Our Obsession With Limited War Leads To Bizarre Policy Choices

Last week the Senate released a report on so called "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the CIA between 2001 and 2008 to extract information from terrorists captured on the battlefield. The "torture report" chronicles the sometimes bizarre treatment given to about a dozen captives. This investigation can now be filed away with all the other investigations our country has been forced to conduct since Vietnam into "abuse," "war crimes," and other such "atrocities."

Whether "enhanced interrogation" is torture or not is not the point of this article. There are strong arguments on both sides, and I don't think this report or any other investigation has yet revealed the full scope of the program or its effectiveness. Nor is this article about whether releasing this report was wise. Undoubtedly, it will embolden our enemies, but it also gives Americans an opportunity to see what our professionals thought was necessary in the wake of 9/11 to stop imminent attacks on the United States. We will continue to debate that and decide as a nation whether our actions were appropriate. The polls are divided on these issues and, like with most things, history will be the true judge, not the Senators issuing this report.

Several months ago, President Obama's former Defense Secretaries, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, went public with allegations that the President and his political advisors were micromanaging the military, making exceptionally poor strategic decisions, and ultimately making the nation less safe. This is nearly unprecedented in history. Two former Defense Secretaries, from different ends of the political spectrum, criticizing the Commander in Chief for, in their opinion, making the country less safe. 

In some ways, their criticisms are unfair. Micromanaging the military is nothing new. Harry Truman, for example, was accused of micromanaging the Korean War. He refused, for example, to allow his generals to broaden the war to include China. He was also accused of not pressing for total victory, and he ultimately fired General MacArthur who, at the time, was the most popular general in the country. History has been kind to Truman, but his approval rating at the time was very low.

Lyndon Johnson is famous for his micromanagement of the Vietnam War. Robert Gates, who actually served under Johnson, recently reminded Americans that Johnson went so far as picking individual bombing targets and village "relocation" sites. The enemy found safe haven in nearby Cambodia, which Johnson decreed off limits. He wanted to limit the war to Vietnam. President Nixon was only marginally better, expanding the war to include additional targets, but still limiting the military's ability to fight the enemy where they were.

Modern presidents were not immune. Who could forget how, when Mulla Omar was in the sights of a Predator drone, some lawyer refused to clear the target? We then learned for the first time that our military was consulting with lawyers about which targets were fair game and which were off limits. It is these same lawyers, of course, that drafted the "guidelines" used for enhanced interrogations, suggested labelling terrorists as "enemy combatants" and shipping them off to "Guantanamo Bay" rather than keeping them prisoner on the battlefield.

The problem is this, micromanagement is not a strategy. It is not a tactic. Micromanagement is the principal side effect of a poor strategy, poor execution and a lack of moral resolve. And, in the post World War II era, it is the result of our obsession with "limited warfare."

"Limited war" is the fiction that presidents, prime ministers and generals have used to justify projecting military force where it is not absolutely critical to our survival. War fighting is "limited" to the leadership or the "regime" and its supporters. Limited war is fought with drones and "precision air power," lawyers and "approved target" lists. Civilian casualties are to be avoided at almost any cost because, theoretically, it is not their fault that some evil, oppressive regime chose to fight us. They are therefore absolved of all guilt and responsibility. To that end, limited war is fought for "regime change," and there is never any plan to "occupy" the enemy once it is vanquished. 

Limited war requires the mental gymnastics with which we have now become so familiar. "Soldiers" are now designated as "enemy combatants," and while we won't "torture" anyone, we will use "enhanced interrogation techniques" to extract intelligence. Enemy combatants are then "tried" in military "courts" for their "crimes." Some politicians have gone so far as to demand that they be brought to the United States to be tried in federal courts. 

It is this deconstruction of all things war that has led us to strategic failure and has arguably caused us to violate our own principles. Worse still, since "limited wars" are never actually won, it has also led to a state of perpetual war for our nation. Limiting war has no deterrent effect on most potential enemies, especially fanatics. Our enemies have made it clear that they do not value life. Promising a population that we will limit our violence to only those people running the country absolves them of any responsibility to change their own regimes or take responsibility for the conduct of their own governments.

By contrast, the threat of total war is a substantial deterrent to almost every potential enemy. It is fought with one goal - to win. Total war is fought with whatever weapons are required to achieve that one goal. While civilians are not directly targeted, there is little concern given to collateral damage. Cities and infrastructure are totally destroyed in order to stop the enemy's ability to continue to wage war or to ever wage war again. Total war is waged until the enemy unconditionally surrenders. The entire country is dismantled, occupied, and then rebuilt in accordance with western standards and based on western values. Troops remain in the country for as long as is necessary to ensure that whatever cause the populace followed to war is completely extinguished - even if that takes generations.

