John Adams re-examines the Pacific War by asking himself what Alfred Thayer Mahan would have done if he had commanded either the Japanese or American fleets between 1941 and 1945? Adam’s book asserts that in one sense Mahan was already present in because his doctrines drove much of the Japanese and American thinking during the Pacific War. Mahan was present at Guadalcanal, Midway and in Leyte Gulf. But however potent the spirit of the old admiral was, national politics and ego often created solutions which diverged from the Mahanian ideal. And these politically driven compromises may have extended the Second World War. Adams attempts to return the discussion to first principles by revisiting the great decisions of the Pacific War through Mahan’s prism.
Five pages into the book, as Adams was performing a restrospective based on the admiral’s principles it occurred to me that it would be a useful exercise to ask: what would Mahan do if he commanded the War on Terror? Were the same political ‘compromise’ effects at work? And to what extent? The discussion after the “read more” explores that line of thinking.
Adams says that Mahan’s ideas can be succinctly expressed in five sentences. Let’s see how each side, the US and al-Qaeda, measure up to the key concepts.
- The objective of your fleet is to destroy the enemy fleet. By this Mahan meant the destruction of the source of the enemy’s power to interfere with you. In his view, the key problem in naval war was to focus on the enemy center of gravity. There was little use, he said, in attacking each little enemy outpost by itself. Destroy the source of their power and security — in this case the enemy fleet — and all the little outposts would fall automatically.
- Even nine years after 9/11 there are no good official responses to the question: what is the enemy’s center of gravity? Or even, who is the enemy? Is it in Afghanistan? Yemen, the Horn of Africa? Or is it something more abstract, like the sources of money and ideology that sustain it? It is probable that Mahan would insist on finding answers to these questions.
- In contrast, al-Qaeda has never wavered in the its decision to make the United States, its financial centers and centers of government the center of gravity.
- Never divide the fleet. Once the enemy’s center of gravity is known then focusing on anything else is a waste of time. There will be temptations do a little bit of everything, to provide a little bit of protection for everyone. Politicians in especial will want to craft a compromise strategy. But as Adams says, “compromise is the bane of [Mahanian] strategy. Strategic thinking must pare the problem down to its most critical facet, and then make the hard, uncompromising choice to concentrate all to win at that facet. To hedge one’s bets is to risk not being strong enough at the decisive point … never NEVER divide the fleet.”
- America may in fact be in pursuing the strategy of mopping up every outpost it can find without focusing on the enemy center of gravity. Ralph Peters in the New York Post argued that Afghanistan was once an important place, but it’s not central any more. “We know why we went in 2001, but al Qaeda’s long gone.” The strategic reasons for the “war of necessity” may simply be that it was not Iraq. By pursuing a committee approach to warfare, the US may actually be treating “dividing the fleet” as a desirable thing.
- al-Qaeda on the other hand is pursuing the classic Mahanian strategy of forcing its enemy to divide its fleet while remaining a force that can concentrate its efforts at will. It is a “fleet in being”. It never presents a single physical target against which the US can concentrate. But that’s not necessary. The Russians learned in fighting Napoleon that the center of gravity is not necessarily physical. It solved the problem of concentration by identifying his center of gravity as the Grand Armee’s endurance. By luring him into Russia and destroying the Grand Armee’s endurance, they avoided the necessity of having to concentrate their armies against the French armies. But in a strategic sense the Russians did not “divide the fleet”; by choosing the right focus, they concentrated it.
- The nation that would rule the sea must always attack. Mahan believed that the only way to win was to retain the initiative.
- To talk about pre-emption and initiative today is to court political disaster. The War on Terror is no longer even called a war. Victory has been discarded as an obsolete concept by the President himself. In its place are approaches that treat it as a chronic condition or another species of crime. That Khalid Sheik Mohammed is being tried for the 9/11 attack in order to be “brought to justice” is stark proof of this. What would Mahan make of treating warfare as a law enforcement problem? It is not clear whether the administration believes that initiative is even a virtue in war, or whether a state of war even prevails.
- al-Qaeda on the other hand is always on the attack. Despite its smaller resources this organization retains the initiative even today.
- Well trained men are decisive fleet attributes. Over time, better leadership will prevail.
- The US has a tremendously well trained force. However as Adams notes, the total effectiveness of the “fleet” consists of the joint effect of material capability x personnel training x strategic leadership. ‘If one of these factors go to zero, then the entire term is zero.’ It is possible that the cumulative US effort is being zeroed out by the inept strategic decisions.
- On the other hand al-Qaeda may have small values for all the three factors mentioned above, but because its strategy may have a non-zero value the joint effectiveness is still some positive number.
- To interfere with the commander in the field is generally disaster.
- The number one rule in the War on Terror is to keep the commander in the field on a short leash; to spend months avoiding a meeting with him and to send thousand of lawyers to descend on his chain of command. Mahan would consider this a disaster, but Washington would consider it business as usual.
- al-Qaeda is designed as franchise which allows for tactical flexibility within a single strategic framework. In many ways, al-Qaeda’s inability to communicate in real time with its field commanders re-creates the old Nelsonian environment of individual iniative.
The Japanese Imperial Navy put great store by Mahan’s teachings. Fortunately, so did the United States Navy. When they met, two strategically competent foes fought the greatest naval campaign in history. But today America’s adversaries in the War on Terror may be more faithful to the old admiral’s precepts than his strategic descendants. The correlation of forces between al-Qaeda and America is tremendously lopsided. What evens it out is the asymmetry in strategic competence.
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
When we have opposite sides of the political fence clamoring for “more oversight” of intelligence processes, e.g. more centralization, aren’t we at fundamental loggerheads with our former winning ways in war? When all assassination projects need to run all the way up the command to a bevy of lawyers, pols, and high-ranking military types, aren’t we needlessly squandering the might of our trillion dollar defense?
The common wisdom on the failed “pantybomber” attack is that there wasn’t enough connectivity (read “interference”) from the multiple layers of intelligence analysis… Same wisdom applies to the failures to contend with the Fort Hood Muslim Murderer. But rest assured, there WERE operatives at several points in each of those events who had queazy feelings about what they knew, whose guts squirmed about those murdering Muslim bungholes. Had they had the power to act decisively to destroy those enemies at each juncture, we’d be sitting pretty.
But at each stage none of those people had sufficient powers to act, and worse, feared the consequences of the “social justice” which would be brought down on their heads in the aftermath. It’s the mess of a bulwark of affirmative action JAGs and PC functionaries who persecute our warriors if the “got it wrong” which is destroying our capacity to fight and win. Our military is performing super-humanly under impossible circumstances, both from our vicious unconventional enemies, but more so from within the ranks of command and control.
I’ll add Adams book to the giant heap of my “to-read” list to learn more.
Saudi Arabia is the center of gravity but is barely mentioned.
Wow, wretchard –that was pretty savage. rings true tho.
Formulating the correct strategy is the hardest task to get right and the easiest to get wrong. But at the same time it is the most important thing to get right. Getting it right means economy of force, and by that is meant mayhem is held to a minimum.
By opposing and discrediting the enemy ideology; by creating energy independence and degrading their sources of funds the wind can largely be taken out of their sales. Sheer brutality and bloodthirstiness can never offset the effects of a idiotic strategic approach. The left, by insisting on bad strategy for ideological reasons may guarantee tremendous mayhem in the end. This was the core concept of the Three Conjectures.
Now that a new administration is in office its strategy will be put to the test and I think it will fail. This doesn’t mean that the previous administration’s strategy was right. It may have been defective as well and maybe all we are about to see is whether it is comparatively better or worse without either necessarily being the “winning” strategy.
I think the “winning strategy” against Islamic extremism is relatively bloodless and terribly politically incorrect. The losing strategy will be very bloody and very politically correct.
I can’t see a more plain center of gravity than Islam. That does not mean you kill all Muslims as there are, as numerous people will tell you, many who are not extremists and only want a good life, raise children, hope for the future, etc. But Islam as it is being used to control and incite its followers, the problem Muslims perhaps, is the uniting factor and needs to be adressed head-on. Ignoring it as if it is not central to the problem is ignoring any possible solution. As practiced by the extremists, it is a failed ideology and should be hastened in its failure just as Communism was to the Soviet Union. If they attack, kill them. Otherwise, isloate them- not us, them. Let them fester in the beds they have made. This also includes closing any mosque where members have ties to terror. Seditious speech should result in instant expulsion. Show justice, patience and understanding but DEAL with the problems head-on.
I continue to believe that the policy of overthrowing despotic Arab governments and replacing them with democratic ones remains the best possible strategy to permanently change the situation in the Islamic world.
*that* is a Mahanian solution, even if we don’t have the political guts to try it again.
