Arms and influence

Clean hands, light hearts

IN THE NEWS
As you might know from earlier posts (click here and here for examples), I don't believe that winning at counterterrorism requires abandoning normal legal and political processes. Far from it: cleaving to them often, as they were designed to do, produce better results than the hastily-concocted alternative. Fidelity to our own principles and procedures also has an important demonstration effect. We want to show audiences whom we're trying to move that we truly believe in and practice what we say about the universal value of democracy and the rule of law. Plus, of course, "we don't let the terrorists win" by getting us to rush into ineffective or counterproductive measures.

That's why the extradition hearing for Abu Hamza, a Muslim cleric who openly supports Osama bin Laden and other anti-Western Islamists, deserves more attention than it's probably getting. Yet again, the US government is faced with the choice between making the system in which we supposedly believe work, and taking some other "emergency measures." Yet again, we see the Bush Administration's representatives lean in the second direction before trying the first.

Hamza is a veteran of al Qaeda's campaign in Afghanistan, where he was literally battle-scarred, losing both hands and an eye. Among the 11 counts in the US indictment, he's accused of giving material support to a kidnapping plot in Yemen, attempting to set up an al Qaeda camp in Oregon (!!!), and advocating "hatred and violence toward the West and specifically the United States," which he derisively calls the "United Snakes of America."

Now, the other 10 counts are pretty bad, so I have to wonder, why throw in the eleventh, about advocating "hatred and violence"? Actions speak louder than words--or scream them, in Hamdi's case, if the US charges are backed with sufficient evidence. This eleventh charge is worse than gratuitous: it helps feed the anti-American propaganda machines. The editorials, sermons, and other forms of denunciation that result will use that raw material to good effect, focusing on the clumsy eleventh charge over the possibly substantive other counts in the indictment.

Here's, predictably, what the other side will say: The Americans don't believe in freedom of speech. How is it wrong to support those who stand up for the thousands, or millions, of Muslims who have died at the end of an American gun, whether the Americans or their Zionist allies wielded it? Wolfowitz, the real butcher of Baghdad, can't even remember the number of American soldiers who have died in their unjust war, let alone count the uncounted thousands of Iraqis who have died. And that doesn't include the thousands dead in Afghanistan, Palestine, and other places where Americans have waged their crusade against the believing Muslim.

As I said, it's not hard to guess what our ideological opponents will say. Therefore, why make their jobs any easier--particularly if we can enjoy a clear conscience as an added benefit?

Of course, the US attorneys may simply be trying to establish motive, or hoping to improve the odds of getting the extradition by citing Hamza's own words. However, this is where the First Amendment shows itself to be, yet again, one of the pillars of American politics. Once you start trying to shave it down too much--you can say these things, but not those; here's what words constitute support for terrorists, and these don't--the pillar may collapse. Terrorists and their supporters are careful with their words anyway, so if we outlaw particular types of speech that advocates or supports terrorism, they'll retreat behind a curtain of code words and phrases. (Actually, they already do.) Everyone who needs or wants to know what they mean will know, so the whole exercise in censorship by prosecution will have been pointless.

The US attorneys are standing on a swaying legal platform already. Other pillars of US legal procedure since 9/11 have been undermined by the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the headline-grabbing PR efforts of the Attorney General, the denial of access to government witnesses (as in the Moussaui case), and other Bush Administration actions that have, in toto, made it harder to convict terrorists. To quote one of the articles on the extradition hearings, Hamza's attorney hit the US case in all the obvious weak points:

Ed Fitzgerald QC, for Hamza, told the court that his client could not be guaranteed a fair trial in America and claimed that evidence likely to be used against him would be in contravention of his human rights since it had been obtained through torture and plea-bargaining from prisoners captured in Afghanistan..

Mr Fitzgerald said: "He would not receive a fair trial because there is every likelihood that evidence gathered in circumstances that violate his human rights would be used." He told the court that US prosecutors would be likely to rely on statements from a detainee at Guantanamo Bay and other evidence gained through "torture or inhuman or degrading treatment".

