Channelling George Washington: How Not to Fight a War
“I’ve hemmed and hawed over talking to you about this for a good—or bad—week. I’ve always been reluctant to criticize a sitting president. That’s especially true in the case of President Obama because of his symbolic importance in the overall sweep of American history. But I think it’s time to speak before it’s too late.”
“I share your feelings about President Obama. What do you find so troubling?”
“How he’s fighting the war in Afghanistan.”
“Is there a fundamental mistake that is troubling you?”
“His repeated statements that he’s going to withdraw American troops in 2011. All by itself, this is losing the war. Why is he saying this?”
“I don’t know. Why you think this is a serious mistake?”
“Can you imagine President Lincoln announcing to the South that if he didn’t win victory in twelve months or twenty-four months he would withdraw the Army of the Potomac? Or President Polk when the U.S. Army marching on Mexico City declaring if they didn’t capture the city they would go home? Or Harry Truman telling the North Koreans and Chinese Communists that he would withdraw our army from Korea in 1952, at the end of his term? There can’t be a better way of inspiring an enemy to keep fighting.”
“Do you think we would have won in Vietnam if we hadn’t withdrawn prematurely?”
“We now know that the North Vietnamese were down to their last cadres of men. They resolved to launch one more offensive and if that failed they would have accepted peace. The Russians agreed to reequip their army one more time. Meanwhile, South Vietnamese morale had been wrecked by the American withdrawal and the massive cuts in aid a runaway Congress had imposed. The South Vietnamese collapsed and the Communists rumbled to victory.”
“What would you have done, if you had succeeded the disgraced Richard Nixon and were an unelected president like Gerald Ford?”
“I would have given the North Vietnamese twenty-four hours to withdraw. If they refused, I would have ordered the Air Force to begin a massive bombardment of North Vietnam. I would have issued a similar order to the Navy. I would have ordered the U.S. Army to have a hundred thousand men back in Vietnam in ten days.”
“What if Congress had voted against this decision?”
“I would have told them that this was why the framers of the Constitution appointed the president commander-in-chief of the armed forces. I certainly would not have bleated, like President Ford, ‘our friends are dying,’ and done nothing.”
“Do you see other flaws in the way the Americans are fighting the Afghanistan war?”
“President Obama and his advisors don’t seem to grasp another basic principle of winning a war—seizing the initiative as early as possible —and keeping it. You don’t spend three months ‘studying’ a war you’re already fighting before you decide to continue fighting it. Then Mr. Obama cut the number of troops General McChrystal asked for—and took months to get them there.”
“Why is the initiative so important?”
“The side that holds the initiative forces the enemy to fight where he doesn’t expect or want to fight.”
“Can you give us an example of how that works?”
“The best example is the American decision to invade Guadalcanal in 1942. Until that point, the Americans were on a desperate defensive in the war with Japan begun at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had seized dozens of islands, Malaysia with its vital rubber plantations, and Indonesia with its vast oil reserves. Only a combination of luck and courage had enabled the Americans to score hairbreadth victories in the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, preventing the Japanese from seizing Australia and Hawaii. The Guadalcanal assault totally surprised them. After we won that ferocious struggle, we had the initiative and held it until the end of the war”
“Are there other examples in more recent wars?”
“After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush did a remarkable job of seizing the initiative. He invaded Afghanistan and routed the Taliban, then launched a worldwide intelligence war that threw Al Qaeda on the defensive. That’s why there were no follow-up attacks.”
“Do you agree with President Obama that President Bush is to blame for the way the war in Afghanistan has evolved?”
“Blaming President Bush is a lamentable habit that President Obama should abandon once and for all. President Bush and his advisors made many mistakes in the first two years in Iraq. They badly miscalculated the resources and abilities of the enemy. Similar things have happened in the first years of all our wars. We tend to be much too optimistic about our chances for a swift victory. President Bush was soon forced to focus all his efforts on winning in Iraq. During this time, Afghanistan had a garrison of about 2,000 troops. We weren’t fighting a war there. We simply lacked the manpower. But President Bush learned from his mistakes. He listened to General Petraeus and other top commanders, gave them the reinforcements they needed to regain the initiative and keep it—and won the war.”
“Can the same lessons be applied to Afghanistan?”
“Of course. The tactics will be different. But the same principles apply. Seizing the initiative and holding it against a determined enemy until he quits. But to do this in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama will have to junk the restrictions that he has imposed on our fighting men.”
“Could you explain this?”
“Under President Obama, the U.S. Army is forbidden to attack if the enemy is using civilians as cover. They cannot call in artillery support if there is any possibility of killing civilians. Even a pilot who drops a bomb that kills civilians may be liable to a ruinous court martial. I can’t think of a better way to drain an aggressive spirit from an army.”
“Isn’t the Taliban’s strategy similar to the one you pursued in the American Revolution? In 1776, you told Congress that we would stop trying to win in a single battle—a general action. Instead, you wrote: ‘We will protract the war.’”
“So I did.”
“It was a brilliant change of strategy, enabling a weaker army to wear down a much stronger opponent. Now our position is reversed. How can our stronger side—the Americans—win in Afghanistan against the Taliban’s protracted war?”
“By following a maxim I repeated frequently in the Revolution—‘we cannot lose as long as we stay in the game.’ Winning a protracted war requires patience and determination—and faith that we have a better cause. In Afghanistan, this latter point is heavily in our favor. The Taliban is the most brutal, tyrannical, backward-looking enemy we have ever encountered. It is impossible to believe their call for a return to the savagery of the seventh century is more appealing to the people of Afghanistan than the benefits and hopes we embody with our belief in the blessings of freedom and the rule of law.”
“Is there anything else we need to win?”
“Indignation. This can and should be supplied by the president, the leader of all the people. The Taliban recently murdered a group of civilian doctors, several of them Americans, who had come to Afghanistan to help the poor. Here was a marvelous opportunity for President Obama to depict the enemy as monsters. He did not say a word.”
“Have American leaders evoked indignation at an enemy in the past?”
“Take a look at what Tom Jefferson wrote about George III in the Declaration of Independence. He accused him of every moral lapse in the book, from slave-mongering to greed. The goal was to make Americans very very angry at His Majesty and anyone who supported him. Indignation is a key ingredient in fighting a war. President Roosevelt denounced Japan for perpetrating a ‘day of infamy’ at Pearl Harbor. President Polk accused Mexico of ambushing and murdering American cavalrymen along the Rio Grande. President Lincoln maneuvered the Southerners into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter and then denounced them as rebels against the best government on Earth. A president has to lead his people. He has to appeal to their hearts as well as their heads to support a war.