Tomgram: William Astore, Words About War Matter
By William Astore
Posted on April 14, 2016, Printed on April 22, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176128/ ;
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: As you know, in return for a donation of $100
($125 if you live outside the U.S.), we've been offering signed,
personalized copies of Andrew Bacevich's groundbreaking new book, Americas
War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. Many thanks to those
of you who already contributed. Your books will be in the mail soon and your
donations really do help keep us chugging along! If you meant to get a copy
and haven't yet, the offer is only open until Sunday, so check out our
donation page soon for the details. Tom]
At the moment, there are a maximum of 3,870 U.S. military personnel (or
7,740 actual boots on the ground) in Iraq supporting the war against the
Islamic State. Thats the official cap imposed by the Obama
administration, because everyone knows that the president and his top
officials are eager to end American wars in the Middle East, not expand
them. Of course, that number doesnt include the other 1,130 American
military types (or 2,260 boots) -- give or take we dont know how many --
who just happen to be there on whats called... er, um... temporary
deployments, or are the result of overlap from rotating deployments, but
add up to perhaps 5,000 trainers and advisers, or maybe, for all we know,
more, including 200 Special Operations forces whose numbers are officially
acknowledged by no one but mentioned in press reports. And naturally that
5,000 figure doesnt include the American private contractors also flowing
into Iraq in growing numbers to support the U.S. military because everyone
knows that they arent either troops or boots on the ground and so dont get
counted. Those are the rules.
Do keep in mind that this time around the whole American on-the-ground
operation couldnt be more limited. Though the numbers of U.S. trainers,
advisers, and Special Ops types continue to creep up, they are, at least,
helping the Iraqi military reconstitute itself on Iraqi bases. In other
words, this round of Washington's Iraq wars bears no relation to the last
one (2003-2011), when the Pentagon had its private contractors build
hundreds of U.S. bases, ranging in size from American towns to tiny combat
outposts. This time, the U.S. military has no bases of its own, not a
single one... er, um... at least it didnt until recently when an American
Marine, a specialist in firing field artillery, died in an Islamic State
rocket attack on what turned out to be an all-American Marine outpost, Fire
Base Bell, in the northern part of the country. The artillery operations he
was involved in supporting the Iraqi army in its (stalled) drive on the
countrys second largest city, Mosul, are not, however, combat operations
because it's well established that no American troops, Special Ops units
possibly excepted, are in combat in that country (or Syria). In fact, U.S.
officials point out that artillery doesnt really count as combat. Its
more like U.S. air operations against the Islamic State except... er, um...
it takes place on the ground.
And by the way, according to Nancy Youssef of the Daily Beast, the U.S.
actually has two bases in Iraq (the other in al-Anbar Province) and is
planning to add more in the future, but these will most certainly not be
old-style fire bases. In fact, the one where that Marine died has already
been renamed the Kara Soar Counter Fire Complex and it seems that any
future... er, um... post established in Iraq will also be a counter fire
complex, not a base, and will only engage in air-strike-style operations on
or just above the... um... ground. And the reason for that has nothing to
do with the possible reaction of Americans to the new realities of Iraq. As
Youssef points out, it's the fault of the touchy Iraqis: The new name
notably did not include the word base, as some Iraqis fear the return of
any U.S. footprint that resembles the eight-year war that began with the
2003 invasion.
In this spirit of renaming, the Pentagon and the Obama administration follow
in a proud American linguistic tradition. As the Bush administration was
completing its invasion of Saddam Husseins Iraq in April 2003, the New York
Times reported that the Pentagon was planning to build at least four major
installations for the future garrisoning of that country, though permanent
bases was a phrase being avoided at all costs. ("[T]here will probably
never be an announcement of permanent stationing of troops," wrote the Times
reporters.) At the Pentagon, these massive outposts were instead labeled
enduring camps." And tradition matters. So all is well in... er, um...
that country in the Fertile Crescent. You know the one I mean.
Its true that, in these years, American English has taken some casualties,
but the good news is that none of these have happened in combat. Just
think of them as necessary adjustments to an increasingly
difficult-to-describe world, one that TomDispatch regular retired Air Force
Lieutenant Colonel William Astore catches to a T in today's post on this
countrys post-9/11 war of words. Tom
Whats the Meaning of Failure?