We should be decapitating Iran’s civilian and military leadership right now. One quick strike which would knock out most of their armed forces and especially the military bases. Forget trying to hit the nuke manufacturing plants, too hard to get – take out the men who are going to oppress the people ready to revolt.
Here’s the non-pc part: Forget strategic targeting – focus on eliminating at least 100,000 military personal with a single strike. It’s possible, and probably much easier than hitting the nuke facilities. Once that strategic center, the army, is knocked out, the rest of the country will fall.
Logicians say analogy is the weakest form of argument. Theologians say it is the highest form of wisdom.
Richard’s citing of Mahan and application of Mahan to the War on Terror (or Man-Caused Disaster) is very instructive.
Richard’s post reminds me of the several references to Sun Tzu on this site:
“So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
“If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
“If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.”
I don’t think any serious observer of the War on Terror would argue that we really know the enemy or ourselves. As a result, Americans, according to polls, feel endangered again.
The center of gravity of the enemy is ideological and geographical. The ideology is salafist Islam; the geographical centers, the Mordor and Orthanc, are Saudi Arabia and Teheran, although geography in the struggle is less central than ideology. The al Qaeda Mahanian strategy is ongoing leveraging of western values against themselves, an Alinskyite holding of the West to its own values. Western media documents the struggle, providing coverage of the West as it fails to live up to its own values (e.g. “Guantanomo,” lack of “fair trials,” tendency to pre-judge and “profile).
Another word from Sun Tzu: “All warfare is based on deception. Never will those who wage war tire of deception.”
The Al Qaeda strategy has taken the tactic of deception away from us (“We are better than these last eight years,” says our President), leaving it mostly to them.
Christianity disapproves of deception, since Satan is the father of lies, while Islam approves of it, at least in support of jihad. So what to do? Maybe speak the truth about the enemy and its ideology, leaving the enemy fully exposed and without recourse to deception? But that is what politically correct leaders forbid us, and even our military, to do.
Bah, humbug. I can offer two answers.
First, it’s obvious that we need to find the center of gravity metaphorically, and once into metaphor, it’s not clear we’re really in the same game at all. But if you want a virtual center of gravity, it is the clan structure of Arabic jihadi Islam. It is collective responsibility and punishment. But, we (not me!) have foresaken this under some effete Euroweinie doctrine or other. So, at the very least, we are fighting in some very suboptimal manner.
Second, this “divide the fleet” is inappropriate, both for this distributed and asymetric (read: weak) enemy, and for modern technology generally. Anyhow, since we’re back in metaphor-land, what is the fleet but our culture, our collective strength. Well, I suppose we divide that when we foreswear what is the obvious metaphoric center of gravity of the enemy.
Y’know, I didn’t like it when we were maintaining a no-fly zone over Iraq. Either kiss them or kill them, but this was boring, and I would argue, less ethical than an outright attack that might at least end. However, perhaps I’ve now been converted. Perhaps an endless harrasment of jihad, as with the predators et al, is the proper distributed solution, if still sub-optimal. Perhaps we need to start pot-shotting sites all over Iran, and plan on continuing for the next twenty years. In part, because we can. In part, because it will irritate them to the max.
I wonder.
So, I guess I cannot much translate Mahan to today’s problems, at all.
Wrechard,
Perhaps you have seen it already, but I would recommend the book Shattered Sword, about the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Midway. The Japanese-speaking authors used several sources new to the West, including air group logs from several of Japan’s carriers. I think they would argue that Japan compromised several of the above Mahanian principles in the preparation for Midway.
Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Mahan. It’s all the same from different historical perspectives. We call it MOSS MOUSE.
Isolate the them from their Saudi support. They helped to create this problem and we have not yet held them accountable. Take away the money and the rat lines and this problem will become much smaller. And just to prove our point, we should topple the Syrian regime!
One of the more interesting observations in Adam’s book concerned marginal analysis, something ingrained in all of us who’ve sweated through elementary microeconomics. The idea of marginal analysis is fairly simple, find the factor which gives the greatest incremental improvement and supply it. Bang for buck. This decision rule is used in many economic settings to identify the best area for “improvement”.
The problem is that in a Mahanian strategic setting what you are really interested in is not marginal change but catastrophic change. The thing that upsets the entire enemy apple cart. This is the only thing that counts in a victory/defeat setting. Thus the emphasis on the enemy center of gravity. Pushing on it may produce no discernible marginal effect at first and the temptation is to go elsewhere, where the incremental effects are more evident. But pushing the apple cart over is the name of the game, not making little gains here and there. The argument is that in certain situations, you are not aiming for a smooth function but a cliff function.
That observation reminded me of the criticisms leveled against Robert S. McNamara’s approach to Vietnam. He had tables and tables of cost-benefit ratios, but perhaps a less than refined concept of the binary states of victory and defeat. He knew the price of everything but maybe he knew the value of nothing.
But it really goes back to the first question: are we aiming for a victory or are we content simply not to be defeated? I don’t pretend to know the answers, nor even that the Mahanian framework supplies the right ones. But I think it is fair to assert that Mahan asks many of the right questions and that the political system is very adept at never having to resolve any of them.
W, the only way to win this ‘war’ is for a reformation of Islam. The only way for a reformation to occur is to prevent the possibility of the haj. The reformation of Judaism didn’t/couldn’t occur while the temple in Jerusalem along with the sacrificial system existed, The reformation of Christianity also required the near defeat of Europe. I leave it as an exercise to the reader, what is required for a Muslim refeormation.
haj – the fifth pillar of Islam is a pilgrimage to Mecca during the month of Dhu al-Hijja; at least once in a lifetime a Muslim is expected to make a religious journey to Mecca and the Kaaba; “for a Muslim the hajj is the ultimate act of worship”
There are 2 centers of gravity in this war. One is our idiological center. We have to defeat the 1960′s hippie left here before we can formulate a winning stratagey. BHO is setting his left up for defeat. Let us hope it is a complete sweep for at least a generation.
The defeat of Islamofasicsm will only happen when the despodic governments in the Mideast and south Asia fall and the population sees that they have a future for self expression. Breaking the chain that Whiskey describes of religious government, big men, no wives. and no future for young men and breaking the political power of the clerics are both mandatory. It will be a long war but regime change in the Mideast is the answer, whether by force or other means. The Neocons had it right at some level.
We assume Mahan intended this principle
“The objective of your fleet is to destroy the enemy fleet.”
to imply destruction of the enemy fleet in a decisive battle.
However, per Sun Tzu, “… To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
There may be other ways other than decisive battle to destroy the enemy fleet.
Two approaches that were used with success in the Pacific War:
Rendering enemy bases useless.
Interrupting the enemy’s fuel supplies.
Sun Tzu might say,
“A fleet without bases or fuel is a fleet that has been destroyed.”
No brilliant ideas on how to apply this approach to the current war.
We assume Mahan intended this principle
“The objective of your fleet is to destroy the enemy fleet.”
to imply destruction of the enemy fleet in a decisive battle.
However, per Sun Tzu, “… To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
There may be methods other than decisive battle to destroy the enemy fleet.
Two approaches that were used with success in the Pacific War:
Rendering enemy bases useless.
Interrupting the enemy’s fuel supplies.
Sun Tzu might say,
“A fleet without bases or fuel is a fleet that has been destroyed.”
No brilliant ideas on how to apply this approach to the current war.
“A fleet without bases….” goes WAY back –Alexander’s first aim was to protect the homeland by neutralizing the Persian chain of forward naval bases –
Well, I’d like to cite Chauncey Gardner as my expert. “If you prepare the garden, and take care of the shoots, in the spring you will have flowers.”
In my life as a software developer, I have to handle a hundred factors – and two hundred bugs. There is nothing for it but to take them one at a time. Conceptual integrity yes, system integration sure, but debugging is bug/smash, bug/smash, bug/smash. It’s a stochastic process, and with luck you can smash things down to an acceptable level. Yes, when you have a clean slate you design the quality in, you can never really test in quality that’s lacking from the start, but most of life is just bug/smash, etc.
Modern life is more like that. I think our Gen-X and later folks never see the center of anything, don’t look for victory, download songs not albums, sneer at strategy, delight in process, love minutia and lots of tiny unmarked buttons, repair nothing but buy the newest widget. How do we apply all of these, to the situation?
I’m sorry, wretchard…I can’t get there from here.
We can’t prosecute a war we aren’t in…and from my seat in the cfbleachers, we have a Commander in Chief who is definitely into getting out…as soon as possible.
Are we asking what is the strategy for retreat?
We have no strategy for prosecuting a war against an enemy, we have a half-baked strategy for prosecuting “man-made disasters”…mostly after the fact.
In Mr. Robespierre’s Neighborhood, there is more fear of the internal revolution than the Reign of Terror from bin Laden’s external perch.
A couple of drones, and a deep bow…exit…stage left.
