Illusions of Grandeur

In two recent articles, Andrew Bacevich -- a graduate of West Point and Princeton, a retired US Army colonel and a veteran of Vietnam with a doctorate in American diplomatic history -- has focused on the illusions which spawned the War on Terror, and the illusions which persist in the rubble of its failure. "Valor does not offer the measure of an army's greatness," he writes in Illusions of Victory, "nor does fortitude or durability nor technological sophistication. A great army is one that accomplishes its assigned mission. Since George W. Bush inaugurated his Global War on Terror, the armed forces of the United States have failed to meet that standard."

Bacevich does not blame the soldiers on the ground. They have, he says, displayed more than their share of fortitude and durability. At the heart of America's failure lie three great illusions: the first is the misplaced belief that, in the 1980's and 90's, the United States reinvented military conflict. During this period, those in charge of the American military began to believe that, "by employing these new military techniques [like precision guided weapons] the United States could eliminate an obstreperous foreign leader and his cronies, while sparing the population over which that leader ruled." This confidence in new technology, says Bacevich in a second article, Is Perpetual War Our Future? Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Bush Era, trumped old truths -- particularly those of military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote two centuries ago that, "War is the realm of chance. No other human activity gives it greater scope: no other has such incessant and varied dealings with this intruder."

Bacevich says that the second great illusion was that both the officer corps -- and, more importantly, the civilian leadership of the armed forces -- had learned this lesson in Vietnam; and that it had found expression in the Powell-Weinberger Doctrine of overwhelming force: "Henceforth . . . the United States would fight only when genuinely vital interests were at stake. It would do so in pursuit of concrete and attainable objectives. It would mobilize the necessary resources -- political and moral as well as material -- to win promptly and decisively." But Mr. Rumsfeld, who had flown Navy jets in peace time, had no experience of the "realm of chance" which was the chief hallmark of military conflict. And his deputies, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, had no military experience at all. Most tellingly and most tragically, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had both worked very hard to stay out of Vietnam. Cheney, in particular, had claimed in a Congressional hearing years ago that he had "other priorities" at the time.

The third and last illusion was that the division between the military and the American public -- which had been exposed so painfully during Vietnam -- had been healed by the new All Volunteer Force. By professionalizing the military and by getting rid of the citizen soldier, those who disagreed with American policy would be marginalized, not having a personal stake -- like a member of the family-- in it. The problem was that, while the All Volunteer Force may have dampened criticism of the war, it placed an unequal burden on the troops.

These illusions persist in the wake of America's failure in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And it is those illusions which Bacevich is at pains to dispel. What are the real lessons which we should learn from this monumental failure? The first hearkens back to Von Clausewitz: "War's essential nature is fixed, permanent, intractable, and irrepressible. War's constant companions are uncertainty and risk. . . . War remains today what it has always been -- elusive, untamed, costly, difficult to control, fraught with surprise, and sure to give rise to unexpected consequences. Only the truly demented will imagine otherwise."

The second lesson is that, "As has been the case throughout history, the utility of armed force remains finite. Even in the information age, to the extent that force 'works,' it does so with respect to a limited range of contingencies."

The third lesson is the futility of the so called Bush Doctrine of preventive war. "History has repeatedly demonstrated," writes Bacevich, "the irrationality of preventative war. . . . For principled guidance in determining when the use of force is appropriate, the country should conform to the Just War tradition -- not only because that tradition is consistent with our professed moral values, but also because its provisions provide an eminently useful guide for sound statecraft."

The fourth and final lesson, says Becevich, is not to confuse strategy with ideology. "The president's freedom agenda, which supposedly provided a blueprint for how to prosecute the Global War on Terror, expressed grandiose aspirations without serious effort to assess the means required to achieve them. . . . The political elite that ought to bear the chief responsibility for crafting grand strategy instead nursed fantasies of either achieving permanent global hegemony or remaking the world in America's image. Meanwhile, the military elite that could puncture those fantasies and help restore a modicum of realism to U.S. policy fixates on campaigns and battles with generalship largely a business of organizing and coordinating materiel."

To some, Bacevich may sound like a wild eyed radical. However, he defines himself as a "Catholic conservative;" and he has urged conservatives to vote for Barack Obama. What he brings to the argument is historical perspective and his experience in Vietnam. More than that, he brings the tragedy of a father's personal and private grief. A year ago, his son -- a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army -- was killed in Iraq. Bacevich is a much wiser man than the man who currently sits in the Oval Office.

Is Iran Next?

In the October 8th edition of The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reported that Pentagon planners had, for sometime, been developing plans to attack Iran. "This summer," wrote Hersh, "the White House, pushed by the office of vice president Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran." The original plans called for a "broad bombing attack." But the redrawn plans would emphasize "'surgical' strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere."

Shortly after Hersh's article appeared, Mr. Bush -- at a press conference -- declared, "I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." One should note that the information necessary for constructing a nuclear weapon is all over the Internet. If possessing knowledge is the threshold for an attack, the entire world is a target.

Defenders of the president claim that Bush, whose command of the English language is worse than embarrassing, was merely displaying more of his shattered syntax. But, in an address to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies on October 22nd, Vice President Cheney warned, "The Iranian regime needs to know that, if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences."

Even Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has joined the chorus. He has vowed that, should Iran develop a nuclear weapon while he is president, he will attack Iraq's neighbour. That, he says, is "a promise."

It is interesting that all three of these men have never served in combat. And, therefore, none of them have any familiarity with the unintended consequences which accompany the use of military force -- what former Secretary of State Colin Powell has called the Pottery Barn Rule -- "you break it, you own it." It was President Kennedy's familiarity with that rule which led him to build a naval quarantine around Cuba, rather than invade that island.

As a glaring example of the Pottery Barn Rule, Iraq is Exhibit A. Yet both Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney refuse to recognize it. It could be that they are simply dense; or perhaps, convinced of their own righteousness, they are incapable of admitting a mistake. Whatever the reason, both men appear to be drawn more to the power of myth than to the power of facts. And, when it comes to myths, there are chiefly two which, apparently, appeal to both men. The first is The Myth of the American West, where it is easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys -- and where the administration of justice rests on the principle that the guys in the white hats are quicker on the draw than the guys in the black hats. The other myth is the Myth of American Invincibility. In this myth, the American military -- like Washington's army at Valley Forge -- endures unspeakable hardships; but, in the end, it triumphs. That myth died in the jungles of Vietnam thirty-five years ago. But it was resurrected by the Neo Cons when the Cold War ended; and it was promoted by a generation of boosters who spent the Vietnam years far away from those jungles. In the last four years, the Myth of American Invincibility has died another death in the sands of Mesopotamia.

It is this mythological perspective which appears to have led the president and vice president to conclude that the U.S. can ride out the consequences of a "surgical" strike on Iraq. Having destabilized Iraq and empowered Iran, they now propose to take those intransigent mullahs to the woodshed. But, as a former senior intelligence official told Hersh, "Do you think those crazies in Tehran are going to say, "'Uncle Sam is here! We'd better stand down?' The reality is an attack will make things ten times warmer."

It would have done a world of good if the education of Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney -- and Mr. Giuliani -- had included stints in the jungles and rice fields of Southeast Asia.

It Starts When You're Always Afraid

Canadians were justifiably proud when Prime Minister Jean Chretien refused to join the "Coalition of the Willing" before the invasion of Iraq in 2001. But when previously censored documents were released last week, we discovered that we had no cause to be proud of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service -- or, indeed, of the Chretien government -- after Maher Arar was detained in the United States and shipped to Syria, where he was imprisoned for a year -- tortured -- and eventually released.

Last summer, a judicial inquiry headed by Justice Dennis O'Connor, concluded that the Americans were acting on faulty information provided them by the RCMP. The government awarded Mr. Arar ten million dollars in compensation and set up another inquiry to investigate the role that the Mounties and CSIS played in the affair. But the Harper government also censored sections of O'Connor's report, citing national security, and claiming that release of the censored information could damage relationships with international security agencies, more specifically, the C.I.A.

Last week, the Federal Court of Canada ordered the release of the censored material. And it immediately became apparent why the government had tried to keep the information under lock and key. To begin with, the RCMP had provided misleading information to the judge who granted a warrant to look into Arar's affairs. The Mounties neglected to tell him that the information they possessed had probably been obtained under torture and could therefore be tainted. Most disturbing of all, CSIS suspected that as soon as Arar was handed over to American intelligence officials, he would be whisked out of the country and taken to a site where the kind of interrogation prohibited in the United States could take place.

Two days after the U.S. secretly deported Arar, Jack Hooper -- the second in command at CSIS -- wrote a memo in which he speculated that, "the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him." This opinion was bolstered by a report from a CSIS liaison officer, based in Washington, who had noted a trend "that when the C.I.A. or F.B.I. cannot legally hold a terrorist subject, or wish a target questioned in a firm manner, they have them rendered to countries willing to fulfill that role."

All of this was known by Canada's police and security services long before The Washington Post reported on "black sites" overseas, which were used to expedite the process of "extraordinary rendition"-- an Orwellian phrase if there ever was one -- which made torture by proxy sound like a new and melodic cover of an old song.

What is most shameful of all is the fact that, knowing all of this, the Liberal government let Mr. Arar languish in a Syrian jail for a year, even though they knew the Syrians considered him more of a nuisance than a critical threat. And, to fuel the fires of cynicism, William Elliot -- the newly appointed commissioner of the RCMP (who was appointed supposedly to clean up incompetence in the national police force) -- revealed at the end of last week that he participated in the censoring of Justice O'Connor's report.

It's clear that when a government (of any stripe) cites national security as the reason for withholding information from the public, chances are that its real motive is to avoid hanging out its dirty laundry. Last week's revelations are a reminder that, in Canada, the judicial inquiry is a critical oversight mechanism, whose purpose is to keep the government of the day honest -- and that paranoia's first target is the judicial system. As Buffalo Springfield reminded us four decades ago, "It starts when you're always afraid."

The Difference Between a Battle and a War

We can learn something from the British response to the recent terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow. British authorities have relied on very good police work and very effective international cooperation. The same strategy paid considerable dividends when suicide bombers hit the London transportation system two years ago.

That insight is critical as Americans begin to call for a change of strategy in Iraq. Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld insisted that what was needed to combat terrorism was a war. And they brought all the technological resources at their disposal to effect "regime change" in Afghanistan and Iraq. But both countries have a history; and history suggests that in both countries a massive military response was -- and is -- counterproductive. The Russians tried that strategy in Afghanistan in the 1970's; and the British tried the same strategy in Iraq in the 1920's. Both Russia and Britain, despite their huge investment in weapons and human lives, failed to change the fundamental character of the region. Instead, they created what the United States has created in Iraq today -- insurgencies.

Why? Because, despite their sheer brute force, Russia, Britain and the United States -- in the tortured language of George W. Bush -- "misunderestimated" their enemy. The British have some experience with this problem. Perhaps that accounts for the way they are dealing with the attacks in London and Glasgow. But in 1776, they lost the thirteen original colonies because, as the historian Barbara Tuchman pointed out in The March of Folly, they failed to see that, essentially, the American Revolution was an insurgency and that their opponents were not ignorant and unwashed country bumpkins.

It is more than a little ironic that the present American administration is so ignorant of its country's history. It is even more ironic that thirty-five years ago the United States faced an insurgency in Vietnam which no amount of carpet bombing could bring to its knees. History -- whether ancient or modern -- has no bearing on their thinking.

The British encountered the same problem in India. When Mahatma Gandhi told the British that they would one day "walk out of India," Winston Churchill declared that he placed no store in the ridiculous assertions of a "naked savage." But Adolph Hitler misread the same Churchill and his countrymen in 1940, when his air assault on Britain produced the exact opposite of what he so confidently predicted. As a strategy, "shock and awe" is counterproductive against a population prepared to wait out the invaders.