A Dictionary of Euphemisms for Imperial Decline
By William J. Astore
The dishonesty of words illustrates the dishonesty of Americas wars.
Since 9/11, can there be any doubt that the public has become numb to the
euphemisms that regularly accompany U.S. troops, drones, and CIA operatives
into Washingtons imperial conflicts across the Greater Middle East and
Africa? Such euphemisms are meant to take the sting out of Americas wars
back home. Many of these words and phrases are already so well known and
well worn that no one thinks twice about them anymore.
Here are just a few: collateral damage for killed and wounded civilians (a
term used regularly since the First Gulf War of 1990-1991). Enhanced
interrogation techniques for torture, a term adopted with vigor by George W.
Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of their administration (techniques that
were actually demonstrated in the White House). Extraordinary rendition for
CIA kidnappings of terror suspects off global streets or from remote
badlands, often followed by the employment of enhanced interrogation
techniques at U.S. black sites or other foreign hellholes. Detainees for
prisoners and detention camp for prison (or, in some cases, more honestly,
concentration camp), used to describe Guantánamo (Gitmo), among other places
established offshore of American justice. Targeted killings for
presidentially ordered drone assassinations. Boots on the ground for yet
another deployment of our troops (and not just their boots) in harms way.
Even the Bush administrations Global War on Terror, its label for an
attempt to transform the Greater Middle East into a Pax Americana, would be
redubbed in the Obama years overseas contingency operations (before any
attempt at labeling was dropped for a no-name war pursued across major
swathes of the planet).
As euphemisms were deployed to cloak that wars bitter and brutal realities,
over-the-top honorifics were assigned to Americas embattled role in the
world. Exceptional, indispensable, and greatest have been the three words
most commonly used by presidents, politicians, and the gung ho to describe
this country. Once upon a time, if Americans thought this way, they felt no
need to have their presidents and presidential candidates actually say so --
such was the confidence of the golden age of American power. So consider
the constant redeployment of these terms a small measure of Americas
growing defensiveness about itself, its sense of doubt and decline rather
than strength and confidence.
To what end this concerted assault on the words we use? In George Orwells
classic 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, he noted that his
eras equivalents for collateral damage were needed if one wants to name
things without calling up mental pictures of them. Obviously, not much has
changed in the intervening seven decades. And this is, as Orwell intuited,
a dangerous way to go. Cloaking violent, even murderous actions in anodyne
language might help a few doubting functionaries sleep easier at night, but
it should make the rest of us profoundly uneasy.
The more American leaders and officials -- and the media that quotes them
endlessly -- employ such euphemisms to cloak harsh realities, the more they
ensure that such harshness will endure; indeed, that it is likely to grow
harsher and more pernicious as we continue to settle into a world of
euphemistic thinking.
The Emptiness of Acronyms
In the future, some linguist or lexicographer will doubtless compile a
dictionary of perpetual war and perhaps (since they may be linked) imperial
decline, focusing on the grim processes and versions of failure language can
cloak. It would undoubtedly explore how certain words and rhetorical
devices were used in twenty-first-century America to obscure the heavy
burdens that war placed on the country, even as they facilitated its
continuing failed conflicts. It would obviously include classic examples
like surge, used in both Iraq and Afghanistan to obscure the way our
government rushed extra troops into a battle zone in a moment of failure
only ensuring the extension of that failure, and the now-classic phrase
shock and awe that obscured the reality of a massive air strike on Baghdad
that resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians (collateral damage),
but not the decapitation of a hated regime.
Dont think, however, that the language of twenty-first-century American war
was only meant to lull the public. Less familiar words and terms continue
to be used within the military not to clarify tasks at hand but to obscure
certain obvious realities even from those sanctioned to deal with them.
Take asymmetrical warfare, the gray zone, and VUCA. Unless you spend time
in Department of Defense and military circles, you probably havent heard of
these.
Asymmetrical warfare suggests that the enemy fights unfairly and in a
thoroughly cowardly fashion, regularly lurking behind and mixing with
civilians (hostages), because that enemy doesnt have the moxie to don
uniforms and stand toe-to-toe in a kinetic smack-down with U.S. troops.
