Posted on 10/19/2006 7:11:53 PM PDT by kellynla
It appears that political correctness has infected many of our military brass, indeed even instructors in our military academies. It is one thing when politicians and cultural elites force it into our lives; it's quite dangerous, however, when those selected to protect us elevate political correctness over the necessity of vanquishing enemies intent on destroying us.
Many of us now believe that a much ballyhooed "higher morality" in the conduct of war is a major cause for America and the West not achieving its goal of destroying jihadist terrorisim. A new "counter-insurgency manual" provides evidence of a military guided not by the age-old assumption of an army's purpose being military victory over its enemy but, instead, attempts at sociology and "understanding" the enemy's culture, and the need to persuade the enemy of our goodness and noble intentions.
In the name of "compassion," our soldiers are at times asked to risk their lives, placing themselves in lethal fighting conditions, so as to spare the "innocents" among the enemy. Where bombing from above could easily destroy a terrorist hideout, young Americans are forced to fight treacherous hand-to-hand combat so that "innocents" mingled among the jihadists will not be harmed.
Because of this rule, more soldiers die than need be, creating, also, demoralization and hesitancy. Some, out of fear of later military reprimand, are reluctant to shoot at terrorist targets where civilians may also be. This, too, renders our war less effective than it could be. Beyond question, this new ethos stands in the way of victory. The Iraq war should have been won long ago. If soft political correctness remains a guiding military motif, the most powerful nation in the world will have defeated itself, given victory to a rag-tag al Qaeda band unworthy of being called fighting men.
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
ping
Barely a dime's bit of difference between liberals pathetic cut and run policy and Republcans pathetic tendency to fight a politically correct war againt terrorists.
They both add up to a longer war, and more U.S. casualties.
I proposed,long ago the B-52 saturation bombing of fallujah, Al Anbar province, and the sunni triangle, along with the shiite militia stongholds of Moktar Al Sadr.
You would see the white flags of unconditional surrender flying all over Iraq, after such an air campaign.
It appears that political correctness has infected many of our military brass, indeed even instructors in our military academies. It is one thing when politicians and cultural elites force it into our lives; it's quite dangerous, however, when those selected to protect us elevate political correctness over the necessity of vanquishing enemies intent on destroying us.
The author has an uncanny ability to completely miss the point. This is a counterinsurgency manual, not an all-encompassing manual on warfighting doctrine. The military's job is to execute within the limitations placed upon it by the civilian leadership. In the case of counterinsurgency, the manual states doctrine that is developing based upon lessons learned from fighting against insurgencies within those likely limitations. If the author has a problem with that then his beef should be with the civilian leadership, not the military. Just because the military lays out doctrine for how to fight certain kinds of wars in a certain way, that does not mean that the military prefers all wars to be executed in that manner or believes in the prudence of the limitations placed upon it by the civilian leadership.
Those military brass who twist our soldiers from being fighting men to social workers should be fired.... If they don't have the stomach for real war and the criticism from the left, they should find another vocation. They have become a collateral damage to our security.
You actually think that the military is attempting to turn Soldiers into social workers? And you think that this Rabbi knows what "real war" is more so than our military leaders?
The "Greatest Generation" would agree I am sure. WW2 was not faught with Kit gloves and we won. If we don't stop micromanaging this war we will surely lose in the long run.
All I can tell you is from my personal combat experience in Nam 69 & 70. I walked point and on more than one occasion I had a VC teenager or woman come up on me and my patrol and if you think I waited around to ask them how their day was going, you have another thought coming.
We have Marines locked up in the brig at Camp Pendleton for months without being charged of a crime simply because the enemy says they "murdered" others.
Now when the Marine Corps starts taking the word of the enemy over the word of Marines; it is time to bring the Marine Corps home and send the Peace Corps.
Yes, I KNOW a PC war is trying to be waged because I KNOW those who are fighting it.
We are trained to kill the enemy, not hold their hand.
Semper Fi,
Kelly
I second that!!
well said...
YES, go**amnit. My oldest son is a Stryker platoon leader over in that s**thole Mosul right now, and I can tell you for a fact.....that's an accurate statement.
Cease your lectures. You're out of touch with reality on the ground over there.
And there is nothing in the new manual that states we should do any such thing. It is doctrine, with some recommendations for TTP, and nothing of the likes that the author has misrepresented it to be.
Respectfully, you're wrong. Any civil-military operations conducted are for the purpose of driving a wedge between insurgent factions, co-opting them, or building rapport with the people to gain intelligence and their cooperation. That's not social work.
The "progressives" and their ilk are good at hiding behind faux news reports and pointing fingers but no one wants to help bake the pie.
The problem all along is that our arrogant left think the Iraqis are not worth the effort.
Have you ever been in combat?
if so when and where?
Fine. Tell that to the grunts on the ground who are trained to fight and kill bad guys and break their stuff.......most of whom are little more than kids.
Sell it elsewhere.
As an Italian WW2 vet over my way sez, (and demonstrates with lovetaps), "Balls, nose, t'roat! And then he down."
