27 January 2007
Then, Sink the Boat
Asymmetric warfare is a conundrum. When confronting an imperial power with mighty resources, fear and uncertainty are cheap and effective counterweights. Yet when terror is the weapon of choice, there is a limit even to horror.
How much can anyone removed from it actually absorb? I could do the headlines from the war just as you could. There are a couple bombs, and around a dozen civilians killed. Move the decimal point on a particularly bad day. Shrug.
If someone else is doing it, touching it, living it, it lessens the impact. I love the French, who have a saying that is so elegant and cynical: “Le soufferance de d'autres est toujours supportable.”
I flunked French in High School, and I curse myself now for not knowing what was really useful in life. I think the phrase means that the misery of others is always bearable.
It is precisely how I respond, living in Arlington, to the traffic reports in the mornings, which helpfully remind us that there are dramatic slowdowns at all the usual chokepoints around the city. Who listens?
Of course it is screwed up at the American Legion Bridge.
Naturally there is madness at the Wilson Bridge to the south. How could there not be? One of the spans is not complete. In the afternoon, the low sun hitting directly down the axis of the freeway and into the eyes of the weary, it is entirely possible that everyone wants to get out of town and there is chaos at the Mixing Bowl in Springfield.
One becomes inured to it, of not outright numb.
That is one of the things that causes me to marvel about the resilience of this newest generation to rise to join life's struggle. My generation shambles forward with bemused introspection, the curse of the Baby Boom. We were permitted that luxury by the generation who had lived the Depression and The War and the long dizzy economic expansion.
We were the generation permitted by the long Peace.
We have begotten the Baby Boom Echo, a smaller but similar version of our cohort, marching into a future that seems somehow less luminous. It is limned by the lights of the Long War, and periodic explosions from another conflict as ancient as Faith.
They have the same sort of guts as our parents did, at least the ones who are out there. There is no question of their indomitable courage. There just are not many of them who have answered the call.
I have a pal who served a career with the US Agency for International Development. He is a great guy, one of my favorites. We met at War College, one of those career development programs designed to throw people from different cultures together and build networks in the military and civilian agencies.
We had all been fiercely committed to our small careers, and this opportunity to sit up and look around was a revelation. I learned many things, not the least of which is that the best and most effective war is the one deferred, on favorable terms.
My buddy spent a career getting food to the needy, building industry and enterprise, and pulling the more subtle levers of influence. In a later year I stood on a dock in Port au Prince and one of the AID people explained how many people on that dolorous island we were feeding.
When I realized the pittance we contribute to the mission, I was astounded. It should be a priority, I reasoned, at least on a par with acquiring the F-22 multi-mission fighter.
It is not. In fact, I just heard the Air Force budget for next year sailed through the Secretary's Staff and is headed to the Hill festooned with irrelevancy. With kids on the ground, this seems akin to madness.
The only way to extricate ourselves from the morass is to enable the Iraqis to have stability and peace on their own, and only some of that influence can issue from the barrel of a gun. Security is clearly part of the solution, but so is food and economic activity.
When you have arrived at the point when the adversary defines the struggle in terms of violence, the military response is naturally in ascendance. But the sledge hammer is the tool of last resort, or at least it ought to be, and not an answer in itself.
I vividly recall a saying that still echoed in the military I joined an eon ago, after another display of overwhelming force coupled with irresolution failed to impose our will.
Some of the guys who served Vietnam expressed their frustration this way: "Round up all the good guys and them on a boat. Then kill everyone left ashore. That way you get all the bad ones. Then, sink the boat, and let God sort it out.”
It is an approach, I'll grant you, though if you let the enemy drive you to it even as irony it means something fundamental has been lost.
On this winter day, I am going to pray for the boat-builders. Of course they need the hard-eyed people with guns to be with them, but it is hardly the point, is it?
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com