Logic Times
Conditional Support for War
Posted by Aslan, 12/29/04, 11:32pm. Comments (3)
In a pure exercise of military power, the United States armed forces cannot be defeated. This is a statement of fact that not even the most extreme anti-American would contest.
When the United States deploys its military in a cause that it believes to be in its critical self-interest, what then is the standard of victory for the enemy? To defeat that which cannot be defeated. Any opponent of our military machine is confronted with the insurmountable task of assembling more firepower, better intelligence, more highly skilled personnel, superior technology and greater wealth than the United States of America. This is not remotely possible.
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However, there is a non-military component to the application of force – is the action supported by the people – is it justified? If morally justified and strongly supported, then the full application of military power is expected, and the standard for the weaker nation to prevail is out of reach. This we saw in Afghanistan. Post 9-11, the American people overwhelmingly considered this military action to be justified. The United States therefore entered that operation with the full threat of its military behind every move, every negotiation. This flipped Pakistan, a strong advocate of the Taliban, and made short work of Afghanistan, the vaunted slayer of empires.
A fully supported American military operation (which implies the American people see it as justified) will inevitably achieve victory given the current array of military powers in the world. It further follows that the only chance to defeat the United States in a war is to avoid the full might of its military and instead focus on eroding American support for the military action in question. Without unconditional support, there emerges a cost threshold beyond which support will be withdrawn, resulting in political management of the conflict and a chance for the enemy to prevail. This we saw in Viet Nam following the Tet Offensive. We also saw this in Mogadishu, where we were strategically defeated despite a weak enemy that suffered massive casualties.
What happens when unconditional support for a military operation becomes conditional?
- Unconditional support recognizes that the operation is essential regardless of the potential costs associated with the action. By virtue of our power and wealth, victory becomes inevitable.
- Conditional support views the operation as desirable, but not essential, and the cost influences the support. This is how the left, recently lead by John Kerry, views Iraq:
What is the devastating effect on our military when unconditional support is denied and the military operation receives only conditional support?
- Conditional support communicates to our opponent that the United States can be defeated. Support is dependent upon a certain reduced-cost outcome and support will be withdrawn if that cost threshold is exceeded.
- Conditional support restrains our military planners who know that the full application of military power may be a factor that influences tenuous support. This restraint results in a more hazardous environment for our military and ultimately costs the lives of American soldiers (e.g., Somalia).
- Conditional support emboldens our enemy to resist in the hopes of reaching the conditional threshold. In an engagement with the U.S. military where support is unconditional, the enemy must operate without hope of success, which demoralizes and leads to rapid victory.
- Conditional support lengthens any military engagement beyond its normal course (when the enemy is emboldened to resist, the conflict is extended).
The most devastating consequence of conditional support – most commonly seen in the phrase “I support the troops, but not the war” – is that we communicate to the enemy we can be beaten. The emboldened enemy will then try and elevate the cost in American lives to such a point that the support evaporates.
There is no greater disservice to our troops than to openly fault the war in which they are risking everything. The time for debate in a representative republic is before war. Once we commit as a nation to war, the time for debate is over. War is not a tax bill or stadium levy. War is life and death. The time for support is upon us.
This is the price that our soldiers require from the people they defend: to maximize their chance for success and survival with an unconditional message to the enemy that the massive might of the American military and the unshakeable will of the American people is behind each and every soldier.
With Viet Nam, it became fashionable to suppose that protest was American. It was free speech. This is not so. Protest before war, fierce debate in Congress, grass roots activism - these things are American. Protest during war is treason, developed in the Constitution as follows (taken from here):
1.2. Article III, Section 3. of the United States Constitution defines the crime of treason. Title 18, USCS, (Crimes and Criminal Procedure) Section 2381 of the Federal Statutes which is the Federal Statute implementing Article III, Section 3, of the Constitution, further defines treason as follows:
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or be imprisoned for not less than five years, and fined not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding office under the United States.
1.3. The case of United States v Haupt, D.C.III., 47 Supp. 836, 839 expanded the definition of treason to mean any act which 'strengthens or tends to strengthen the ability of the enemies of the United States or which weakens or tends to weaken the power of the United States to resist such enemies.'
Conditional support “strengthens or tends to strengthen the ability of the enemies of the United States.”
Conditional support reveals a weakness in American character to avoid assaults on a comfortable way of life, a weakness that has empowered the very Islamic movement we are now fighting:
"Using very meager resources and military means, the Afghan mujahidin demolished one of the most important human myths in history and the biggest military apparatus. We no longer fear the so-called Great Powers. We believe that America is much weaker than Russia; and our brothers who fought in Somalia told us that they were astonished to observe how weak, impotent, and cowardly the American soldier is. As soon as 80 American troops were killed, they fled in the dark as fast they could, after making a great of noise about the new international order. America's nightmares in Vietnam and Lebanon will pale by comparison with the forthcoming victory in al-Hijaz."
