This “New Anti-War Right” Is Pro-War And Wrong
By its very nature, a counterinsurgency campaign is a limited war, one that relies on winning over the civilian population through the careful use of military force combined with deft diplomacy. The idea is to use persuasion as much as possible and coercion as little as possible. So when Chaffetz writes that we’ve tied the hands of our military, he means that vanquishing enemies, not nation-building, should be our core goal.
One problem with this is that “vanquishing enemies” in a war against a domestic insurgency is a goal that cannot really be achieved without strict rules of engagement and respect for the civilian population. To a large degree, the enemy is “vanquished” by not adding to his numbers with tactics that harm the civilian population. The trouble with Chaffetz’s brand of “antiwar” stance is that he conceives of a “withdrawal” from Afghanistan being a prelude to the perpetual use of air strikes and targeted assassinations. His alternative of “going big” and eliminating strict rules of engagement is a pose of “freeing” the military from constraints that the top commanders themselves insist on having to give their mission the best chance of success. Barring the deployment of an even larger force with few constraints on how they operate, Chaffetz advocates a “withdrawal” from Afghanistan that will be as non-interventionist as Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. In this approach, we will reserve the right to launch attacks on their territory with impunity whenever we wish, but otherwise we will wash our hands of the place and the consequences of our actions. This will not only ensure the alienation of the population from any allied government that might still be in power, but it will contribute to the very radicalization and militancy that Chaffetz presumably would like to see weakened. If the Iraq “surge” failed in its political objectives, and it did, Chaffetz’s proposal would simply ignore the importance of creating conditions for any possible political settlement that is the prerequisite of any withdrawal from Afghanistan that will not lead to greater regional instability.
Critics of the Afghanistan plan such as Chaffetz want to make Afghanistan into a shooting gallery and call it peace. In this way, they can still pretend that they take national security and strategy questions seriously, when they are just reverting to a default position of advocating less restraint, more force and greater indifference to the moral and strategic consequences of our actions. As Chaffetz’s later remarks on Iran make clear, this is not someone interested in reducing the strain on our military or reducing unnecessary risks to American soldiers, as he actively calls for military action that will greatly strain and endanger all of our forces in the Gulf and central Asia. Neither does he give any hint of thinking strategically about how distastrous an Iranian war would be for U.S. and allied interests.
P.S. If so-called Jacksonians don’t believe in limited wars, as Reihan says, their instincts are decidedly not conservative. If self-described conservatives embrace the idea of unlimited and total war, that simply reveals how far removed they are from temperamental conservatism and how great the gap is between movement conservatism and a conservative disposition. Limiting the horror and destruction of war is something that is certainly basic to civilized behavior, and there is reason to think that the desire to impose those limits is a conservative one.
Update: Donald Douglas demonstrates just how dense (or dishonest) militarists can be. As anyone can see, I am defending the proposed war plan against Chaffetz’s insipid criticisms, and I will be defending the war plan in my next column. These are odd things for an “oppose-war-at-all-costs” and so-called defeatist to do. It is a useful reminder that hawks such as Douglas are completely shameless and will say whatever serves them in the moment.
37 Responses to “This “New Anti-War Right” Is Pro-War And Wrong”
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One problem with this is that “vanquishing enemies” in a war against a domestic insurgency is a goal that cannot really be achieved without strict rules of engagement and respect for the civilian population.
I disagree. So does Edward Luttwak, Genghis Khan and every other empire in history. Killing everyone is guaranteed to end an insurgency (“no man, no problem”), but a more moderate dose of collective punishment tends to do the trick. The thing is, in accordance with Steve Sailer’s “dirt theory of war” these days the ground people live on isn’t worth as much as human capital. Hard to say it conflicts with the strategic goals of our wars, since those aren’t well defined in the first place. Certainly it would be politically unpalatable (as was the successful use of torture in Algeria, which has also worked well for the nationalist government which replaced the French and doesn’t have to deal with such political obstacles), but then an opponent should be straight-forward and say they simply oppose the tactic on their own moral grounds rather than insisting against history it can’t possibly work.
