I’ve wondered for years how the Left could idolize despots: the likes of Saddam, Hugo, and Mahmoud. Well, the mystery is finally solved as I happened to stumble across this magazine. It may be published by the Sulzberger family (though I’m not sure …

“… Tet and Somalia were not defeats. They were success perceived as failures. Such stark divergence between perception and reality is common in wartime, when people’s beliefs about which side wins and which loses are often driven by psychological factors that have nothing to do with events on the battlefield.”

The battlefield in the Vietnam War and in Somalia was not only on the ground where the combat units fought. It was much bigger than that. Johnson and Tierney do not seem to understand that the battlefield included the ability of our political leaders to cultivate and sustain a “unified national will.” In regard to the Vietnam War and in Somalia, we can say that our national leadership was unequal to the task and was defeated. It is not a media generated false perception but rather a grim reality that this nation must be fought (against our enemies) in a seamless universe of war that includes multiple and varied dimensions. One of these dimensions is military action. Another dimension is the commitment of the people. Both are instruments of war, both can contribute to victory and both can be subject to defeat. In combat, our leaders must lead and develop both. I don’t think our congress and executive branch have understood this. I think the Vietcong did:

‘‘’You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,’ said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. ‘That may be so,’ he replied, ‘but it is also irrelevant.’” - Harry G. Summers On Strategy

I remember in 1976 at USMC The Basic School (TBS) in Quantico, VA seeing a military instructional movie regarding communication security in the Vietnam War. According to this movie the Vietcong had developed incredible electronic warfare capability using the most humble of equipment. The movie described the apparently laxity of communication security by the US forces and the great success the communists had in compromising our communications in the most deadly ways for our soldiers and marines. If this was true than it described a dimension of war that was not given due leadership consideration at the time. I believe this same “type” of conceptual error is being made in the US war in Iraq. There are dimension(s) of this war that have not been given due consideration by the national leadership. In the same way that our company commanders must use their unit as an instrument of combat and must “fight their company” against the enemy, our national leaders must “fight the nation” in time of war. I am saying that in the universe of war there is a seamless environment composed of many dimensions. One of the dimensions is the commitment of the people. Our elected government has failed to understand this in Iraq.

The organized application of violence on the battlefield is clearly the most dramatic and traumatic component of war…, but it is not the only one. If national leadership takes this country into a war and does not have a legitimate plan to cultivate and sustain a “unified national will” to support that war than they have not done their job. It is not a problem of the press, it is a failure in leadership. Can you imagine a unit leader, leading his or her company into an attack without reconnaissance, without considering the situation, mission, execution, admin and logistics, and command and signal? This administration has done the moral and operational equivalent of this kind of unacceptable and poor performance. I am saying that it is not “perception” but reality: one of the components of war is the will of the American People. It is simultaneously a weapon against the enemy and an objective of opposing forces. If we go into war without a plan and contingency plans or if we fail to execute a plan to cultivate and sustain a unified national will we are fighting with our hands tied behind our back.

Whatever we do in Iraq at this dismal point in time, if we do not have a national leadership that cultivates and sustains with integrity, an unified national will than we can say once again, (to paraphrase Bernard B. Fall) that our elected government is accountably “unequal to the task” that is at least Iraq.

(Around Midnight at sundayschoolforsinners.blogspot.com)

Anything less, is to pit terror upon the Free world, confusing aggression with prevention; and prohibiting function of a World in support of int’l laws.
Rick Moran posts: THE ISG REPORT: NOT EXACTLY
“BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS; “Baker botched it. Gi…

… that was the quote from NBC’s Tim Russert this afternoon, referring to what he says a senior Republican told him on condition of anonymity. The unnamed official was talking about the Iraq war, and the neoconservative dream of building a democrati…