As a result, of course, the U.S. must be prepared for underhanded tactics
and devious weaponry, including ambushes and IEDs (improvised explosive
devices, or roadside bombs), as well as a range of other unconventional
tactics now all too familiar in a world plagued by violent attacks against
soft targets (aka civilians). It must also be prepared to engage an enemy
mixed in with a civilian population and so brace itself for the inevitable
collateral damage that is now so much the essence of American war.
That groups like the Islamic State (ISIS) would choose to fight
asymmetrically should hardly come as a surprise to anyone whos ever been
confronted by a much bigger and better armed kid in a schoolyard.
Misdirection, a sucker punch, a slingshot, even running away to fight
another day are asymmetrical approaches that are sensible indeed for any
outgunned and overmatched opponent. The term is a truism, nothing more,
when it comes to the realities of our world. It is, however, a useful way of
framing matters for those in the Pentagon and the military who dont want to
think seriously about the grim course of action, focused significantly on
civilian populations, they are pursuing, which often instills anger and the
urge for revenge in such populations and so, in the end, runs at cross
purposes to stated U.S. aims.
The gray zone is a fuzzy term used in military circles to describe the
perplexing nature of lower-level conflicts, often involving non-state
actors, that dont qualify as full-fledged wars. These are often fought
using non-traditional weapons and tactics ranging from cyber attacks to the
propagandizing of potential terror recruits via social media. This zone is
unnerving to Pentagon types in part because the vast majority of the
Pentagons funding goes to conventional weaponry thats as subtle as a
sledgehammer: big-ticket items like aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines,
main battle tanks, strategic bombers, and wildly expensive multi-role
aircraft such as the F-35 (now estimated to cost roughly $1.4 trillion
through its lifecycle). Much of this weaponry is too big to fail in the
funding wars in Washington, but regularly fails in the field precisely
because its too big to be used effectively against the latest crop of
evasive enemies. Hence, that irresolvable gray zone which plagues Americas
defense planners and operatives.
The question the gray zone both raises and obscures is: Why has the U.S.
done so poorly when, by its own definition, it remains the biggest, baddest
superpower around, the one that outspends its non-state enemies by a factor
so large it cant even be calculated? Keep in mind, for instance, that the
9/11 attacks on American soil were estimated to have cost Osama bin Laden at
most a half-million dollars. Multiply that by 400 and you can buy one made
in America F-35 jet fighter.
If the gray zone offers little help clarifying Americas military dilemmas,
what about VUCA? Its an acronym for volatile, uncertain, complex, and
ambiguous, which is meant to describe our post-9/11 world. Of course,
theres nothing like an acronym to take the sting out of any world. But as
an historian who has read a lot of history books, let me confess that, to
the best of my knowledge, the world has always been, is now, and will always
be VUCA.
For any future historian of the Pentagons language, let me sum things up
this way: instead of honest talk about war in all its ugliness and
uncertainty, military professionals of our era have tended to substitute
buzz words, catchphrases, and acronyms. Its a way of muddying the water.
It allows the world of war to tumble on without serious challenge, which is
why its been so useful in these years to speak of, say, COIN
(Counterinsurgency) or 4GW (Fourth-Generation Warfare).
Much like its most recent enthusiast, General David Petraeus, COIN has once
again lost favor in the military, but Fourth-Generation Warfare is still
riding high and sounds so refreshingly forward-looking, not like the stale
Vietnam-era wine in a post-9/11 bottle that it is. In reality, its another
iteration of insurgency and COIN mixed and matched with Chinese Communist
leader Mao Zedongs people's war. To prevail in places like Afghanistan, so
4GW thinkers suggest, one needs to win hearts and minds -- yes, that classic
phrase of defeat in Vietnam -- while securing and protecting (a definite
COINage) the people against insurgents and terrorists. In other words,
were talking about an acronym that immediately begins to congeal if you use
older words to describe it like pacification and nation-building. The
latest 4GW jargon may not help win wars, but it does sometimes win healthy
research grants from the government.