Ralph Peters
October 18, 2006 -- HAVE we lost the will to win wars? Not just in Iraq, but anywhere? Do we really believe that being nice is more important than victory?
It's hard enough to bear the timidity of our civilian leaders - anxious to start wars but without the guts to finish them - but now military leaders have fallen prey to political correctness. Unwilling to accept that war is, by its nature, a savage act and that defeat is immoral, influential officers are arguing for a kinder, gentler approach to our enemies.
They're going to lead us into failure, sacrificing our soldiers and Marines for nothing: Political correctness kills.
Obsessed with low-level "tactical" morality - war's inevitable mistakes - the officers in question have lost sight of the strategic morality of winning. Our Army and Marine Corps are about to suffer the imposition of a new counterinsurgency doctrine designed for fairy-tale conflicts and utterly inappropriate for the religion-fueled, ethnicity-driven hyper-violence of our time.
We're back to struggling to win hearts and minds that can't be won.
The good news is that the Army and Marine Corps worked together on the new counterinsurgency doctrine laid out in Field Manual 3-24 (the Army version). The bad news is that the doctrine writers and their superiors came up with fatally wrong prescriptions for combating today's insurgencies.
Astonishingly, the doctrine ignores faith-inspired terrorism and skirts ethnic issues in favor of analyzing yesteryear's political insurgencies. It would be a terri- fic manual if we returned to Vietnam circa 1963, but its recommendations are profoundly misguided when it comes to fighting terrorists intoxicated with religious visions and the smell of blood.
Why did the officers in question avoid the decisive question of religion? Because the answers would have been ugly.
Wars of faith and tribe are immeasurably crueler and tougher to resolve than ideological revolts. A Maoist in Malaya could be converted. But Islamist terrorists who regard death as a promotion are not going to reject their faith any more than an ethnic warrior can - or would wish to - change his blood identity.
So the doctrine writers ignored today's reality.
Al Qaeda and other terror organizations have stated explicitly and repeatedly that they're waging a global jihad to re-establish the caliphate. Yet the new manual ignores religious belief as a motivation.
The politically correct atmosphere in Washington deems any discussion of religion as a strategic factor indelicate: Let our troops die, just don't hurt anyone's feelings.
So the doctrine writers faked it, treating all insurgencies as political. As a result, they prescribed an excellent head-cold treatment - for a cancer patient. The text is a mush of pop-zen mantras such as "Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction," "The best weapons do not shoot," or "The more force used, the less effective it is."
That's just nutty. Should we have done nothing in the wake of 9/11? Would everything have been OK if we'd just been nicer? What non-lethal "best weapons" might have snagged Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, where the problem was too little military force, not too much violence?
Should we have sent fewer troops to Iraq, where inadequate numbers crippled everything we attempted? Will polite chats with tribal chiefs stop the sectarian violence drenching Iraq in blood?
On the surface, the doctrine appears sober and serious. But it's morally frivolous and intellectually inert, a pathetic rehashing of yesteryear's discredited "wisdom" on counterinsurgencies and, worst of all, driven by a stalker-quality infatuation with T.E. Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia," who not only was a huckster of the first order, but whose "revolt in the desert" was a near-meaningless sideshow of a sideshow.
Lawrence is quoted repeatedly, with reverence. We might as well cite the British generals of the Great War who sent men over the top in waves to face German machine guns.
You can trust two kinds of officers: Those who read a great deal and those who don't read at all. But beware the officer who reads just a little and falls in love with one book. A little education really is a dangerous thing.
The new manual is thick - length is supposed to substitute for insight. It should be 75 percent shorter and 100 percent more honest. If issued to our troops in its present form, it will lead to expensive failures. Various generals have already tried its prescriptions in Iraq - with discouraging results, to put it mildly.
We've reached a fateful point when senior officers seek to evade war's brute reality. Our leaders, in and out of uniform, must regain their moral courage. We can't fight wars of any kind if the entire chain of command runs for cover every time an ambitious journalist cries, "War crime!" And sorry: Soccer balls are no substitute for bullets when you face fanatics willing to kill every child on the playing field.
In war, you don't get points for good manners. It's about winning. Victory forgives.
The new counterinsurgency doctrine recommends forbearance, patience, understanding, non-violent solutions and even outright passivity. Unfortunately, our enemies won't sign up for a replay of the Summer of Love in San Francisco. We can't treat hardcore terrorists like Halloween pranksters on mid-term break from prep school.
Where is the spirit of FDR and George C. Marshall, who recognized that the one unbearable possibility was for the free world to lose?
We discount the value of ferocity - as a practical tool and as a deterrent. But war's immutable law - proven yet again in Iraq - is that those unwilling to pay the butcher's bill up front will pay it with compound interest in the end.
The new counterinsurgency doctrine is dishonest and cowardly.
We don't face half-hearted Marxists tired of living in the jungle, but religious zealots who behead prisoners to please their god and who torture captives by probing their skulls with electric drills. We're confronted by hatreds born of blood and belief and madmen whose appetite for blood is insatiable.
And we're afraid to fight.
Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer.
Good article, right on the money!
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