Well, of course, there are political and moral standards that make such tactics unacceptable for us, but in the modern era such tactics have rarely succeeded against insurgencies. In an era of mass social and political mobilization, the “kill everyone” approach tends to generate greater resistance along the way. Genghis Khan et al. could compel capitulation through mass terror because there was no effective means for the terrorized populations to strike back. Mass reprisals during the occupation of Greece did not come close to ending the resistance. Even Moscow’s scorced earth approach to Chechnya has not ended their problem with militants in the north Caucasus. The other problem with the “kill everyone” approach is that no occupying power actually wants to destroy the entire population. They want to keep most of the population intact and under their or their allies’ control. Ending an insurgency is usually a means to achieve some other political goal. It is not usually an end in itself.
Daniel,
You lost me here. Big war won’t work, limited war won’t work, bailing out with episodic military response won’t work. All for different reasons. BTW, bailing out altogether would still leave Iraq/Afghanistan basket cases.
So given a collection of lousy alternatives, can you pick one and explain why?
P.S. Basket cases may be as good as it gets in that part of the world.
Limited war won’t work? That might be the case, but I am not saying anything of the kind here. It depends on what the goal is supposed to be. A limited war isn’t going to annihilate Pashtun forces hostile to the Kabul government, but it should secure the civilian population and could force some political settlement with Pashtuns currently lumped together under a “Taliban” label that will create a tolerably stable political situation. Limited wars are fought to achieve minimal objectives. As long as we don’t pretend that fighting a limited counterinsurgency is going to eliminate all of Afghanistan’s problems or result in total victory over every fundamentalist-tinged militia in the region, it could work.
Re: Daniel Larison
OK, thanks for the clarification. So then how in your opinion should the American strategy play out? Is it the Obama plan or something different?
As I told Whiskey, the Russians certainly received their lumps as a result of brutality against the Chechens, but the leading insurgents wound up throwing in the towel. In the modern era Sri Lanka just defeated its long-running Tamil insurgency over the objections of human rights groups. I already mentioned the current Algerian government. Their populace has the technological ability to mobilize (which I’ll agree is important and the enabler of nationalism in the first place), but not the domestic political ability to hold back state forces. Empires of old and their modern “counter-insurgency/counter-terrorism)” standins have failed to subdue populations, repeatedly in the case of Afghanistan, but they have succeeded as well, generally through brutal methods.
I think you do have a point about the conservatism of limited war. The wars of kings tended to be limited because they were fought over territory. If it wasn’t worth fighting any more for a scrap of ground, they could call it quits. The wars of men are justified with nationalist ideology, and so one cannot so easily tell their people that is all resolved and bygones should be bygones (the Iran-Iraq war lasted such a long time for that reason). Legitimacy is also conferred upon a cause rather than a commander and his forces, which encourages non-uniformed partisans and guerrillas.
Mr. Larison writes: If self-described conservatives embrace the idea of unlimited and total war, that simply reveals how far removed they are from temperamental conservatism…[l]imiting the horror and destruction of war is…basic to civilized behavior.
I disagree. Some of the greatest civilizations fought horrifyingly unlimited wars against barbarians. One often successful way to preserve, or conserve, an empire is to ruthlessly suppress uprisings. Why should conservatives be all that worried about the unconservative effects of unlimited war on the other guy? While barbarians and savages have traditionally had their place as categories in Western just war theory, it’s a historically liberal, anticonservative heresy of the 20th century that jus in bello is a matter of universal norms.
There are plenty of reasons to be morally concerned about this kind of war, but none that strike me as particularly conservative.
Torture “worked” in Algeria? I guess that’s why Algeria is still a French colony. Oh…wait. Hmmm. Maybe it didn’t actually work quite so well as some think. Maybe it actually increased the resistance to French occupation. Just maybe.
Im very skeptical of a counter-insurgency campaign built
on protecting the civilian population having any major political success in the country, although I think Larison is correct to note this option, though massively flawed, is still superior
to the idiotic “bomb them from a distance” approach that others are advocating. The plain fact is that airpower, without ground intelligence, is going to kill many, many more civilians than enemies. Comparisons to WWII are not much value here, unless you believe the German residents of Dresden
were disposed to retributive terrorism against the United States.