The fact is that trendy acronyms and snappy buzz words have a way of
limiting genuine thinking on war. If America is to win (or, far better,
avoid) future wars, its war professionals need to look more honestly at that
phenomenon in all of its dimensions. So, too, do the American people, for
its in their name that such wars are allegedly waged.
The Truth About Progress in Americas Wars
These days, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter often resorts to cancer
imagery when describing the Islamic state. "Parent tumor" is an image he
especially favors -- that is, terrorism as a cancer that Americas
militarized surgeons need to attack and destroy before it metastasizes and
has children. (Think of the ISIS franchises in Libya, where the
organization has recently doubled in size, Afghanistan, and Yemen.) Hence
the proliferation of surgical strikes by drones and similarly surgical
Special Ops raids, both of which you could think of as Americas equivalent
of white blood cells in its war on the cancer of terrorism.
But is terrorism really a civilizational cancer that can be cured via the
most aggressive kinetic treatments? Can the U.S. render the world
cancer-free? For thats what Carters language implies. And how does one
measure progress in a war on the cancer of ISIS? Indeed, from an
outsiders perspective, the proliferation of U.S. military bases around the
world (there are now roughly 800), as well as of drone strikes, Special Ops
raids, and massive weapons exports might have a cancerous look to them. In
other words, what constitutes a cancer depends on ones perspective -- and
perhaps ones definition of world health, too.
The very notion of progress in Americas recent wars is one that a
colleague, Michael Murry, recently critiqued. A U.S. Navy Vietnam War
Veteran, he wrote me that, for his favorite military euphemism, I have to
go with progress as incessantly chanted by the American military brass in
Iraq and Afghanistan
We go on hearing about 14 years of progress which, to hear our generals
tell it, would vanish in an instant should the United States withdraw its
forces and let the locals and their neighbors sort things out. Since when do
fragile gains equate to progress? Who in their right mind would invest
rivers of blood and trillions of dollars in fragility? Now that I think
of it, we also have the euphemistic expression of drawdown substituting
for withdrawal which in turn substitutes for retreat. The U.S. military
and the civilian government it has browbeaten into hapless acquiescence
simply cannot face the truth of their monumental failures and so must
continually bastardize our language in a losing -- almost comical -- attempt
to stay one linguistic step ahead of the truth.
Progress, as Murry notes, basically means nothing when such gains, in the
words of David Petraeus during the surge months in Iraq in 2007, are both
fragile and reversible. Indeed, Petraeus repeated the same two words in
2011 to describe similar U.S. progress in Afghanistan, and today it
couldnt be clearer just how much progress was truly made there. Isnt it
time for government officials to stop banging the drums of war talk in favor
of progress when none exists?
Think, for instance, of the American-trained (and now re-trained) Iraqi
security forces. Each year U.S. officials swear that the Iraqi military is
getting ever closer to combat readiness, but much like one of Zenos
paradoxes, the half-steps that military takes under American tutelage never
seem to get it into fighting shape. Progress, eternally touted, seems
always to lead to regress, eternally explained away, as that army regularly
underperforms or its units simply collapse, often abandoning their
American-supplied weaponry to the enemy. Here we are, 12 years after the
U.S. began training the Iraqi military and once again it seems to be
cratering, this time while supposedly on the road to retaking Iraqs second
largest city, Mosul, from its Islamic State occupiers. Progress, anyone?
In short, the dishonesty of the words the U.S. military regularly wields
illustrates the dishonesty of its never-ending wars. After so many years of
failure and frustration, of wars that arent won and terrorist movements
that only seem to spread as its leaders are knocked off, isnt it past time
for Americans to ditch phrases like collateral damage, enemy
noncombatant, no-fly zone (or even worse, safe zone), and surgical
strike and adopt a language, however grim, that accurately describes the
military realities of this era?
Words matter, especially words about war. So as a change of pace, instead
of the usual bloodless euphemisms and vapid acronyms, perhaps the U.S.
government could tell the shocking and awful truth to the American people in
plain language about the realities and dangers of never-ending war.