Osama bin Ladin, recruiting tape found in Afghanistan, post 9-11.
The purpose of the More Fuzzy Moral Math essay was to isolate those who do not support the war because of their concern for our soldiers. Such a philosophy puts those soldiers at greater risk; it is moral cowardice and has created and emboldened an enemy that now hopes to leverage our weakness into victory, a victory that would be otherwise impossible.
Copyright © 2004 Dan Hallagan. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
1: Larry Horacek
December 30, 2004 11:25am EST
Kudos to you, Aslan, for a great article. It is very difficult to prove that dissent against war is treasonous. Even during the Vietnam era, young people who demonstrated against the war on American campuses were not traitors; perhaps un-patriotic, but not treasonous. Their activities did indeed sap the morale of our armed forces but, for the most part, it was dissent and demonstration directed at US institutions and US citizens.
On the other hand, the actions of John Kerry in 1970 flying to France, seeking out the enemy North Vietnamese negotiators, and then meeting with them for the purpose of strengthening the US anti-war movement would easily fall into the category of treason. Kerry did not simply voice his protest against the war, he actively took steps to undermine the US Government policy through unauthorized direct contact with the enemy. Now that IS treason.
There is tremendous imprecision in determining the line beyond which any act moves from dissent to become treason. The definitions of treason given in your article describe an extremely broad category of activity not easily fitting the conditions of “fish or fowl.” I would have to side with those who would say that simply dissenting against the war (and contributing to the conditional acceptance of a US armed intervention) is not treason. On the other hand, I do not support nor respect those Americans who DO publicly demonstrate and dissent against a US armed intervention while saying they support the troops. They are supreme hypocrites.
{Aslan: Thank you, Larry. I will be the first to admit that labeling simple dissent as treason is ridiculous. There is even a role for active dissent during a time of war, but it is a subtle and mature role.
The point of that portion of the essay is to bring into sharp focus what is at stake: the lives of our soldiers who are handicapped by the naïve and chimerical left and their allies in the media who validate their nonsense. And they are buoyed by romantic notions of protest rooted in the self-indulgent, juvenile 60s. When I look at this picture below, I do not see rational protest; I see ignorance and a reckless disregard for the lives of young men and women in uniform.
They have no idea about the cost of liberty.}
2: EvntProdcr
December 30, 2004 11:52am EST
Your commentary on unconditional support for "the war," while well meaning exhibits a certain naieve extremism. You imply that if we blindly accept everything that our military and administration does in the name of the advancement of "liberty" then we will win. First of all, you ignore the fact that without dissent, there is no such thing as liberty. Tianamen Square should have made that perfectly clear to the entire world. Second, I wholly disagree with your premise that android like support for any administration's policies somehow make them pure and achievable. The history of the United States would seem to suggest that had we blindly accepted everything that each administration had proposed that America would magically have become Valhalla. Clearly, whether it was the conduct of military action in the revolutionary War, Jeffersonian land expansion, Jacksonian democracy, Lincoln's pursuit of the Civil War, Wilson's League of Nations or, yes, John's expansion of the Viet Nam war, the ability to provide contrasting views has been the strength, not the weakness of American Democracy.
{Aslan: I agree with you that dissent and contrasting views are a strength of American democracy. Indeed, the constitutional amendments begin with the premise of dissent - the second amendment in particular, which I strongly support, enshrines the power of dissent in a fashion that no other government of men had ever done before.
My point is that the timing of the dissent is what is in question. If a nation sends you to war, it had better have made up its mind. Any debate had better be resolved before that nation asks you to die for a cause. When war is the issue, certainty empowers the mission and vacillating dissent weakens the mission and costs lives. Therefore, the singular obligation of a decision for war is certainty and support.
Policy decisions are never unanimous. This is not a government of men that only acts unanimously, but a representative republic that debates and then decides. And in the matter of war, that decision needs to be definitive and final.
Any who believe that the subject remains open for hostile and inflammatory public debate after our soldiers are in field treats war like tax policy and betrays the trust of those who are at risk.}
3: William
December 30, 2004 12:38pm EST
I agree!
Those who protest the Iraq war and are our efforts there, and at the same time sport the nice ribbons that say "Support our Troops" are hypocrites.
To not support the War is a death sentence for our boys in uniform. In fact, you might as well hold a rally calling for the defeat and ultimately the lives of all US soldiers fighting there.
You are not Americans. Leave the country.
{Aslan: And that is my hope with this essay - not to belittle the concept of dissent, but to expose anti-war hypocrisy. The anti-war left despises soldiers as much as war, but they cleverly make the phantom distinction between the war and the warriors to avoid a backlash.}