What Does it Mean to "Win" a War

Master Sgt. Sean Lulofs, USAF (Ret.) argues,

Our nation has not won a war since World War II. I think America is unwilling to win a war.

The United States has won battles and conflicts, but it has not truly won a war which could clearly demonstrate victory as the defeat of the Axis Powers did. The enemy leadership was removed and new types of democratic governments put in place. Their militaries were disassembled and rebuilt so as to no longer pose a threat to other nations. It was clearly defined who won, who lost, and how. Our nation has maintained a presence in those countries since 1945.

Unfortunately, that was the last time when America believed in true victory, as demonstrated by the lack of willpower in wars since.

If the measure of victory is whether the nation you conquer subsequently bends to your will and allows your troops to remain indefinitely on its soil, the logical extension of that argument is that we lost World War I. Some people have tried to distinguish winning a war from winning the subsequent peace, and that interpretation could be applied to World War I, but if we are to apply that definition of victory then the U.S. did win the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, decisively toppling their governments, but got lost in the aftermath. Lufos also shows no understanding of the institutions of government and the predicates of democracy, and how they played a role in the establishment of democratic governments in Germany and Japan. You can't simply imagine them into existence.

The author's understanding of more recent history, unfortunately, is also weak:

The Vietnam War was lost even though we were winning it. We had pushed our enemies back and they were on the verge of defeat. However, due to lack of support for the mission (a.k.a. the troops), the national leaders fled not only the battlefield but their commitment and responsibility to our military. The communists fully took the nation and their evil spread to other countries which fertilized the killing fields due to the vacuum created by the hasty withdrawal.

In fact, Cambodia and Vietnam had centuries of conflict between them, conflict that started long before the region was colonized. The Cambodian government under Lon Nol engaged in ethnic cleansing against ethnic Vietnamese, killing thousands. Subsequent to the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, his government fell to the Khmer Rouge, an organization that was communist, tied to China, and spawned by the People's Army of Vietnam, but which was actively hostile toward Vietnam. The Cambodian genocide was an internal phenomenon, not something inspired by the Vietnamese government. The Khmer Rouge was toppled after they attempted to invade Vietnam and capture the Mekong Delta, a region that Cambodia claimed as its own. While Vietnamese occupation followed, the Vietnamese set out to extirpate the Khmer Rouge. The U.S. government response to the toppling of the genocidal Khmer Rouge by Vietnam, under Ronald Reagan, was to recognize the Khmer Rouge as the official government of Cambodia in exile.

One might also ask, why did communism manage to get such a strong foothold in Southeast Asia? One would then look at the history of colonialism in that region. The Vietnamese refer to the Vietnam War as the American War, not so much to identify the principal opponent, but to distinguish it from the first and second French Wars. We have a tendency to view ourselves as the "good guys" and to be perplexed when those in other nations don't share that perspective, but if you're trying to escape from France's brutal colonialism, the response of the West is perceived as taking France's side, and the only powers willing to help you are communist, guess whose money, arms and support you're going to accept, and guess what impact that has on the leadership and goals of your movement?

Let's posit an alternative end to the war, one in which the U.S. takes the military action necessary to win the war in Vietnam. I'm not sure what Master Sgt. Lulofs believes that would be, perhaps bombing the Red River dams and starving the North into surrender. Does he believe that the conflict would have ended, throughout the region, with no further conflict? Cambodia would have swiftly evolved into a stable democracy under leadership better than Lon Nol, somebody who could not have held onto power as long as he did without U.S. backing? Those who had spent a lifetime fighting for freedom against the French and then the Americans would have emerged, put down their arms, and embraced a new, national government led by Duong Van Minh? To me, it seems pie-in-the-sky. It seems more likely that skepticism of U.S. goals would have persisted, and that we would have seen a subsequent level of conflict that Lufos suggests is evidence of our lack of will to "win".