In defending their homeland, the British have abandoned shock and awe for intelligence and leg work. Their chief weapon has been information; and they have relied on an international network of police forces and intelligence agencies to generate that information. Information has led them to abandon some of their previous assumptions -- like the enemy are all foreign infiltrators and they are all ignorant barbarians. The medical profession is the last place that any of us would begin to search for terrorists.

It is information, not ideology, which drives their strategy. The tragedy of the last six years is that the Bush administration has got so much backward. Intelligence comes before strategy; tolerance comes before democracy; battles are on going; but wars are -- or at least should be -- rare. And preemptive war is doomed to failure.

What we have needed from the beginning is a battle against Al Qaeda. All out war simply saps resources; and, as the First World War proved, it can obliterate an entire generation. The war we have waged -- including the war Canadians are fighting in Afghanistan -- is fought against an enemy who has better knowledge of the terrain and which is -- in the words of one military analyst -- willing to trade space for time. When things get tough, insurgents simply leave one area and pop up in another. What we have needed all along is a strong homeland defense, which emphasizes good police work, not a crusade to bring democracy to "savages."

Mr. Bush is not the first to misunderstand the world in which he lives and the battles which need to be fought. More importantly, he ignored advice that could have put him in a much different place. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell -- who knows something of war in general and of war in Iraq in particular -- has recently revealed that he spent two and a half hours with Mr. Bush, trying to convince him that his decision to invade Iraq was folly. "I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers," Powell told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Powell has some knowledge of the limits of military power. Of the civil war the American invasion of Iraq has spawned, Powell says, "It is not a civil war that can be put down or solved by the armed forces of the United States." Unfortunately, says Powell, "It is not going to be pretty to watch, but I don't know any way to avoid it."

The way to avoid it was to do what Mr. Bush was loathe to do -- which was to avoid grandiose dreams and the rhetoric which accompanies them. If Mr. Bush had committed himself and his country to an admittedly long battle with Al Qaeda, which required stellar police work as opposed to smart weapons, he would not face the general revolt he now confronts. Having led his countrymen into a quagmire, they do not trust him to lead them out. Even his once most fervent supporters understand the fundamental miscalculation he made.

He could have won a battle against Al Qaeda. But he has lost the War on Terror.

The Wrong Man

Canadians laugh at that old MGM icon, Nelson Eddy, serenading Jeanette MacDonald in the frozen wastes of the Yukon. They know that, in the depths of a Canadian Winter, no one chooses the Barren Lands as a suitable place to pledge their eternal devotion. It strikes us as frigidly incongruent.

But we do take some pride in the old chestnut about the Mounties always getting their man. However, we note that there is nothing in the chestnut about getting the right man.

Many winters have taught us about human frailty and human vulnerability in the face of forces more powerful than ourselves. Recognizing those forces, however, does not mean surrendering to them. As the Inuit and Eskimos learned long ago,we have the natural resources at our disposal to survive the harshest of winters.

This is certainly the winter of American discontent. But it has not been made glorious by this son of Bush. Once again, he is stoking the fires of paranoia, while boldly admitting the existence of secret prisons, all in the name of safety. Safety for whom and from whom?

The Maher Arar case provides a window on how Kafkaesque the present administration has become, and how easy it has been for Americans -- and more disturbingly -- Canadians to be caught up in the tide of fear which these folks are clearly using for their own convenience.

As Justice O'Connor's report makes clear, there was no evidence -- only misplaced suspicion -- for deporting Arar to Syria, where he was imprisioned and tortured.

Now more than ever, it is time for Canadians to insist on the rule of law and on the primacy of incontrovertible evidence when acting on terrorist threats. We are morally culpable if we pass hearsay evidence on to incompetents. The evidence has to be solid and the people who receive it must also be committed to the rule of law. In the Arar case, neither of these thresholds was met. Fighting barbarism by surrendering to it is ultimately self defeating. What is worse, it makes a mockery of everything that Canada stands for -- and until recently -- what the United States has stood for.