Wesley Clark has a piece in WaPost and as always he annoys me. More than any other general in our recent history he feels the need to convince of his genius. Perhaps it is because he fought a war that no one on the home front cared about. It is unfortunate that the lessons he learned from that effort are applicable to every potential conflict that we encounter.
Gen. Clark does not realize that his situation was unique. In the Balkans there was no tangible national interest at stake. It was the quintessential example of what Michael Mandelbaum labeled as "foreign policy as social work." Tolerance for casualties was obviously non-existent affecting both the planning and execution of the war. Let's not forget that a democratically elected leader, no matter how odious was bound to be more responsive to domestic pressure.
Clark has a number of lessons for us:
Then there is this confusing passage:
Gen. Clark does not realize that his situation was unique. In the Balkans there was no tangible national interest at stake. It was the quintessential example of what Michael Mandelbaum labeled as "foreign policy as social work." Tolerance for casualties was obviously non-existent affecting both the planning and execution of the war. Let's not forget that a democratically elected leader, no matter how odious was bound to be more responsive to domestic pressure.
Clark has a number of lessons for us:
Any future U.S. wars will undoubtedly be shaped by the experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, however painful that might be. Every military refights the last war, but good militaries learn lessons from the past. We'd better get them right, and soon. Here, the lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan couldn't be more clear: Don't ever, ever go to war unless you can describe and create a more desirable end state.Really? What if the threat is imminent? What if we know that a state is unleashing terrorist attacks upon us but we fret that we don't know what leaders will pop up next? We knew that heroin production would ramp up as soon as the Taliban was removed. Should we have negotiated with the Taliban to hand over Osama?
Then there is this confusing passage:
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the U.S. military embarked upon another wave of high-tech modernization -- and paid for it by cutting ground forces, which were being repeatedly deployed to peacekeeping operations in places such as Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. Instead of preparing for more likely, low-intensity conflicts, we were still spoiling for the "big fight," focusing on such large conventional targets as Kim Jong Il's North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- and now we lack adequate ground forces. Bulking up these forces, perhaps by as many as 100,000 more active troops, and refitting and recovering from Iraq could cost $70 billion to $100 billion.Ok, so if we would not be engaged in "peacekeeping" (peace-forcing) operations we would not have had manpower shortages? We should have been preparing for "more likely, low-intensity conflicts" but we looked for a "big fight?" Didn't the big fight that never happened with N. Korea come looking for us? I would also argue that Saddam's refusal to come clean on WMDs, whether he had them or not, was the problem. So we should only look for small, tiny, little problems that have no bearing on our interests at home and send small, tiny forces with technology galore. So who takes care of the big problems? The eUNuchs?