In terms of the first Gulf War,

The Gulf War was never truly won because, although Saddam Hussein was turned out of Kuwait, his army scorched the earth and left mostly intact. Iraq would remain a threat to coalition forces patrolling the skies over the northern and southern no-fly zones by repeatedly firing upon aircraft. Iraq would also remain a constant threat to its neighbors for the next 12 years through the threat of launching SCUD missiles armed with chemical and biological weapons.

The alternative to the outcome chosen for the first Gulf War, though, is the outcome of the second Gulf War. You either leave the regime intact with enough military strength to perpetuate itself and defend its borders, or you don't and you face the consequences of taking down a government led by an ethnic minority in a region rife with religious, factional and tribal conflicts. The author falls into the same trap, imagining that we can show enough will and resolve to make opposition to occupation, to subjugation, simply fade away. There's no reason to believe that to be realistic.

On Afghanistan, we get myth-making:

Initially, the United States demonstrated the will to win and win decisively. This nation, with a multinational force, exacted a swift and violent response. The enemy and all sympathizers were terrified. Terrorist-supporting nations around the region began to disarm their nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs because of the resolve shown to win the war and win decisively. It is a region of the world that only understands strength and force, which is what we showed them.

Okay... so initially the Taliban was terrified. So terrified that they refused to surrender and refused to turn over bin Laden. And "Terrorist-supporting nations around the region began to disarm", by which the author apparently means Libya. And boy, didn't that turn out well. And yes, there's more than a slight undercurrent of bigotry in declaring, in relation to the people of the Middle East and North Africa, "It is a region of the world that only understands strength and force".

The author really likes to blame the U.S. public, particularly those opposed to certain of its wars, as somehow being responsible for the lack of will that prevents the U.S. military from achieving the fantasy victories he believes would otherwise apparently result from every U.S.-led war. Beyond the tired myth of people spitting on military veterans returning from Vietnam, Lufos complains that just when we were on the verge of victory,

However, our country again entered into a campaign to appease the minority of loud and aggressive pacifists. The cowardice of our nation's politicians prevented them from making clearly defined rules of engagement.

I suspect Lufos believes what he is saying, but it's difficult to see how he reconciles his positions with the facts. The anti-war movement was marginalized and ridiculed during the period leading into the war, and predictably public sentiment was firmly behind the war once it began. To the extent that the problems that arose in Iraq can be attributed to the rules of engagement, it seems fair to ask Lufos to explain what new rules of engagement would have created his fantasy victory? Does he imagine an unconstrained military, so free to stack up Iraqi bodies that the opposition simply wilts? Perhaps he does, given his prior suggestion that all the people of the Middle East understand is "strength and force." But that's a recipe for a fragile peace that ends the moment the occupying power lets down its guard, which is pretty much what happened (but with less bloodshed). The author continues,

Years of weak leadership and poor tactical execution created the powder keg in Fallujah in 2004. Because the fools of politics are never students of history, it was doomed to be repeated by another hasty withdrawal of forces from the country. Again, another vacuum was created and it allowed the very same terrorists which were turned from Fallujah to return.

Wait - I thought it was the anti-war movement that caused the problems after the invasion. Now it turns out that it was "weak leadership" and "poor tactical execution"? More than that, we're back to Lufos' odd notion of what it means to win a war. Apparently it means having a host government that is happy to have the U.S. military remain on its soil in perpetuity, and a U.S. military that is willing to police and hold together that state in perpetuity, because otherwise how would it be a failure of the war effort that the Iraqi government wanted us out, and how would it be the job of the U.S. military to hold or re-conquer (and re-conquer, and re-conquer) various regions of Iraq if the Iraqi government and military was not up to the job?

More than that, if all it takes is a government that is willing to be ruthless in its military operations to cow a population into throwing down its arms and acceding to whatever puppet government the occupying power chooses to impose, why did the Soviet Union fail to permanently pacify Afghanistan? Surely Lufos isn't going to blame that, as well, on anti-war sentiments held by the people of Russia.

