BOOK
REVIEW 'Long war' a tragic
misstep Winning the
Un-War by Charles
Pena
Reviewed by David Isenberg
Not all worthwhile points are new ones.
Sometimes the most useful thing one can do is
remind people of certain undeniable truths,
especially when the powers that be are doing their
best to obfuscate or deny them.
In this
task Charles Pena, a former director of
defense-policy studies at the Cato Institute,
succeeds admirably in Winning the Un-War.
His thesis is both simple and powerfully valid. He
argues that the "global war on terrorism", which
nowadays the administration of US President George
W Bush simply prefers to call (shades of
Nineteen Eighty-Four) the "long war", is a
tragic misstep. Pena is not the first one to note
that, as terrorism is a
tactic, not an enemy,
fighting a war against it is futile. But he does
amass an arsenal of evidence detailing how it has
made the United States less, not more, safe.
Pena has an eye for detail. The book is
crammed with it.
Obviously he spent a long time Web-surfing while
doing his research. As such, the first few
chapters dealing with the threat of al-Qaeda and
the lackluster US response to it, the distraction
of the Iraq war and the costs it imposed cover
much of the material that has been covered in
previous books. To his credit, Pena acknowledges
this up front. Yet he manages to flesh out
insights that rarely, if ever, are mentioned. For
example, in talking about the numbers of US troops
needed for the United States to crush the
insurgency, he writes:
Historically, the force ratio
required for imposing stability and security is
20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants; this is the
ratio the British - often acknowledged as the
most experienced practitioners of such
operations - deployed for more than a decade in
Malaysia and more than 25 years in Northern
Ireland. With a population of nearly 25 million
people, to meet the same standard in Iraq would
require a force of 500,000 troops for perhaps a
decade longer.
That is the same line
of thought, albeit more detailed, that caused the
Bush White House to force former army chief of
staff Eric Shinseki into early retirement when he
testified before Congress in early 2003.
Pena also has a flair for language, as you
might expect from an author whose acknowledged
inspirations range from Sting to Yogi Berra.
Operation Iraqi Freedom is a "catastrophic
success". Or: "Removing 70,000 US troops from
Germany and South Korea is the right thing to do.
But like the proverbial joke about the demise of
100 lawyers at the bottom of the sea, it's just a
good start." Or, commenting on the US lack of
focus for waging war on terrorism, "It is as if
America is still the little Dutch boy trying to
plug all the holes in the dike with his fingers."
He writes that the "war on terrorism" is
the "un-war" because it is unlike any previous war
the US has fought. Because it is a different war
it requires a different paradigm. But, sad to say,
although fortunately Pena does, the United States
has not yet made that shift.
One of the
strengths of this book is in Chapter 4 where he
details what the Pentagon is spending money on and
how most of that is totally inappropriate for the
war at hand. This is both an educational and a sad
chapter. It is educational because of the wealth
of detail it supplies on intellectually bankrupt
Pentagon acquisition programs and sad because it
shows how clueless the United States is in
fighting al-Qaeda. Pena accurately points out that
in the long haul this war will not be won by
reliance on military forces. And yet the US
persists in using the Pentagon as if it is the
only tool in the toolbox.
The most useful
part of the book is Chapter 6, "Tao of Strategy",
in which he outlines his policy prescriptions.
While this chapter clearly shows the influence of
his days at the libertarian Cato Institute, its
essence can't be said too often. Simply put, it
comes down to this: it is America's actions in the
world, not its ideology, that creates enemies.
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda hate the US because
of what it does, not because of who Americans are.
To paraphrase Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion,
for every US foreign-policy action in the Arab and
Islamic world there is an unpredictable, but
almost inevitable, reaction.
As Pena
writes: "The problems of US foreign policy in the
Islamic world will not be repaired by a better
communications or public-reactions or
public-diplomacy effort. Muslims see US foreign
policy for exactly what it is. A better foreign
policy - not better spin - is what is needed.
Deeds, not words, are what matters."
Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for
the War on Terrorism by Charles Pena. Potomac
Books Inc, April 2006, ISBN: 1574889656. Price
$27.95, pages 241.
David
Isenberg is a senior research analyst at the
British American Security Information Council, a
member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign
Policy, and an adviser to the Straus Military
Reform Project of the Center for Defense
Information, Washington. These views are his
own.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about
sales, syndication and republishing
.)
crammed with it.
Obviously he spent a long time Web-surfing while
doing his research. As such, the first few
chapters dealing with the threat of al-Qaeda and
the lackluster US response to it, the distraction
of the Iraq war and the costs it imposed cover
much of the material that has been covered in
previous books. To his credit, Pena acknowledges
this up front. Yet he manages to flesh out
insights that rarely, if ever, are mentioned. For
example, in talking about the numbers of US troops
needed for the United States to crush the
insurgency, he writes:
