Why We Can't "Win" Any War -- Kathleen Reardon (HuffPo)

[DeSwiss]

This is (I think) is a great piece that should be shared. Since HuffPo's sucky website half the time hangs when one tries to post a comment, I thought I'd bring it over to DU where the fish are jumping and the posting is easy!

Why We Can't "Win" Any War
By http://www.huffingtonpost.com/contributors/bio.php?nick=kathleen-reardon&name=Kathleen%20Reardon">Kathleen Reardon

08.29.2006

If you've read my previous blogs, you know that I explore beneath the surface of what people say and do in politics. Purposeful deceit does emerge, but more common are unexamined patterns of thinking. Socrates disparaged the unexamined life and spent much of his helping people discover their own limiting http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2d.htm">habits of thought.

I'm putting on my blog philosopher hat for a few moments to endeavor to do the same.

If we're not alert to how language is used, how it shapes our thinking and thus our decisions, we make ourselves predictable, manageable and often wrong. We limit our options and close down any hope of creativity. Words are not harmless and using them as if they are is, at best, naive. They are shaped by thinking and shape thinking.

Words that work well in one context can also be borrowed for use in another where they actually do not belong (what modern philosopher Stephen Toulmin refers to in his book Return to Reason as language being "desituated" or "disembedded"). And that is what happens when the term "win' is applied without adequate forethought or for political advantage to the war in Iraq.

Consider this -- In the past, winning a war meant annihilating or in some fashion destroying by force an enemy's leadership and major forces. The defeated enemy's beleaguered followers were largely content to go home even if they harbored anger and disdain for the victors. That facilitated what could reasonably be called a "win." In short, a "win" was possible then. Many thousands of lives may have been lost, but a "win" of sorts could nevertheless be called, especially as the other side usually surrendered.

The enemies America has now, many in Iraq, most elsewhere, are bred from near infancy to hate. They are as committed to their cause as those who lead them. Terminate their leaders and others emerge to take their places. Living to go home is not high among their priorities - beleaguered or not. Dying a martyr is. We've seen how those who hate America and Israel (soon to more evidently hate Europe, Australia and other countries, many lying low in the false hope of being spared) are emboldened by both failures and successes of their enemies. Both can be used to foster recruitment to the cause.

Today's terrorist enemies also don't seek to win a war; they seek to change the world. Losses along the way are expected when the goal is so substantial. They come as no surprise and are planned for in advance. This is an enemy that might be contained, outmaneuvered, driven back, controlled, and managed, but not one against which it's even sensible to seek, especially in the short term, a definitive, final "win."

Yet, thousands of lives, countless dollars, and valuable resources have been diverted from increasing and improving national security and the development of much needed intelligence operations in order to achieve such a "win" in Iraq. Ingenious people who are capable of coming up with counterintuitive strategies of the "Greeks-bearing-gifts" type should be gathering in Washington, D.C. right now as guests of the White House, no matter their political leanings, working day and night to outsmart this enemy. But, instead, the Bush Administration and many members of Congress cling to a win scenario they can't even define, let alone achieve. Predictability is the kiss of death in negotiation, politics and war, and yet we're extremely predictable in our need for a "win." Once predictable, we're manageable. And that can't be good. A much more clever means of succeeding will be needed. But it won't be found until simple, limiting constructions (win or lose) no longer shape the thinking of those who could make a difference.

While most of us think that ideas shape language, we are inadequately trained to notice how language shapes ideas and therefore decisions. And as we've seen, it can be used to excuse inexcusable actions.

If we don't, as a country, pay closer attention to how this works to our disadvantage and locate the fallacies hidden in our unquestioned assumptions, there is good reason to believe that the road we take will have one very unacceptable result: a place in the history books for a president and vice president who supposedly "won" a war but lost everything else that mattered.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-reardon/why-we-cant-win-any-wa_b_28241.html

[Demeter]

1. Assuming Anyone At BushCo Can Think Is Overestimating Them

They can lie, cheat, steal, and backstab, torture and kill, destroy and enslave, but they cannot think.

