DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
Scoring the 'war on
terror' By Andrew Bacevich
With the United States now well into the
second decade of what the Pentagon has styled as
an "era of persistent conflict", the war formerly
known as the global war on terrorism (unofficial
acronym WFKATGWOT) appears increasingly fragmented
and diffuse. Without achieving victory, yet
unwilling to acknowledge failure, the United
States military has withdrawn from Iraq. It is
trying to leave Afghanistan, where events seem
equally unlikely to yield a happy outcome.
Elsewhere - in Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and
Somalia, for example - US forces are busily
opening up new fronts. Published reports
that the United States is
establishing "a constellation of secret drone
bases" in or near the Horn of Africa and the
Arabian Peninsula suggest that the scope of
operations will only widen further. In a
front-page story, the New York Times described
plans for "thickening" the global presence of US
special operations forces.
Rushed Navy
plans to convert an aging amphibious landing ship
into an "afloat forward staging base" - a mobile
launch platform for either commando raids or
minesweeping operations in the Persian Gulf - only
reinforces the point. Yet as some fronts close
down and others open up, the war's narrative has
become increasingly difficult to discern. How much
farther until we reach the WFKATGWOT's equivalent
of Berlin? What exactly is the WFKATGWOT's
equivalent of Berlin? In fact, is there a
storyline here at all?
Viewed close-up,
the "war" appears to have lost form and shape. Yet
by taking a couple of steps back, important
patterns begin to appear. What follows is a
preliminary attempt to score the WFKATGWOT,
dividing the conflict into a bout of three rounds.
Although there may be several additional rounds
still to come, here's what we've suffered through
thus far.
The Rumsfeld
era
Round 1: Liberation. More than
any other figure - more than any general, even
more than the president himself - former secretary
of defense Donald Rumsfeld dominated the war's
early stages. Appearing for a time to be a
larger-than-life figure - the "Secretary at War"
in the eyes of an adoring (if fickle) neo-con fan
club - Rumsfeld dedicated himself to the
proposition that, in battle, speed holds the key
to victory. He threw his considerable weight
behind a high-tech American version of blitzkrieg.
US forces, he regularly insisted, were smarter and
more agile than any adversary. To employ them in
ways that took advantage of those qualities was to
guarantee victory. The journalistic term adopted
to describe this concept was "shock and awe."
No one believed more passionately in
"shock and awe" than Rumsfeld himself. The design
of Operation Enduring Freedom, launched in October
2001, and of Operation Iraqi Freedom, begun in
March 2003, reflected this belief. In each
instance, the campaign got off to a promising
start, with US troops landing some swift and
impressive blows. In neither case, however, were
they able to finish off their opponent or even, in
reality, sort out just who their opponent might
be.
Unfortunately for Rumsfeld, the
"terrorists" refused to play by his rulebook and
US forces proved to be less smart and agile than
their technological edge - and their public
relations machine - suggested would be the case.
Indeed, when harassed by minor insurgencies and
scattered bands of jihadis, they proved
surprisingly slow to figure out what had hit them.
In Afghanistan, Rumsfeld let victory slip
through his grasp. In Iraq, his mismanagement of
the campaign brought the United States
face-to-face with outright defeat. Rumsfeld's boss
had hoped to liberate (and, of course, dominate)
the Islamic world through a series of short, quick
thrusts. What president George W Bush got instead
were two different versions of a long, hard slog.
By the end of 2006, "shock and awe" was kaput.
Trailing well behind the rest of the country and
its armed forces, the president eventually lost
confidence in his defense secretary's approach. As
a result, Rumsfeld lost his job. Round one came to
an end, the Americans, rather embarrassingly,
having lost it on points.
The Petraeus
era Round 2: Pacification. Enter General
David Petraeus. More than any other figure, in or
out of uniform, Petraeus dominated the WFKATGWOT's
second phase. Round two opened with lowered
expectations. Gone was the heady talk of
liberation. Gone, too, were predictions of
lightning victories. The United States was now
willing to settle for much less while still
claiming success.
Petraeus offered a
formula for restoring a semblance of order to
countries reduced to chaos as a result of round
one. Order might permit the United States to
extricate itself while maintaining some semblance
of having met its policy objectives. This became
the operative definition of victory.