The strategy is…there is no strategy. We wait for the next “man made disaster”…and hope there’s a body left this time to lawyer up and make him a witness against our system. Put a soapbox in the witness chair, give him a microphone and let him rip us to the world.
What would Mahan say about that?
“The thing that upsets the entire enemy apple cart. This is the only thing that counts in a victory/defeat setting. Thus the emphasis on the enemy center of gravity. ” _Wretchard.
I hope you’re right about the relatively bloodless victory over the retrograde forces of Islam, but I’m in serious doubt. And I also reject the idea that the failure to avoid the bloodbath will rest on our shoulders.
With Islam, I think we are failing to attack the right enemies. Islam is an interesting mix of top down, and bottom up administration. Relatively simple software, a long list of “do this” (halal) and “don’t do that” (harams). When in doubt, check with the local head-man/Imam/Kalif/King/warlord/daddy-of-the-household.
I think it’s the top-down aspect of Islam we are pretty much failing to attack. We need to always decapitate. Sadr should be dead. The Saudi King, after 9/11, should be dead. So should the top clerics in SA. Ditto the Mullahs. When the leaders interpret their Islam in a way which meaningfully impacts us in any negative way, they should be neutralized. Some believe this would be an incendiary which would unite the Muslims against us. I say — so what? They’re already aligned against us, and unless we begin neutralizing their command structures, their Frankenstein of Jihad will continue. Without a head, the snake will not have direction. What care we if Muslims turn their congenital rage against each other in the absence of a controlling patriarch to focus and foment their rage against us? Without the snake-Imams who concocted the “comic book” rage across the planet, the screaming murdering masses would not have turned out. We don’t need to “win their hearts and minds”, we need to shoot the zombie of Jihad in the head. “Shoot the head, kill the zombie”. We all learned that from Night of the Living Dead, didn’t we!?
Of course I’m being a bit glib, but I’m really serious about this. I believe much of the potency of the Islamic narrative derives from their belief in the patriarchal power of Allah. Each brutal authority figure is vested with a diminishing share of that godly omnipotence they believe belongs to Allah. Begin to erode the Muslims’ sense of the power of their patriarchy, decimate that patriarchy’s ability to focus and foment their hatred, and most of Islam’s juju disappears. Of course a few craters around a few major holy sites with no commensurate wholesale destruction of our myriad totems of power would necessarily deflate the Muslim’s sense of power which derives from their terrorism. Off a few thousand Kings, Sheiks, Imams, and Mullahs, create a couple huge craters where Allah used to manifest, and I think their whole stinking house of cards comes down in a crash.
Josh, form them into an army, arm them with charm, and send them into jihadiland: “Idiots Savant for Cities Levant!”
There is a huge perceptual problem with the idea that Islam is capable of any reformation. It rests on an analogy with Judaism and Christianity, but those making the analogy don’t appreciate how truly unique it was for those two faiths to be able to do that. First, Judaism is in a class by itself; what other religion has managed to survive for nealy 4,000 years? (traditional dating for Abraham, btw, not meant to be a quibble about chronology) The only way to for that to happen was for Judaism to have the ability to reform itself several times over, and it has.
Next, the Christian reformation can’t be separated from the Renaissance which preceeded it and the huge social transformation arising from the development of the printing press, concurrent with the reformation. In this way the Protestant Reformation was as much a result of social change as it was a cause.
It would literally take a miracle for either of these circumstances to be repeated in the Muslim world – historically, they are almost certainly incredibly unique events that cannot be duplicated. But there have been many, many religions on this Earth – and by far the most common end for a religion is death, when the political power of the society that espoused that belief dies.
This usually plays out over a century or more – but my belief is that Islam is incapable of reform, therefore it is a fool’s errand to hope for one. It is already in the process of destroying itself – look at how much of the terrorism is turned inward. If anyone does ever destroy Mecca, my bet will be that it is an Islamic Terrorist backed by someone who believes that “they aren’t doing it right!”
Islam will commit suicide long before it reforms. They are in love with the idea.
Adams is pretty silly a fair amount in this book, but his depiction of the dangerous unwisdom of divided command in the Pacific, on both sides, is dead on and well presented.
MacArthur’s advance up New Guinea’s north coast was almost nailed by the IJN on several occasions, and he avoided disaster only by the fortunate timing of some of Nimitz’ Central Pacific offenses drawing the IJN counter-strikes off at the last minute.
Certainly it was possible for CentPac to have intentionally timed its attacks so as to pre-empt IJN counter-strikes at McArthur, but such pre-emption happened only by luck rather than planning.
China, Iran Spur U.S. to Develop Air-Sea Battle Plan
The QRD was released today and outlined a new direction for US Defense Planning, something one of your writers identified weeks ago.
The battle plans for the US are not changed capriciously.
Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. military is drawing up a new air-sea battle plan in response to threats such as China’s persistent military buildup and Iran’s possession of advanced weapons, according to the Pentagon’s latest strategy review.
The Air Force and Navy are seeking more effective ways to ensure continued access to the western Pacific and counter potential threats to American bases and personnel, according to the Quadrennial Defense Review that was released today along with the Pentagon’s proposed budget for fiscal 2011 .
http://tinyurl.com/y986sfe
Very interesting stuff, it is always useful to go through a classic view of things, but I disagree.
I think that Bush/Rice did strike for the strategic heart of Al Quaeda and basically wounded it enough to lead to it’s death. It just takes time for this to play out. Ultimately, even Muslims come to hate these jihadi killers.
Historically, this killer jihadi surge bursts out of static/complacent/corrupt Islam, causes a lot of damage and then burns out. This jihadi extremism contains the seeds of it’s own undoing.
Bush/Rice played on this first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. The result was 10s of thousands of jihadis killed and deep hatred left for Al Qaeda in the areas they operated. Al Qaeda is not welcome in Afghanistan. Nor in Iraq. The popularity of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan has fallen as the casualties from the bombing campaign in the cities has risen. The jihadis have been hunted down in the Philipines, Indonesia, Thailand, Algeria even in Saudi Arabia.
Our current feckless leader may throw away 7 years of safety. May revitalize Al Qaeda in Yemen. May allow the perverted media to lose us the information war, but do not misunderestimate what Bush and Rice did.
Morton, I don’t think Islam, as an entity, has a head.
I like the idea of pot-shotting its many little jihadi leaders, and this (apparently) fits with our current culture’s acceptable views of battle.
I just think it would be better if we used much larger warheads to take the shots. Make it clear that to be in their presence, risks you and your family and your neighbors and your goats.
But I’ll have to concede, *if* it can be done with the current smaller munitions, it will prove to have been the better decision. I just wonder if it will work as currently prosecuted. It might. Imagine our chagrin, if after three more years of Predator (etc) war, Al Qaeda pretty much is a non-issue in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Obama has to be given some of the credit. Ugh.
A decade or three of this, and I wonder if we can watch jihadi theory, change. After all, even now, if jihad is impractical, one is supposed to abstain.
But, I might speculate, jihad will not change until it is replaced by a more positive channel. Perhaps a new dispensation that makes friends with the Jews? But, part of Islam is supposed to be, that it is the *last* revelation, right. Well, last it may just be, then, buy the ticket, take the ride.
–
buddy, how about Obama stands up and explains his new strategy, “At oh-three hundred hours, a dozen B-2 bombers were dispatched to un-friend Iran. After a short time-out, I plan to re-friend Iran 2.0 which will have a better user interface.”
I think it’s the top-down aspect of Islam we are pretty much failing to attack. We need to always decapitate. … if course a few craters around a few major holy sites with no commensurate wholesale destruction of our myriad totems of power would necessarily deflate the Muslim’s sense of power which derives from their terrorism.
While I don’t agree with this strategy, I’m willing to admit that is how many aggressive ideologies act. The 9/11 attacks aimed in part at bringing down the ‘temple structures’ of America. The World Trade Center, the Pentagon, maybe the White House or the Capitol. The attack on the Golden Mosque, the destruction of the Bamian Buddhas, etc. are in the same vein. Topple the enemies gods, show him impotent and your religion increaseth! Even the British were not beyond that. Back in the day they dynamited the Madhi’s tomb. As late as 1945 the Allies did things like blow up the big Swastika at Nuremberg, to reproduce the spectacle of Ozymandias thrown ruined from his pedestal, surrounded by empty sand.
And while I don’t think America’s first act should have been to respond in like manner, it was also wrong to refrain from memetically engaging the enemy ideology. Making Major Hassan a protected political species was not necessarily the only alternative to vilifying Islam. Surely something in between was possible. But was it even considered? And does such a silence do justice to many Muslims in the Middle East who are trying to fight the very same things that are malignant in that culture?