The court also heard that Hamza's name was used in a presidential declaration of foreign terrorist suspects, which Mr Fitzgerald said "violates the presumption of innocence".

Plus, of course, the death penalty issue is a complicating factor. British judges are going to look at a Hamza's possible execution as a factor in their decision whether or not to release him to US custody. The more slipshod the American case looks, the less likely they will assent to the extradition request, if Hamda has to pay the ultimate price for his crimes.

Many Americans probably are tired of asking, Why do they hate us? Instead, they want to get on with the work of taking whatever immediate actions will make them safer from terrorist attack. That's fine, but in the process, they have to be clear-headed about what actually makes it possible to capture and convict terrorists. We also don't need to make the job of anti-American propagandists any easier.

The PLO: Can't live with 'em...

IN THE NEWS
The recent outbreaks of violence directed against Yassir Arafat personally, and the Palestinian Authority generally, is a long time coming. Palestinians in the occupied territories had mixed feelings about Arafat's return as part of the peace process. Symbolically, he's undoubtedly critical for the Palestinian struggle. That's why, every time the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) encircled his compound, support for the Chairman spiked. As soon as the Israeli tanks withdrew, however, his approval ratings plummeted.

In day-to-day life, Palestinians don't live, breathe, and work because of Arafat's talismanic role in the Palestinian struggle. They depend on being able to start a business, get medical care, hire a contractor to repair their homes, or other mundane tasks. That's when Palestinians run afoul of the corruption that Arafat brought with him. Palestinians, already feeling let down by the Israelis, the United States, the oil-rich Arab states, the UN, and nearly everyone else, have hit rock-bottom with the sense of betrayal that comes with the corruption.

That sad fact doesn't just make daily life in the occupied territories harder for the Palestinians, however. It also makes it harder for everyone (including Americans) somehow involved in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle to find a mutual exit from this mess. As Arafat's authority disintegrates so badly that the al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade is now shooting at his deputies, who fills the political vacuum? With whom will the Israelis, or anyone else, deal?

The best answer, of course, is Hamas. You might remember them as the terrorist group whose leaders the IDF has been killing. They're not likely to submit to Israeli coercion any time soon, and the way Hamas has managed charities, medical care, and various public services continues to win the respect of many Palestinians--including those who don't approve of the "military" action Hamas also directs.

I've heard a lot of different perspectives on the historical moment on which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict turned: the offer that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat in 2000. Of course, the range of opinion on this moment has the usual range that anything about this conflict usually sees: from one extreme to another. On on extreme, people argue that Barak offered Arafat everything he could ever want. On the other extreme, you'll hear that the offer was either an insult or a trap.

History, however, is made of the quiet drip-drip-drip of everyday life as much as by the explosive ruptures of events like wars, failed negotiations, or assassinations. Daily life in the occupied territories has become even more morally arid than it was before. The statement, "Arafat blew it," applies as much to widespread corruption as it might to Arafat's rejection of the Barak offer--if not moreso. In one case, he might have proved impossible to deal with as the representative of the Palestinians. In the other, he proved unwilling to convince the Palestinians themselves that he has their interests in his heart.

Let soldiers fight wars...

IN THE NEWS
...And let private contractors handle cafeterias, overnight shipping, and janitorial services. The more you mix private and public functions, the more mayhem you create in a warzone.

Case in point is this article about a murky situation in Afghanistan. Some, er, private individuals (call them mercenaries, vigilantes, whatever) had someone in detention, whom they then turned over to the US military. Reading this story, the lede alone is enough to stop you cold in your tracks:

The U.S. military said Thursday it held an Afghan prisoner for two months after receiving him from three Americans who have been charged with torturing detainees at a private jail.

How can we avoid ugly messes like this one? (Were the three Americans working with the US government, or were they glory-hunting yahoos on a very strange safari in Afghanistan?) One very easy, obvious first step is to eliminate private security forces from the mix of troops in an important theater of operations. Scratch that--how about removing them altogether?