Of course, in the West anyway, we have long agreed upon certain limitations. Western warfare does not, in theory, allow the forced or violent interrogation of POWs. Chemical Weapons are banned from the battlefield, and were not in fact widely used after the ban was put in effect. We have the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners who are captured in uniform. We have the International Red Cross. While the enforcement of these western norms is largely dependent on the guarantee that the enemy will also follow the rules, they are at least reasonably clear and understandable.

We get confused, however, when we face an enemy that doesn't follow the same rules, or when the threat they pose is not existential. For example, were we facing an invasion force, waging a "limited war" would be suicidal. Since the threat would be existential, the total destruction of our enemy would be justified. If that same invasion force refused to abide by the traditional rules of war, we would be justified in using whatever force against whomever to defeat the threat. A fight for survival usually doesn't carry with it a long list of rules.

The problem we have is largely one of timing. We have become so accustomed to fighting these perpetual low intensity conflicts that we prefer that to the massive, but rare engagements of the past. During the Cold War, we had to be very careful about how and when we entered a conflict. Since total war with a nuclear superpower was unacceptable, every provocation had to be analyzed. Wars were not fought to win, but rather to maintain the status quo with the Soviet Union. That was always the strategic objective. 

The Cold War is over now. We no longer have to wage war to a stalemate in an effort to avoid thermonuclear war, yet we are acting as if we do. For example, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, we sent a massive military force to eject Hussein from the country. We did not, however, continue on into Iraq to defeat the country. The result has been a state of war existing between our countries for almost 25 years. It would have been easier and cheaper to invade, conquer, occupy, rebuild and stay. Perhaps the region would be more stable now. In any event, it is hard to imagine that we would be worse off.

Doing nothing can also be justified. Not every regional conflict is our problem, nor can every problem be solved with U.S. military force. Even the biggest proponents of perpetual, limited warfare admit that sometimes civilians are killed. Sometimes a predator drone accidentally blows up a wedding and kills some children. From a moral perspective then, each decision to use force must start with the question: "Is this worth killing an enemy's child over"? That may seem simplistic, but the scale of the engagement is not really the issue. Both limited war and total war result in civilian casualties. Total war may result in more civilian casualties, but the war is shorter, serves as a strong deterrent to others who may be inclined to wage war in the future, and ultimately results in the total defeat of the errant ideology that led to war in the first place. Limited war, by contrast, means that the violence lasts for generations, usually devolves into guerrilla warfare, is used as a rallying cry for extremists, and has historically led to a U.S. "withdrawal." Twenty-five years after Hiroshima, Japan began to emerge as the serious economic power it is today. Twenty-five years after the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq is still at war. Our strategy has failed and it is time for a new one.

War is violent. It is never going to not be violent. War is sometimes necessary. It will always sometimes be necessary. War is fought with soldiers, not lawyers. War is won by killing the enemy and crushing their will to fight. It is not won by emphasizing the avoidance of civilian casualties or trying to approve targets in real time. War is won by using a huge invasion force to overwhelm the enemy and disabuse them of idea that they will retreat into the civilian population to wage a successful guerrilla war later. Wars are won by stationing a huge occupying force in country after "major combat operations" are terminated. It is not won by turning the country back over to a symbolic government that is hostile to us, and that doesn't have the support of its people. War is won by having a clear strategic purpose and the moral resolve to annihilate the enemy and then suppress their remnant for as long as is necessary to achieve lasting peace.

Let us no longer be confused as a nation about what war is or how it is waged, won or lost. Torture is torture and cannot be "enhanced" in anyway that improves it. Defeat is defeat and cannot be spun with terms like "withdrawal." Retreat is retreat and cannot be recast as a "draw down." When we commit our men and women to these fights, victory is either worth achieving or it is not. If the objective is important, if it is worth the lives of our men and women in uniform, then it is worth achieving in the quickest possible way, which is also usually the most violent. If the extreme violence and inevitable collateral damage required to actually win a war is not palatable to us under the circumstances, then it is not a matter for our armed forces. It is a police action, and we should just commit ourselves to arresting "enemy combatants" and trying them in federal court for "crimes against" whomever. Something tells me, however, that most of us war weary Americans are ready to be done with all of this. And the enemy better be careful, because we hate to lose...