The strangest things catch the imaginations of PooterGeekers. In this week’s ongoing debate about military theorists I have to admit Timbeaux and David Duff have me thoroughly out-read. Not since I ‘Blogged about The Passion of the Christ have the comment boxes been so busy. As if by appendix to the discussion, SlashDot pointed at a story in Wired yesterday about the high-tech effort to completely re-equip the American GI. There is one quote in it from a military consultant at GlobalSecurity.org that I have to draw to the attention of T and DD (who are currently detonating the charges they have attached to the door of my underground bunker) because it’s so relevant to my argument:
“Once you’re in an urban environment, it strips out a lot of (America’s) technology advantages. It puts you in a fair fight. And you don’t want to be in a fair fight.”
Writing as a physical coward, armed only with rolled up diplomas, I couldn’t agree more.
And neither could Sun Tzu. You never want to let your enemy chose the battlefield conditions (the ‘terrain’). He will always chose a time and place that renders your advantages nil and highlights his own. The Russians did the same thing at Stalingrad, German armor was useless in the city and Russian snipers were in tactical heaven (although I’m sure it didn’t seem like it at the time). Americans did the same to General Gage at Lexington and Concord, sniping infantry lines from the forest instead of meeting them in Napoleonic lines, decisively defeating what should have been a far superior force. The examples are endless.
Which brings us back to the main reason the war in Iraq was begun in the first place. Politicians can talk all they want about bringing democracy to the middle east, and ending Saddam’s mass graves (getting filled at a rate of 40,000 a year), and catching rogue WMDs, but those are all secondary goals, nay merely welcome consequences. The whole point was to strategically fight on their terrain, not ours. If they want to target civilians as a matter of strategic choice, than we want to deny them the opportunity of killing our civilians, chiefly by making them fight somewhere on their terrain. Tactically, they have a better chance of bringing our soldiers into urban areas we don’t want to fight in, but that’s light-years better than fighting in New York with the police.
I pity the Iraqis getting caught in the center of it all, but that doesn’t sway my support for action abroad against genocidal maniacs that would leap at the chance to assist another 9/11 attack. The danger of watching the 24 hour news channels is that they draw you into the moment, and you lose perspective.
Timbeaux is right! However, the military consultant (dread word!) is wrong. Or at least, partly wrong. High technology actually gives the *Americans the advantage* in an urban scene *provided they fight at night*, which I note, is exactly what they do.
The Israelis have shown the way; first, all operations must be intelligence led, and second, it is best to cut off the head, ie, go for the top leaders. Building up the sort of intelligence networks that the Israelis have in Palestine, and the Brits had in Ulster, takes a lot of time and effort but it is the only way. I should add that there-after, operations should be ruthless and the moans and groans from the weak and feeble must be resolutely ignored.
As the middle east expert and scholar, Bernard Lewis, has advised American policy makers with regard to Iraq, “Get tough, or get out!”
I think it is the stratgic/tactical terrain trade-off that most people are missing. We chose the strategic terrain, and deferred to them some choice of the tactical terrain. When people say “But Iraq had no ties to terrorism!”, it doesn’t really matter that they are wrong, they are discussing the matter in the wrong tense anyway. The correct response is “But it does now.” The terrorists, and their limited resources, are engaged somewhere other than New York or London. Strategically, that is a very good thing.
Of course, no strategy is perfect, as Madrid highlighted. That was a strategic counter-attack, and it worked as far as Spain was concerned. The Spaniards were effectively routed.
Love a Good Debate
Pootergeek and I, as well as a fellow named David Duff, have been debating Sun Tzu, the nature of war, and grand strategy in Iraq and the War on Terror. Check it out if you like….