Chicago Boyz Archive

Yeah, we’ve got it permalinked on the blogroll. But I want to mention here that Phil has been exceptionally good lately, so if you haven’t checked out his coverage of defense issues, please do so, and you will become a regular visitor.

This recent piece, War game’s outcome stuns decisionmakers, blew me away.

To summarize, the military had a wargame and then they were surprised that “Our overwhelming conventional superiority is bound to trigger a massive, unconventional, asymmetric, possibly terroristic response.” This causes Lex to scratch his head. Open and obvious sources, e.g. well-publicized books and articles on the Internet, have been saying plainly, for years now, that this is the type of approach America’s enemies are going to take. So how is it possible that senior military personnel who participated in this exercise were surprised, let alone stunned, by these results? Can it be that these senior military personnel are so out of touch with basic reality which is openly available to the entire world? Can it be that they don’t understand the fundamental nature of the world we are entering and the threats we are facing? Or, is it that they are willfully blind to that reality? Why are they preparing to face a non-existent state-based threat? Because that is all they know how to do?

Damn. Not good.

I am thinking more and more that any “state-based-threat”, in the tanks-planes-howitzers category, is a mirage — North Korea and China being partial exceptions. Cynically, I wonder why the anti-war crowd argue more forcefully that we attacked Iraq because it is the only country on earth inept enough to fight us in a fashion we are able to handle?

The many people out there who want to destroy America are short on means, other than willpower and brains, so they are doing some innovative thinking. If we don’t match that innovative thinking we are going to suffer unnecessary disasters before we rally and respond. We have abundant human and material resources to identify, engage and preempt, deter or destroy any possible threat. We need to employ these vast capabilities wisely. (Speaking of rallying, responding, etc., be sure to see this tour d’horizon by den Beste.)

A first step might be to stop thinking about and talking about “asymmetric threats” at all. Let’s just look at threats. A threat is only asymmetric because we have not yet developed a “symmetric” capability to address it. The Wehrmacht was an asymmetric threat in 1938, as far as America’s tiny army was concerned. We acquired the human and material means to deal with the threat, period. It stopped being asymmetric when we understood it and spent the time, effort and money to acquire the needed “symmetric” capability. Then we hammered the Third Reich into the dirt, with a little help from the Red Army’s tank armada.

The key thing here is that terrorism used to be primarily a nuisance from a military standpoint. For fifty years our former friend the Red Army’s tank armada was the monster symmetric threat we had to worry about. We could survive the loss of Vietnam. (We did.) But we could not survive the loss of Western Europe.

But those days are long gone. Now terrorism is the major threat because the means of destruction the terrorists are likely to obtain are so enormously powerful. This is a novel situation. We need to look carefully at military history to cull out any the lessons which are pertinent to this current situation, and to “fill the box” to deal with asymmetric challenges. We must not suffer a nuclear Pearl Harbor before we figure out what the real threats are. That would be a catastrophe, and it would be positively criminal if it occurred as a result of bureaucratic inertia.

(This Intel Dump piece about the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly is spot on. The essay about JFK’s dealings with the military, and the rotten advice they kept giving him, strongly support Eliot Cohen’s thesis, in his book Supreme Command — i.e., the military must be subject to strict scrutiny and control by the civilian leadership but, unfortunately, skillful or even competent civilian leadership in this area is rare. A quandry. Anyway, a discussion of Cohen’s book, and other historical and contemporary examples, merits a long post in itself. Too many topics, too many books, too little time.)

Ralf’s earlier post, This time its personal (scroll down to the first May 17 post if Blogger permalinks don’t work), got me thinking. I started to type a comment but it got too long.

I don’t think Dubya is personalizing anything by not talking to Schroeder. Ralf also noted that Bush’s contacts gain in stature just from being photographed with him. Bush is aware of this power and he is using for political purposes.

Bush has set a floor on what he will tolerate from foreign leaders. Snubbing Schroeder is about the United States, and perhaps the presidency, but it is not about GWB as any kind of personal matter. Bush likes to deal with leaders he thinks he can trust, and assesses them on that basis but, again, I think that is practical and not a matter of “personalizing” his policies or his politics.

Bush is cutting Schroeder because Schroeder’s conduct fell below what is acceptable. And Bush is wise enough to know that Germany is not = Schroeder, just as America is not = Bush 43. Schroeder will be gone some day, and his successor will think twice about how he chooses to speak to and about the United States. As to lost networking opportunities, that is not much of a price to pay. If someone has something they want to bring to the attention of the United States government, there are avenues by which to do that. A visit to Bush’s ranch or a convivial lunch with Powell is not absolutely necessary. Such perks must be earned. Bush loses nothing by not talking to Fischer on the phone, and he sends a useful message to others: Respect us. Don’t diss us. Don’t assume we will just choke down anything you may care to say about us or do to harm or thwart us.