The day Saddam fell the first act of the crowd was to go and push over his statue. Such a primitive act is probably beyond the comprehension of the sophisticated West, but it is eminently understandable in a culture where a fallen idol is regarded as a potent symbol. It must have been a head scratcher to watch GWB to declare Islam the “religion of peace” and to see Barack Obama scrape in front of the Saudi King. Whatever message GWB and BHO intended to send may have been received by a tiny minority of Westernized Middle Easterners, but the great many probably saw it as something else.
Strategy is about making hard choices. But it should be guided by an underlying idea. I would even go along with calling Islam the “religion of peace” if there were some strategic thinking or calculation behind such a move. Some twist down the track. But I think there simply isn’t one; that very often politicians just get up on a podium and regurgitate a whole load of nonsense uncritically without a clue why they are saying it at all.
#12 F47 is right. Islam does need a Reformation. But the Christian one took hundreds of years and killed millions. There is no reason to believe that an Islamic one would be shorter or less deadly.
#19 Morton is also right. We should have killed Sadr in 2004 when we had the chance. We should kill all these loud mouths who egg on the morons. They will be much less mouthy when they learn that words have deadly consequences. We have the means, but we lack the will, and lack of will only postpones the day of reckoning and ensures that it will be much bloodier when it comes.
What is the answer
They love death as we love life
Give abundant joy
Richard, putting Mahan’s dictums into perspective here:
1) Al Qaeda’s strategic center of gravity lies in the scores of thousands of Islamic schools teaching hate, and what makes those possible is Saudi funding with oil money. The U.S. by contrast does not have a strategic center of gravity which Al Qaeda can attack.
More importantly, Al Qaeda’s objective is, and always has been, securing of control over the Arabs’ Muslim majority. Attacking the U.S. is only a means of achieving that objective, through publicity among Arab countries. This means that the strategic center of gravity which Al Qaeda must influence lies in Arab countries – it is attacking their regimes, which it hopes to replace.
Furtrhermore one of the multiple reasons the U.S. attacked Iraq was to force Al Qaeda to engage us in an Arab country where its savagery against Muslim non-combatants would discredit it.
I.e., we might not be attacking Al Qaeda at the center of gravity where it is most vulnerable, but we did where it would hurt Al Qaeda a whole lot, and succeeded.
2) We didn’t divide the fleet. Iraq really was the correct place to initiate our counter-attack, both because it was where we could successfull engage Al Qaeda in an Arab country, and because it was then a terrorist-supporting state. It just wasn’t the only one. Others should follow. I had this opinion eight years ago see One Invasion Won’t Be Enough at http://www.strategypage.com/strategypolitics/articles/20020501.asp
3) It is absolutely true that the Obama administration does not believe we should attack, let alone win. They’d rather ignore the whole thing.
4) I agree that incompetent strategic leadership negates whatever other advantages we have in the War on Terror. Napoleon Bonaparte said, “An army of rabbits led by a lion is superior to an army of lions led by a rabbit.”
5) I wouldn’t much blame Obama and the Democrats for letting the Pentagon micromanage our field commanders. The Pentagon always wants to do that, and it takes a confident or, in the case of Obama’s predecessor, desperate President to overrule this constant urge by the Pentagon.
In WWII in the Pacific the key was not the destruction of the Japanese battle fleet but the Japanese merchant fleet. Japan, an island nation, probably could not survive without her merchant fleet and definitely could not prosper
But the Japanese battle fleet was a problem right away and had to be stopped. They were stopped at Coral Sea, were stopped and crushed at Midway – and spent the rest of the war fearfully looking to see if the Stars and Stripes would come over the horizon. And it always did, sooner or later.
The correct “low cost” answer was airpower and submarine warfare to destroy their merchant fleet. The problem was implementing that solution without first breaking the back of their battle fleet. The climactic battle fleet engagement never happened, at least not all at once. It was stretched out over the whole war. The Yamato was not sunk until the Okinawa invasion made the outcome of the war certain.
WWII in the Pacific illustrates that there are two problems, the immediate efforts to not lose or at least lose your will, and the longer term problem of eviscerating your enemy, both morally and physically. We did both. Our battle fleet beat theirs, B-25’s over Tokyo supported our morale and hurt theirs, the subs and long range bombers wrecked their merchant fleet, and the B-29’s over Japan were the final blow to their vision of themselves. It is one thing to say that all was Okay and that the reason the carriers Akai and Soryu had not been seen in port was due to military secrecy, but it was another to explain all those big shiny airplanes over Tokyo.
The war in Afghanistan was necessary to not lose. The war in Iraq was necessary to eviscerate the enemy. The question at hand is: what is the next step toward evisceration? But Obama represents the view the that the evisceration phase against Japan was shameful. So he ain’t doing it.
Wretchard, we are planning for defeat. Much of the elites, the SWPL, and other forces (women, gays, Blacks, Hispanics) long for a rebuking defeat of America, guilty as Victor Davis Hanson notes, of sexism, racism, and a whole lot of other isms. Guilty verdict first, trial afterwards. Look at AVATAR — certainly many Americans would love to see the US Marines destroyed along with America. Much of the Disaster Porn movies (2012, Day After Tomorrow, etc.) follow that same line. And why not? Isn’t America FILLED with Middle Class White people who should not even EXIST in a “sane, just world?” to paraphrase the themes of the movies and those who make them (and live in Malibu mansions).
This is why Obama, a man who cannot conceal his loathing for America and its White Majority population, to the point of not even putting his hand over his heart during Memorial Day ceremonies AS PRESIDENT, won the election.
Rich Lowry on Fox News Sunday casually noted the press will investigate the intelligence failures AFTER a US city is nuked, and not one of his guests, not even Juan Williams of NPR, rebuked him. So yes, we all know it will happen. And THEN (and perhaps it will take a few more American cities dying and a few more millions US civilian dead) America will fight.
Actually fight. Not what we are doing now.
What is the enemy center of gravity? Muslim men, ages 15-45, of middling class or higher. Poorer Muslim men do not fly to Yemen, and thence to the Netherlands, and thence to Detroit, to blow up airplanes. They are too busy worrying about what to eat that day (if anything).
This suggests that the center of gravity is Muslim population wealth. Make all the world’s Muslims poor, and we have no problem. As of yet, there have been no Mauritanian, or Chadian, or Niger men involved in AQ plots against the West. They are too poor, and know of us only by distant, word of mouth rumor.
Applying pure Mahanian principles, devoid of any concern for PC or indeed morality after say, 3-12 million US war dead, you could imagine something like this:
1. Invade and occupy and pump ALL the oil out (China would back this, they care only about cheap oil for their own ends) from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Emirates, Sudan, Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Leave as soon as there are no natural resources to allow even Jordanian standards of living.
2. Bomb and reduce infrastructure to nothing in: Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, etc. Blockade any trade, so that everything has to be carried in by hand, in a modern version of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Bomb any trucks, mules, or what have you going into or out of the countries.
3. Do nothing to dirt-poor nations like Mali. They are not threats.
4. Expel all Muslims in Western nations. They will be too rich to be tolerated.
I do not speak of the morality, the wisdom, or anything else related to the above. I merely consider it, like the firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden after the Blitz, Rotterdam, Coventry, and Warsaw to be inevitable.
This is because true Mahanian principles designed to bring about decisive defeat in shock concentration in battle (what Victor Davis Hanson called in his book “Culture and Carnage” the Western Way of War) will inevitably engage in the true strength of the enemy, which is Muslim men who have a bit of money.
AQ and Jihadis have no navy, air force, army, or anything else. They are not afraid that attacking us will cause their families, friends, cities, towns, and indeed culture to die. They see weakness and it will take now gargantuan efforts to dissaude them otherwise, likely permanent poverty. This means in raw, Mahanian terms, killing about 40% of the men age 15-45 who are Muslim and middle to upper class, and insuring poverty that is permanent for the rest, mostly by taking natural resources away. This prevents any revanchism among the next generation. You could even argue that the problem with Versailles was that the German people were not defeated in mind, with their entire town and village and city infrastructure NOT reduced to absolute rubble, with not a brick atop another. After May 1945, or August 1945, neither applied to either Germany or Japan, and so defeat was permanent. Even thinking about fighting produced horror (and Godzilla Movies).
Note this is a different outcome than the Three Conjectures. In some ways a better one (it would not imply killing half a billion Muslims as in the Three Conjectures) but it would imply a permanent state of poverty for Muslims and expelling Muslims from the West.
As Mark Steyn is fond of saying, compare the female class of 1959 of Cairo University (bare-headed, western dress) with that of 2009 (all Islamic chador covered, only eyes visible). Liberals like to think societies and social change only moves one way. It clearly does not among Muslim women, and probably not among Westerners either. Yes it is unthinkable we would do that NOW. Later? IMHO after NYC, DC, and a few other cities are nuked, not so much.