Let soldiers do the work. The US taxpayer will pay for them, whether they're official US armed forces, or private security contracters (alias mercenaries). Last I heard, we had the best fighting force in the world. If that's the case, the private sector can't do a better job anyway, and private armies only get us into trouble like this story out of Afghanistan. Just set the force levels, recruit the troops, and let them do their jobs.

Athenians 'R' Us

IN THE NEWS
After this earlier post on Eliot Cohen's article, the Peloponnesian Wars have been rattling around in my brain all day. I've read Thucydides (the fellow pictured to the right), and two of Donald Kagan's four-volume series on the conflict. After picking up Kagan's much-recommended single-volume history today, I decided to look up the Melian dialogue on the web. There was something in this famous exchange between the Athenians and Melians that tugged at my memory, and now I remember what it was.

Melos was a Spartan ally, a small island surrounded by Athenian allies. It took the prudent course, therefore, of remaining neutral, despite its nominal allegiance with Sparta. Neutrality wasn't good enough for the Athenians, however, who wanted to make sure that Melos didn't present an unwanted and potentially dangerous complication. The Athenians blockaded Melos and beseiged the city.

Thucydides records the content of a negotiation between the Athenians and Melians, in which the Athenians are, to some extent, thunderstruck that the Melians are continuing to resist. Not only are they clearly outmatched, but the Athenians cannot understand why the Melians don't understand them. Aren't the Athenian concerns justified? Wouldn't the Melians do the same, if the situation were reversed?

Here's a key section of the debate:

Athenians: The fall of our empire, if it should fall, is not an event to which we look forward with dismay; for ruling states such as Lacedaemon are not cruel to their vanquished enemies. With the Lacedaemonians, however, we are not now arguing; the real danger is from our many subject states, who may of their own motion rise up and overcome us, their masters. But this is a danger which you may leave to us. And we will now endeavor to show that we have come in the interests of our empire, and that in what we are about to say we are only seeking the preservation of your city. For we want to make you ours with the least trouble to ourselves, and it is for the interests of us both that you should not be destroyed.

Melians: It may be your interest to be our masters, but how can it be ours to be your slaves?

Athenians: To you the gain will be that by submission you will avert the worst; and we shall be all the richer for your preservation.

Melians: But must we be your enemies? Will you not receive us as friends if we are neutral and remain at peace with you?

Athenians: No, your enmity is not half so mischievous to us as your friendship; for the one is in the eyes of our subjects an argument of our power, the other of our weakness.

Melians: But are your subjects really unable to distinguish between states in which you have no concern, and those which are chiefly your own colonies, and in some cases have revolted and been subdued by you?

Athenians: Why, they do not doubt that both of them have a good deal to say for themselves on the score of justice, but they think that states like yours are left free because they are able to defend themselves, and that we do not attack them because we dare not. So that your subjection will give us an increase of security, as well as an extension of empire. For we are masters of the sea, and you who are islanders, and insignificant islanders, at that, must not be allowed to escape us.

Melians: But do you not recognize another danger? For, once more, since you drive us from the plea of justice and press upon us your doctrine of expediency, we must show you what is for our interest, and, if it be for yours also, may hope to convince you:, Will you not be making enemies of all who are now neutrals? When they see how you are treating us they will expect you some day to turn against them; and if so, are you not strengthening the enemies whom you already have, and bringing upon you others who, if they could help, would never dream of being your enemies at all?

The negotiation ends with this statement by the Athenians (emphasis added):

Athenians: Help may come from Lacedaemon to you as it has come to others, and should you ever have actual experience of it, then you will know that never once have the Athenians retired from a siege through fear of a foe elsewhere. You told us that the safety of your city would be your first care, but we remark that, in this long discussion, not a word has been uttered by you which would give a reasonable man expectation of deliverance. Your strongest grounds are hopes deferred, and what power you have is not to be compared with that which is already arrayed against you. Unless after we have withdrawn you mean to come, as even now you may, to a wiser conclusion, you are showing a great want of sense. For surely you cannot dream of flying to that false sense of honor which has been the ruin of so many when danger and dishonor were staring them in the face. Many men with their eyes still open to the consequences have found the word "honor" too much for them, and have suffered a mere name to lure them on, until it has drawn down upon them real and irretrievable calamities; through their own folly they have incurred a worse dishonor than fortune would have inflicted upon them. If you are wise, you will not run this risk; you ought to see that there can be no disgrace in yielding to a great city which invites you to become her ally on reasonable terms, keeping your own land, and merely paying tribute; and that you will certainly gain no honor if, having to choose between two alternatives, safety and war, you obstinately prefer the worse. To maintain our rights against equals, to be politic with superiors, and to be moderate towards inferiors is the path of safety. Reflect once more when we have withdrawn, and say to yourselves over and over again that you are deliberating about your one and only country, which may be saved or may be destroyed by a single decision.

