To Attack or Not: Scenarios from Three Wars
Peter Robinson has carried on an interesting exchange with some of his readers on The Corner.
It started with the suggestion that the U.S. war in Vietnam can be defended now better, perhaps, than at the time of John Kerry's testimony as a returned veteran. As with the maintenance of the Truman Doctrine during the Cold War in general, the point is that dominoes did not fall in a Communist direction, and some of them, eventually, fell in a liberal and/or democratic direction. If Hanoi had defeated South Vietnam years earlier than it did, Thailand would have been in jeapordy, and thus some of today's "Asian Tigers" might not have achieved the progress that they have.
Robinson clearly wants to make a connection to today's "war on terror." There is a large, international enemy, providing some connecting links to somewhat distinct national and local organizations. They all threaten U.S. interests and/or beliefs to a greater or lesser extent. What might appear to be an unprovoked intervention in a civil war that is none of the Americans' business is actually necessary fighting on one of many fronts in this greater ideological war. If Iraq had no WMDs, and even if the Bush administration was aware of this fact, there would still be good reason to invade.
The exchange has continued with an analogy to the British attempt to halt the Nazi conquest of Greece in World War II (1941). (See here and here). British troops were overwhelmed fairly quickly. Men and tanks had been withdrawn from North Africa, where a badly-needed victory over German forces was in sight. Instead there was another Dunkirk-style debacle in the flight from Greece, with 12,000 men and many precious tanks left behind. Some have argued, however, that the Greek campaign tied up enough German troops to delay the German invasion of the Soviet Union. This in turn meant the Germans could not accomplish their major goals in that country before winter, and to some degree this determined the outcome of World War II.
An apparently small, yet hopeless and even stupid undertaking, noble insofar insofar as it at least threw troops against a huge and hated enemy, had excellent (albeit unpredictable) long-term results.
Liddell Hart, in his history of World War II, says "Even if the Greek campaign was found to have retarded the invasion of Russia, that fact would not justify the British Government's decision, for such an object was not in their minds at the time." Liddell Hart says that what caused the postponement of German plans was not the Greek campaign, but "the unexpected coup d'etat in Yugo-Slavia that took place on March 27th..." The new government in Yugoslavia refused to enter a pact with the Axis, so Hitler decided to invade.
Why was Churchill so determined to fight back in Greece if, as Liddell Hart says, he had no thought of any German invasion of Russia, hence no thought of affecting its timing? Liddell Hart, who seems to have had a grudge against Churchill, says the great man was trying to re-start his Balkan dream dating back to World War I--an imaginative "Eastern" or "South-Central" route to attack German forces and liberate France.
(Update: Liddell Hart actually says the fear of a British intervention, very much like Churchill's World War I dream, moved Hitler to put troops just to the north of Greece; the actual British landing "may" have inspired the coup in Yugoslavia; this coup in turn caused an escalation of the German effort.)
What Churchill says in his own history is that he was trying, let us say desperately, to get the U.S. into the war. One could be snarky and say Britain was in an awkward spot. It was fighting for its very life, and its sometime great ally, the United States, was sitting the war out. Churchill thought the spectacle of British troops fighting and dying for "the cradle of democracy" would inspire American public opinion. It didn't work.
Does either the Vietnam analogy or the World War II/Greece analogy work for the invasion of Iraq? So far, it does not seem that the enemy of 9/11--either Al Qaeda, or international terrorism more broadly--was directly involved in any way with Saddam Hussein. Indeed the whole analogy to the Axis, or to international communism, seems strained. Is there one, more or less united terrorist movement beyond the one that was headquartered in Afghanistan, the remnants of which have retreated into the mountains straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan?
(Update: Bush's defenders might say the new international enemy is something a bit different. Possibly the mixture of bigotry, hatred of the West and violence that is bred among fundamentalists, particularly in Arab countries? They might say that it is important to weaken "rogue" Arab governments, which support the culture of hatred in one way or another; and that it is desirable to make them all fear ending up in a spider hole like Saddam).
Further update: I should have noted that there is indeed a multi-front war against terror, being successfully waged by the U.S., as Bill Clinton has apparently been acknowedging recently. (Link to Jay Nordlinger, NRO, via Instapundit. But this is war of intelligence and police work, more than of strictly military action; and it probably requires working closely with regimes that are not democracies, rather than being committed to regime change in the name of democracy.
If the advice of Robinson or his readers is: throw everything you've got at the enemy, on all possible fronts; even if you can't foresee the results, you're at least drawing blood somewhere--I'm not sure that is helpful as a guideline to fighting any actual war. When to fight, when to husband resources for a future fight, when to resort to diplomacy; these are the questions.
(But then, the only megapower in the world does not need to fear adverse consequences of its military interventions the way most countries have had to, most of the time.)
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