The true test of a society and its leaders

December 12th, 2009

War

is hell, as the saying

goes. Murder, on the other hand,

is a crime. In this age of the “long war” pitting

the United States against the forces of global terror, it is

critical that the American people be able to distinguish between the

two. The legitimate application of military power to a problem that manifests

itself, directly or indirectly, as a threat to the legitimate national

security interests of the United States, while horrible in

terms of its consequences, is not

only defensible but

mandatory.

The

true test of a

society and its leaders is the

extent to which every effort is made to

both properly define a problem as one worthy of

military intervention and then exhaust every option other

than the use of force. It is true that President Barack Obama inherited

the war in Afghanistan from his predecessor and therefore cannot be held

accountable for that which transpired beyond his ability to influence.

But the president’s recent decision to “surge” 30,000 additional

U.S. military troops into Afghanistan transfers ownership

of the Afghan conflict to him and him alone.

It is in this light that his decision

must be ultimately

judged.

In

many ways,

Obama’s presentation before

the Long Gray Line at West Point, in which

he explained his decision to conduct the Afghanistan surge,

represented an insult to the collective intelligence of the American people.

The most egregious contradiction in his speech was the notion that the people

of Afghanistan, who, throughout their history, have resisted central authority

whether emanating from Kabul or imposed by outside invaders,

would somehow be compelled to embrace

this new American

plan.

At its

heart, the strategy

requires a fiercely independent people

to swear fealty to a man, Hamid Karzai, whose tenure

as Afghanistan’s president has been

marred by inefficiencies and

corruption…

…For

any military-based

solution to have a chance of succeeding,

we would need to deploy into Afghanistan an army

of social scientists capable of navigating the complex reality

of intertribal and interethnic relationships. They would require not

only astute diplomatic skills that would enable them to bring together Hazara

Shiite and Pashtun Sunni, or Uzbek and Tadjik, or any other combination of

the myriad of peoples who make up the populace of Afghanistan, but also

an understanding of multiple native languages and dialects. But the

reality is we are instead dispatching 20-year-old boys from

Poughkeepsie whose skill set, perfected during several

months of predeployment training, is more conducive

to firing three rounds center

mass into a human

body.

The

nation-building or

“civilian strategy” envisioned by

President Obama, impossibly ambitious even

under the most ideal conditions, simply cannot be achieved

with the resources at hand, whether in 18 months or 18 years. That he

has chosen to place at risk the lives of even more American

troops, and by extension the citizens of Afghanistan

and Pakistan, in the pursuit of such

unattainable ambition is

inexcusable.

The

“war on terror” has

shredded the concept of the rule of

law, at least as applied by the United States within

the context of this struggle. While Obama has made moves to

fix some of the symptoms of the flawed policies of his predecessor,

the underlying foundation of American arrogance and exceptionalism

from which such policies emerged remains unchanged. There is no

more telling example of this than the current program of targeted

assassination taking place under the guise of armed unmanned

aerial drones (also known as remotely piloted

vehicles, or RPVs) operating in the

Af-Pak theater of

operations…

Rather

than furthering the

U.S. cause in the “war on terror,”

the RPV program, which President Obama seeks

to expand in the Af-Pak theater, in reality represents a

force-enhancement tool for the Taliban. Its indiscriminate

application of death and destruction serves as a recruitment vehicle,

with scores of new jihadists rising up to replace each individual who might

have been killed by a missile attack. Like the surge that it is designed to

complement, the expanded RPV program plays into the hands of those

whom America is ostensibly targeting. While the U.S. military, aided

by a fawning press, may seek to disguise the reality of the RPV

program through catchy slogans such as “warheads through

foreheads,” in reality it is murder by another name.

And when murder represents the centerpiece of

any national effort, yet alone one that aspires

to win the “hearts and minds” of the

targeted population, it is

doomed to

fail.

Scott Ritter

In

practicing

the art of war, it is

most desirable to take the

opposing country whole and intact,

rather than assaulting and destroying it.

So too is it preferable to take an

opposing army whole, a

regiment, a company,

a squad.

The

greatest excellence,

then, is not to fight one hundred times

and win, but to break the resistance

of the opponent without

ever resorting to

bloodshed.

Therefore,

the highest strategy is to

confound the opponent’s plans; next best,

to undo his alliances; next, to attack his

troops in battle; last of all, to besiege

the walls of his

cities.

To

attack a walled city

is always the option of last resort.

Preparing positions and weapons and shelters

for such a siege takes months. Unable to control himself,

an intemperate officer will launch his warriors at

the walls like ants. A third of them will be slain,

and still the city will stand. These are

the disastrous results of

a siege.

Therefore

the skillful leader

breaks her adversary without

a battle, forces cities to submit without

having to march on them, and conquers kingdoms

without getting mired in drawn-out conflict.

Her own troops remain whole, her triumph

complete. This is known as “using

strategy rather than

weapons to

attack.”

The

Art of War:

Sun Tzu, Barack Obama,

and the Modern

Moment