In last night's post, I explained who the enemy is (hint: it's not Osama, it what Osama stands for). Tonight, I want to review some past wars that history documents adequately, and look at what won them, or what lost them.
In this war, we fight terrorists who project force in the name of Wahabbist Islam. Most, but not all, of the terrorists we fight are in the war for an ideal. Idealist soldiers are very difficult to defeat, because unlike soldiers projecting only political-military force, the idealists will ignore limitations on risk.
So, as we see, the major weapon of the current terrorists we fight is their own bodies. They are willing to give EVERYTHING to project their force, whereas our soldiers project THEIR force with the objective of survival, or living to fight another battle.
We are at an immediate disadvantage, but we should have expected this disadvantage and learned to deal with it. We haven't.
Jump back to the Second World War, Pacific campaign. We started the Pacific campaign with and at a terrible loss, the debacle at Pearl Harbor. We recovered the initiative of battle within a year, and began to push the Japanese back to the west in battle after battle. Mostly the Japanese fought conventionally, with their commanders assessing risk to forces before committing to battle, but we encountered a few desperate units that "fought to the last man".
When we finally got to within tactical aircraft range of Japan, we encountered a new phenomena - the Kamikaze, or suicide pilot. If the Japanese had trained these expendible "missile guidance systems" better, we would have lost the majority of our Fleet, again. The average Kamikaze pilot only had ten hours of training, and that's just enough to learn to manage a takeoff and level flight, and the essentials of a straight-in attack and terminal dive. These pilots got little or no training in evasive maneuvers against intercepting fighters or intense anti-air barrages. In the end, the tactic was a failure: the Japanese flew 3,000+ sorties and sank about four dozen ships, with another three dozen or so disabled and out of action. If the pilots had been better trained, capable of a one-in-ten success rate, our Navy might have had to withdraw to safer waters instead of pressing the campaign closer and closer to the Home Islands.
Now, jump forward a few months to "VJ-Day". Remember how we won the war?
Right, we nuked two Japanese cities, and led the Japanese leadership to believe we would continue nuking cities. The Japanese leaders knew that they had no answer to the awful "Pika-don" (Thunder-flash) that had incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so they sued for immediate peace.
Much has been said about the use of nuclear weapons since August of 1945, but the fact remains that we conquered a fanatical military force, one planning to expend as many lives, millions if necessary, as it would take to resist conventional invasion of their Home Islands.
We did it by deploying a force so far out of the range of normal military imagination as to mean both certain and invincible defeat for the Japanese.
Jump back to the Civil War. Consider the introduction of Henry's repeating rifle, and Dr. Gatling's "Coffee-Mill Gun". Look at the battles where these weapons were first deployed. They were amazing force-multipliers. A company of soldiers equipped with Henry's rifles could and did tie down entire battalions of the enemy. The Gatling gun didn't have such a large effect, but military historians tell us that was because it was poorly deployed. When 5 Gatling guns went with Teddy Roosevelt's Expeditionary force to San Juan Hill in Cuba 30 years later, and they were used properly as an area-fire weapon, the result was that Roosevelt's Rough Riders (fighting dismounted) were able to take a superior position with relative ease. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders got all the credit, but the fact remains that 5 Gatling guns won that battle.
Dr. Gatling had designed his weapon to be used to instill fear in the enemy by it's horrific volume of fire. It was a weapon of counter-terror, just like the nukes dropped on Japan.
Counter-terror works. There are more such instances in the annals of warfare, but you get the idea: the strategy works.
From then to now: what forms of counter-terror might we apply to our current war?
Are there any tactics which would work against individual Jihadiis? Perhaps. In the British Colonial wars on the Indian sub-continent in the late 19th Century, British allies, namely a brigade of Kashmiri troops whose religion was Islam, were told that the cartridges for their Martini-Henry rifles were lubricated with pork tallow, and they refused to take up those arms. Clearly, an Islamic religious taboo against pork and pork products is what affected all those trained soldiers. Could there be some religious taboo in the present that might affect the Jihadiis likewise?
The Islamists who are our enemies are a small minority of all the adherents of Islam. Probably less than 5%. They have claimed the "high ground" within their religion and they lord it over all other Muslims. This is the tail wagging the dog, an un-natural condition. What might be done to restore the dog's tail to it's proper place and condition on the dog? Could we get the vast majority of Muslims to revolt against the small number of Wahabbists who fight us and subdue them within the religion?
Why do we refuse to even discuss the role of Wahabbism within Islam?
Somewhere in the Islamic world, there is a Wahabbist clan that gathers, off to itself, at least every Friday evening for prayers. Probably there are dozens. If one of these clans ceased to exist, their lives snuffed out with a Fuel Vapor bomb in the still evening air, then somewhere else, a clan at prayer on the same evening got chewed into worm-food by two circling AC-130 gunships, don't you think that a message would be sent? Of course it would. If, at the same time, several more tolerant Mullahs got a message from the US indicating that Wahabbism was a dead sect, one way or another, and perhaps a statement in favor of the more tolerant forms of Islam and against Wahabbism might be in order, do you think we might be on the road to peace?
I do. Other military officers think this way as well. It remains mostly to convince the National Command Authority (the President) that nothing less than this strategy and these tactics will win this war.
That's where we come in. As writers and patriots, we have a duty to educate those who read our screed. When enough are educated, this winning strategy might be adopted, but it will at least be considered. That's all I want, for the strategy of counter-terror to be at least considered.
Political correctness has never won a war. Every victory in war is underpinned by winning strategy coupled with patriotic committment.
Well written, and right on target. One of your best postss, IMHO. I'm going to go set up a link to it on Mr. Completely right now. Others should read this.....
Posted by: Mr. Completely | June 30, 2005 at 09:42
Yep. I agree with you here dog. We have to fight fire with a bigger fire if we are ever going to bring this war to its proper conclusion (the sex change of all male terrorists). I don't know how we will ever get anyone who sits on their ass in an air-conditioned office all day to ever believe that. We need to stop pussy-footing around in the Middle East and kick some goddam ass. Fuck being PC with the world. Let's get the goddam job done and bring our fighting men and women home.
Posted by: assrot | June 30, 2005 at 07:57