William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of
history, is a TomDispatch regular. He blogs at Bracing Views.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Tomorrows Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 William J. Astore
© 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176128
Tomgram: William Astore, Words About War Matter
By William Astore
Posted on April 14, 2016, Printed on April 22, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176128/ ;
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: As you know, in return for a donation of $100
($125 if you live outside the U.S.), we've been offering signed,
personalized copies of Andrew Bacevich's groundbreaking new book, Americas
War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. Many thanks to those of
you who already contributed. Your books will be in the mail soon and your
donations really do help keep us chugging along! If you meant to get a copy
and haven't yet, the offer is only open until Sunday, so check out our
donation page soon for the details. Tom]
At the moment, there are a maximum of 3,870 U.S. military personnel (or
7,740 actual boots on the ground) in Iraq supporting the war against the
Islamic State. Thats the official cap imposed by the Obama
administration, because everyone knows that the president and his top
officials are eager to end American wars in the Middle East, not expand
them. Of course, that number doesnt include the other 1,130 American
military types (or 2,260 boots) -- give or take we dont know how many --
who just happen to be there on whats called... er, um... temporary
deployments, or are the result of overlap from rotating deployments, but
add up to perhaps 5,000 trainers and advisers, or maybe, for all we know,
more, including 200 Special Operations forces whose numbers are officially
acknowledged by no one but mentioned in press reports. And naturally that
5,000 figure doesnt include the American private contractors also flowing
into Iraq in growing numbers to support the U.S. military because everyone
knows that they arent either troops or boots on the ground and so dont get
counted. Those are the rules.
Do keep in mind that this time around the whole American on-the-ground
operation couldnt be more limited. Though the numbers of U.S. trainers,
advisers, and Special Ops types continue to creep up, they are, at least,
helping the Iraqi military reconstitute itself on Iraqi bases. In other
words, this round of Washington's Iraq wars bears no relation to the last
one (2003-2011), when the Pentagon had its private contractors build
hundreds of U.S. bases, ranging in size from American towns to tiny combat
outposts. This time, the U.S. military has no bases of its own, not a single
one... er, um... at least it didnt until recently when an American Marine,
a specialist in firing field artillery, died in an Islamic State rocket
attack on what turned out to be an all-American Marine outpost, Fire Base
Bell, in the northern part of the country. The artillery operations he was
involved in supporting the Iraqi army in its (stalled) drive on the
countrys second largest city, Mosul, are not, however, combat operations
because it's well established that no American troops, Special Ops units
possibly excepted, are in combat in that country (or Syria). In fact, U.S.
officials point out that artillery doesnt really count as combat. Its more
like U.S. air operations against the Islamic State except... er, um... it
takes place on the ground.
And by the way, according to Nancy Youssef of the Daily Beast, the U.S.
actually has two bases in Iraq (the other in al-Anbar Province) and is
planning to add more in the future, but these will most certainly not be
old-style fire bases. In fact, the one where that Marine died has already
been renamed the Kara Soar Counter Fire Complex and it seems that any
future... er, um... post established in Iraq will also be a counter fire
complex, not a base, and will only engage in air-strike-style operations on
or just above the... um... ground. And the reason for that has nothing to do
with the possible reaction of Americans to the new realities of Iraq. As
Youssef points out, it's the fault of the touchy Iraqis: The new name
notably did not include the word base, as some Iraqis fear the return of
any U.S. footprint that resembles the eight-year war that began with the
2003 invasion.
In this spirit of renaming, the Pentagon and the Obama administration follow
in a proud American linguistic tradition. As the Bush administration was
completing its invasion of Saddam Husseins Iraq in April 2003, the New York
Times reported that the Pentagon was planning to build at least four major
installations for the future garrisoning of that country, though permanent
bases was a phrase being avoided at all costs. ("[T]here will probably
never be an announcement of permanent stationing of troops," wrote the Times
reporters.) At the Pentagon, these massive outposts were instead labeled
enduring camps." And tradition matters. So all is well in... er, um... that
country in the Fertile Crescent. You know the one I mean.
Its true that, in these years, American English has taken some casualties,
but the good news is that none of these have happened in combat. Just
think of them as necessary adjustments to an increasingly
difficult-to-describe world, one that TomDispatch regular retired Air Force
Lieutenant Colonel William Astore catches to a T in today's post on this
countrys post-9/11 war of words. Tom
Whats the Meaning of Failure?
