In an essay with this chilling title, “The Next War”, Wes Clark provides instruction as to how to win the next war in Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook. I wish he and other dinasours would lumber away and take their war loving ways with them.
Clark reveals himself to be the bloodthirsty general that he is. Apparently, it doesn’t matter the country we are bombing, or why…just do it right.
One of the most important lessons from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and Vietnam, for that matter — is that we need to safeguard our troops. The U.S. public is more likely to sour on a conflict when it sees the military losing blood, not treasure. So to keep up our staying power, our skill in hunting and killing our foes has to be matched by our care in concealing and protecting our troops. Three particularly obvious requirements are body armor, mine-resistant vehicles, and telescopic and night sights for every weapon. But these things are expensive for a military that has historically been enamored of big-ticket items such as fighter planes, ships and missiles. Many of us career officers understood these requirements after Vietnam, but we couldn’t shift the Pentagon’s priorities enough to save the lives of forces sent to Iraq years later.
But he wants well-educated generals leading the charge for the next war.
For years, Congress has whacked away at military-education budgets, thereby driving gifted officers from the top-flight graduate schools where they could have honed their analytical skills and cultural awareness.
How a commander in chief should use those well-educated generals? Why, to win, of course.
At the same time, the United States’ top generals must understand that their duty is to win, not just to get along. They must have the insight and character to demand the resources necessary to succeed — and have the guts to either obtain what they need or to resign. If they get their way and still don’t emerge victorious, they must be replaced.
This armchair quaterback would have a revolving door of generals, if we’re not winning. Of couse, Clark doesn’t take the time to define “winning”. How does one “win” in Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, for that matter? What human cost in winning? How about 1 million in Iraq, and still no “victory” in sight:
According to the ORB poll, a survey of 1,461 adults suggested that the total number slain during more than four years of war was more than 1.2 million.
ORB said it drew its conclusion from responses to the question about those living under one roof: “How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003?”
Based on Iraq’s estimated number of households — 4,050,597 — it said the 1.2 million figure was reasonable.
There was no way to verify the number, because the government does not provide a full count of civilian deaths. Neither does the U.S. military.
Make no mistake about it, Clark believes we must “win” any conflict we enter. So the overriding issue is not whether or not war serves the purpose of the human species on this planet. What is glaringly absent from this essay is the human costs of war.
And make no mistake, Clark and his ilk intend to use our men and women for “nation building”:
In Iraq, President Bush approved war-fighting plans that hadn’t incorporated any of the vital 1990s lessons from Haiti, Bosnia or Kosovo; worse, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fought doing so. Nation-building, however ideologically repulsive some may find it, is a capability that a superpower sometimes needs.
What nation are we going to create, Wes, and where? How many more trillions will be spent on “nation building”, how much more blood spilled?
So after basically condoning a war against Iran, Clark at the very end, tries to sound reasonable:
How tragic it is to see old men who are unwilling to talk to potential adversaries but seem so ready to dispatch young people to fight and die.
So, steady as we go. We need to tweak our force structure, hone our leadership and learn everything we can about how to do everything better. But the big lesson is simply this: War is the last, last, last resort. It always brings tragedy and rarely brings glory. Take it from a general who won: The best war is the one that doesn’t have to be fought, and the best military is the one capable and versatile enough to deter the next war in the first place.
Clark sounds confused. We should talk to our adversaries, but war with Iran is basically a done deal. And the real mistake with Iraq is not that we entered the war, but how it has been fought. And you can heap Vietnam into that lesson as well.
If I was good with graphics, I would have painted Wes Clark on one side of his face with blood, uniform stained with it, and one side holding a daisy.
With schizophrenic retired generals like this, who needs Bush?
