The US didn’t close the supply lines (fanatics and semtex)coming in from the east and the west, or at least I see no evidence of it and thus the fight continues
Virtual wars are, I agree, useless and I would take your point further. If Iran is supplying the werewhithall for the road side bombs then the US need to close that supply line and if that means bombing the factories in Iran then thats what must be done. If countries on the western flank are supplying terrorists and money and they are, then put pressure on them…F18 type pressure.
I still think it’s heading in the right direction but the US do need to upgrade to all out war or we will be at it forever.
Democracy is not simply an election where the majority wins. It is far more nuanced than that.
A vote in a democratic country ensures that the democrat with the most votes gets to operate the democratic apparatus. Islamic culture has never thrown up the apparatus
(Rule of law, separation of church and state, liberty, fraternity, equality, an independent judiciary, to name but a few of the things that form the apparatus) nor has it produced any democrats that I can think of. Most importantly, it needs a citizenry that have democratic views. Alas, the recent election in the land adjacent to Israel has shown that the electors themselves are not democrats.
The idea that the only reason democracy doesn’t exist in the Middle East is because the people have been repressed is nonsense. The television footage, taken after the last vote in Iraq, of thousands of Iraqi Shia ladies, dressed in black tents and waving purple fingers, sent chills down my spine. Democracy stripped of its essential apparatus is nothing more than tyranny by the majority; and so it will come to pass in Iraq.
Sharia law, which is the backbone of Hamas and the newly elected Iraqi Government, is anathema to democracy. The Algerian military were confronted with the conundrum – have an election and the winners first move will be to make it the last election – and chose to abandon the election. Attaturk was no democrat because he recognised the danger that the theocrats represented. He tried to westernise Turkey but he wasn’t stupid enough to allow democracy.
I agree that the Marshall Plan and American occupation of Japan after WWII were successful in transforming those societies. However, Nazism was an ideology of historically short duration and Japanese military adventurism was non existent until the Russo Japanese war at the beginning of the 20th Century. Both countries civilian populations were attacked and decimated by the victors pursuant to the concept of total war. Islam is a much, much harder nut to crack and we don’t have the stomach any more to declare total war on our real enemies, namely the civilian populations of these countries.
I don’t blame our Governments for not doing as I suggest because it would have been unacceptable to the majority of their populations. But at least we should not be wasting blood and money on fighting a lost cause (Islamic democracy) but should instead be securing bases there, isolated from the population, to enable us to attack and destroy the next villain in the long campaign ahead.
“WHEN he sent our forces to help invade Iraq, John Howard was sure they would not be there long: months, not years,”
That has to be an invention on White’s part. Only a fool would say how long the war ( against the Baath regime)phase would last, and how long post-war presence would be required. Consider it, end of WWII, there was no time-table for withdrawal of allied forces form West Germany, and, none at all for east Germany, and no time-table could be set either for removal from Japan itself by U.S. and Oz.
Is WHite’s nonsense original to him or did he borrow:
Rudd, earlier this year, in response to the improving situation in Iraq, in particualr the increasing competence of the Iraqi Army still under Allied re-training and reformation, and to a remark of the P.M’s, the time for withdrawal might be sooner than might be otherwise the case due to those improving affairs: `Now, that’s a proper way to manage a military operation.’ What drug is Rudd on? The sheer vacuity of the man and the acid test, apply his, Beazley’s and White’s rubbish to Britain’s decalaration of war against Hitler. What should have been done is,clearly according to those buffoons, the clause added: `And, to properly manage this we have a proper time-table and, properly, therefore, in Europe it will end in 1944 and, we just knowit, we will fight the Nips and that wil end in 45.’
Churchill, Battle of Britain speech, `We will them in the streets…, and we have a proper time-table with an end of hostilities date.’
You know what’s the sickest, real taxpayer is forced to handoever their private property to keep such dumbed down bloody fools as White, Beazley, and Rudd.
To the above, hmmm….
Kev, if we are to apply the managerialese rubbish expressed by White, Rudd and Beazely,, then it should apply right down to section level:
Right chaps , we are about to engage the enemy and, we have set a proper time-table for end of battle, 30 minutes and ten seconds and, it’s all over and we will have one. Imagine it Kev, C.O. telling the chaps that at the commencent of the Battle of Long Tan, or of The Bulge, Kiev, geebus, von Paulus’s men would have loved a proper management time-table for the battle of Stalingrad. Indeed, Hitler had one for Operation Barbarossa and, it worked right up until the day the german Army Groups found they still had to keep fighting after the scheduled last day of the campaign.
Bloody heck, Kev, can you imagine that as pre-requisite OCTU training, `Now, gnetlemen, this is the course during which you will learn and master the most difficult and finest art of a battle commander, preparing a proper time-table prior to battle.’
I won’t swear Kev but, it’s bloody tempting.
You’re right D, Time and Space considerations of war seldom have a useby date appended to the battle plan but the longer things go on, the more time military illiterates have to postulate about end games, sunset clauses and withdrawal plans. They know little and confirm it by speaking, or writing publicly