Its always unthinkable until after it happens. Then its “why yes of course Brown won ‘Kennedy’s seat’ or the Red Sox finally win or the Saints get to the Superbowl or any number of unimaginable outcomes that were obvious in hindsight.
Good news. Bad news. Good news is that
Dubya sank four of their aircraft carriers in one day.
Bad news is that there are a lot of float-plane Zeros harassing us with pinpricks.
While the latter cannot bring us down, they can engender a sense of futility.
Current administration plays to this sense
and helps rebuild major enemy capabilities.
There are two enemy centers of gravity. Main one is Arabia. Secondary one is Persia. The common thread of Islam simply helps recruit auxillaries elsewhere.
Iraq has disrupted Arabia no end. The Iranian insurgents are threatening the Persian element. General Jubilation T. Obama is therefore ordering a general retreat because
things are not utopian.
“The day Saddam fell the first act of the crowd was to go and push over his statue.”
And then the statue was toppled not by the angry crowd but by a cable attached to a U.S. tank. Symbology indeed.
I’ve always thought that the SW Pacific campaign was a waste of lives and resources. In retrospect, it was the Central Pacific campaign that began in 1943 that eventually won the war by bringing strategic bombers within range of Japanese cities.
At the time, the SW Pacific was the only front we had in 1942. So, it built up a momentum of its own simply by existing. It led eventually to the Philippines and the deaths of hundreds of thousands people that could have been avoided. Many of those people were Americans and Filipinos that otherwise would have survived the war.
It’s hard to condemn the US strategy in hindsight, because they had to fight Japan somewhere. However, by 1944 it should have been clear that Japan was the ultimate target and the SW Pacific was very far away from the home islands.
For the current war, it seems to me that the center of gravity for the enemy is the governments that rule the middle east. It’s the rulers of those countries that allow jihadists to be trained, funded, and transported within their territory. We still haven’t acknowledged that, although Bush tried unsuccessfully to focus attention on the dictatorships’ activities.
We did overthrow the Iraqi government, but we failed to use that as an example to the others. I don’t think we need to invade and occupy any more countries, but we have many other military means to express our displeasure toward Syria or Iran. We also should put more pressure on the Saudis and Egyptians to stop supporting jihad outside their borders. This could be achieved by cutting military aid or by other economic means. They need us to protect them from the Iranians, and there’s no reason to let them have that for free.
We’re not going to transform Arab and Persian society from without. That’s impossible as long as reformers can simply be shot or intimidated. We can use force to intimidate their governments. Sadly, that’s the one measure that seems to consistently work for us.
Continuing with that theme, the middle eastern governments are best at keeping control of their people through violence and intimidation. They are worst at stopping foreign countries from attacking them.
No Arab insurgency has ever succeeded. Popular resistance has never been very effective in the face of terror.
What I think will happen someday is that the inability of middle eastern regimes to defend themselves against foreign threats, combined with the relative passivity of their populations in the face of terror, will lead to a foreign takeover of the region. There is so much oil wealth and so much instability that there are plenty of incentives to invade. The only real barrier to foreign meddling right now is the United States. Without us there to protect the status quo, anyone with the ability to project force into the middle east, and few scruples about using it, will be able to rule the area.
That’s not going to be the United States, despite Iraq, but I think it might be the Turks, the Iranians, the Russians, and someday the Chinese.
“When all assassination projects need to run all the way up the command”
Gee, I thought we didn’t do this anymore… oh wait a minute, I guess that changed.
“It’s possible, and probably much easier than hitting the nuke facilities.”
I am not sure that we couldn’t do this. I am not sure if there are aerial drones that can really handle a big payload but if I were attacking a target that had state of the art air defense and potentially dirty nuclear fallout, I’d want to use drones against it and ones with bunker buster capability at that.
“Perhaps an endless harrasment of jihad, as with the predators et al, is the proper distributed solution, if still sub-optimal.” It would be nice if sanctions included this. This would get Russia’s and China’s interest up more than the Iranians though.
“Take away the money and the rat lines and this problem will become much smaller.”
This goes back to American oil dependence. All of the economic geniuses’ tell us that it can’t be done and we will always be dependent on foreign oil. I don’t know; 100 new nuclear power generating stations, electric cars, liquefied or compressed natural gas for trucks that transport goods, shale, etc.
I am not a soldier, nor sailor. I know a little history, but most of it is self-taught. I am not a scholar. To those who have more training or expertise, it is overly simple to rely on Truman’s admonition that the only thing new is the history you don’t know. To those experts it is likewise not worth observing, as did Twain, that history might not repeat, but it sure does rhyme. In my view, though, there has to be a historical antecedent to the present conflict. What it is, I do not know, yet I feel confident it exists. Once we can connect our present antagonists with their historical counterparts, we can apply the historically approved solutions, if we have the will. Political correctness in the meantime refuses to allow an honest discussion of the issues, and thus prevents a determination of the answer.
For an overly simplistic illustration of my point, consider the current Somali and Asian pirates. Is there an antecedent? Sure, going all the way back to Rome, and earlier. So, how did the ancients solve the piracy problem for their time? They — Pompey –destroyed the pirates’ land bases, which eliminated their ability to go a pirating. In the modern context, whether it is Somalia or East Asia, the answer to piracy is to destroy the pirate bases, and the pirate ships, and if need be the pirates, but it will not happen due to political correctness. Remember how many were offended when Navy Seal snipers rescued the captain of the Maersk Alabama. If we cannot accept without debate the application of blunt deadly force in the circumstance of high seas piracy, we are no where near the level of seriousness to subdue Al Queda.
Thanks for allowing me to add my point of view.
Tom
In 1944 no one knew that there was going to be an atomic bomb coming along like a deus ex machina. It made sense to drive the Japanese back bit by bit – a ground invasion of the home islands, which is what was planned, would have been a horrible slaughter if the Japanese would have still had large armies in the Phillipines to draw on.
If we want to write alternate histories we can imagine what it would have been like for the US to have built 1000 submarines and waged war by simply cutting the home islands off completely, but I don’t think that was a realistic option at the time. As it was their shipping was pretty effectively eliminated, but as we found with Saddam under sanctions a blockade with no invasion can drag on forever.
John Lynch 34:
I am inclined to agree with you. The SW Pacific was focused first on not losing the war by saving Australia and then simply to enable Mac to meet his “I Shall Return” promise.
But looking at it longer term, every single country that did not see the USA come marching in to rescue it was a big problem after the war: Indochina, China, Korea, as well Greece, Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, Iran, Iraq. So the SW Pacific campaign may have been militarily pointless but politically smart in the end.
Tom/38
In my view the historical antecedent you are looking for is the war against the Barbary pirates, who were not at all free lance pirates, but agents of the Barbary (Muslim) states. I named my son Stephen Decatur Erickson, so maybe I have a biased opinion.
Walt
RWE; John Lynch:
Conceded that the Liberation of the Philippines could have been more astutely handled than it was.
But if MacArthur had not made it back, no remaing POWs or “internees” would have survived
and Filipino deaths would have been in the millons. And no that is not hyperbole. Japanese behavior and even plans have been confirmed to be “The Greater Southeast Asian
Co-Sepukku Sphere.”
SW Pacific is rather like the MTO. Secondary in importance but far from being unimportant.
went looking on the web for ‘Armin von Roon’s’ peroration on Guadalcanal –didn’t find it, but did find this Belmont, ‘The Lost Squadron’ –from January 31st 2009 –what a great thread –starting with the title post and down thru the comments, very link rich –worth a re-read –long tho –there needs to be more time in the world.
The way the war was conducted evidenced more fear of the US citizenry than the enemy.
Derek
To our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!
- Stephen Decatur, giving the toast at a banquet in Norfolk, Virginia, 1816.
31. whiskey:
Is it that or are we just planning on how not to be blamed for defeat? People who have never done a constructive day’s work in their lives are scrambling now to not be associated with the next “Carter”. How inspiring to their base is that?
And we all know who the Islamic center of gravity is, but for over 13 years our administrations have managed to do everything in their power to ensure we still need Saudi oil too much today to be honest about it. Throw the bums out!
Dave #42:
You are no doubt correct. But those distressing facts would have had nothing to do with winning the war.
Today people would be criticizing the USA for not stopping the Great Extermination of Manilla rather than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. As it was, as Wretchard has pointed out, 100K civilians died in the battle for Manilla because the Japanese deliberately killed those people – and no one holds an annual vigil for those souls.
As it was, in 2001 a law firm filed suit against the USA on behalf of the victims of Auschwitz because we did not bomb the railways leading there. Even though we could not have bombed the railways and even hitting the ovens would have taken a special operation, at best.
