Well, on the whole I tend to agree with what you say about the effectiveness of democracies and the contradictory character of brutal tactics and the goals we have set for the region.

However, I have two ammendments to offer. I think it's not democracy per se, but publicity in societies with a free flow of information that make these tactics unfeasible. Publicity depending on your point of view acts either as a corrective or as a distortional lens to the reality in the ground. Hence, a military event that would be insignificant on every single war in human history-like the bombardment at Qana- becomes a serious political defeat in modern war.

This IMO, explains why the English and the French brutally suppressed rebellions in India and Algeria respectively in the 19th century, but couldn't repeat their success a century later. The Algerian case is illustrative. If I am not mistaken, the first French counterinsurgency was one of the most brutal ever.

The second ammendment is this. Past successful counter-insurgencies alligned themselves with elements of the local population who knew the local realities of geography and culture; for example the English allied themselves with the Sunnis who became their partners in governing Iraq (which in turn, made the Sunnis the secular middle class that ruled over Shias for the past 80 years); the same with the Belgians who chose the lighter-skinned locals in order to govern their mandates setting up inadvertedly the ground for the tragedy of modern day Rwanda.

However, today in Iraq, America can't adopt this tactic either, because although it would work, it would defeat the goal of having a genuinely multi-ethnic democracy.

Which of course brings us again to the crucial question that tortures every thinking man in america. What where they thinking when they invaded Iraq?

Some bloggers of talent have gone after me for a column on Tuesday in which I raised questions about the nature of our advanced liberal civilization and whether it can win the war against Islamic terrorism.  Podhoretz

But Podhoretz' rhetorical question re: decimating the ranks of young Iraqi Sunnis had nothing whatever to do with the "war against Islamic terrorism" and everything to do with how an occupying power defeats or prevents an insurgency.  His original question was well put, and while I'm not surprised to see him backpeddling in such an humiliating crouch, I am disappointed.

Matt, do you believe the neocons when they describe what they're trying to achieve? There's every reason to believe that a Middle East wracked by war is exactly what they want.

Re: It's hard to know exactly how to count the ages of some of Europe's constitutional monarchies, but there are plenty of liberal regimes that have lasted longer than that.

Europe's (and Japan's) constitutional monarchies ARE liberal regimes.

I don't remember that quote from On War, but I don't have a copy in front of me. Since your link is to a paper on his works, is this the writer's or Clausewitz's statement?

There are various translations of the most commonly quoted phrase, and while I read a bit of German, I really can't infer his nuanced intent. Given when he wrote it, and the autocrats he served, I would think that "national policy" still is a closer translation than "politics".

Of course, he did much other theoretical work. For some reason, COL(ret) John Warden has recently been associated with the idea of centers of gravity, which is pure Clausewitz. Warden's contribution is the systematic use of centers of gravity as a simplifying technique in conducting air warfare.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

The German quote is "Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln." For source see

http://www.clausewitz.com/CWZHOME/VomKriege/Book1.htm#1

(paragraph 24).

I would translate it as "war is merely an extension of politics through other means". Unfortunately the German word Politik is ambiguous, as it can mean either politics or policy. Eg. Politik is politics, but Aussenpolitik is foreign policy.

Clausewitz continues (my own translation): "We see therefore that war is not merely a political act, but rather a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, its execution through other means. What remains specific to war is merely the nature of its means. The art of war in general and the commander in every actual case can demand that the directions and intentions of politics do not conflict with these means, and this demand is not trivial. Yet however strongly it influences the political objectives in certain cases, it must be thought of as a modification thereof, because political objective is the goal - and means can never be considered without goals."

Clausewitz always writes 'Politik', but as I said, it is difficult to guess whether policy or politics might be a better translation in individual cases; in the above paragraph, substitute 'policy' for 'politics' wherever you feel it makes better sense.

I think that there's a lot to this. I'd extend the argument a bit by suggesting that the old Colonial empires were really bolstered by a relatively temporary superiority in weapons, medicine and technology. When these things proliferated or became more accessible, the advantages shifted...

The actual Clausewitz quote, from the paper cited, is:

As a total phenomenon its dominant tendencies always make war a fascinating trinity—composed of (1) primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; (2) of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and (3) of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason. The first of these three aspects mainly concerns the people; the second the commander and his army; the third the government. The passions that are to be kindled in war must already be inherent in the people; the scope which the play of courage and talent will enjoy in the realm of probability and chance depends on the particular character of the commander and the army; but the political aims are the business of government alone.

Pretty interesting. It seems the passions were certainly there to be kindled in our people. Welcome to primordial violence, hatred, and enmity - also known as National Review Online.

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

I am reminded of a quotation from Saddam Hussein in Robert Fisk's The War for Civilization.  When questioned about the wisdom of purging a man in the absence of any proof of betrayal, Saddam replied, in the fashion of Stalin, "This is a red revolution.  Suspicion is enough".

How can a neo-conservative Jewish American think that this kind of government would be worthy of imitation?  I can only think that he must truly believe that Israel's back is to the wall as it has never been before.  Oh God, it is so broken over there.  Let there be peace.