The
formal name for the formula that Petraeus devised
was counter-insurgency, or COIN. Rather than
trying to defeat the enemy, COIN sought to
facilitate the emergence of a viable and stable
nation-state. This was the stated aim of the
"surge" in Iraq ordered by Bush at the end of
2006.
With Petraeus presiding, violence in
that country did decline precipitously. Whether
the relationship was causal or coincidental
remains the subject of controversy. Still,
Petraeus's apparent success persuaded some
observers that counter-insurgency on a global
scale - GCOIN, they called it - should now form
the basis for US national security strategy. Here,
they argued, was an approach that could
definitively extract the United States from the
WFKATGWOT, while offering victory of a sort.
Rather than employing "shock and awe" to liberate
the Islamic world, US forces would apply
counter-insurgency doctrine to pacify it.
The task of demonstrating the validity of
COIN beyond Iraq fell to General Stanley
McChrystal, appointed with much fanfare in 2009 to
command US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Press
reports celebrated McChrystal as another Petraeus,
the ideal candidate to replicate the achievements
already credited to "King David."
McChrystal's ascendency came at a moment
when a cult of generalship gripped Washington.
Rather than technology being the determinant of
success as Rumsfeld had believed, the key was to
put the right guy in charge and then let him run
with things. Political figures on both sides of
the aisle fell all over themselves declaring
McChrystal the right guy for Afghanistan. Pundits
of all stripes joined the chorus.
Once
installed in Kabul, the general surveyed the
situation and, to no one's surprise, announced
that "success demands a comprehensive
counter-insurgency campaign." Implementing that
campaign would necessitate an Afghan "surge"
mirroring the one that had seemingly turned Iraq
around. In December 2009, albeit with little
evident enthusiasm, President Barack Obama acceded
to his commander's request (or ultimatum). The US
troop commitment to Afghanistan rapidly increased.
Here things began to come undone. Progress
toward reducing the insurgency or improving the
capacity of Afghan security forces was - by even
the most generous evaluation - negligible.
McChrystal made promises - like meeting basic
Afghan needs with "government in a box, ready to
roll in" - that he proved utterly incapable of
keeping. Relations with the government of
President Hamid Karzai remained strained. Those
with neighboring Pakistan, not good to begin with,
only worsened. Both governments expressed deep
resentment at what they viewed as high-handed
American behavior that killed or maimed
noncombatants with disturbing frequency.
To make matters worse, despite all the
hype, McChrystal turned out to be miscast -
manifestly the wrong guy for the job. Notably, he
proved unable to grasp the need for projecting
even some pretence of respect for the principle of
civilian control back in Washington. By the summer
of 2010, he was out - and Petraeus was back in.
In Washington (if not in Kabul),
Petraeus's oversized reputation quelled the sense
that with McChrystal's flame-out Afghanistan might
be a lost cause. Surely, the most celebrated
soldier of his generation would repeat his Iraq
magic, affirming his own greatness and the
continued viability of COIN.
Alas, this
was not to be. Conditions in Afghanistan during
Petraeus's tenure in command improved - if that's
even the word - only modestly. The ongoing war met
just about anyone's definition of a quagmire. With
considerable understatement, a 2011 National
Intelligence Estimate called it a "stalemate."
Soon, talk of a "comprehensive counter-insurgency"
faded. With the bar defining success slipping ever
lower, passing off the fight to Afghan security
forces and hightailing it for home became the
publicly announced war aim.
That job
remained unfinished when Petraeus himself headed
for home, leaving the army to become Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) director. Although
Petraeus was still held in high esteem, his
departure from active duty left the cult of
generalship looking more than a little the worse
for wear. By the time General John Allen succeeded
Petraeus - thereby became the eighth US officer
appointed to preside over the ongoing Afghan War -
no one believed that simply putting the right guy
in charge was going to produce magic. On that
inclusive note, round two of the WFKATGWOT ended.