For those who have not seen The Three Conjectures — and it certainly has been mentioned enough recently without a single link that I noticed — I tracked it down.
http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003/09/three-conjectures-pew-poll-finds-40-of.html
We are facing a multi-faceted enemy. In dealing with the Islamic facet, the schwerpunkt(en) is/are glaringly obvious. While it would not instantaneously effective, dealing with 23 discreet targets would cause the collapse of militant [and non-militant] Islam; albeit the tonic-clonic contractions of the movement would be downright untidy for some time. [The number will grow, the longer we delay.] A secondary strategy of ending dependence on Middle Eastern oil with a concommitent lack of necessity for us to preserve their production capacity in the aftermath would be a form of longer term action to prevent a recurrence.
However, the ability to go for the Schwerpunkt(en) will be totally dependent on a return to rationality in our own political system and decision making. The road to striking the enemy center of gravity goes through Washington, DC as surely as the Marines had to go through the Central Pacific island chains or Patton’s Third Army had to go across the Rhine.
If we are in an existential fight to win, as opposed to fighting not to be blamed for our defeat; it will require a degree of pragmatism, taking sides [our own], and cold-blooded realism not evident at all in the PC-addled, self-absorbed, decadent, metrosexual fops that run our political/educational/media system ….. of both parties. Absent a return to reality in our own country, there will be no further war, at least by our side. Because our self-described “elites” would rather lose than soil their hands and dignity by fighting for survival. There is much in common between them, and the upper classes in Rome at any time after say 250 CE, or any of the upper classes in any of China’s Imperial dynasties during the reign of the last emperor of the dynasty. Too effete except to live by exploiting or betraying their own people.
We must master the works of Thomas Paine and perhaps Theodore Roosevelt before we can master those of Mahan and Clausewitz.
Subotai Bahadur
“To our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!
- Stephen Decatur, giving the toast at a banquet in Norfolk, Virginia, 1816”
Nice one Buddy. Congratulations for getting your name back. I hope it sticks.
RWE #47: Ain’t 20-20 hindsight just wunnerful?
As I recall, over 2% of all US combat deaths
occurred on Iwo Jima after Mount Surabachi was taken and the flag raised.
After all of that, the Iwo runway was so poor that it was darned hard to take off with more fuel that you landed with. And let us not forget what happened next door on Chi chi Jima. Couldn’t the Navy have gotten C. LeMay
to stage a 1000 plane raid? That would have worked a lot better.
All in all, that was not a very productive campaign. But if I ever say they should not have done it, kindly plant your boot in my posterior, would you?
Like I said, all this is clear as can be, ex post facto.
BTW: My nominee for worst goof of the war?
The way they kept trying to bomb Ploesti refineries. If somebody had thought to call in Red Adair as a consultant, they might have laid their eggs with delayed fuses and where they would have done some good.
Also, the less said about Omar Bradley, the 36th Infantry Division and El Rapido, the better.
And we are still here? Drunks, little children and The United States of America!
It is a matter of honesty.
The West (at least those who believe in what it is supposed to stand for) tries to be honest. It tries. It doesn’t always succeed, fully, but it tries. Honesty is (or was) a cultural value.
By trying its best to be honest, but more importantly, by asserting that there IS such a thing as TRUTH and such a thing as HONESTY, the West has triumphed. (No, the West has not been perfect—but it is, in fact, the perfectionist utopian ideologues that have created hell(s) on earth).
One of the ways to undermine the West has been to deny that there is such a thing as truth; to assert that there are many truths; to, essentially undermine honesty.
In WWII, the West’s victory over Germany and Japan was so absolutely clear that it forced most (no, not all) Germans and Japanese to finally acknowledge the truth. To finally be honest (mostly).
That was the Allies’ “gift” to the people of Germany and Japan (and yes, it was indeed a gift, considering what Germany and Japan “offered” the people they conquered).
In the West, today, truth has been compromised. Honesty has been debased. Dishonesty has been “privileged”; self-censorship has become essential.
Truth is absolutely relative.
Orwell noted the results of such perversions.
In WWII, the goal was to win.
In the West today, winning is not only politically incorrect. It is sinful.
The West is facing an enemy that is forcing it choose between making terrible choices, and making more terrible choices. (Even though it was always thus, in previous eras, the West had a more confident view of itself.)
Rather than make the best of this terrible situation, the West thinks it can finesse itself out of trouble.
Churchill noted, in his time (and does our age not strongly echo it?), that this is not remotely possible.
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 2/2/2010, at The Unreligious Right
Speaking of Saudi. Where is the source of Islam’s power and influence, money from oil, mostly from the Middle Eastern Region. Islam has had little intellectual achievements, manufactures less than Spain, and is pretty much brain dead and stagnant. They buy expertise since they can’t or won’t develop their own. Cut the money off and the fleet of Islam remains in port rusting away. “Quartermaster win wars not generals.”
I remember a guy talking about a third world country, “They have a surprising number of college graduates but plumbers are damned hard to find.”
It is kind of ironic, Obama is the Jihad’s best friend, but if they carry off a big attack in the US before November, they destroy him.
Thanks Wretchard.
In a short essay you have given a set of axioms that can be considered a guide for personal and business behavior and planning equivalent to what the Book of Five Rings and The Art of War was considered in the 1980s.
Your essay should be downloaded into Zotero and meditated on for one’s own purposes. And one should view Obama’s behavior in such light: not as though he is incompetent; but that he is engaged in his own war: against this nation and its people.
Reforming Islam would be much harder than reforming Christianity or Judaism. The ideals and promises of Islam work agaisnt this.
Consider: Judaism offers pretty vague promises to believers. Pretty much “Your descendents will be numerous and prosperous”.
Christianity got smart and offered no worldy promise at all. Paradise. Exactly what’s in paradise, they’re not saying. But they promise it’s good. Clever.
Islam… offers worldly rewards, with specific promises of conquest, plundered wealth, power and respect, and an afterlife of sexual bliss. It’s fine tuned to the ego of an angry, repressed teenage boy.
Naturally, by permitting wealthy, powerful men to collect harems of young wives, Islam becomes a net generator of angry repressed teenage boys- who become net generators of Islam. What a vicious circle.
It’s no coincidence that the values we associate with Islam, for example, a tendency to react violently to insults, a degrading view of women, and a patron-client social arrangement among men, is exactly what we see in urban gangs.
The REAL reason they get so cranked over insults to Mohammed is not that they are defending the honor of their god- think about it: Allah is already sending the infidel to an eternity in hellfire, what more revenge could Allah the merciful and compassionate possibly want? The reality is, insult Mohammed, you have insulted Mohammed’s believers, and in the Muslim and Ghetto codes, when someone “disses” you, you hurt them. It’s that simple. It really is the philosophy of the angry teenage boy.
I don’t see an easy way out, other than a deus ex machina upsetting of their entire social order.
Someone up above noted the need to deal with internal enemies first. A good point, that.
The recent experience in Mass amplifies my ongoing belief that we need to attack the leftist where they live. Conservatives still focus on weak seats on the perimeter. We need to implement a strategy of attacking the leftist leaders at home, directly. A reasonably well funded group could recruit candidates to run against them all, hard. It forces the holders of safe seats to focus on defense of the rice bowl.
It could even be used to develop good conservative leaders. For example, bright, young grads seeking conservative political careers could be recruited and funded through a campaign or two. Even when loosing, the training would be valuable. And some could win.
To steal a phrase, Tora, Tora, Tora.
I won’t repeat my regular call to attack Islam at its core, relentlessly questioning and denounceing every facet of this blood philosophy.
ta
Mahan’s doctrinal principles were well taken in general, but there are always exceptions, and cases where slavish obedience to doctrinal shibboleths might not be called for.
World War II case in point. At Leyte Gulf, Admiral Halsey conformed to Mahan’s dictum about not dividing the fleet, went haring off after Ozawa’s carrier bait force (which appeared to be the “main fleet”) with his whole fleet, and did not leave his battleships to watch San Bernardino Strait. Halsey easily crushed Ozawa’s empty carriers off Cape Engano, but left 7th Fleet’s jeep carriers, and beyond them, the transport force, vulnerable to Kurita off Samar. The enemy (which held the initiative) had divided his force. Halsey (cast as the defender by the need to cover the Leyte landings and the transports) but with overwhelmingly superior numbers and firepower, should have responded appropriately, by dividing his own force. He failed to do so. Halsey arguably was confused by which enemy force was the “main fleet” but conformed to Mahan as best he could. He was wrong.
We have a few of Halsey’s problems today. Which of our enemies represents the “main fleet?” Where is the center of gravity? Identifying the enemy’s center of gravity is perhaps the key element in making some kind of Mahanian plan, and if this step is botched, all else may come to naught, as Halsey belatedly found out in 1944. More to the point for today, what if the enemy has NO center of gravity, or it is distributed? That appears to me, as far as the War on Terror goes, to be the situation today.