If they could think, they wouldn't be doing the other stuff, or at least not so much as to call attention to their lawlessness. Because they would realize that the consequences will catch up with them, and it isn't going to be pretty, or even survivable. Where would they run? Argentina? Khazakstan? Mars?

The lessons of Delay, Abramoff, Cunningham, just now are beginning to sink in for those who have a vestigial ability to reason. The rest will be taking the Ken Lay defense, I expect.

[DeSwiss]

3. Demeter I believe you're right...

I think her article was aimed at those who empowered them in the first place. Like the one's who are still listening to these bastards....

[yurbud]

7. they think the way a gambler does--I've lost EVERYTHING so I'll double

my bet.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Somebody ought to send this to Rummy and his 'military experts'

in the Pentagon.

[DeSwiss]

4. sinkingfeeling I think this would be one of Rummy's...

...unknown knowns. Or is it a known unknown? Or worse, an unknown unknown???

Forget I brought it up, okay???

[applegrove]

5. They wanted a long war.. and they have one. Who says they did

want it to go any faster? Isn't the whole point to smash the Middle East and force everyone there to choose between democracy and jihadists. The longer this goes on..the better chance they have at forcing everyone to choose. As it spills out everywhere. To exhaust the whole region with war, just like WWI and WWII finally exhausted the "Fighting Europeans" - well at least some of the Europeans...not the Balcans or Soviet victims.

This is a slow war. And is meant to be that. The bourse, control of oil, safety for Israel, and putting a muzzle on this huge generation of Middle Eastern boys growing up... it is all about that.


I don't think it is working (aside from all the others - civilians especially, who are destroyed or killed). Iran is just panicking. And Israel has had to cut its losses. Sharon had to.

A big huge mess.

[DeSwiss]

6. Applegrove now that you mention it...

...when you put it that way, I don't think we've had a point since WWII where there wasn't some war we weren't involved in. We segued from WWII into a Cold War, which only helped the nukies and missile guys. And then we needed a hot war and got Korea. And Korea proved a stalemate so we got ourselves a new war in Vietnam. Then when that one proved a bust, we started Star Wars. Which in turn ended the Cold War.

So we found ourselves all dressed up and no war to go to. But then we got the best kind of war of all -- a war with no country to conquer and no army to defeat. Just good ol' "terra, terra, terra" everywhere we look. Really, its more like THE WAR, Chapter X (The Middle East).

Maybe its not ever supposed to end.....

[applegrove]

8. I forgot to mention the fear stirred up to allow for brown-shirt bully

president. Yes you are right. The slow war does that too.

I was one of those who thought... go get that genocidal maniac and win a war in three months. There are many of us. Assumed the reason for going to war was to help people and stability. Seems the point was to cause instability.

I don't believe that if Israel was safe (which it has never been) and the Repukes were promised a huge long term rule, and they had access to oil...that these nuts would keep wars going. I think they just think: War or Peace = apples or oranges... I just think they don't really care about people. See them as "others".

Yes you are right about the past. Terrible wars during the cold war. And always somewhere far away from the people who were backing one side or the other. Stalin was more murderous at home than Hitler over the long term I think. US just fell into a trap of paranoia and what did it cost? Cause none of those 50 wars were fought on American or Soviet soil. It was always other people who paid. And a few soldiers.

I really think the President should stand up and say: "you know, when we destabilized emerging democracies back 50 years...just because somebody a little to the left won the election...well that was bad. Cause Iran was one of those places that had secular democracy way back when. As always... power-lust got in the way". But he will not. Perhaps why the * WH is going back 40 years and blacking out so much of the historical record.

Democracy is the most important thing. That is it - that is all. That countries get to choose how they are run. I don't disagree with that premise. I fail to see how Iran and Bush acting like a bunch of yahoos will lead to anything but a very small mushroom dropped on the heads of a bunker somewhere(perhaps with a mushroom cloud 100 feet wide or something). I think the people around Bush want to live eternally through the magic they create delivered via military supremacy.