March 22, 2006

Quick post...

This is a quickie post (I'm very busy this week) on this, by John Derbyshire...It deserves a lot more working over, I think he's all wrong, but this is a start...

....I suspect that rather a lot of Americans, when they see footage of GIs handing out candy to children in some occupied place, think: “What a good nation we are! Surely the enemy will see our goodness and cast down his arms!” There is no inconsistency in reflecting, when seeing such scenes, that yes, we are a good nation, but that’s not what soldiers are for....

Sorry, John, but this is counter-insurgency warfare, and candy can have clear tactical value. (sometimes literally; I once blogged a story about an American column stopping on a Baghdad street, because a little girl was sitting in the middle of the road. They were very worried that this might be a trap, but, being Americans, they stopped anyway. She was trying to prevent them from driving over an IED! I can't find that post, but read this.)

And counter-insurgency warfare, (and similar frustrating even-lower-level fights below the level of "insurgency) are all you get! Our forces would love to fight our enemies with all the force we possess, but nobody is going to play that game anymore. Even Saddam's army wouldn't stand against us. And we did get some real fights against the insurgents in places like Falluja, but that's over. (The genius of the Iraq Campaign was that it forced people to fight against us. But alas, it never lasts once we show how we can slaughter them with ease.)

War between nation-states is over, and all the efforts of pacifists and the wishful thinking of paleo-hawks and defense contractors won't bring it back again...

Soldiers are "for" whatever fight or danger the world happens to serve up. And is quite likely we never again see our forces committed to battle in entire corps. Possibly in entire divisions. In fact our army is now moving away from divisions as tactical units, and building more independent brigades. (Divisions, corps and armies will still exist as administrative bodies.)

And by the way, that's how it was for most of our history. When Hunter Liggett was trying, as President of the Army War College just before WWI, to teach America something of modern war, he had officers re-fight (without troops) battles of the Civil War. Why? Because that was the last time we had fielded armies, corps, and yes, divisions! No American had maneuverd a division since the Civil War...

* Update: About that story of the little girl sitting in the street. I don't know if a piece of candy helped win her heart, but it's not unlikely. And just consider the cost of supporting a disabled soldier, perhaps for the next 50 years. Guys like Derbyshire think of themselves as hard-headed realists sneering at dreamers, but one little piece of candy may have saved the US treasury tens of millions of dollars, not to mention lives...

Posted by John Weidner at March 22, 2006 10:06 AM
Weblog by John Weidner