"And Men Shall Learn War No More"
From Sisu we learn that Western civilization has finally gotten rid of the "W" word.
"Britain stops talk of 'war on terror,'" headlines a Guardian article, apparently pleased as punch that the Foreign Office can no longer stomach the calling of a spade a spade:
Many senior British politicians and counter-terrorism specialists have always been uneasy with the term 'the war on terror', coined by Bushitler the White House in the week following the 9/11 attacks, arguing that the term risked inflaming hot-headed Islamofascists opinions worldwide. Other critics said that it was too 'military' and did not adequately describe the nature of the diverse efforts made to counter the new threat.
A recent Belmont Club post noted that British troops hurt in Afghanistan and Iraq are now eligible for compensation under the same program that awards damages to personnel who are mugged or robbed because casualties are considered victims of crime.
All those injured fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but who have decided to remain in the Army, could be entitled to lodge claims with the newly revised Armed Forces' Criminal Injury Compensation (overseas) scheme. ... The new ruling and expansion of compensation to the Iraq and Afghan conflicts means insurgents or terrorists launching surprise attacks and sabotage missions are also regarded as criminals and not enemy troops. It is thought the only circumstances where troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan would not be eligible for criminal compensation is when they were involved in pre-arranged, offensive operations directly targeting insurgents.
Commentary
From the financial point of view, it makes better sense to be hurt waiting for an enemy surprise attack than to engage in "offensive operations directly targeting insurgents". Insurgents, on the other hands, are transformed into "criminals" presumably with all the advantages of the criminal justice system, if they engage in surprise attacks on British troops. However, they revert to being "insurgents" if they are taken in their safe houses preparing nail-bombs. In some universe this makes sense, and doubtless it does. The question is whether this universe bears any resemblance to the one we live in. Beg your pardon, it is the universe we currently inhabit.
It has occurred to me that perhaps all the words of war have truly vanished from the lexicon and that it is I -- not the liberal pundits --who truly does not understand that an epochal change has taken place. That the old givens: us, them, victory, defeat, battlefields, soldiers, nations, loyalties -- are no more. After all, the abolition of these concepts follows logically from the view that God, King and Country are all pernicious illusions.
But I think I give them too much credit. It seems more likely that the aversion to the notions of victory, borders and culture is not the product of conscious thought: that would be too startling; but arises spontaneously from an accumulations of nights at certain cafes, uncounted evenings at art galleries; from the weight of a thousand cocktail conversations. In other words, from a certain zeitgeist that has no room for all the old words and any of the old gods.
posted by wretchardthecat at 12/10/2006 04:00:00 PM
40 Comments:
Wretchard said, "Insurgents, on the other hands, are transformed into "criminals" presumably with all the advantages of the criminal justice system, if they engage in surprise attacks on British troops. However, they revert to being "insurgents" if they are taken in their safe houses preparing nail-bombs."
But the insurgents can rest easy, because no such raid will take place lest the troops lose their eligibility for compensation as a victim of crime by both 1) engaging in disqualifying offensive operations AND 2) being injured by enemy troops instead of state-recognized criminals.
Not only on the left.
Terror is a strategy in warfare, President GW Bush declared war on this. The enemy is war, so we go to war to fight against war.
War was declared passé in 1913, 1920, and 1938 to name a few. It didn’t seem to make any difference, however. It won't now.
On a single day, all will change.
allen:
So true -- like stock market blow-offs that are declared "different this time" because some fundamental law of economics, finance or physics has supposedly been repealed, suspended or amended.
The present generation of elites has been standing on the shoulders of giants for so long that it takes its height for granted.
They have exercised power earned for them by the blood and struggle of others for so long that they believe they can define reality by fiat.
Wretchard said- "That the old givens: us, them, victory, defeat, battlefields, soldiers, nations, loyalties -- are no more."