Identify the enemy, period.
You fight the enemy everywhere you can, period.
And you fight to win, period.
Kill anyone giving cash and comfort to the “enemy”, period.
Destroy the enemy’s belief system where ever possible, period.
Hang any traitor found in your own system, publicly, period.
Do the above and victory is certain, fail at any of the above and defeat is certain, period.
We’re losing, badly. Very badly.
On every front, politically, economically, internally.
We won the Cold War overseas, but lost it here at home, where it counted the most.
Our ability to help ourselves as a nation has almost been removed, when the world embargoes the US, the great Satan, what will we do.
We don’t make anything anymore, do we?
Obviously they will break us up as a country, and then loot the natural resources our government keeps us from using.
Who was the former representative telling us on Cavuto the gold is gone from Ft Knox?
Whiskey @31 You have described the final dance. We are definitely in the long war. Cultures change because they must and only because they must. Cultural change is always achieved across generations. Islam’s reformation for annihilation are at least a couple of generations away.
What would Mahan do?
Basically in SEAPOWER he said command of the sea is the ultimate end. He pointed out you had command at sea when you could go anywhere you want on a desired sea and could conclusively deny your enemy that same ability. Achieving that end allowed your naval forces and commercial interests to pursue their interests using that sea. He pointed out that this was most directly achieved by fashioning a force superior in firepower, or numbers, or both.
He’d have to re-tool for the currently largely land-based war fought by an enemy without a country or a navy.
The current war is about ideas and the implementation of those ideas. It is a war to control the Moslem mind.
Superior force has a hard time applying itself to gnats, but superior force can be patiently applied gnat by gnat. More important in this war of ideas is discrediting the enemies’ ideas and maintaining our will to fight. It could be said that some of our technology, i.e., drones, may in the end deny the enemy total mobility, but this strategy must be complemented by discrediting certain ideas.
The way to beat the United States is not by defeating it militarily but by pursuading it to give up.
I think Mahan would have a hard time intially re-tooling, but he did live in the period of the Philippine insurectionists, the Moros, and would be surprised we are having difficulty with all this.
From Fjordman:
In the Islamic world, Greek natural philosophy was never fully accepted, and what initial acceptance there had been was largely nullified by the highly influential theologian al-Ghazali (1058-1111). He regarded natural philosophy as dangerous to Islam and was even skeptical of the concept of mathematical proof, one of the most important and unique contributions of ancient Greek scholarship to the modern world.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3934
They do not think like us. Forget the hearts and minds thingy.
How do we defeat them? Sever the jugular. Money. If the US were to immediately open up our petroleum resources we could reduce their income by a considerable amount. Force them to loosen up lest their highly subsidized populations get hungry.
Simply answer to Richard’s question:
Al Qaeda practice Guerre du Course. Mahan would say that against the superior opponent Guerre du Course must fail.
Mahan’s observation is true in every historical example. Guerre du Course will always imposts costs but will eventually be defeated. See the Battle of the Atlantic I and II, the South in the Civil War, the US in the War of 1812 and the Revolution.
The American submarine offensive in the World War II was not an example of Guerre du Course. It was part of an integrated naval campaign designed to defeat Japan.
“‘In poker, in war,’ Amos said, ‘what you want is a simple, stupid plan. Reason you hear about the old flim-flams so much is they always work. Never try no deep, tricky plan. The other feller can’t foller it; it throws him back on his common sense which is the last thing you want.’
Amos declared that what you plan out never helps much any; more liable to work against you than anything else. What the other fellow had in mind was the thing you wanted to figure on. It was the way you used HIS plan that decided which of you got added to the list of the late lamented.
‘You see, Martie, a man is very liable to see what he’s come expecting to see. Almost always, he’ll picture it all out in his own mind beforehand. So you need give him but very little help, and he’ll swindle hisself.’”
Alan Le May, THE SEARCHERS
Christians, Jews and Hindus have been at war with Islam for 1,400 years. The borders of Islam have forever been bloody and that will not change until there are no more Muslims. The best efforts of Karen Armstrong to turn Mohammed into a reasonable human being notwithstanding, it is Islam itself that divides the world into Muslims and those that must be converted to Islam or subjugated to it. Does anyone expect the law of gravity to begin repelling objects tomorrow?
The difference between today and about 1,350 of those previous years is that everybody in the West knew that Islam was the enemy of civilization. Postmodern idiocy has erased, in the West, what should have become genetic knowledge. European countries that invite Muslims in under some delusion that up is down will pay the same heavy price as their Roman ancestors who welcomed the barbarians.
You should note that the same idiocy is not rampant in what was known as the Eastern Roman Empire.
Until we defeat our domestic enemies all of this is as moot as it is futile.
Goodness, it appears that we will cease to be a space faring nation.
America is on the edge of losing herself, including her power.
Let us get back our country.
If you want to kill a snake you don’t grab it by the tail, you chop off it’s f’n head.
Blunt, but accurate.
Call to heel the Saudi/Syrian/Iranian head of state and exterminate those who won’t. Close down any mosque that preaches against us and deport it’s Imans….
A scorched earth policy is the only thing that will ever work…it’s all they understand.
Whiskey:
Define victory.
Please don’t tell me that victory will be achieved when every woman, every non-white man, and every homosexual is dead or expelled from the North American continent.
One of the reasons why American political minorities will oppose any mass expulsion of Muslims is simple – they think you won’t stop with expelling the Muslims.
A gut bustin’ Navy war is a boxing match without gloves and without a referee.
There is no bell and the chances of throwing in the towel are remote.
Mahan’s observations are good ones applied to the war on terror.
Islam and the west have been at war continuously for 1300 years. Over that span there has been a great deal of ebb and flow but never a “decisive” engagement in the sense of final victory for one side or the other. At best we get lulls as one side or the other rearms and plans its next move following a setback. There is no physical center of gravity to strike so no single blow can end the conflict.
The center of gravity lies in the minds of men and not in a place. Destroy Mecca, Tehran or Riyadh and you only inflame the enemy and widen the conflict. Incinerate Rome or Paris or New York and the response is not surrender but terrible retribution. There is no end to this war short of the second coming.
As others have noted, the strategic center of Islam is the source of their funding and ideological cadres — Saudi Arabia and Iran. Eliminate funding for radical madrassahs and radical imams, and you greatly reduce the number of new recruits.
One other thing to keep in mind is that Islamist ideology is very territory-oriented. Any ground that has ever been under Islamic control must forever after remain under Islamic control. They react very badly to being displaced. They are still upset over being kicked out of Spain centuries ago. They go insane at the idea of Israel, because Islamic land was taken away from Islamic control. The Serb war of ethnic cleansing against the Balkan Muslims, if we had stayed out of it, might have resulted in the Islamic world being too focused on the Balkans to bother us.
#71 foont
Destroy Mecca, Tehran or Riyadh and you only inflame the enemy and widen the conflict.
With all due respect, I disagree. It goes to the nature of the religion. Islam is, like some other religions, focused on specific locales and on specific rites at those locations. I offer that of the “5 Pillars of Islam”;
1) recitation of the Shahada
2) alms
3) prayer 5 times a day in the direction of Mecca
4) the Hadj
5) observance of Ramadan,
and the customs around them, 3 are centered on Mecca. [3,4,5] Ramadan cannot be started or ended unless it is so declared by an Imam who sights the moon at the appropriate phase from Mecca.
Further, it is an article of faith for much of Islam [including that segment that we are hostilely engaged with] that Mecca, Medina, and the associated holy places are under the especial protection of Allah and are divinely immune to attack by the Infidel.
Religions which are tied theologically to specific geographic locations are uniquely vulnerable to collapse if those locations are either destroyed or fall into the hands of enemies. One can cite the local faiths of city-states throughout the world which failed when the temples were taken. The idea is something along the line of if a Diety cannot protect its own home, what the [expletive deleted] good is he/she/it?
The only exception that I can think of was the Jewish faith which lost the Temple [and the Ark of the Covenant]to the Babylonians. And somehow they managed to survive in an altered form. I offer the conjecture that it is because they had centuries earlier begun the process of transition to a religion that was immune to such; because it was held in the heart of the believer and not entirely at a location. I offer as possible evidence the Psalms which were centuries before the Captivity and which evinced a personal relationship with the Diety of a type totally unthinkable in Islam. However, that is a conjecture on my part and I am neither Christian nor Jewish and am approaching it as a student and observer.
Other religions; Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and yes Christianity in its multifarious forms, are not tied to a specific location for validation. The Christian holy lands have been in hostile hands for a millenium. If Rome were to disappear, Catholicism would survive pretty much untouched. The Eastern Orthodox Christian faith lost not only the holy lands, but also Greece for a time and Byzantium forever. And it still lives.