The Melians refused to submit. After the starved city finally fell, the Athenians executed every male citizen in punishment for not surrendering earlier.

The Melian debate inspires a lot of feelings, however many times you read it. The first is the question, almost a cry of despair: How could the Athenians do this? What happened to the Athens of Pericles and Themistocles--the cradle of democracy, a champion of Greek freedom during the Persian wars, the most civilized of the city states?

The answer, of course, is that the Athenians were no more immune to folly, arrogance, and short-sightedness than anyone else. You can pin the blame for Athens' fall from grace on everything from well-known individuals like Alcibiades to the most impersonal of historical forces, like the corrosive effects of war weariness. Whomever or whatever you blame, Athens had reached a point where it was not being needlessly brutal, but wasn't even understanding what, in war and politics, worked and didn't work.

The Melians resisted. That was the point I hadn't remembered. The ancient world's version of "shock and awe" had failed to compel the Melians to submit to Athenian demands. They lost, but in the long run, so did the Athenians, whose allies--tired of the shabby treatment they received from the haughty Athenians--revolted at the first opportunity. Athens had good reason, as they discuss in the Melian dialogue, to be more worried about smaller states like Melos than the other superpower, Sparta. The Athenians just didn't understand why they should be afraid of them.

Historical parallels are sometimes more informative than detailed accounts of current events because we can look at them more objectively. We have none of the investment in the Athenian cause that Americans have in their own today. Therefore, we can look objectively at the Melian dialogue, a scene replayed today in American diplomatic exchanges with other governments, and understand both sides equally well. We wish the Athenians weren't behaving in such an un-Athenian way, but it's not impossible to believe that they would. We can see why the Melians resist, even if there was an element of self-delusion about expected Spartan support. There were other elements at play in the Melian resistance, however, than calculations about when the Spartan hoplites would arrive. There was also a visceral outrage at being bullied. As the Melians say, it's hard to tell how events will play out, so perhaps there might be a better outcome from an honorable struggle than a dishonorable surrender.

Next time you're asking familiar questions about current events like, Why do they hate us? and, Don't they understand our motives? I suggest you sit down with a copy of Thucydides and read, long and carefully.

Just plain weird

IN THE NEWS
That's about all I can say about the Sandy Berger story. This whole incident smells like something where you absolutely cannot trust the first statements, presented as facts, that surface in the press. Has someone of Berger's experience suddenly devolved into the Iran-Contra scandal's poster girl, Fawn Hall, stuffing classified documents into his/her clothes?

Uhhh, maybe. Maybe not. I can't believe that he needed to pilfer documents about port security. The documents that are available to the public on this and other homeland security topics are pretty good, as Berger (or anyone working for him) should know. So, was this an innocent mix-up of piles of documents? An unforgiveably sloppy way of handling official documents? A complete fabrication? Something else?

Who the hell knows? Unlike the pundits, I'm not going to speculate. Almost everything about the 9/11 Commission has an aura of unreality already.

Signal-to-noise ratio

IN THE NEWS
One of the lessons of 9/11 should be, "Forget the exotic threats for the time being. Start working on the easier, lower tech ones, like hijacking airliners with pepper spray and box cutters, then crashing them into buildings."

That focus, of course, requires a great deal of information sifting and filtering. The famous "signal-to-noise" ratio needs to be kept high, since there's a lot of noise. Consider the number of airline passengers travelling in and out of the United States each day, the number of ports of entry to monitor, the crossing points at the borders with Canada and Mexico, the number of boats the Coast Guard needs to track...It's a staggering amount of data.

