The More Things Change...

Just a few quick notes about how little some things change in wartime.

Quote #1, from an American newspaper, courtesy Bill at Eject Eject Eject!:

This war is an abject and utter failure. What everyone thought would be a quick, decisive victory has turned into an embarrassing series of reversals. The enemy, — a ragtag, badly-fed collection of hotheads and fanatics – has failed to be shocked and awed by the most magnificent military machine ever fielded. Their dogged resistance has shown us the futility of the idea that a nation of millions could ever be subjugated and administered, no matter what obscene price we are willing to pay in blood and money. The President of the United States is a buffoon, an idiot, a man barely able to speak the English language. His vice president is a little-seen, widely despised enigma and his chief military advisor a wild-eyed warmonger. Only his Secretary of State offers any hope of redemption, for he at least is a reasonable, well-educated man, a man most thought would have made a far, far better choice for Chief Executive. We must face the fact that we had no business forcing this unjust war on a people who simply want to be left alone. It has damaged our international relationships beyond any measure, and has proven to be illegal, immoral and nothing less than a monumental mistake that will take generations to rectify. We can never hope to subdue and remake an entire nation of millions. All we will do is alienate them further. So we must bring this war to an immediate end, and make a solemn promise to history that we will never launch another war of aggression and preemption again, so help us God.

And quote #2, spoken by the BBC’s Alistair Cooke in his Letter from America series:

In the First World War the statesmen and generals and correspondents waited many years before they told us of the horrors and the scope of the casualties.

Here now … young correspondents in sweaty shirts poke microphones into a soldier’s face and hear him say he doesn’t know what he’s there for. There is now no gap between the battlefield and the memoirs.

I don’t think it’s possible to exaggerate the shattering capacity of television to tell it now and what is shattered, I suspect, is morale - both at the front and at home.

It puts a crippling burden on the statesmen and the generals, most of all on the field commanders, who in a democracy are trying to conduct any war.

It raises the profound question whether any nation not under a dictatorship can ever again fight a war with a steady spirit. And this I believe is something new under the sun.

About which war were these statements uttered? Try the Civil War and Vietnam, respectively. Just goes to show how little some things change.

In the first case, the quote was actually uttered in 1864, long after Gettysburg, Antietam, and Cold Harbor — all sacrifices Union troops had made for what we now know to be a clearly just cause. Perhaps we’re seeing shades of Copperhead in Dennis Kucinich. The Copperheads were mostly from Ohio, after all.

The second case is more troubling. It’s widely acknowledged that media played a large part in ending the Vietnam War short of U.S. victory, by sapping morale back home and weakening the political will that would have been necessary to succeed. I think Cooke is missing a key difference here, though. Although Cooke is rather conservative, his argument here somewhat resembles a current liberal/anti-war/anti-American thought that if Americans truly knew the horrors of war, they wouldn’t be so eager to fight. I’d argue, though, that Americans know full well the horrors of war. (Lest anyone forget, our Civil War was also the debut of the “total war” concept of bringing war to the civilian population in order to end fighting faster, an idea that lasted through WWII; Georgians certainly haven’t forgotten.) Americans just want to be sure that what we’re fighting for is just, and right now, 70% of us are convinced. Slanted media coverage is the danger to morale there, not coverage in and of itself. The corollary to this, that strong American public support should be a pre-condition to American military action, is one of the main principles of the Powell Doctrine.

Finally, a happier parallel: several months after the liberation of Afghanistan, a soccer game was staged in the Kabul soccer stadium between mostly British members of the peacekeeping forces and a Kabul all-star team, on grounds that previously had served as the site for Taliban executions. This time, it didn’t take even that long for the Royal Marines to find some ‘footy’ challengers in Iraq, in a market square in Umm Khayyal bordered by defensive trenches originally dug by Saddam’s forces.