From: nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle)
Subject: Re: Principles, principles, principles
Organization: Psych Department, Indiana University
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 17:53:12 GMT

kmitche@eis.calstate.edu (Kenneth Mitchell) writes:

>nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle) writes:
>>     Would you say that there's any lesson to be drawn from that 
>> war concerning the wisdom of committing forces prior to 'committing' the
>> American people? In the absense of that commitment, should we have stayed?

>Actually, I'd say that the lesson to be learned is to decide ahead of time
>what the objectives are (i.e., "How will we know when we've won?) and
>don't get in unless we're willing to go for those objectives. The persian
>Gulf War was a good example. The objective was apparently "We win when
>there are no more Iraqis in Kuwait" (though I'd have preferred "We win
>when Saddam is in a Saudi jail for war crimes, but picky, picky) and we
>did what needed to be done to achieve the objective. In Beirut, as you
>correctly note, nobody had defined the objectives, and we got creamed. 

    Ok, here's a question for you. What should have been the objectives in 
Vietnam? In the 2nd Boer War General Roberts was successful in defeating 
every Boer field army he encountered and went on to occupy the capitals of 
both Transvaal and the Orange Free State, but the irregular Boer guerillas 
went on fighting for over 60 years. Would it have been enough to capture 
Hanoi?

>Bill Clinton has said occasionally that we need to get involved in the
>Serbian wars of aggression. I'd support aerial intervention ("we win when
>there are no Serbian airplanes flying over Bosnia or Croatia") but Slick
>Willie apparently doesn't have such clear objectives. 

    Well, you may be right about Slick Willy. My chief hope is that, as the 
Republicans did with Jerry Ford, he'll get himself a set of good advisors 
and then *listen* to what they tell him. 

>Mark Twain is quoted as saying that a cat who has once sat on a hot stove
>will never sit on a hot stove again. Of course, he'll never sit on a COLD
>one either!  While it is important to learn the lessons that history
>teaches us, it is CRITICALLY important that we learn only the right lessons!

    To a certain extent. I think that it's important to remember those wrong 
lessons as well so that they can be more effectively countered when (not if) 
they come up again.

>>     Right. That's exactly my position. So if that's my reason for 
>>opposing the war, and if there were lots of people in the millitary who 
>>felt the same way, then would you say that both me and the rest of them 
>>actually "supported the murders committed by the Khmer Rouge"?

>Since I'm one of the ones who wanted to get IN and finish the job, you'll
>understand that I'm not real sympathetic to the ones who wanted to quit. 

    No, I didn't really expect sympathy, but would you grant that those 
millitary folks had a point when they didn't want to stick around and fight 
a war that their government wouldn't let them win? Not all of the opposition 
to the war came from liberal vegetarian, new age religious types. Some of us 
just thought that it was a bad situation millitarily.

>What a tragedy that we had the ABILITY but not the "political will" to
>prevent 3 million murders, and the enslavement of 30 million people for 25
>years.

    Ability can never be completely separated from political will. We 
probably had the ability to help the kurds, and it was a tragedy that we 
didn't, but the tragedy was not our responsibility to fix. We really aren't 
the world's policemen; we can get involved in some places at some times, 
but I'd say that we should be really careful about making those commitments, 
and try whereever possible to make them in situations which highlight the 
strengths of our armed forces. The Persian Gulf was a great opportunity in 
that respect. The desert setting really enhanced the effectiveness of our 
airpower.

>> > I figure that when the consequences of an action are BAD
>> >that we have to be ready to accept that it doesn't make any difference
>> >WHAT our intentions were. 
 
>>     Hmmm, sounds dangerously close to being a justification for further 
>> expanionist "adventurism", but I'm sure that's not your intention. I guess 
>> I'm just extra sensitive because that's the basic reason the British used 
>> to justify literally dozens of "little wars" from the 1830's through 1910.
 
>Not sure what you're talking about here.

    I was thinking of some comments made by Sir Charles Napier prior to 
the annexation of Sind. Basically he noted that the British *were* going 
to conquer Sind, and "a very noble piece of scull-duggery it will be". 
British losses in Sind were around 2,000 out of an army of 18,000, so the 
consequences were questionable. And as Sir Charles noted, it was a somewhat 
dubious action regardless of the East India Company's noble intentions.

>>     In that case, do you think that they would have experienced a similar 
>> dominoe effect such as the one that has occurred in Eastern Europe? Would 
>> they eventually have been free of communism anyway, even without the time 
>> we bought with our boys' lives?

>I think it unlikely. After all, even as weak as we left them the communist
>regimes in Cambodia, Laos, and Viet Nam are still in power, and show no
>signs of letting go. On the other hand, absent our resistance to communist
>(read: Soviet) expansionist "adventurism" in southeast Asia, in Angola, in
>El Salvador, in Afghanistan, in Nicaragua, etc, it's unlikely that the
>Soviet empire would have fallen apart. 

    I'd say that there's a fundamental difference between Vietnam and the 
"covert" actions fought in Afganistan et al. Those actions were fought for 
the most part by local troops, meaning no US casualties to worry about. 
Also, since they were locals they did a good job of taking advantage of 
difficult terrain. Basically it was a matter of picking fights where the 
millitary advantages were in our favor, unlike Vietnam in which the terrain 
was very much to our disadvantage.

>I begin to think that maybe there's hope for you yet, Nathan!

    Well, don't get carried away. I try to read enough to understand 
something about war. As C.P. Snow noted, the lack of knowledge about 
war usually results in tragedy. But I'm not a "hawk" by any means. If 
wars can be avoided then it behooves us to do what we can to avoid it. 
Sometimes we don't have a choice and we have to fight, but in many 
cases we've been fortunate enough to be able to pick the battlefields to 
which we send our forces and in those cases I think we'd do well to pick 
the battlefields where we get the most advantage for each life lost.
I still think that 50,000 was too high a body count for what we got out 
of that war.

--
Nathan Engle                        Software Juggler
Psychology Department               Indiana University
nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu      nengle@copper.ucs.indiana.edu
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