That's why, when faced with real risks, cool heads need to prevail. If we jump at every terrorist-shaped shadow, we're going to be easily overwhelmed with potential threats, to the point where we can't possibly catch a real terrorist. An astute customs official caught someone involved in the planned "Millennium Bombings." That person needs to know whom to wave on, and whom to pull over.

Therefore, alarmist characters like Annie Jacobsen make a bad situation worse. There's a definite line between being alert and being panic-striken. It's not that fine a line, too, just one that requires a bit of maturity, good sense, and caution--both about your fellow passengers, and your own fears.

Read the piece in Salon and see what you think. I concluded that, given the signal-to-noise challenge I've outlined, the author has good reason to be outraged. Not only do people like Jacobsen raise the risk of abusing innocent travellers, but they also clog the information arteries with junk.

The hyperpower's burden

IN THE NEWS
I recommend reading Eliot Cohen's short piece, "History and the Hyperpower," in the July/August 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs. It's a good thought piece, in the literal meaning of that term. The article is intended to get the reader to think about the US position in the world in a particular frame of mind: the realistic appraisal of what a "hyperpower" should and should not do in its foreign policy. It summarizes neatly the relevant facts (for example, the astonishing conventional military dominance of the US), as well as the important challenges the United States faces (for instance, how smaller actors, like al Qaeda or Saudi Arabia, have the advantage of focus and endurance that the US lacks).

It's a good piece from a level-headed scholar who rarely disappoints. Since one of Cohen's stated aims is to get the reader to think more about useful historical examples that might guide the United States, I'll say that, in my case, he succeeded. He got me thinking again how much more we should be studying the Peloponnesian Wars for lessons, and more importantly, for warnings. Athens, the democratic superpower of its age, pursued an arrogant, corrupt, and ultimately failed strategy against Sparta. It abused allies and enemies alike, rolled the dice on reckless gambits like the Sicilian expedition, and mistakenly trusted leaders like Alcibiades, whose statesmanship, sadly, never matched his popularity.

The other thought I had after reading Cohen's article is how much the military requirements of the United States resemble that of the late Roman empire. Like Rome, the United States needs a quick reaction force that could move to any theater where it might be needed. Like Rome, the US needs to maintain a superiority in fighting ability to offset an inferiority in numbers. Like Rome, US forces need to fight side-by-side with allies (or, in Roman terms, auxiliaries). And, like Rome, the United States needs to be careful as the dominant power to never let a coalition of its rivals form. That's what makes the Bush Administration's bluster hard to take at times--not just because the rhetoric is needlessly undiplomatic, but it's also needlessly provocative to multiple rivals at the same time.

Anyway, forget about my musings, and go read Cohen's article.

Simplicity and redundancy

THEORY
In military strategy discussions, some additional aspects of the dynamics of strategy surface that haven't received a formal label quite yet. Analysts and practicioners alike understand these principles, even if they haven't risen to the level of formal definition that concepts like friction have achieved.

The first is simplicity. Why have a complex plan, when a simple one will do? Complexity leads to needless problems, particularly since friction can play havoc with any part of it. The more failure points, the more failures.

For people who aren't familiar with military history, the simplicity of most successful strategies may seem surprising. Perhaps people expect that military professionals use their special expertise to create baffling, Mission Impossible-like plans. The stark simplicity of, say, Operation DESERT STORM (first bomb around the clock, then a direct thrust through the desert to cut off and destroy the Iraqis) may seem disappointing.

The simplest plans aren't necessarily easy to execute. You still have to know when to take action, with which forces, against which targets. You also have to keep in mind the point of the operation--something that easily gets lost in the confusion and clamor of battle. Some of history's best generals, such as Lee or Napoleon, have had a talen for appraising the battlefield in an instant and knowing exactly the right thing to do. That takes a special kind of intuition, or spatial thinking, or instinct about what the enemy is doing, that's not what you might think of when you hear the term "military genius".