I think there are still some circles in America and the military that still believe in these old givens. It's the politicians and journalists who've ditched them.
we can ignore the storm all we wish...
the storm is heading our way, whether we wish it or not...
iran/syria/hamas/hezbollah (and others) will not be singing kumbaya any time soon...
"War on terror" was always a crap description (how can one make war on a technique?) , but now they appear to have cropped the wrong word from that phrase.
Perhaps its just as well we called it the "Cold War" instead of the "War on Communists". After all, communists like Boris Yeltzin played a big part in bringing the Soviet Union down.
I hope American is strong enough to fight the way we did in the Cold War, using every tool available to win, not just the military.
Wu Wei,
It's possible to argue that using the military against Islamic radicalism was a sign of Western weakness. Recently Tony Blair has, with much clearing of the throat, announced that British Islamic groups will not receive government subsidies unless they are willing to swear allegiance to Britain. That was like pulling teeth. In many ways the US has been far more successful militarily than it has been at the War of Ideas. We know who will fight the kinetic battle. But who will fight the information war?
> War on terror" was always a crap description..
Yes it is a "war", but calling the enemy "terror" has caused confusion. The original idea was self defense, that we were fighting all the terrorists interested in attacking the United States, but then it expanded to include all Islamists, all Muslims, all brutal Arab tyrants, anyone on the earth who uses terrorist tactics...
What are our new gods?
Well, I can name one:
-System perturbations
Conflict does not present a set of imperatives, only moral obligations.
It is instead an object of study, a kind of superorganic machine whose levers are only accessible by the United Nations and well-meaning progressive clerics. Its nature is defined in books and leaks from our 21st Century diviners.
Is this the end of American modes of governance? Is the coming conflagration so great that only a King can unite the scattered polities of the world to destroy Islamism?
Or do we have only an hour of wolves that awaits us?
New enforcement powers to be outlined in a White Paper this week include the removal of passports, curfews and electronic tagging.
Seems like an obvious tool for managing imams, sheiks and matrons of martyrdom, no?
Chris:
"We need leaders who understand the unchanging nature of man and war."
Because without them, none of the stuff politicians concern themselves with today -- prescription drug benefits, minimum wage, work week hours, etc. -- will mean a thing.
Chris/ppab:
ppab's examples highlight our focus on the trivial at the expense of the crucial.
When our institutions are hamstrung by ideology -- police think twice about career-destroying charges of 'racism' and investigations for enforcing the law -- what ppab describes is the sort of place they go.
We wouldn't dare do a subversive what we wouldn't think twice of doing to a male divorcee.
Cosmo's description of the problem as one of a nefarious and outright harmful ideology poses a question to me:
Can you advocate survival?
This question to me seems to jab at the fundamental problem Wretchard laments - that of how the clerical tradition of subversion cannot understand survival.
It it there, in the notion that your ornamental philosophies of freeing Mumia and Palestine cannot save you from the terrible men toting power tools and machetes and guns, that the Postmodernist will conclude - all too late - that theirs was the cheapest of follies, that they served idols that cheapened them as they worshipped and that nothing can save them now.
That is how those ideas will die, inside the fading brains once convinced of them, now suffocating and bleeding from grisly messes made by men whose rise to power was concomitant with the grisly mess of ideas that celebrated them.
Cosmo's description of the problem as one of a nefarious and outright harmful ideology poses a question to me:
Can you advocate survival?
This question to me seems to jab at the fundamental problem Wretchard laments - that of how the clerical tradition of subversion cannot understand survival.
It it there, in the notion that your ornamental philosophies of freeing Mumia and Palestine cannot save you from the terrible men toting power tools and machetes and guns, that the Postmodernist will conclude - all too late - that theirs was the cheapest of follies, that they served idols that cheapened them as they worshipped and that nothing can save them now.
That is how those ideas will die, inside the fading brains once convinced of them, now suffocating and bleeding from grisly messes made by men whose rise to power was concomitant with the grisly mess of ideas that celebrated them.