I don't think that I was the only one who suggested that extermination is the only way to "win" an occupation that starts out repressive.


With commanders, generals, and a CINC so simplistic as to order kill all of them."

"Who?" I used to ask of my Bush backing buddies back in 2002. Almost invaribly the well thought out answer was, "Them."
"But who are they?"
"The terrorists."

Is it any wonder. . .

Not only do they want to kill all males between 15-35, but if what I heard on C-SPAN this morning is representitive, those calling in on the Bush supporters line are wondering when the Iraqis are going to start paying us back for all the money we're spending on them.

Exactly.

Aren't we supposed to be better than that?
Isn't that the thing we supposedly most abhore in those "evil islamists?"
Smells like neocon hypocrisy again.

Ahh, and don't forget the kindling effect of 9/11.

Just saying.

My argument on that topic is that like making cars, tv sets, weaving, running a dictatorship takes a certain set of skills that one may posess or not. Our neo-cons may think that Saddam was an idiot, and if he managed to run Iraq rather smoothly and inexpensively, any semi-intelligent person can do it. And give the job to an intelligent person, the result will astonish the world.

The other aspect is that dictatorship requires rather numerous cadres to run some administration, secret police, security forces, and ideally these cadres are well connected with the rest of the society, so they know how to collect and evaluate information, and can predict reactions to various forms of repression and popular mobilization. It really helps to start with a political movement.

I read that British in Kenia were pretty brutal and ready to continue like that for a long time and not particularly successful in supressing Mau-Mau guerillas. Once colonialists are perceived by the general population as enemies, they are in a much worse shape than indigenious dictators.

Boil it down to this:

Conservatives are liars.
Conservatives are hypocrites.
Podhoretz is a liar and a hypocrite.

This whole Neocon thing was all wrapped up in paradox and fine tuned abstractions from the get go.

"We'll create stability through war."
"The US will impose self rule on Iraq."

In a way it's poetic justice, but why do Conservatives need to lose a war every 30 years or so in order to be reminded of the limits of bad-ass-ism?

There's something decrepit and degenerate in their perrenial - really eternal - embrace of authoritarian government and endless imperial wars. Then they try to sell their twisted mind-scape and pathetic pathos as some kind of timeless wisdom.

I remember in the run-up to the Iraq war, I was posting on the NY Times forums and so often wingnuts would accuse me of cowardice - personal cowardice - because I thought the war was a bad idea. One man insisted I would stand by as my wife was raped because I marched against the war.

So they were casting themselves as courageous heroes, just for typing on a keyboard in an air conditioned rooom, advocating bad-ass-ism.

Now our basketcase John Podhoretz is advocating genocide - this is a Jew remember - genocide like it's some kind of bad-ass gangsta tough guy thing to do. Sending F-16s to go against 3000 guys with WWII era rockets - and in the process killing 30,000, ah hell 300,000 - maybe 3,000,000 - that's most of the Lebanese.

But there's another factor besides the expansion of communications technology in explaining why the UK and France couldn't repeat their successesful suppresions of anti-colonial uprisings: the mass production and ready availabilty of weapons systems essential for conducting an insurgency.

You do have a point.

OTOH, Ghandi beat the English with tactics exemplified by an archetypical media event:

Trying to make salt.

Moreover, in the cases of Vietnam, Iraq and Southern Lebanon, mass production techniques did allow for the mass availability of cheap rifles. But the insurgents don't win because they can beat the organized armies they fight - who also use post-industrialist technologies in order to gain an advantage.

They beat them by playing a political meta-game in which the actual results don't matter. On the contrary the participants are judged as if they play a friendly golf game: Each one starts with a handicap.

As a result, the insurgents knowing that they are losing the actual fighting, try win the political meta-game by propagating the justice of their cause, bleeding their opponent (a bleed which again is subjectively judged by the various elites), tiring their opponent's public opinion, galvanizing the opponent's opposition's and last but not least drawing neutral powers in order to get a stalemate and a favourable political outcome.

If we eliminate publicity, these outcomes can't come to fruition. But if we eliminate massly produced riffles, you can still try to gain publicity by other means.

Does anyone remember the concerts about Nelson Mandella in the 80s?

If this is true then it's my bad. I was pretty sure that hse was supporting JPod's view from what I read.

My personal opinion -- worth what any sensible person would pay for it -- is that invading Iraq, an action which brought with it the subsequent occupation of Iraq, was a terrible idea. It made little geopolitical sense and was likely to cost too much in blood and treasure to be worth what small value it had in affording us a location from which to block Iranian expansionism.

We should have invaded Kuwait (and I'm not joking) but exhibited our best Sunday manners in the doing of it.

Ellen's point isn't true. The more brutal the occupation, the less successful it is. The only two successful occupations I can think of are Germany and Japan. (And remember, we still have troops in both countries) What made it successful is that the west offered them something better than what they had just experienced. A miitary occupation that had concentrated on law and order and maintaining and improving social services would have been better than the chaos and stupidity of OPA.