Military organizations are just that--organizations. Here's where a lot of organizational theory from people like Crozier, Wilson, Weber, and others has an important role in understanding military affairs. Large military bureaucracies are designed to be responsive to what the commander wants: otherwise, you couldn't get the same squad to attack a hill, march down it, and attack it again a day later. Organizations can only be responsive to a point, after which their ability to execute a plan, however brilliant on paper, breaks down.

There's an analog to this principle in the software industry, by the way. I've known a lot of incredibly bright people--graduates of MIT, Cal Tech, and other prestige universities--designed failed products for a predictable reason: the people using the technology are not themselves Cal Tech graduates. Your software is only as good as the person implementing it, who may not be the best and the brightest. The more complex, unusual, or otherwise challenging you make a new technology, the less likely it is to be successful. Even if there were not a skill gap between the software architect and the systems integrator, most people want to do their jobs and get along with the rest of their lives. Arcane software implementation puzzles don't fascinate everyone, nor do they share the same level of interest in innovative software design. Software complexity also retards the ability of the larger organization to consume a new technology, since its information arteries are blocked whenever complex systems break down (and believe me, the principle of friction applies to IT as much as warfare).

This organizational reality, among other things, leads to the second principle, redundancy. Since you have to deal with the unexpected--enemy countermeasures, weird twists of fate, etc.--you need to have redundancy built into both your resources and your plans. You always need more resources than you think you do, so allocate more. Why risk failure at taking the hill with a squad when you'd have better chances with a platoon? Balancing resources this way--having more than you need in some places, while still having enough free to do other things--is another one of those ineffable qualities of good commanders that's hard to transform into a formula, but is a critical element of success.

Redundancy in plans means, simply, having a plan B. You can't cover every possible contingency, but you need to plan for some likely ones. At the very least, you need an avenue of retreat. If the enemy turns out to have not 10 troops, but 100, guarding a bridge, you might want to back out of the attack. All or nothing plans are bad; plans based on too many ifs are even worse. You can continue propping one possibility against another until it looks like you have a sturdy plan: if the Germans have not detected us yet, and if (as we expect) they're low on fuel and ammunition, and if we can get the air support we need, and if we can launch the attack before dawn, we'll be able to take the town. However, how many American commanders in WWII would have given the order to attack until most or all of these ifs were replaced with solid answers?

Deciding on when you have enough contingency planning, and how much uncertainty in the plan you will tolerate, is again, a leadership trait that takes experience, instinct, training, and some raw talent to acquire. Not everyone will have it, so promoting the people who do is one of the important functions of a military bureaucracy.

PRACTICE
Since 9/11, the US government has certainly applied the principle of simplicity--for the most part. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were very simple, direct, and successful plans, executed with the usual operational and tactical efficiency for which the US military is justifiably famous.

Unfortunately, the campaigns in these two countries only started with the invasions. The occupation phases have been far more challenging, in part because the US approach has been plagued with, among other problems, no equally simple, direct strategy like the invasion plans. A major complicating factor is how the unity of command has broken down, particularly in Afghanistan, since the invasion. Rather than having multiple bureaucracies executing a single plan, we now have multiple bureaucracies executing multiple plans. Coalition warfare makes this challenge harder, but not intractable. The reason we're not making more progress against the Taliban and al Qaeda has very little to do with unity of command among NATO and Afghan forces, however, and a lot more to do with the disconnect between military and non-military actions. In the Vietnam War, it wasn't until the politico-military integration that the CORDS program and other initiatives brought that the US effort began making real progress against the NLF insurgency. We'll continue to be frustrated in Iraq and Afghanistan as long as US efforts fail to achieve this unity (and thereby simplicity) of effort.

One might say, by the way, that the US strategy in the Iraq occupation has been too simple, simplistic in its ignorance of Iraqi political realities. I'd agree with that statement, but even if the US were to gain a better appreciation the complexities of post-Hussein Iraq, that doesn't mean it will craft a simple, direct plan in response. Different organizations--some American, some not--will continue to pursue different agendas and strategies, based on different perceptions of the situation.

