Big and little crusaders

I was agreeing with most of what I read in Andrew Bacevich's recent Atlantic Monthly article until I got to this section:

Embedded within this argument over military matters is a more fundamental and ideologically charged argument about basic policy. By calling for an Army configured mostly to wage stability operations, Nagl is effectively affirming the Long War as the organizing principle of post-9/11 national-security strategy, with U.S. forces called upon to bring light to those dark corners of the world where terrorists flourish. Observers differ on whether the Long War’s underlying purpose is democratic transformation or imperial domination: Did the Bush administration invade Iraq to liberate that country or to control it? Yet there is no disputing that the Long War implies a vast military enterprise undertaken on a global scale and likely to last decades. In this sense, Nagl’s reform agenda, if implemented, will serve to validate—and perpetuate—the course set by President Bush in the aftermath of 9/11.

Nagl, in Bacevich's terminology, is a "crusader." Crusaders believe that counterinsurgency wars are winnable, so the US government should reorganize its national security apparatus, including the military, to go forth and win them.

In contrast, "conservatives" believe we should stick to the old Powell Doctrine, and just avoid those long, messy wars with less than glamorous victory conditions:

Gentile understands this. Implicit in his critique of Nagl is a critique of the Bush administration, for which John Nagl serves as a proxy. Gentile’s objection to what he calls Nagl’s “breathtaking” assumption about “the efficacy of American military power to shape events” expresses a larger dissatisfaction with similar assumptions held by the senior officials who concocted the Iraq War in the first place. When Gentile charges Nagl with believing that there are “no limits to what American military power … can accomplish,” his real gripe is with the likes of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

And here's where Bacevich's simple distinction between crusaders and conservatives proves to be oversimplified. In reality, there are at least three categories of opinion about wars like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq:

• Big crusaders, who see "the Long War" as a single overarching conflict, or a set of intertwined wars that need to be addressed in some common fashion. Big crusaders invent terms like GWOT to describe their belief system.
• Little crusaders, who think that some of these wars are worth fighting, but there's no bigger meta-conflict at work. A little crusader might think that the war in Afghanistan or Iraq is winnable, but there's no "vast military enterprise undertaken on a global scale and likely to last decades" that we're compelled to fight.
• Conservatives, who want to push these little wars, low-intensity conflicts, or whatever the term du jour is, down the list of priorities. Whether we're not capable of doing a good job at fighting these wars, or the costs outweight the benefits, they're just not worth re-engineering the US defense apparatus to fight them.

You might slice the philosophical or doctrinal distinctions even more finely, but you get the point. I'd classify myself as a little crusader, who believes passionately in taking these conflicts seriously. Creating some bigger story arc, however, isn't necessary to justify the changes needed to fight these conflicts better. 

In fact, the story arc of "big crusaders" creates dangerous misconceptions about connections that don't really exist. Back in the 1980s, people spoke about "global terror networks" as if SMERSH or SPECTRE were running the show behind the scenes. However, revolutionary groups that use similar methods don't necessarily belong to some larger network. (And, in fact, revolutionaries in the same country, using roughly the same methods, often compete with each other.) The occasional collaboration among them, such as sharing technical information about bomb-making or psychological warfare, is also not evidence of some greater network that only a "Long War" can ultimately defeat.

Therefore, we're not just arguing semantics here. The notion that, if you're not a "conservative," you are thick as thieves with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, is just ludicrous.

[Thanks to Mark Grimsley for pointing out Bacevich's article.]

 

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