[Peace-discuss] A conservative (but accurate) view of the war

[John W.]

I think Kwiatkowski's characterization of Obama as a "left-wing socialist"
is rather absurd, in a knee-jerk, cliched sort of way.  But most of this
speech is quite thoughtful.  Thanks for sharing, Carl.

John


On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 5:23 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:



>        American Military Policy and the War on Terrorism
>        by Karen Kwiatkowski
>
> {This speech was part of a panel sponsored by the Future of Freedom
> Foundation, Campaign for Liberty and the Ladies of Liberty Alliance (LOLA)
> held on February 20th at the 2010 CPAC. The panel presentation was titled
> "Why Real Conservatives Are Against the War on Terror."}
>
> The phrase "war on terror" has been used to justify trillions of dollars in
> spending, hundreds of thousands of new government positions, and thousands
> of new government contracts. At the same time, the "war on terror" has
> produced very little in terms of new technology or enhanced security, has
> vastly increased the degree of national centralization, and has created many
> new permanent trees and branches in the gnarled world of federal and state
> institutions.
>
> The Congressional Research Service reported in September 2009 the cost of
> the "War on Terror" since 9/11 at almost one trillion dollars. But they
> looked only at the cost of the three military operations launched in
> response to 9/11. They counted only the war in Afghanistan (9 years
> running), the war in Iraq (7 years running), and the overall effort to
> secure US military installations around the world – not our borders at home,
> but our forward deployed empire.
>
> While it is very costly, in both dollars and in terms of rule of law, the
> war on terror is not a real war, in the sense that conservatives understand
> it. Yes, our nation was assaulted, and on 9/11, our nation was undefended
> and vulnerable. Our very expensive armed forces and our very expensive
> intelligence apparatus failed to prevent or to predict what happened on
> 9/11. A conservative reaction would have been to assess the situation from
> the perspective of what we had done or not done, as much as to seek to
> avenge the attack. A wise and thoughtful response would have been to unleash
> a criminal investigation, at home and internationally, and to pursue the
> perpetrators, as we examine the institutional failures and policies that
> made our country vulnerable.
>
> Instead, even though we had a so-called conservative president, we did not
> proceed as conservatives. We did not hold accountable or fire anyone in our
> government, or our defense and intelligence institutions. We did not closely
> examine our own foreign policy or our extensive intelligence and military
> activities overseas, particularly the Middle East. We did not even devote
> sufficient time and energy to investigating the crimes committed and the
> people behind those crimes. Instead, our so-called conservative president,
> with the backing of so-called conservative people, reacted pretty much as
> that other party we have been rightfully criticizing here at this
> conference.
>
> What we are talking about today is our reaction to 9/11 – because that is
> really what the war on terror has been – a reaction, not a strategy.
>
> This reaction, like most poorly thought-out reactions, has been anything
> but conservative.
>
> Furthermore, it has led to conditions and changes in this country that are
> anything but those a true conservative would desire or hope for: Massive
> growth in spending, new permanent and centralized government institutions,
> and worst of all, an incredibly stupid militarization of the pursuit of
> terror.
>
> It is the stupidity in the strategy that I want to briefly review. And to
> do this, no one here needs to understand the least bit about military
> history, tactics and strategy. You do not need to know about the Chinese
> general Sun Tzu, because apparently no one leading the Pentagon is reading
> him.
>
> Sun Tzu understood that understatement and deception is necessary in war.
>
> He said, "Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be
> extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be
> the director of the opponent's fate."
>
> Instead, our approach has been to almost randomly identify countries and
> governments and very publicly, go after them. The only mystery of our
> military and foreign policy since 2001 is in the minds of the American
> people, who do not understand why the war isn’t won yet, and why the enemy
> seems to be expanding, getting smarter, and hating us more.
>
> Sun Tzu said, "If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain
> to be in peril." He was right about that – but in fact you wouldn’t know it
> from the obscene confidence and outright idiocy put out by the Pentagon, and
> eagerly embraced by two presidents, one a so-called conservative, the other,
> a left-wing socialist.
>
> We – as conservatives – ought to care about getting back to an old kind of
> normal – not creating a new normal of unconstitutional government,
> unsupportable debt, and endless war. We should want victory in the "War on
> Terror" but understand that victory must include a return to small
> government republicanism. Sun Tzu wrote, "He who knows when he can fight and
> when he cannot, will be victorious."
>
> But as I said, those creating, pursuing, advertising and selling the
> so-called War on Terror have not read Sun Tzu, and cannot be bothered.
>
> Von Clausewitz is another strategist we study in the military finishing
> schools. One thing Clausewitz knew, that conservatives also know – is that,
> "The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the
> statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind of war
> on which they are embarking." But instead, we are still debating the
> question of "What is this war on terror?" More and more we are asking, why
> isn’t it working, and when will it end.
>
> Instead of Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz our strategy has been more theatrics
> than tactics, and running on a script written by those who stand to benefit
> from more government, and more government spending, than those Americans who
> are fundamentally conservative and who in their hearts, do value the
> Constitution – which is to say – the majority of Americans.
>
> From a Pentagon standpoint, it was fortunate that the Pentagon was one of
> the 9/11 targets. Had the Pentagon not been targeted, and had it emerged
> unscathed on 9/11, it is likely that serious questions would have been asked
> about why the premier and best-funded military, with the best and most
> highly funded intelligence agencies in the world, was a blind paralyzed
> sitting duck on 9/11.
>
> Instead, no serious or probing questions were asked about the
> appropriateness of our massive military-industrial complex. After 9/11 the
> so-called conservatives in charge – instead of taking wise counsel – did
> what any decent Democrat would do. They threw unlimited piles of money at a
> largely undefined and misunderstood problem.
>
> Some in the GOP are still wondering why the Tea Party movement evolved.
> Didn’t people already have a conservative political party representing their
> interests? Well, the GOP promotion of the war on terror using big contracts
> and bigger government, trampling the constitution, all in the name of fear
> and empire – none of this approach was conservative.
>
> Beyond being anything but conservative, the war on terror as we have
> conducted it since 2001 is simply not succeeding. In many of our overseas
> battlefields, we are creating and growing new terrorists, and smarter
> terrorists. We are increasingly exposing our own weaknesses in terms of
> occupation and counterinsurgency, and even as we institutionally learn from
> our mistakes, it is always too slow, always after the fact.
>
> We – as conservatives, no less – seem to be supporting a vague and
> extremely Clintonesque policy of global nation building. We keep hoping that
> putting another one of our crooked guys in charge of a country will work,
> and we keep hoping that military and economic blackmail can keep the locals
> in line. That’s just idiotic.
>
> It may be that our military policy is not designed to reduce terror at all,
> but is instead simply designed to evolve hand-in-hand with the so-called
> "war on terror," in order to maximize the opportunity for growth of American
> intelligence and security institutions. Permanent institutional growth.
>
> Many predictions about the next decade have been made in the past weeks.
> One thing not predicted for 2010 is a reduction of American forces, or fewer
> American interferences and entanglements overseas. No one is predicting the
> ending of America’s illegal wars, or even the ending of a front in just one
> of the illegal wars.
>
> Curiously, government spokesmen are aware that this is exactly what
> Americans want, and are beginning to pander. Case in point is JCS Chairman
> Admiral Mullen on The Daily Show last month discussing how we are coming out
> of Iraq in 18 months, and how the US military is 40% smaller than it was at
> the end of the Cold War.
>
> Mullen represents his case well, but unfortunately he was lying. He is
> lying about leaving Iraq – even Obama has stated that a minimum of 50,000
> American troops will permanently remain in that foreign country. He is also
> lying about the size of the military.
>
> In 1988, about a year before the end of the Cold War, a Congressional
> Research Service chronology of military spending put the DoD take at $451
> billion (in 2005 dollars). In 2009, DoD got $10 billion more, with a budget
> of $460.5 billion (in 2005 dollars). The real military budget in 2009 was
> larger, not smaller, than at the end of the Cold War. But there’s more,
> namely the modern habit of funding any actual wars the DoD may be fighting
> through separate supplemental Congressional appropriations and
> authorizations.
>
> Admiral Mullen also mentioned on the Daily Show that our uniformed military
> was smaller today than at the end of the Cold War. It’s true, we do have
> about 750 thousand fewer troops than we did at the end of the Cold War.
> However, for the past 20 years, we have been outsourcing all kinds of
> formerly uniformed specialties and subspecialities. As one conservative
> economist correctly wonders,
>
> "…was [the outsourcing] really about saving money? Or was it a way to ramp
> up the effective size of the fighting force without having to institute a
> draft or some other means of increase the size of the military (e.g.
> increasing pay substantially)? And perhaps sending a few, more than a few
> actually, bucks in certain directions?"
>
> The future – especially the future for people who love and value American
> liberty – is in danger. It is in danger in part because we did not pursue,
> and are not today pursuing, a conservative approach to reducing
> anti-American terrorism and ensuring the guilty were indeed punished for
> their acts.
>
> After 9/11 – a ruthless, tragic, terrible event, burned into our minds and
> our hearts – the United States had alternatives. We could have, as we had