A Dictionary of Euphemisms for Imperial Decline
By William J. Astore
The dishonesty of words illustrates the dishonesty of Americas wars.
Since 9/11, can there be any doubt that the public has become numb to the
euphemisms that regularly accompany U.S. troops, drones, and CIA operatives
into Washingtons imperial conflicts across the Greater Middle East and
Africa? Such euphemisms are meant to take the sting out of Americas wars
back home. Many of these words and phrases are already so well known and
well worn that no one thinks twice about them anymore.
Here are just a few: collateral damage for killed and wounded civilians (a
term used regularly since the First Gulf War of 1990-1991). Enhanced
interrogation techniques for torture, a term adopted with vigor by George W.
Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of their administration (techniques that
were actually demonstrated in the White House). Extraordinary rendition for
CIA kidnappings of terror suspects off global streets or from remote
badlands, often followed by the employment of enhanced interrogation
techniques at U.S. black sites or other foreign hellholes. Detainees for
prisoners and detention camp for prison (or, in some cases, more honestly,
concentration camp), used to describe Guantánamo (Gitmo), among other places
established offshore of American justice. Targeted killings for
presidentially ordered drone assassinations. Boots on the ground for yet
another deployment of our troops (and not just their boots) in harms way.
Even the Bush administrations Global War on Terror, its label for an
attempt to transform the Greater Middle East into a Pax Americana, would be
redubbed in the Obama years overseas contingency operations (before any
attempt at labeling was dropped for a no-name war pursued across major
swathes of the planet).
As euphemisms were deployed to cloak that wars bitter and brutal realities,
over-the-top honorifics were assigned to Americas embattled role in the
world. Exceptional, indispensable, and greatest have been the three words
most commonly used by presidents, politicians, and the gung ho to describe
this country. Once upon a time, if Americans thought this way, they felt no
need to have their presidents and presidential candidates actually say so --
such was the confidence of the golden age of American power. So consider the
constant redeployment of these terms a small measure of Americas growing
defensiveness about itself, its sense of doubt and decline rather than
strength and confidence.
To what end this concerted assault on the words we use? In George Orwells
classic 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, he noted that his
eras equivalents for collateral damage were needed if one wants to name
things without calling up mental pictures of them. Obviously, not much has
changed in the intervening seven decades. And this is, as Orwell intuited, a
dangerous way to go. Cloaking violent, even murderous actions in anodyne
language might help a few doubting functionaries sleep easier at night, but
it should make the rest of us profoundly uneasy.
The more American leaders and officials -- and the media that quotes them
endlessly -- employ such euphemisms to cloak harsh realities, the more they
ensure that such harshness will endure; indeed, that it is likely to grow
harsher and more pernicious as we continue to settle into a world of
euphemistic thinking.
The Emptiness of Acronyms
In the future, some linguist or lexicographer will doubtless compile a
dictionary of perpetual war and perhaps (since they may be linked) imperial
decline, focusing on the grim processes and versions of failure language can
cloak. It would undoubtedly explore how certain words and rhetorical devices
were used in twenty-first-century America to obscure the heavy burdens that
war placed on the country, even as they facilitated its continuing failed
conflicts. It would obviously include classic examples like surge, used in
both Iraq and Afghanistan to obscure the way our government rushed extra
troops into a battle zone in a moment of failure only ensuring the extension
of that failure, and the now-classic phrase shock and awe that obscured the
reality of a massive air strike on Baghdad that resulted in the deaths of
dozens of civilians (collateral damage), but not the decapitation of a
hated regime.
Dont think, however, that the language of twenty-first-century American war
was only meant to lull the public. Less familiar words and terms continue to
be used within the military not to clarify tasks at hand but to obscure
certain obvious realities even from those sanctioned to deal with them. Take
asymmetrical warfare, the gray zone, and VUCA. Unless you spend time in
Department of Defense and military circles, you probably havent heard of
these.
