by Frederick W. Kagan
Policy Review Online
August, 2003
http://www.policyreview.org/aug03/kagan.html(snip)
"Why has the United States been so successful in recent wars and encountered so much difficulty in securing its political aims after the shooting stopped? The obstacles in the way of establishing stable polities in Kabul and Baghdad were always considerable. It was never likely that the road to peace and stability in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan would be short or smooth. The nature of the American military operations in both countries, however, multiplied those obstacles instead of reducing them and greatly increased the chance of failing to achieve the political objectives that motivated both wars.
"The reason for this fact lies partly in the vision of war that President Bush and his administration brought into office and have implemented in the past two wars. This vision focuses on destroying the enemy’s armed forces and his ability to command them and control them. It does not focus on the problem of achieving political objectives. The advocates of a “new American way of war,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Bush chief among them, have attempted to simplify war into a targeting drill. They see the enemy as a target set and believe that when all or most of the targets have been hit, he will inevitably surrender and American goals will be achieved."
(snip)
"It is a fundamental mistake to see the enemy as a set of targets. The enemy in war is a group of people. Some of them will have to be killed. Others will have to be captured or driven into hiding. The overwhelming majority, however, have to be persuaded. They must be persuaded not merely of the shocking awfulness of American power, but of the desirability of pursuing the policies the U.S. wishes them to pursue. And they must not be driven away from the pursuit of those policies by the horrors and opportunities presented by a chaotic, lawless vacuum created by our precision weapons. To effect regime change, U.S. forces must be positively in control of the enemy’s territory and population as rapidly and continuously as possible. That control cannot be achieved by machines, still less by bombs. Only human beings interacting with other human beings can achieve it. The only hope for future success in the extension of politics that is war is to restore the human element to the transformation equation."
- much more . . .
http://www.policyreview.org/aug03/kagan.htmlFrederick W. Kagan is a military historian and the co-author of
While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today (St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