Cosmo's description of the problem as one of a nefarious and outright harmful ideology poses a question to me:
Can you advocate survival?
This question to me seems to jab at the fundamental problem Wretchard laments - that of how the clerical tradition of subversion cannot understand survival.
It it there, in the notion that your ornamental philosophies of freeing Mumia and Palestine cannot save you from the terrible men toting power tools and machetes and guns, that the Postmodernist will conclude - all too late - that theirs was the cheapest of follies, that they served idols that cheapened them as they worshipped and that nothing can save them now.
That is how those ideas will die, inside the fading brains once convinced of them, now suffocating and bleeding from grisly messes made by men whose rise to power was concomitant with the grisly mess of ideas that celebrated them.
Great triple post Googles servers fail at interneting - my apologies to the BC
Point I'm trying to make is its obvious to me you can't ordinarily persuade someone to pursue his or her own survival. Perhaps, that is what makes a King?
Perhaps, Americans can begin to appreciate the function of a King in times that will see the whole world covered in shadow, as a fragmented and subverted power ambles amidst its imposed illusions. That a King's separation from common men is manifest in his ability to sew new illusions and unite the ambling fragments, and should the movement he leads turn successful, man and miracle will be one in the Sovereign.
And all our enemies are intently studying of how Hez and the Iraqi insurgents have negated "high tech, supersoldier" advantages the Israelis and USA fielded against them hamstrung by present law and ROE..
And they are reading it on the internet with which we provide them.
I note that even after three years of IEDs and distributed insurgency, the cellular telephone and internet networks in Iraq have not been switched off, indeed we pay to expand and improve them.
On a single day, all will change.
When it becomes profitable to make war.
> And all our enemies are intently studying of how Hez and the Iraqi insurgents have negated "high tech, supersoldier" advantages the Israelis and USA fielded against them hamstrung by present law and ROE..
It was easy in Iraq. They just tricked our commander-in-chief into fighting the wrong war. Our original mission was to overthrow Saddam's government and to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Both of those were accomplished quickly and efficiently.
But then the Bush administration dragged its feet on elections, turning us into the police force of Iraq and responsible for propping up its government and fighting its civil wars. Bush did not switch quickly enough to a special forces / counter insurgency war, one more like Afghanistan.
> hamstrung by present law and ROE
The problem is we're trying to fight this like world war II instead of a guerrilla war. There's no reason we should be going on presence patrols, making ourselves targets for the insurgents. Let the Iraqis kill each other and police their streets; we will become the hunters, staying in hardened positions until we decide to strike out at the enemy.
> But who will fight the information war?
Hopefully our commander in chief. He is supposed to give a speech about Iraq before Christmas, with the new direction.
Those payments are not a new idea for the Brits. They were given when fighting terror in Northern Ireland, and are routinely given out to British crime victims. So I don't think this is a sign that the world has changed, something that has been happening for decades.
This is similar to that run by the Home Office, which makes payments to the victims of crimes such as muggings, rape, burglary and robbery. Troops will be informed officially of the new policy in the next few weeks and the first payments will be made in early spring.
Until now, the MOD has paid "criminal" compensation only for incidents where troops were injured in "civilian situations" such as a fight in a nightclub while off-duty.
Those injured in Northern Ireland during the Troubles were also eligible for such compensation because it was deemed that the terrorists attacking them were criminals and not enemy combatants in a conventional war.
Link
ADE said, "ie, somebody has worked out that the tipping point of support for the Coalition of the Willing has not been reached, and in fact is in decline; that it is better to wait for the Islamoids to overplay their hand again, in the hope that this will provide the needed backbone.
This is just like the "FDR Knew About Pearl Harbor On December 6th But Stayed Pat" theory.
The GWOT is functionally a war against states that can not or will not prosecute criminals that commit or conspire to commit terrorist against other states.
Another component is removing oppresive regimes that deny "venting processes" to there populations.