Certainly, the Bush Administration has failed to follow the principle of redundancy in both conflicts. Not only have the resources proven to be inadequate, but the plans had any real flexibility. Many people asked, before the invasion, what would happen if the Iraqis didn't welcome us with open arms, if there were no stable post-Baathist regime, if Iraqi groups started fighting the US and Coalition occupiers, if the invasion proved harder than expected...At least, with that last question, didn't throw US planners a curve ball. These conventional, maneuver warfare issues were, of course, the topic with which US military planners were most familiar.

On the other topics, the Bush Administration was far too comfortable with the number of ifs in its invasion/occupation strategy. Not only did the civilian leaders think they had the answers to these questions, but they were actively hostile to people who did have expertise in these areas.

That mistake, seen purely from the lessons of past conflicts, was eminently avoidable. Both the White House and 10 Downing Street are dissembling when they say, "No one could have known," or, "Our best experts told us the Iraq War would be over by now." Many people tried to point out the risks the Americans and British were taking in ignoring the principle of redundancy. At best, these critics were ignored; at worst, they were called traitors by red-faced demagogues. No amount of bluster and blindness will make the failure go away, however.

Breaking the Vietnam truce

IN THE NEWS
For those too young to have known not just the Vietnam War, but also the post-Vietnam debates, let me say that the war was divisive in a way that's hard to depict. Describing the venom-spitting, apoplectic ragefests that lasted through the Eighties was "debates" is perhaps inaccurate. For a long time--too long--Americans could not have a rational discussion about the Vietnam War. Whether the setting was one of those painful occasions when the thorns and spines of political opponents became snagged, or even when people of the same opinion worked themselves into a mutual froth, the Vietnam War raked its talons across the American psyche for decades. It had long-term effects, not just on public discourse, but also on US foreign policy (the famous "Vietnam syndrome") and US military strategy (the equally famous Weinberger/Powell doctrine, an Aquinian set of conditions for the justified use of force.)

The productive conversations about the lessons of Vietnam happened quietly, often in places that were rather obscure to the general public (the US Army War College, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, etc.). It's always hard to get an accurate picture of what happened in any conflict; it's even harder, once the facts are assembled, to reach a plausible conclusion. These matters take time, and because Vietnam divided the nation along multiple fracture lines, the post mortem on Vietnam has taken a very long time indeed. (For a contemporary example of why you should never leap to conclusions about what really happened in battle, see this article about how the Army has reversed itself on the first attempted cowardice prosecution since Vietnam.)

Meanwhile, a larger public consensus about the national Vietnam dissonance formed. Americans, with their nation's interests at hear, both fought in Vietnam and fled to Canada to avoid the draft. They protested at the Lincoln Memorial, to support or denounce the war. Some voted for Nixon to end the war, or to defeat the communists, or perhaps both at the same time. The situation was so muddled, thorny, confused, and bloodily real that it was impossible to reach or impose some right answer, like, "We needed to fight the Nazis, and it's a damn shame we didn't get started sooner." This nod to ending the war over the War extended up and down the social strata, from people eating at the same lunch counter to opponents in the same congressional race.

It's a bit shocking, then, when someone breaks this truce. The Bush campaign's allies, the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, has been trying to turn Kerry's Vietnam service into a campaign issue. One might say that's fair, since Kerry himself often cites his Vietnam service and decorations (as well as his later protests against the war) as pillars of his political resume. However, the Swift Boat Veterans are proceeding on the nastiest track possible: funded clearly by one political faction, they are picking apart the after action reports of many operations in which Kerry played a role. Worse, they have hired a private detective to "dig up the dirt" on Kerry from those who served with him.

To say that this kind of attack is slimy, particularly given Bush's non-service during the same conflict, is an understatement. The attack has ripple effects through the brown waters of Vietnam memories, though, that go beyond the Kerry-Bush race. Criticizing someone's judgement about a particular firefight opens far too many other discussions about what a soldier might or should have done on a particular day in Vietnam. How many other politicians deserve the same treatment? How many other Americans also need to have their AARs scrutinized for potential mistakes, often by people with no military experience, with questionable motivations? How many of these people have mentally and morally re-visited these days on the Mekong Delta, or at Khe Sanh, or in the highlands, thousands of times already? Even if Kerry didn't deserve one of his medals, how many other Americans received honors they didn't deserve, or failed to get the recognition they earned at risk to life, limb, and sanity? And what, really, is the point of the exercise?