> done in so many other cases of terrorism, pursued the criminals through the
> system of law enforcement. This would have meant a slower process, a process
> that would have been less emotional and less political, and would have
> required international police and intelligence cooperation. After 9/11, we
> had the sympathy of the world, and strong offers and guarantees of their
> support. It would have taken time – although in retrospect, this approach
> would have taken far less time, less money and destroyed fewer lives and
> livelihoods than what we really did. A conservative approach would have
> saved trillions of dollars. It would have educated Americans on the rule of
> law and the Constitution, rather than blinding them to it. And a
> conservative approach, because it cares about history and culture and
> community, would have ensured that Americans more deeply understood
> terrorism, and how to prevent it. Instead, we are repeatedly lied to by our
> government, on everything, but particularly on the real lack of success, the
> real cost and the extreme risk of our ongoing and endless "War on Terror."
>
> Rahm Emmanuel has famously said, "you never want to let a crisis go to
> waste," and he is right, from a government’s standpoint. I hope that from a
> conservative’s perspective, Rahm’s words are an abomination. But in fact,
> looking at the policies of the Bush and Cheney administration regarding
> terrorism, with Obama continuing them enthusiastically, I am beginning to
> have doubts as to whether conservatives in this country really understand
> what it means to be conservative.
>
> Had our government not seized the opportunity that the 9/11 crisis
> presented, and had the Bush Administration spent that political capital on a
> serious legal and criminal approach to catching and punishing the 9/11
> terrorists – by now, almost nine years later – in the very worst case
> scenario, we would be in the same place we are today. Lots of bad guys
> picked up, some convicted in trials, others held with trials pending.
> Certainly, many people would have been released, as we have done with a good
> number of those who had been held without charge or evidence in Guantanamo.
> Best case, this whole episode would be behind us, and the money not spent on
> security might have gone to reduce the deficit or support tax cuts.
>
> Had we taken the conservative fork in the road back in 2001, we would not
> have enraged other nations, insulted entire cultures, violated our own
> Constitution and sacrificed on a bloody altar what we like to put forth as
> American honor. We would be living in a world where our 1.4 trillion-dollar
> debt ceiling could be reduced, not raised. We would be living in a world
> without an overgrown defense and intelligence structure, with no blurring of
> lines between civilian law enforcement and the military. We would be living
> in a world where, having not killed women and children, not having
> interfered with the domestic politics and trade policies of third-world
> countries in far away places, and having not destroyed our onetime
> reputation as a free nation – we would be clearly safer from terror aimed
> against us.
>
> But the United States is led by a media and power elite that is, in fact,
> not conservative. It is instead vested in doing exactly what it has been
> doing, growing in power and increasing its take from the national till. For
> these agencies, the war on terror is working just fine.
>
> How might we, as conservatives today, really begin to fight terrorism?
> First, get a Secretary of State who speaks for the founding father’s
> preferred policy of free trade with all and entangling alliances with none.
>
> Second, if a secretary of war is required, appoint one who will make his
> sole mission the security of the United States, rather than the security and
> continued expansion of the defense industrial establishment.
>
> Third, conservatives, of all people, have the responsibility to understand
> both rule of law, and to understand our own American history, both the good
> and the bad – and keep the light of freedom burning at home. This means we
> have to be leading the charge at home to reduce our illegal empire abroad
> for reasons both financial and constitutional.
>
> Instead, of course, the Republican Party has become identified with big
> government, empire, excess spending, and overpriced and counterproductive
> defense strategy. As the American people wake up to this reality, they will
> naturally reject the philosophy that is behind the modern GOP approach.
>
> If the GOP intends to remain relevant, it must deliver. The nearly
> decade-long experiment in government growth called "the war on terror" has
> been a cruel joke that history will rightfully blame on the Republican
> Party. It’s not working, and conservatives – as well as libertarians and
> independents and democrats – can all see that. But only old-style
> conservatives and libertarians are truly in a position to offer a reasonable
> alternative. And that alternative is to energize real conservatism in our
> defensive strategy and foreign affairs, and to rediscover the sound advice
> of Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz, and more than ever, our founding fathers.
>
> February 23, 2010
>
> {LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF
> lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues with a libertarian
> perspective for MilitaryWeek.com, hosts the call-in radio show American
> Forum, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com and Liberty and Power
> ... Copyright © 2010 Karen Kwiatkowski}
>

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