Quite a bit of action is being sent my way from AntiWar.com. Thanks, tex!
Tex is also the host of UnFairWitness - collecting and reporting still more of the excesses of empire.
Since few people ever check out the archives (and I am as guilty as the next), I'm going to reprint something from March 31, 2003 that just gets more and more relevant.
What Shall It Matter?The Powell Doctrine (overwhelming force combined with the full support of the homefront) has been talked up in recent days as the woulda, coulda, shoulda panacea for this rapidly congealing quagmire. At least then, when the Iraqis stubbornly fought, we'd be in a position to squash them, so the thinking goes. Or maybe the Iraqis would have really realized that fighting was hopeless. Well, something like one of those. I guarantee you will see many more invocations before this war is done.
But I find myself thinking more and more on the Bush/Baker Doctrine, the doctrine of overwhelming diplomatic force. The Gulf War was won before a shot was fired or a soldier committed to battle because Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was declared to be and understood to be illegitimate by the international community. Clinton used the doctrine as well to great effect in Kosovo and Bosnia, also forging diplomatic consensus for military action and delegitimizing the aggression of unsavory regimes.
The Powell Doctrine, whatever its merits or flaws, has in fact never been tried apart from a solid grounding in international agreement.
Let me repeat and emphasize: In all the places where the application of military force has been successful in the past decade [and more], it has been firmly rooted in a diplomatic consensus that has delegitimized the opposition's regime.
That is the twenty-first century way of war; that is the lesson in all of this. All the second-guessing about field strategy is mere professional territorial pissing between the military and the civilians. Grand strategy, the application of the national interest to the nation's interactions in the world, is where you really win - and lose.
Posted by Martial at March 31, 2003 05:13 PM
Every day, we see the call go out for more soldiers. Professionals and pundits alike tell us that - whatever else we do or don't - more boots on the ground are necessary. They count the squads and divisions, they add up the homesick men and women and then divide by the restless population, they compare the results to Japan, Germany, Bosnia.
But it isn't the number of troops. It isn't the training or weapons or morale or lines of supply. It isn't the soldiers - or generals - at all.
Neither is it a dogged determination to continue in a rigid course, never wavering in certainty no matter the situation, never counting the costs. It isn't will or stubborness or "leadership".
It is what it has always been: the legitimacy of the intervention as agreed to by the international community through some body for collective discussion and decision making.
Without that, it is - and was always bound to be - a disaster.
Posted by Martial