One of the problems with the Obama “surge and (possibly) start leaving” strategy is that its difficult to estimate with any precision whether you are making sufficient progress to justify
a further engagement in the country, especially in a mere couple years, which is a pretty short span of time warwise. Another problem is one of durability. Reading some biographical information on many of the former mujahadeen, one is struck my how often these people change sides: Hekmaytar, for instance, began as a pro-Soviet communist and ended up as a fanatical Islamist, making plenty of smaller alliances and opportunistic betrayals along the way.
Anyway, I think America should simply leave. The result will not be an immediate Taliban takeover, but a new round of Civil War between the Pakistani (and probably Saudi, too) backed Pushtun and the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities backed by Russia, Iran and India. With another confessional war going on in Yemen, we might do well to let the house of Islam fight itself for awhile.
conradg, torture resulted in political opposition within France culminating in de Gaulle’s referendum, but it was successful within Algeria. Even the pro-FLN communist filmmakers behind “The Battle of Algiers” acknowledge that. The Algerian government uses torture against islamist rebels quite successfully without any worry that it will “increase the resistance” to their regime.
unless you believe the German residents of Dresden were disposed to retributive terrorism against the United States
German and Japanese civilians were certainly killed in mass quantities by the allies during WW2 before their countries were occupied. Why is it they did not retaliate with terrorism? I think it’s because they knew how devastating our retaliation for that would be. As time went on, eventually they forgot to be angry with us. Native Americans and southerners likewise learned to live with defeat at the hands of the U.S government.
Once again, Daniel nitpicks to death the statements of an irrelevant Republican Congressmen. The last time I looked, the Republicans are irrelevant in the House and have zero affect on defense or foreign policy. Also, what the Obama believes about Afghanistan is the only opinion that matters.
It is much more what Rep. Howard Berman, Rep. Ike Skelton, and Rep. David Obey believe on Afghanistan than what a backbencher from Utah has to say.
Is Daniel afraid he will lose his credibility with the left and possibly lose out on future jobs with liberal think tanks,publications, and academia if he ever posts about what the relevant Democrats are saying instead of the irrelevant Republicans
Let’s break out Occam’s razor: is it more likely that the Center for American Progress is going to hire Larison, perhaps to head their “progress is overrated, hark back to the middle ages” department, or that Reihan chose to write about Chaffetz and Daniel responded?
So you actually believe that someone who blogs for The American Conservative is going to be an early draft pick for liberal think tanks? A distaste for engaging in drawn-out, unwinnable conflicts is tantamount to being a fellow traveler?
it’s all part of the democratic outreach to the Orthodox community. Because that’s been going so well.
Daniel is mentioned frequently on liberal blogs as one of the “good” conservatives. Good meaning that he nitpicks conservatives while never bothering to write about liberals. So, Daniel keeps writing about the blathering of irrelevant Republican back benches instead of writing about the dominant forces in foreign policy: The Obama Administration and the senior Democrats in Congress who chair the committees that actually affect foreign policy.
My guess is that I read ten more blog posts about the irrelevant Republicans before Daniel writes anything about the Obama Administration.
And yet somehow, despite all the torture, the Algerian resistance did in fact increase rather than decrease. That the current Algerian government still uses torture without fear that it will increase resistance simply goes to show that the real reason governments torture has nothing to do with it being effective in ending insurgent resistance movements, but because governments like to exert maximum control over those who oppose it, on sheer principle, regardless of whether it actually achieves their long term goal of stability. Torturers like to think of themselves as rational pragmatists, but in reality they are delusional fantasists.
Count me as another who would like to hear more about what Daniel has to say about Obama’s foreign policy, and less about what irrelevant Republicans think.
As a left-of-center guy, I can’t get enough of the phrase “irrelevant Republicans.” :)
The Algerian government was successful in the Algerian Civil War, to steal one of your lines “I guess that’s why Algeria is still under their rule”. Kerensky could not hold on to power because he was a spineless liberal who didn’t use his whiff of grapeshot to clear the streets, the Bolsheviks were far more offensive to polite sensibilities but held power for much longer. Is the Chinese government more or less stable because they sent tanks into Tiananmen Square? They would have had fewer problems if they sent the tanks in before the situation had grown to that point.
For those who can’t get enough comment section debates on Algeria, one which I did not participate in is here.
