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November 17, 2006

Depressing, But Likely Accurate

Dave Shuler takes a look at how America lost support for the Iraq war among Walter Russell Mead's four schools of foreign policy thought. The entire article is well worth reading, but the most important part to me is in his conclusion.

I don’t believe that this means that America will fight fewer wars in the future or even be more reluctant to go to war.

I think it means that, increasingly, America’s wars will be fought from 30,000 feet, the objectives of these war will be those that can be accomplished from 30,000 feet, and they will be concluded quickly.

One hope I've had about the Iraq war is that we will learn a lesson about going to war and will be more careful about doing so in the future. With our armed forces, it is very easy to start a war, but as we've relearned the hard way in Iraq, ending wars is a lot harder than starting them. The American people, speaking broadly, are unhappy with the war in Iraq because we're not winning it. Americans are more than willing to fight wars; we're a tremendously belligerent people. But we hate losing them, and as I tried to explain the other day, we have not yet adapted our style of warfighting to how wars are now fought, which means we're highly unlikely to win wars we start (with obvious exceptions like the first Gulf War and, to a lesser extent, Kosovo). Of course, there are also people who didn't like the war to begin with, but the reason both the Democrats and Republicans are talking about getting out of Iraq now is because of those who supported the war on the assumption we'd win it, and who are now very unhappy with the direction the fighting has taken.

I'm not a pacifist by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, I fully concur with Heinlein's assessment of pacifism: "pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay–and claims a halo for his dishonesty." No society can survive if it is not willing to fight others for that privilege, although thankfully we are at a point in our history where those battles can be few and far between. But there is a difference between fighting for survival and fighting because you can, and far too often we have been on the wrong side of that line. In part that is because we haven't had to do much of the former. With the possible exception of the Second World War, we haven't fought an existential war since the American Civil War. Our location has immunized us from most requirements to ensure our existence, which has meant when we go to war, it's usually a war of choice. Wars of choice are not universally bad; Korea may have been a good idea, since South Korea has become a democratic and successful state. In Kosovo I think we were fighting for a good idea, even if we did so in a terribly inappropriate manner. But we have also fought a lot of wars of choice we would have been wiser to stay out of, Iraq being an obvious example. And the way American politics and government work, we're likely to continue that trend.

A lot of Democrats live in terror of being accused of being weak on national security. This reputation is partially-earned; a lot of Democrats were convinced the Soviet Union wasn't a threat back during the Cold War, and had some Democrats had their way, we wouldn't have a lot of the military tools that allow us to wage war with so few casualties among U.S. forces. But, much like Al Gore being a 'liar,' the argument Democrats aren't serious on national security extrapolates far too much from a very few examples. Unfortunately, in politics appearance is reality, and so whenever a Democrat makes a suggestion that might be interpreted as weak on national security, the Republicans clobber them for it. And so, in 2002 when the votes were tallied on the AUMF in Iraq (because we don't declare war any more, more's the pity), a lot of Democrats voted yes out of fear for their political prospects rather than out of conviction the war was the right thing to do. The consequences of this political calculation were predictable: as long as the war went well, they kept their mouths shut. As soon as things went bad, however, the Democrats started saying what they believed, and a lot of support for the war was revealed as paper-thin. While I empathize with Democrats who feared Republican demagoguery had they voted no, going to war is a little more important than politics, so I cannot forgive those who voted yes when they didn't believe in their vote. Had they been honest up front, we would have been better off.

Democrats don't mind all wars. President Clinton launched the Kosovo war with pretty solid Democratic support despite the lack of a UN mandate, he engaged the Iraqis on several occasions, and American forces were in motion against Haiti when Aristide blinked. Kosovo and the Iraq and Somalian airstrikes had several important things in common: they didn't present much threat of American losses, they were relatively brief, and they killed a lot of civilians. None of them raised too many hackles in the U.S., though, because they were painless wars from our perspective. I fear that Dave's prediction is dead on. Future American presidents may be far more leery of committing American ground forces to combat, but that doesn't mean they won't continue to use air power to hit foreign targets with predictable results. Why, after all, did so many people around the globe celebrate the September 11 attacks? Could it be because they enjoyed the sight of the U.S. being hit by missiles with no chance to retaliate or prevent the attacks? What's sauce for the goose, after all, is sauce for the gander.