Asymmetrical warfare suggests that the enemy fights unfairly and in a
thoroughly cowardly fashion, regularly lurking behind and mixing with
civilians (hostages), because that enemy doesnt have the moxie to don
uniforms and stand toe-to-toe in a kinetic smack-down with U.S. troops. As
a result, of course, the U.S. must be prepared for underhanded tactics and
devious weaponry, including ambushes and IEDs (improvised explosive devices,
or roadside bombs), as well as a range of other unconventional tactics now
all too familiar in a world plagued by violent attacks against soft
targets (aka civilians). It must also be prepared to engage an enemy mixed
in with a civilian population and so brace itself for the inevitable
collateral damage that is now so much the essence of American war.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463710/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463710/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20That groups
like the Islamic State (ISIS) would choose to fight asymmetrically should
hardly come as a surprise to anyone whos ever been confronted by a much
bigger and better armed kid in a schoolyard. Misdirection, a sucker punch, a
slingshot, even running away to fight another day are asymmetrical
approaches that are sensible indeed for any outgunned and overmatched
opponent. The term is a truism, nothing more, when it comes to the realities
of our world. It is, however, a useful way of framing matters for those in
the Pentagon and the military who dont want to think seriously about the
grim course of action, focused significantly on civilian populations, they
are pursuing, which often instills anger and the urge for revenge in such
populations and so, in the end, runs at cross purposes to stated U.S. aims.
The gray zone is a fuzzy term used in military circles to describe the
perplexing nature of lower-level conflicts, often involving non-state
actors, that dont qualify as full-fledged wars. These are often fought
using non-traditional weapons and tactics ranging from cyber attacks to the
propagandizing of potential terror recruits via social media. This zone is
unnerving to Pentagon types in part because the vast majority of the
Pentagons funding goes to conventional weaponry thats as subtle as a
sledgehammer: big-ticket items like aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines,
main battle tanks, strategic bombers, and wildly expensive multi-role
aircraft such as the F-35 (now estimated to cost roughly $1.4 trillion
through its lifecycle). Much of this weaponry is too big to fail in the
funding wars in Washington, but regularly fails in the field precisely
because its too big to be used effectively against the latest crop of
evasive enemies. Hence, that irresolvable gray zone which plagues Americas
defense planners and operatives.
The question the gray zone both raises and obscures is: Why has the U.S.
done so poorly when, by its own definition, it remains the biggest, baddest
superpower around, the one that outspends its non-state enemies by a factor
so large it cant even be calculated? Keep in mind, for instance, that the
9/11 attacks on American soil were estimated to have cost Osama bin Laden at
most a half-million dollars. Multiply that by 400 and you can buy one made
in America F-35 jet fighter.
If the gray zone offers little help clarifying Americas military dilemmas,
what about VUCA? Its an acronym for volatile, uncertain, complex, and
ambiguous, which is meant to describe our post-9/11 world. Of course,
theres nothing like an acronym to take the sting out of any world. But as
an historian who has read a lot of history books, let me confess that, to
the best of my knowledge, the world has always been, is now, and will always
be VUCA.
For any future historian of the Pentagons language, let me sum things up
this way: instead of honest talk about war in all its ugliness and
uncertainty, military professionals of our era have tended to substitute
buzz words, catchphrases, and acronyms. Its a way of muddying the water. It
allows the world of war to tumble on without serious challenge, which is why
its been so useful in these years to speak of, say, COIN
(Counterinsurgency) or 4GW (Fourth-Generation Warfare).
Much like its most recent enthusiast, General David Petraeus, COIN has once
again lost favor in the military, but Fourth-Generation Warfare is still
riding high and sounds so refreshingly forward-looking, not like the stale
Vietnam-era wine in a post-9/11 bottle that it is. In reality, its another
iteration of insurgency and COIN mixed and matched with Chinese Communist
leader Mao Zedongs people's war. To prevail in places like Afghanistan, so
4GW thinkers suggest, one needs to win hearts and minds -- yes, that classic
phrase of defeat in Vietnam -- while securing and protecting (a definite
COINage) the people against insurgents and terrorists. In other words, were
talking about an acronym that immediately begins to congeal if you use older
words to describe it like pacification and nation-building. The latest
4GW jargon may not help win wars, but it does sometimes win healthy research
grants from the government.