The author then explains that it's not so much the enemy, but is in fact himself who only respects "strength and force":

If our nation understood enemies in combat can only be defeated with violence of action, we wouldn't still be in Afghanistan and black flags wouldn't be flying over Fallujah. Our nation has fought the Taliban and al Qaeda as if they were sparring in the debate team.

This takes us back to the author's earlier confusion about what victory means in a war against a nation state, and how by his definitions the U.S. "lost" World War I. How does the author believe that we can military compel people to change their minds about what tribe or faction should run their country, about what God wants them to do, about why they should agree to being ruled by a faction that they expect to subjugate their rights and interests instead of supporting a rival faction that they intend to champion those interests? "Kill them all and let God sort them out"?

The author complains also that the people have not acted sufficiently to hold elected leaders responsible for their actions. To the contrary, a strong case can be made that the elections in 2006 and 2008 were heavily influenced by the belief of the American people that the Bush Administration had been misguided to lose track of the war in Afghanistan in order to start a war of choice in Iraq. The consequences of the Bush Administration's (to use Lufos's words) "Years of weak leadership and poor tactical execution" have served to erode the Republican Party's prior status as the party that was stronger on issues of national security. Perhaps Lufos prefers to think of that as the anti-war movement somehow cowing politicians into ending wars that he imagines could somehow be "won", but perhaps the truth is something else: That, even with loosened rules of engagement, greater commitment of resources, and a longer time for military operations, people with eyes considerably clearer than his own don't see they type of victories for which he pines as plausible outcomes.

If Americans truly did "support the troops," they would not only shake our hands as we walked through the airport, they would demand their politicians commit to a swift victory.

Or perhaps they would take the position that if politicians and officers cannot achieve what Lufos and his peers would regard as a victory, they bring them home. It's really easy to play "Woulda, coulda, shoulda" games with military history, but at the end of the day you have to be able to distinguish fantasies of flowers, candy and democracy breaking out all over with the reality that more commonly flows from military intervention. The first Gulf War might not have been the fantasy victory Lufos desires, but it in fact achieved its stated military objectives. When you can't even articulate what a victory would look like, let alone become so nebulous in your conception of a war (e.g., a "Global War on Terror") that you can't even define your enemy, how can you know when you've won?

Why Aren't "They" Grateful?

What is new about the following: A powerful nation invades and occupies a weaker nation, imposes some form of western-style law and order, western-style governance, all at the point of a gun. Then when the occupied people act in a manner that suggests that they are not grateful for "everything we are doing for them", the people of the occupying nation respond with surprise. How can they not appreciate our lifting them out of their ignorance, constructing roads, giving them the opportunity to live lives more like ours?

But the fact is, even if this is correct, people don't like to be subject to foreign military occupation. The fact is that living under military occupation does not feel like living under enlightened governance - it feels like, you know, foreign military occupation. It may seem obvious to us that our intentions are good, that capitulation is the best option for the occupied people and their fastest path out of occupation, and that we are making an enormous sacrifice for the good of the occupied nation, but that's not how occupied people view occupation. Nor is it how our nation would view an occupation even if the occupying power credibly promised to end poverty, balance the budget, fix the roads, and put every American into a productive, well-paying job while cutting taxes for the rich. Because, you know, foreign, military, occupation. And if they said, "Trust us - as soon as we're done which, if you capitulate, shouldn't be more than a few years, we'll leave you with an indigenous, democratic government under a new and improved Constitution," what are the odds we would believe it?

Without arguing that the comparison is entirely fair, this essay reminded me of this poem.

The United States and its allies have given the Afghan people every chance they could possibly have wished for to step up and be part of the modern world. If [internecine] tribal warfare is more important to them than forming a nation, who are we to tell them it isn’t? If they prefer feudalism and local warlords to democratically elected leaders and the rule of law, who are we to tell them they have to act like us? If they would rather have their hoary superstitions and magic books instead of running water and [penicillin], who are we to force them to enter the modern world, kicking and screaming?

vs.