If a faith can be established based on a personal relationship with the Diety, with a give and take and the individual having standing and worth; it will transcend a geographic location.
The dislocations and what I referred to as tonic-clonic behaviour would be …. impressive. And probably deadly. But within a generation Islam would, I suspect, either be in the midst of a transition to a different form [and that would be far more decentralized and heterogeneous] or be in the process of dissolution.
I speak, not as any sort of authority; but as a conjecture. Your Mileage May Very Well Vary.
Subotai Bahadur
1. The objective of your fleet is to destroy the enemy fleet. The enemy fleet, in the case of Al Queda or radical Islam, is not found in the application of Islam to individual life, but rather in the application of Islam to tribes and nations. Quietists tend to be more open to western ideas and philosophies, while keeping their own counsel. While Ali Al Sistani is blamed for not only staying the US hand in dealing Al Sadr in 2003, but also in 2005 and beyond. It should be noted that Ali Sistani’s influence kept the Iraqi’s from even greater levels of violence and bloodshed after the bombing of the Golden Mosque and allowed for the evential alienation of Sadr from his followers by is his own actions. Kurds are also followers of Islam, as are many of our fine allies in both Pakistan and in Afghanistan. So I do not believe the fight is against all of Islam as much as it is against those who would use radical Salafist Islamic notions to generate the peculiar aggressiveness associated with terrorism. It is a particularly sick and savage Wahabist group that promotes the salafist philosophy and via agreement with the House of Saud teaches the sadistic strain in the madrasas financed by Saudi money throughout Pakistan, Afghanistan, Europe and the US. Anywhere Salafist inspired religious education thrives is a legitimate target of the war on terror. As I don’t think the Saudi Royal Family requires the Wahabi Salafists to sustain their grip on power in the Kingdom, efforts to confront and show ridiculous this brand of thinking ought to be encouraged everywhere in ksa and the Islamic world.
The pursuit of those whose activities aim is the destruction of the World economy and the subjugation of the US and its allies, the continued decapitation of the terrorist leadership should render their efforts less virulent and effective.
2. Never divide the fleet.
but the slower ones might as well stay in port.
3. The nation that would rule the sea must always attack.
And that is what Al Queda has been doing since at least 1992.
4. Well trained men are decisive fleet attributes. Over time, better leadership will prevail. Lessons learned by the Japanese Airforce= too late.
5. To interfere with the commander in the field is generally disaster.
To deny the commander in the field intelligence gathered at great cost for his use because of political consideration should be a capital offense. At that level of operation the commander knows how to parse the usable from the lame and can use both to advantage his mission and his men.
Jutland is an interesting sea battle to examine in Mahan’s frame. too tired tonignt to toss in my prolix turbidity, but the battle was between the Royal Navy and the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet. RN’s Admiral Jellicoe lost more tonnage in what was essentially a drawn fight –because the better attriting force left the area and steamed home.
neither force was badly damaged, both took moderate losses and were probably 90% or more still as effective after the last shot was fired.
the oddity is that the High Seas Fleet never left port again. It was just too expensive to lose –yet when the Kaiser quit the war, the whole fleet was lost, where it floated, moored in home port.
why did the germans never fight their huge expensive weapon again, for two or three more years of war *after* Jutland? I think it was the RN ‘lean-forward and look for action’ admiralty. so –one could say that –because the two fleets were so evenly matched, that the surface of the seas were owned by an attitude.
Rendering enemy bases useless.
Interrupting the enemy’s fuel supplies.
Sun Tzu might say,
“A fleet without bases or fuel is a fleet that has been destroyed.”
No brilliant ideas on how to apply this approach to the current war.
Destroy Iran’s only major refinery and a couple of key electricity generators and that takes care of their nuclear development, the mobility of their armed forces and Revolutionary Guards and quite possibly precipitates revolution in the streets.
Oh yeah, take out their major military installations and any naval facilities near trade routes just because we can.
27. jWarrior:
#12 F47 is right. Islam does need a Reformation.
I think many of us are forgetting a precursor to Reformation.
That is the freedom or power to discuss and admit that “holy” scriptures are not the direct word of an almighty god but of so-called prophets such as Mohammed or apostles such as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and assorted hangers on/groupies.
How can Islam have any potential for reform while the Koran is considered the direct word of god and any challenge to that notion is heresy with a penalty of death?
That is inherently unreasonable. There is no starting place especially when you consider our notion that democracy is based on the premise of the reasonable man.
How do Muslims get there from where they are now???
And what are we as a civilization doing to support what “progressives” (pardon me) there are in Islamic societies?
31. Whiskey
“Wretchard, we are planning for defeat. Much of the elites, the SWPL, and other forces (women, gays, Blacks, Hispanics) long for a rebuking defeat of America.”
Whiskey I can agree with most of your statement but I have a bit of a problem with your monolithic “Hispanics”.
I grew up in California and have been around Mexicans all my life. Mexican Americans as opposed to illegals were an integral part of the communities I grew up in and the Army I served in for three years.
In the main they were a graceful, responsible part of society and solidly American.
The main problem is illegals and it is our failing as a nation that we have not secured our borders nor applied the law impartially and effectively.
Never divide the fleet
Well, that was actually a big debate in the pre-war (that is, pre-WWII) planing for War Plan Orange/Rainbow5. The Mahanians wanted to to straight for Manila, not capturing any bases along the way because then those bases would have to be defended, dividing the fleet.
Problem was, if the fleet went straight for Manila, it would arrive after a long, long journey to fight a fresh Japanese battle line a la the Russians at Tsushima. That didn’t go well for the Czar’s navy, and it likely wouldn’t go well for the US Navy either.
So bases were needed, and bases required defense, so the fleet needed to be divided. Mahan’s dictum wasn’t actually useful in practice.
It’s useful to realize that Mahan was writing when the Steam Navy was still awfully young. For a couple hundred years prior, sailing ships had ruled the seas, and they suffered less from range problems. They also followed very closely the N-squared law (the more powerful force will always win the battle and suffer disproportionately low losses compared to the smaller force). Battleships followed the same law.
Aircraft carriers didn’t. Battlewagons (whether steam fired steel hulls or wind-driven wooden ones) blast away at each other salvo after salvo. It takes time and both sides suffer damage roughly in proportion to the remaining firepower of the enemy. It’s hard for an inferior force to win.
Carrier warfare is different. A carrier strike is devastating and can preclude a return strike if it achieves surprise. A smaller force, if it gets lucky (and skill can manufacture luck) can cause devastating damage to a larger force. In that style of warfare, divided fleets that can quickly come to mutually support one another but not all get caught in the same ambush are a good idea.
Technology changes the shape of the battlefield, tactically and strategically. What is the War On Terror like? Is it a Big Gun duel or a carrier battle? I’d say it’s more like the Battle of the Atlantic, hidden submarines attacking defenseless targets when they can, running from the escorts when they’re found, and being sunk when caught. If that’s the better analogy, then what are the modern equivalents of:
(useful)
-Sonar
-Radar
-Jeep Carriers
-cheap, but effective and numerous, Destroyer Escorts
-Hunter-Killer Task Forces
-Enigma intercepts
-Convoy system
(questionable)
-Q Ships
-Bombing the sub pens
excellent, JMH!
a brilliant strategy is useless when the leaders (or the nation) lack the will to engage.
Example: the solution to the Somali Pirate Problem is centuries old.
Raids of Reprisal.
Attack the home ports/villages of the pirates.
Kill anyone who resists. Hang any identifiable pirates.
Burn down anything bigger than a hut and sink any boat longer than 10 meters.
Inform the somalis they are no longer allowed to fish outside of x mile from shore and sink on sight any offenders.
none of this has happened and it will not because the west lacks the will to do the job.
The crucial facet of Islamic terrorism is their “Fuel supply” of oil money. This is their central base. Without this fuel, Iran and Saudi Arabia would be at the same level of importance as Chad, Malawi, and Peru. You don’t know who leads these countries, but you do know who leads Iran.
Stop paying our enemies. Stop funding both sides of the war.
Stop paying for oil.
Technology changes the shape of the battlefield, tactically and strategically. What is the War On Terror like? Is it a Big Gun duel or a carrier battle? I’d say it’s more like the Battle of the Atlantic, hidden submarines attacking defenseless targets when they can, running from the escorts when they’re found, and being sunk when caught. If that’s the better analogy, then what are the modern equivalents of:
On the money description JMH, thanks. I would have typed “excellent” but some buddy beat me to it.
(useful)
-Sonar…cell phones
-Radar…drones
-Jeep Carriers…B-52′s
-cheap, but effective and numerous, Destroyer Escorts…Sons of Iraq, AFA
-Hunter-Killer Task Forces…Special ops a la Yemen and Somalia. Perhaps the Israelis?
-Enigma intercepts…SWIFT (Money transfers system).