The Vickers era Round 3:
Assassination. Unlike Donald Rumsfeld or David
Petraeus, Michael Vickers has not achieved
celebrity status. Yet more than anyone else in or
out of uniform, Vickers, who carries the title
Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence,
deserves recognition as the emblematic figure of
the WFKATGWOT's round three. His low-key,
low-profile persona meshes perfectly with this
latest evolution in the war's character. Few
people outside of Washington know who he is, which
is fitting indeed since he presides over a war
that few people outside of Washington are paying
much attention to any longer.
With the
retirement of secretary of defense Robert Gates,
Vickers is the senior remaining holdover from
Bush's Pentagon. His background is nothing if not
eclectic. He previously served in US Army Special
Forces and as a CIA operative. In that guise, he
played a leading role in supporting the Afghan
mujahideen in their war against Soviet occupiers
in the 1980s. Subsequently, he worked in a
Washington think tank and earned a PhD in
strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University
(dissertation title: "The Structure of Military
Revolutions").
Even during the Bush era,
Vickers never subscribed to expectations that the
United States could liberate or pacify the Islamic
world. His preferred approach to the WFKATGWOT has
been simplicity itself. "I just want to kill those
guys," he says - "those guys" referring to members
of al-Qaeda. Kill the people who want to kill
Americans and don't stop until they are all dead:
this defines the Vickers strategy, which over the
course of the Obama presidency has supplanted COIN
as the latest variant of US strategy.
The
Vickers approach means acting aggressively to
eliminate would-be killers wherever they might be
found, employing whatever means are necessary.
Vickers "tends to think like a gangster," one
admirer comments. "He can understand trends then
change the rules of the game so they are
advantageous for your side."
Round three
of the WFKATGWOT is all about bending, breaking,
and reinventing rules in ways thought to be
advantageous to the United States. Much as COIN
supplanted "shock and awe," a broad-gauged program
of targeted assassination has now displaced COIN
as the prevailing expression of the American way
of war.
The United States is finished with
the business of sending large land armies to
invade and occupy countries on the Eurasian
mainland. Robert Gates, when still Secretary of
Defense, made the definitive statement on that
subject. The United States is now in the business
of using missile-armed drones and special
operations forces to eliminate anyone (not
excluding US citizens) the president of the United
States decides has become an intolerable
annoyance. Under President Obama, such attacks
have proliferated.
This is America's new
MO. Paraphrasing a warning issued by Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, a Washington Post dispatch
succinctly summarized what it implied: "The United
States reserved the right to attack anyone who it
determined posed a direct threat to US national
security, anywhere in the world."
Furthermore, acting on behalf of the
United States, the president exercises this
supposed right without warning, without regard to
claims of national sovereignty, without
congressional authorization, and without
consulting anyone other than Michael Vickers and a
few other members of the national security
apparatus. The role allotted to the American
people is to applaud, if and when notified that a
successful assassination has occurred. And applaud
we do, for example, when a daring raid by members
in SEAL Team Six secretly enter Pakistan to
dispatch Osama bin Laden with two neatly placed
kill shots. Vengeance long deferred making it
unnecessary to consider what second-order
political complications might ensue.
How
round three will end is difficult to forecast. The
best we can say is that it's unlikely to end
anytime soon or particularly well. As Israel has
discovered, once targeted assassination becomes
your policy, the list of targets has a way of
growing ever longer.
So what tentative
judgments can we offer regarding the ongoing
WFKATGWOT? Operationally, a war launched by the
conventionally minded has progressively fallen
under the purview of those who inhabit what Dick
Cheney once called "the dark side," with
implications that few seem willing to explore.
Strategically, a war informed at the outset by
utopian expectations continues today with no
concretely stated expectations whatsoever, the
forward momentum of events displacing serious
consideration of purpose. Politically, a war that
once occupied center stage in national politics
has now slipped to the periphery, the American
people moving on to other concerns and
entertainment, with legal and moral questions
raised by the war left dangling in midair.
Is this progress?
Andrew J
Bacevich is professor of history and
international relations at Boston University. A
TomDispatch regular, he is the author most
recently ofWashington
Rules: The American Path to Permanent War
and the editor of the new bookThe
Short American Century: A Postmortem, just
out from Harvard University Press. To catch
Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview
in which Bacevich discusses the changing face of
the Gobal War on Terror, click here,
or download it to your iPod here.
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