The fundamental flaw in the statement "One mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist" is that the "freedom fighter" is unable to engage in peaceful activities to bring about change in his government. A "terrorist" has the option to engage in peaceful activities advocating change, and choses violence instead.
Hence, if we are ever going to irradicate political violance, the GWOT must include 3 types of states as enemies.
1)Those that lack the means to prosecute violent extremists.
2)Those that lack the will to prosecutre violent extremeists.
3)Those that leave their people no choice but to resort to violence.
The Brits have jumped the gun, we are a long way away from winning the global war against political violence.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, we may be waiting a long time for a catastrophe that will galvanize the West.
Again, why risk provoking such a response when the Islamist agenda is being achieved through gaming Western media and legal institutions, and intimidating Western political elites and the Western public.
Actions such as those taken by the Foreign Office can only be seen for the pre-emptive retreat it, in fact, is.
> Actions such as those taken by the Foreign Office can only be seen for the pre-emptive retreat it, in fact, is.
It is premptive, though not a retreat. We have always used politics and propaganda to try and keep the enemy isolated, like in world war II we used those tactics to try to keep countries from joining the Nazi alliance.
Bin Laden's Al Qaeda is a rag tag band of nut cases incapable of doing serious damage to the United States. (Blowing up three buildings is in no way a threat to our nation, although the loss of life is tragic.) Al Qaeda would only be strong enough to hurt us if we do what they want by widening this into a war against all Muslims.
As for the nuke thing, as I've said before it is impossible. The small nukes are not only hard to make but they're too small to destroy a large city. Also, if nukes were really that easy to transport and use, there is no reason to assume that only Islamists would use them against us. If anyone has the technology, it is Russia and China, both of which have secret agents more skillful than Al Qaeda.
IMO, the Al Qaeda threat has been blown way out of proportion. There is a specific group of them who want to hurt this country, so they should be hunted down like dogs, but that doesn't mean all our other enemies have gone away. It's amazing that the most powerful nation on earth would overreact so much to the destruction of three buildings and the loss of 3000 lives.
I think ir is about power, not religion. Like Christians supporting the Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon.
Sheik Naim Kassem, Hezbollah's deputy leader, said the opposition was willing to stay on the streets for months to achieve its goal.
"Does Bush want popular expression in Lebanon? Do the West and the Arabs want to hear the voice of the people in Lebanon? Tell them 'Death to America!' Tell them 'Death to Israel!'" the crowd repeated behind him.
Michel Aoun, a Christian leader allied with Hezbollah, warned Saniora he had only "a few days" to accept a national unity government or face further action.
"What we hope for today is for them to understand that their era is over," he said in a video link shown on giant screens.
Aoun added that the opposition was committed to "to peaceful means, but even other means are legitimate."
Link
This is terrific progress. We should now move forward and outlaw the words "suicide bomber", "hijacker","beheaded" and "honor killing" in order to completely eliminate these issues.
You have to hand it to the Brits.
"But then the Bush administration dragged its feet on elections, turning us into the police force of Iraq and responsible for propping up its government and fighting its civil wars. Bush did not switch quickly enough to a special forces / counter insurgency war, one more like Afghanistan....
The problem is we're trying to fight this like world war II instead of a guerrilla war. There's no reason we should be going on presence patrols, making ourselves targets for the insurgents. Let the Iraqis kill each other and police their streets; we will become the hunters, staying in hardened positions until we decide to strike out at the enemy."
I think you need to re-read that Army counter-insurgency manual you've been touting.
wu:
You are correct to write, "We have always used politics and propaganda to try and keep the enemy isolated, like in world war II we used those tactics to try to keep countries from joining the Nazi alliance."
And with a wink and nod to the home front, our leaders at the time were doing these things in an unambiguous effort to win. They never wavered from their objective of unconditional surrender, even in an attempt to distract or confuse our enemies.
I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt that a government which leaks intelligence like a sieve for political gain, catfights and airs its dirty laundry before a global public, oblivious to consequences would be capable of pulling off some gigantic head fake or rope-a-dope.