“Is Daniel afraid he will lose his credibility with the left and possibly lose out on future jobs with liberal think tanks,publications, and academia if he ever posts about what the relevant Democrats are saying instead of the irrelevant Republicans”
Yes, I am daily inundated with job offers from liberal organizations and flooded with requests from the administration to do their bidding. That must be my purpose here. I must be here to retain my “credibility with the left,” of which I have none whatsoever.
For whatever it’s worth, I think the Democrats who object to the Afghanistan plan are also mistaken. They do at least have some credibility as opponents of misguided military interventions.
I spent the better part of the last two years telling everyone exactly what I think of Obama’s foreign policy views. On the whole, I have been very critical and not supportive at all.
Killing lots of people often does the trick. Torture, not so much.
Actually, Daniel, you seem to have come to like Obama’s foreign policy much more than you liked his foreign policy views. Sort of as I predicted. It’s still not what you would like to ideally see happen, but realistically you seem more pleased with him than not, in relation to the generally expected alternatives.
And liberals seem to like you not so much because they find common ground, but because you at least have personal integrity and argue from facts rather than ideology. Quite rare these days on the right.
conradg,
The left considers Daniel to have personal integrity because he nitpicks Republicans. The minute Daniel starts nitpicking Democrats or anyone in the Obama Administraiton, the Democratic controlled knives will come out and Daniel will be shredded by the left. That is why Daniel is much more comfortable nitpicking back bencher Republicans who are irrelevant to policy than anyone in the Obama Administration. It is a very safe thing to do and does not draw criticism.
Daniel knows that the right does not feel the need to defend back bencher Republicans. Daniel knows that the way to make a name for himself is to be the good conservative who only nitpicks conservatives and stays away from Democrats and progressives. Daniel also knows that nitpicking Democrats has no up side but a huge down side.
I think Daniel criticizes Republicans and other conservatives more than he does Democrats because he cares more about them. He’s a fairly extreme conservative in the Ron Paul mode, and would like to see the Republican party reflect that kind of approach. He doesn’t expect to have any influence on Democrats, but he does at least aspire to influence Republicans and other conservatives.
If Daniel really wanted to make a name for himself I’m sure he could do much better than Limbaugh and Coulter and Hannity, but he simply has a conscience. As the most frequent liberal commentator on this blog over the last year and a half, I can assure you that Daniel has had no shortage of criticism of Obama, and I’ve differed with him quite a lot, There is absolutely zero sense in which I consider Daniel a liberal. It’s only that genuine conservatives always have something in common with genuine liberals, by the very nature of human experience. There’s a huge difference between philosophical conservatism and modern partisan conservatism however. I can respect the former, and understand why the former would feel more threatened by the latter than by liberals themselves.
There’s a sick, nasty, viral form of conservatism in the country that is actually a greater threat to genuine conservatism than it is to liberals. We liberals are more than happy to run against those kinds of conservatives. Bring Palin on, please. We’d feel a lot more threatened running against an Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, or Bush I. Not that Daniel would even be terribly supportive even of those types, given his Ron Paul-Baldwin sympathies. Even so, I like many liberals, find Ron Paul much more appealing than the kind of conservatives dominating the Republican party these days. I don’t agree with a lot of what Paul says, but I respect his integrity. There are at least areas of serious overlap. You seem not to understand the notion of having an opponent one can respect and even like.
In 1982 Hafez al Assad ordered a ferocious attack on muslim brother hood “insurgents” in Hama, Syria.
At the conclusion of that operation, the muslim brotherhood insurgencyin Syria was no more.
I would suggest that daddy Assad’s version of The Hearts and minds program was far more efficacious than ours ever was or ever will be.
conradg,
I did not say that Daniel was a liberal. However, I do believe that the admiration of liberals is more important to him than the idea of changing the irrelevant conservative movement in the U.S. While looking back at Daniel previous writings, his biggest complaint about the Obama Administration is that too many of their policies are similar to what was done during the Bush Administration.
For all of the claim of wanting to change conservatives, Daniel is always short of positives suggestions for conservative but very long on nitpicking and insults.