We’re still not used to the Bush era. We got used to 8 years of Clinton. Clinton was a “68er”, though he did not have the guts to actually be in a riot like Fischer did, or even inhale. Still that is his origin: He’s a hippie. Clinton was comfortable with people, leftists, anywhere in the world, who instinctively hated the United States. Also, he was uncomfortable with formality, dignity or the symbolic and monarchic aspects of the Presidency. His incredibly bad neckties showed this. He had to goof on all that stuff, like dressing appropriately, to show that he was really cool. This matter of “tone” is one of the unspoken reasons Conservatives loathed him but true-blue Lefties loved him, despite the fact that his Administration did not really do much of anything substantively. These attitudes were also a big part of why Clinton was a horrible Commander in Chief — he just couldn’t handle the fact that he actually was the Commander in Chief. He probably wasn’t sure that there even should be a Comander in Chief. To Clinton, a guy who shits on America or its institutions is a rebel, an outsider, a radical, and hence at some level a soulmate and a good guy. And Clinton really believed that you always have to have a dialogue with everybody, that talk is the answer no matter what the question is, and no one is beyond hope. So if some foreigner attacks the US, even makes homicidal threats, Clinton’s instinct would be to sit down with him, get to know him, have a good heart-to-heart chat, understand how we had hurt him, seek forgiveness, try to move beyond the pain together. And Clinton wanted to be loved.

And the world took advantage of this, and got used to it.

Bush is a whole ‘nother smoke. Bush is a manager. Bush does not value process for its own sake. Bush knows there are people it is a waste of time to talk to. Like Arafat. And, apparently, Schroeder too. Bush decides on a small number of important things he wants to do and he sets about doing them, relentlessly. Bush does not care if you like him. Bush does not need to be loved. Bush has no time for people who instinctively hate the United States. Bush does not think that he has to win the heart and mind of everyone in the world. Bush is comfortable asserting the basic decency and value of America and its institutions, and vigorously opposing and imposing costs on those who assert otherwise. Bush is willing to ruthlessly employ lethal force against those who threaten us with physical harm. Bush wants America to be respected, and barring that, feared. So, while Bush has his personal idiosyncracies (the nicknames) he does not lose sight of his politicial goals due to any personality issues. And he is consistent about the bread-and-butter basics of politics — rewarding good conduct and punishing bad conduct. That is what Bush’s dealings with Schroeder are all about.

Ralf’s very valuable post (What Schroeder did right for a change, which is the second May 17 post) about Germany’s many contributions to the war on terrorism shows something important. Germany’s real interests and Schroeder’s public posturing are out of sync. This is true domestically, as well. Schroeder will eventually pay a political price for his missteps.

Meanwhile, I’m glad the Germans are aboard in the GWOT (“Global War On Terror”), which is not anywhere near over yet.

Miss Manners Weighs in with a little nugget of Anglospheric cultural history which should, upon reflection, come as no surprise.

TAE: The popular perception is that the Southern tradition of manners and gentility comes from England.

MARTIN: There’s a big English component, but it’s not the only one. The dominant culture in what is called Southern charm or hospitality is African. Southerners thought they were copying English country gentlemen, but do English country gentlemen say, “Y’all come see us”? Southerners practiced African manners–that’s how Southern graciousness developed. The South’s open, easygoing style, its familial use of honorifics, and its hospitality are largely African in origin. The higher the Southern family pretensions, the more likely the children were to be receiving daily etiquette instruction from someone whose strict sense of the fitting came from her own cultural background–the house slave who occupied the position known as Mammy. Charles Dickens was among those who noticed that Southern ladies spoke like their black nurses.

Sounds plausible to me. I wonder if David Hackett Fischer’s book American Plantations — (the long awaited sequel to Albion’s Seed – nice summary here) — is ever going to come out, so we get the whole story on this?

The rest of this item, from The American Enterprise Online, as usual with Miss Manners, is also good. (Found via Innocents Abroad.)

Update. This article about Ralph Ellison from the Atlantic makes, in part, a similar point. Ellison always insisted on the absolutely inextricable and undeniable and all-pervasive permeation of so-called White American culture by Black America from the very beginning. Therefore there is really no meaningful sense in which America can call itself, or be accurately called, a “white” country or culture or society. America is a Euro-African hybrid. This is so despite the perpetual attempts to deny, bury, evade or ignore the “Afro” element by “whitey”. On the other side there have been attempts on the part of some who would be blacker-than-black to say that there is some non-white Black culture here in America buried under the vestiges of oppression. Nope, there aint. We’re all Americans, we’re all in the same boat. We can celebrate diversity or we can grumble about being stuck with each other, but we’ve had 350 years of water under the bridge and it is what it is and it ain’t something else. Ellison is quoted as saying: “There is a de’z and do’z of slave speech sounding beneath our most polished Harvard accents, and if there is such a thing as a Yale accent, there is a Negro wail in it doubtless introduced there by Old Yalie John C. Calhoun, who probably got it from his mammy.”

Right on.

Jonathan pointed me to this post, about a school in California which is not sure it wants to keep the A-4 Skyhawk which has been on display out front for many years. This got me thinking.