The fact is that trendy acronyms and snappy buzz words have a way of
limiting genuine thinking on war. If America is to win (or, far better,
avoid) future wars, its war professionals need to look more honestly at that
phenomenon in all of its dimensions. So, too, do the American people, for
its in their name that such wars are allegedly waged.
The Truth About Progress in Americas Wars
These days, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter often resorts to cancer
imagery when describing the Islamic state. "Parent tumor" is an image he
especially favors -- that is, terrorism as a cancer that Americas
militarized surgeons need to attack and destroy before it metastasizes and
has children. (Think of the ISIS franchises in Libya, where the
organization has recently doubled in size, Afghanistan, and Yemen.) Hence
the proliferation of surgical strikes by drones and similarly surgical
Special Ops raids, both of which you could think of as Americas equivalent
of white blood cells in its war on the cancer of terrorism.
But is terrorism really a civilizational cancer that can be cured via the
most aggressive kinetic treatments? Can the U.S. render the world
cancer-free? For thats what Carters language implies. And how does one
measure progress in a war on the cancer of ISIS? Indeed, from an
outsiders perspective, the proliferation of U.S. military bases around the
world (there are now roughly 800), as well as of drone strikes, Special Ops
raids, and massive weapons exports might have a cancerous look to them. In
other words, what constitutes a cancer depends on ones perspective -- and
perhaps ones definition of world health, too.
The very notion of progress in Americas recent wars is one that a
colleague, Michael Murry, recently critiqued. A U.S. Navy Vietnam War
Veteran, he wrote me that, for his favorite military euphemism, I have to
go with progress as incessantly chanted by the American military brass in
Iraq and Afghanistan
We go on hearing about 14 years of progress which, to hear our generals
tell it, would vanish in an instant should the United States withdraw its
forces and let the locals and their neighbors sort things out. Since when do
fragile gains equate to progress? Who in their right mind would invest
rivers of blood and trillions of dollars in fragility? Now that I think of
it, we also have the euphemistic expression of drawdown substituting for
withdrawal which in turn substitutes for retreat. The U.S. military and
the civilian government it has browbeaten into hapless acquiescence simply
cannot face the truth of their monumental failures and so must continually
bastardize our language in a losing -- almost comical -- attempt to stay one
linguistic step ahead of the truth.
Progress, as Murry notes, basically means nothing when such gains, in the
words of David Petraeus during the surge months in Iraq in 2007, are both
fragile and reversible. Indeed, Petraeus repeated the same two words in
2011 to describe similar U.S. progress in Afghanistan, and today it
couldnt be clearer just how much progress was truly made there. Isnt it
time for government officials to stop banging the drums of war talk in favor
of progress when none exists?
Think, for instance, of the American-trained (and now re-trained) Iraqi
security forces. Each year U.S. officials swear that the Iraqi military is
getting ever closer to combat readiness, but much like one of Zenos
paradoxes, the half-steps that military takes under American tutelage never
seem to get it into fighting shape. Progress, eternally touted, seems always
to lead to regress, eternally explained away, as that army regularly
underperforms or its units simply collapse, often abandoning their
American-supplied weaponry to the enemy. Here we are, 12 years after the
U.S. began training the Iraqi military and once again it seems to be
cratering, this time while supposedly on the road to retaking Iraqs second
largest city, Mosul, from its Islamic State occupiers. Progress, anyone?
In short, the dishonesty of the words the U.S. military regularly wields
illustrates the dishonesty of its never-ending wars. After so many years of
failure and frustration, of wars that arent won and terrorist movements
that only seem to spread as its leaders are knocked off, isnt it past time
for Americans to ditch phrases like collateral damage, enemy
noncombatant, no-fly zone (or even worse, safe zone), and surgical
strike and adopt a language, however grim, that accurately describes the
military realities of this era?
Words matter, especially words about war. So as a change of pace, instead of
the usual bloodless euphemisms and vapid acronyms, perhaps the U.S.
government could tell the shocking and awful truth to the American people in
plain language about the realities and dangers of never-ending war.
William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of
history, is a TomDispatch regular. He blogs at Bracing Views.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Tomorrows Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 William J. Astore
© 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176128