Take up the White Man's burden --
The savage wars of peace --
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Certainly it's not fair to suggest that the essay shares the same colonial mindset in which Kipling was immersed, or Kipling's projection of race onto a clash of cultures. But it's a similar reaction - why aren't they grateful? Why can't they see and appreciate everything we're trying to do for them? Why don't they realize that the violence of occupation is their collective doing, not ours, and that they will benefit from capitulation? But truly, would we act differently? One of those wacky aspects of human nature is that we seem to prefer, collectively, to suffer under domestic repression than to be "liberated" by a foreign occupying power. Once liberated, people want the liberator to leave. Although an occupation may be necessary to effect the liberator's goals, and may in some cases be objectively better than what came before or is likely to come after, occupation breeds bitter enemies.

When Israeli troops first invaded southern Lebanon in 1978 to drive out the PLO and create a "buffer zone" to prevent attacks on northern Israel, Shiites welcomed Israeli soldiers with rice and flowers. But that honeymoon did not last long, and Shiites were soon fighting the Israeli occupation. The Shiites turned out to be more formidable enemies of Israel than the PLO.

When we criticize or find incomprehensible the mores of an occupied nation, how far removed are we from similar conduct? How much different were the men of fifty years ago who saw it as a social good to lynch civil rights leaders, or boys who didn't show proper respect for white women? How much different are we from the German people, before or after the Nazi era, even if we fervently believe that something akin to happened in that dark period could never happen here? How long did it take us in the "global war on terror" to turn our collective backs on the concept that we are an enlightened society that adheres to the rule of law, that we treat our prisoners with respect, that we offer Due Process, that we disdain torture.... Why is it easy to believe that riots in response to the accidental burning of a holy book is evidence of depravity of an occupied nation, but so difficult to accept the possibility that the collective impact of occupation and the imposition of a corrupt, incompetent government, no matter how well-intentioned, have created a simmering resentment in which the burning of the holy book is more accurately seen as a proverbial "last straw"? Why is it that when occupation forces commit atrocities we can easily dismiss them as aberrational, while the actions of individuals within the occupied nation are often perceived as evidence of their collective depravity?

The idea of transforming Afghanistan - a tribal culture, proud of its long history of repelling and defeating invaders, with a population that is largely impoverished and poorly educated, with ethnic divisions that would make it difficult to form a universally accepted government in the best of times - should never have been perceived as something that would be either easy. As much as we might try local outreach, to try to explain our beneficence and good motives,

We came to install a democratic government and present the Afghan people with an opportunity to reconstruct civilization and re-enter the community of nations after decades of brutal internal conflict, Soviet invasion, and xenophobic theocracy.

To the Afghan man on the street, how different does the U.S. occupation look as compared to the Soviet occupation? How different does the Karzai government look as compared to the Najibullah government? To us the differences may be vast and obvious. To them? I'm thinking, not so much.

When we get into the realm of the transformation of culture - education that includes girls, allowing women to work, allowing women the choice of having their faces, even their hair, uncovered, hospitals that treat women alongside men, perhaps even allowing women to treat male patients.... It's easy for us to say that resistance to such progress is parochial and backward, but such clashes of culture can be the most obvious signs of foreign occupation and can overshadow less obvious signs, let alone the stuff that's simply not visible to the man on the street or simply not comprehensible to a village elder with a third grade education and strong religious beliefs that he feels are under active attack. Many of the things we have attempted in Afghanistan in the name of enlightened, progressive western thought are the same things that the Soviets attempted in the name of "godless communism".

Nation-building, to the extent that it has been tried, is largely oversold. If the occupied nation had the fundamental building blocks of a modern society prior to the occupation, some form of parliament, courts and a professional judiciary, a professional civil service, it stands a chance of emerging from occupation as a modern society. But the west's track record of transforming a society without that foundation into a functioning capitalist democracy through military occupation is abysmal. When you want to implement changes that require a generational shift in thinking, you should expect that your occupation will last for at least a couple of generations.