A generation or more back people had few qualms whatever about weapons and war as matters of public celebration and commemoration. The period from the end of World War II until the late Sixties was one in which there was an unusual consensus about the rightness of America’s cause and the wars it fought during that period. Liberals had supported WWII because it was against fascism, and the old time, main street Republicans had supported it grudgingly because we had been attacked and Southerners supported it because it was a war and they always support America’s wars. The various tanks and howitzers in town squares or in front of VFW halls come from this era. This also partly due to the fact that there was a mountainous heap of surplus tanks, etc. which could be gotten easily, welded in place, and painted green. (And you Chicagoans should note next time you are strolling downtown that the State Street bridge is the Bataan-Corregidor Bridge.) The consensus era continued in the early Cold War, which was led initially by Democratic liberal internationalism, so liberals supported it, and main street conservatives supported it because it was against Godless communism, and Southerners supported it because it led to a larger military and the possibility of a war as well as because they didn’t much care for Godless communism, either. So, war and the threat of war and our recent victories were in the air at this time, and monuments featuring weapons were not particularly controversial.

Airplanes had a special appeal. There were lots of surplus planes, for one thing. Also, added to the general willingness to use hardware for commemoration, there was a romanticism about aviation, especially jet aviation, which it is hard for us to conjure up. My Dad got his pilots license when he was 16, in1945, and he was taught by true first-generation pilots. So I have tasted that pioneer-era excitement in hearsay fashion. But you only have to look at the popular culture of the late 40s and 50s and you see aircraft and jet imagery everywhere. Chuck Berry even had Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer “zooming like a Sabre jet.” So, airplane monuments were doubly appealing during that period. Airplane monuments were in large part a celebration of American know-how and technology and speed and energy and vitality — at least as much as they were of an instrument of war.

Previous eras have had a more ambivalent public response to our nation’s wars, and little or no technophilia such as we saw in the Jet Age. WWI produced very few public monuments. In fact, the Yankees of New England and the Upper Midwest had opposed the war, grudgingly supported Wilson once we got in, and then turned against the whole thing the minute it was over. There is a World War I monument in Oak Park, Illinois which is massive, impressive and quietly tasteful — but it is a memorial to the dead, not a celebration of victory. The Spanish American War was met with genuine public ambivalence, and was so badly botched in its execution, that there was little desire for commemoration. The Civil War produced the many cannons and soldier statues in county seat squares, on both sides. In New England and in the upper Midwest every old town square has its white-steepled Protestant church, often a brick late Victorian Catholic church, old trees and large houses on the surrounding streets — and a civil war statue or cannon. But the tone of these monuments tends to be somber or stoic rather than celebratory. Most monuments to the Revolution were put up many years after the events, like the Minuteman statue at Lexington, a stark and beautiful work, and the somewhat less powerful statue at Concord. Saint-Gaudens’s equestrian statue of George Washington in the Boston public gardens is a magnificent and frankly martial work, but it was more a celebration of American national identity and unity than of the war per se. The Mexican war was a land-grab by the Slave-ocracy, which was not popular in the North. U.S. Grant participated in it, and said it was the most shameful chapter in our history. I’ve never seen a monument to it. Of course, the very popular Vietnam monument in Washington DC is anything but celebratory. Its very abstractness allows each visitor to bring to it and take away from it what they want and need.

Anyway, the people who are blessed with an A-4 Skyhawk in front of their school should be grateful to have it. It is a relic of a different time, and we should respect, or at least try to understand charitably and sympathetically, what earlier generations were trying to do by putting it up. The people at the school should understand and appreciate their history. Like it or not, this is a nation built and sustained by war. For all its faults, it is a proud and worthy history. And whether you agree with that or not, we should all be able to squarely face that history, and its tangible relics, and preserve them for the next generation.

Update. Jonathan sent me a link which shows that the Washington statue was not by St. Gaudens. A little research discloses it was in fact sculpted in 1869 by Thomas Ball. So much for Lex’s feigned omniscience.

The Command Post links to this story which says that OBL probably had his arm amputated after the Tora Bora raid, and then probably died from it, since surviving an amputation under those unsanitary conditions is unlikely. Of course, this is all speculation. But it seems pretty convincing.

I sure hope it is true. I must say the idea of OBL scurrying around up in the mountains hiding from our commandos, getting caught in a huge air attack, barely surviving the raid, maimed, undergoing a field amputation, then falling sick, withering, suffering a fevered, lingering death of shock and infection up in the mountains, knowing he’d blown it, knowing the soft, weak, cowardly US had killed him, knowing that the Muslim world was not rallying to his cause, knowing we were going to hunt down the rest of his gang like rats … well, I like that a lot better than him being vaporized by a direct hit on his cave. He did not deserve a quick death.

Bush put it well. They chose to go to war with the United States, and war is what they got.

And if he’s not dead, we will get him. Sooner or later, dead or alive.

Death to America’s enemies.