If Daniel wanted to ingratiate himself to progressives, he could not have picked a better way to do it. To claim that it was totally unintended and he really supports conservatives is not supported by the evidence.
I don’t think Daniel gives a rat’s ass what other people think of him, liberal or conservative, except in the basic human sense of being a man of reason and ethics. I think he finds the limited admiration some liberals have for him amusing, and I haven’t seen any indication that it’s changed his views on anything one iota.
In regards to Obama, Daniel was very critical of his stated foreign policy views during the campaign. I suggested to him then that when Obama actually became President, he would see Obama’s actual policies much more favorably, within limits of course. And that seems to have been the case. Obama is no Ron Paul, but he’s no McCain either. Daniel seems to realize that Obama is trying to steer a more realistic and “conservative” course in foreign policy in many areas, especially those that matter most, and is clearly reluctant to create excuses for any new interventions. If he’s given some credit to Obama, or refrained from criticizing him, and instead directing his ire to GOPers who are advocating interventions at every turn in the road, that’s simply consistent with Daniel’s own foreign policy views, which are more in conflict with the GOP at this point than with Democrats or liberals. One can come to a non-interventionist (or at least lesser degrees of intervention) policy by either conservative or liberal means. A lot of that just has to do with being realistic, which is supposedly the basis of conservatism, but which is in short supply in the GOP.
Superdestroyer:
Daniel has been making the case since forever that the people considered “conservatives” these days are largely in conflict with anything remotely approaching conservative values, and the movement Right has discarded all but “libruls bad, war good” in their worldview. If some liberals happen to agree with this then so be it, it doesn’t make him one of them.
BTW: I’m an anarchist & Eunomia is in the blogroll of my own site. Daniel has a broader audience than you’d think…
People as far left as Dennis Kucinich and as far right as Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan agree that current American foreign policy is a crock of dangerous BS. For this, all of these guys are derided as “unserious” fringe nutjobs. The cancers of American exceptionalism and a kneejerk tendency to reckless intervention are deeply advanced in both parties. But they are much more advanced in the Republican party where they have become a weird sort of fetish. It is difficult to criticize Obama’s Afghanistan policy when the so-called loyal opposition’s main critique is that he isn’t reckless enough.
I am quite sure that if the GOP’s line was less completely unhinged, Mr. Larison would have enough to say about this Administration’s missteps.
Sanity shouldn’t have a party affiliation.
“Less completely.” That wasn’t too good. Sorry.
Who cares that the Republicans are completely unhinged? The Republicans have zero affect on policy and have almost no potential to affect policy in the future.
Why not spend time looking at the groups that will affect policy in the future such as the CBC, CHC, and the progressive caucus? Daniel seems to be working ever hard never to criticize the left for any of their home grown ideas and one should be asking why?
Superdestroyer, I’m a liberal myself who at times wonders why a smart guy like Larison, so eloquent in his damning of the GOP’s leadership, doesn’t just jump ship and hang with us. Then I read a post like the one in which he contends that liberals secretly cheer Sarah Palin’s rise as an easily beatable GOP presidential contender, and I realize he’s not one of us at all.
i am a liberal who overtly cheers on palin’s rise. if the right is ever to rise again as a reasonable force and counterwelght to the left, the pustule that she represents on the elephant of american politics will have to be lanced.
superdestroyer:
“Who cares that the Republicans are completely unhinged? The Republicans have zero affect on policy and have almost no potential to affect policy in the future. ”
It’s amazing that people are able to say this with a straigh face.
As long as the Republicans can come even close to mounting a filibuster they can help determine the terms of the debate. I don’t believe the party is quite emasculated yet.
I’ll say, Jetan. Sometimes I feel Obama talks to nobody BUT Republicans in his speeches.
And Chrome Agnomen — No thanks on letting La Palin anywhere close to the presidential podium. I remember being sure Carter would crush a figurehead dunce like Reagan.
Agreed beej. I want the GOP to run their best, not their worst. As P.T. Barnum said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” It is just too scary.
i don’t think palin has a chance of winning, nor do i think she even considers it. the job doesn’t pay well, and it involves work. plus quitting is frowned upon. however by remaining on the sidelines she will continue to be a pestilence infecting reasonable political discourse. i will concede, though, that she has much company in that.
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