Having spent my adult life trying to have a rational discussion about Vietnam with other people, I don't see the good in this effort. We need to re-visit the Vietnam War to learn what we can that applies to present or future conflicts. The Swift Boat Veterans, however, are not going to help steer the boat in that direction.

What Democratic foreign policy?

IN THE NEWS
Every day, I visit some site that includes a countdown to the November election. Only XXX days until Bush goes back to Crawford! Only XXX days until Kerry goes back to Beantown! Seeing these sites reminds me that we're that many days away from choosing the next president and Congress, and the Democrats still don't have a foreign policy vision.

Given the world-historical fiasco in Iraq and elsewhere, I'm sure it's tempting for Democrats to coast forward on the discontent the attentive public is voicing about the Bush Administration's foreign policy. However, that's not enough, for three major reasons:

1. If we do have a different president in January 2005, that person will need to rally the nation around some banner--not just to deal with the expected problems, but the unexpected ones (like 9/11) that plague every Administration.


2. The rest of the world, too, needs to hear what the United States plans to do with its immense power and leverage.


3. Even if the Democrats were to sweep the White House and both houses of Congress, there are still years of vicious political infighting ahead. The Democrats will need to be armed for that rhetorical battle with something more convincing than, Hey, at least we're not Republicans!

Sitting in traffic today, with nothing else to do but muse about politics, it struck me that the word likely to be on everyone's lips soon is alliances. Whoever is in the White House, whatever doctrine they promulgate, they'll be forced into some serious discussions about our alliances. Not only have they taken a lot of punishment lately, but the evolution or revolution in our alliances--born out of the necessities of the Cold War--seems far from complete. How much we should guide these changes, instead of having them thrust upon us by, say, a suspicious European Union, or a skittish Eastern Asia, or a vengeful OPEC, is perhaps going to be the cardinal question of US foreign policy for the next few years.

Why do we have alliances? The same reason any contract or understanding exists: whatever liberty you surrender will be offset by greater gains. Alliances like NATO designed to contain the USSR may be passe, but these same ties make sense, given the commercial, cultural, and security ties we have to maintain with the Europeans.

Given that a focus on alliances will be a necessity, why not make a virtue of it? You need a simple, organizing principle, or else you won't move the federal bureaucracies, gain the support of the public, win over new allies, or intimidate our enemies. Nixon had detente; Carter had foreign policy; Reagan had ending the Cold War through Soviet exhaustion. Clinton, unfortunately, didn't have a coherent foreign policy vision. Bush sorta has one, but it's hardly worthy of the title the Bush Doctrine, on par with something as carefully-considered as the Truman Doctrine or the New Look. The Kerry Doctrine, I'd say if I were advising him, would rest on the power of alliances.

However, that policy will take some creativity. It sounds too much like a discussion of means, and not enough about ends. The Democrats could easily fix that problem by proposing some new alliances. They'll have to give their definition of national security--what threatens life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--in the process. And they can look as though they're guiding history, not just following in its wake. A real international counterterrorism force--something with real operational teeth, and permanent enough for the necessarily sustained effort--might be a good example.

After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, we had nearly a decade of foreign policy drift, through two presidential administrations. We almost had a third, until 19 hijackers gave the American public a newfound belief in identifying and dealing with threats from abroad. I wouldn't say that the first Bush Administration or the Clinton Administration did a poor job; on the contrary, I feel that there's much to praise about Bush Sr.'s handling of the Gulf War, and Clinton's efforts in the Balkan and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. These two presidents kept us on course after the Cold War balance of power had collapsed; however, they won't be remembered for erecting new international structure to replace it. In the next four years, someone in the Oval Office might be that kind of architect--and alliances, old and new, will be the boards and bricks he and others will need to build that new structure.