I'm fairly certain the weak kneed performance of our current political class is unscripted.
Again, I hope I'm wrong.
"IMO, the Al Qaeda threat has been blown way out of proportion. There is a specific group of them who want to hurt this country, so they should be hunted down like dogs, but that doesn't mean all our other enemies have gone away. It's amazing that the most powerful nation on earth would overreact so much to the destruction of three buildings and the loss of 3000 lives."
I wish that was all that was at stake.
Unfortunately, 3,000 lives is, as Trish would say, "a drop in the bucket" as opposed to what they're going to be able to do in the future.
This wasn't reactive, it was proactive.
And the problem isn't going to go away because we think it is too hard and better off not thinking about.
: )
ade, thanks for that link. Though it doesn't shock me that much any more, I must say that this is one potent weapon we can utilise in the propaganda war against our enemies and internal saboteurs i.e. the MSM.
If only there would be a cable service playing these videos 24/7 and streamed to broadcasting stations worldwide. I'm more than certain that there won't be a shortage of footage.
At least we can say that we did give these guys a chance to explain themselves on national TV. Allowing such a discourse to take place seems like compromising with the enemy. One wonders if we'll see Bush and Ahmadinejad discussing in this manner. We might not be that far off from that possibility.
> Where is the Churchillian cigar, the two-fingered V for victory, the BBC's London Calling.
> Where is the web site that lists the lies of the MSM
It's AWOL. The Republicans in Washington, both the White House and Congress, totally failed to communicate about anything during the last few years. It's hard to believe that Republicans were in control, because they said and did so little.
> And the problem isn't going to go away because we think it is too hard
Al Qaeda is not a threat, it's a joke. People cowering in caves can never be a threat, even if they hide there for a thousand years. Al Qaeda will never be able to develop nukes, never.
Even if this evil fantasy of lunch box sided nukes blowing up a US city were true, all Al Qaeda would ever be was the messengers. The real danger comes from the governments who could develop the weapons of mass destruction, not Al Qaeda living in tents in the desert and caves.
It is absolutely amazing that people in the United States are afraid of a few dozen religious fanatics hiding in caves. Unreal.
Winston Churchill's grandson of the same name told Neil Cavuto last night that the Foreign Office behaved very much the same way in the run-up to WWII, again afraid to call a spade a spade as it might upset Hitler.
> think you need to re-read that Army counter-insurgency manual you've been touting
It says:
Put HN [Host Nation] personnel in charge of as much as possible as soon as possible.
It's been three and a half years.
Also interesting:
The More Force Used, the Less Effective It Is
Any use of force produces many effects, not all of which can be foreseen. The more force applied,
the greater the chance of collateral damage and mistakes. It also increases the opportunity for insurgent propaganda to portray lethal military activities as brutal.
and
Sometimes Doing Nothing is the Best Reaction
Often an insurgent carries out a terrorist act or guerrilla raid with the primary purpose of enticing
the counterinsurgent to overreact, or at least to react in a way that can then be exploited.
Successful practices:
Conduct effective, pervasive psychological operations.
Provide amnesty and rehabilitation for insurgents.
Train military forces to conduct
counterinsurgency operations.
Place police in the lead with military support.
Unsuccessful practices:
Place priority on killing and capturing the enemy, not on engaging the population.
Ignore peacetime government processes, including legal procedures.
"GWOT" might...inflame "hot-headed Islamofascists opinions worldwide"? That would be like putting a match to an already lit candle...it has absolutely no effect.
Until we accept that these people WANT to kill us, and want to engage us in a type of war we don't have the will to fight and win, we are doomed to lose this war, and in addition, the freedoms we are failing to protect.
These people want to dominiate us and our culture, and they are willing to use our intentionally blind ignorance aganist us in order to do so.
We are trying to play nicey-nice with murderous dregs...who really thinks that will work?
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