Thursday, May 12, 2005
ON WAR
Dan of tdaxp is becoming quite the Boydian commentator lately - ain't that a PISSR ?
Speaking of the Boydians, an essay at Defense and the National Interest by William S. Lind caught my eye for the following passage:
"The officials said the United States would win any projected conflict across the globe, but the path to victory could be more complicated.
“There is no doubt of what the outcome is going to be," a top defense official said. "Risk to accomplish the task isn't even part of the discussion.”
It isn’t, but it certainly should be. The idea that the U.S. military cannot be defeated is disconnected from reality.
Let me put it plainly: the U.S. military can be beaten. Any military in history could be beaten, including the Spanish army of Olivares’s day, which had not lost a battle in a century until it met the French at Rocroi. Sooner or later, we will march to our Rocroi, and probably sooner the way things are going.
Why? Because war is the province of chance. You cannot predict the outcome of a war just by counting up the stuff on either side and seeing who has more. Such “metrics” leave out strategy and stratagem, pre-emption and trickery, generalship and luck. They leave out John Boyd’s all-important mental and moral levels. What better example could we have than the war in Iraq, which the Pentagon was sure was over the day we took Baghdad? Can these people learn nothing? "
Government, by nature if not design, tends to learn nothing and remember everything.
I do not agree with Lind in every respect. The United States has not had a hyperaggressive foreign policy since 1991 but a wildly erratic one bereft of strategic direction, driven by the need to respond to the actions of others. Or worse, to ignore the actions of others based upon short-term political interests and public opinion polls. American hyperactivity has often been paired with a dolorous indolence in the face of obvious dangers.
Lind is dead square right on the folly of leaders who cut themselves off from dissenting views and attempt to manipulate their own information flows. All you accomplish by doing this in the long term is to royally screw-up your own analytical judgement by tampering with the feedback loop.
Treasure your critics, especially the ones who seem to hate you and even when they seem to always be wrong. They are like the slave of the Roman Imperator whispering " Remember, thou art mortal". ¶ 9:34 AM
Dan of tdaxp is becoming quite the Boydian commentator lately - ain't that a PISSR ?
Speaking of the Boydians, an essay at Defense and the National Interest by William S. Lind caught my eye for the following passage:
"The officials said the United States would win any projected conflict across the globe, but the path to victory could be more complicated.
“There is no doubt of what the outcome is going to be," a top defense official said. "Risk to accomplish the task isn't even part of the discussion.”
It isn’t, but it certainly should be. The idea that the U.S. military cannot be defeated is disconnected from reality.
Let me put it plainly: the U.S. military can be beaten. Any military in history could be beaten, including the Spanish army of Olivares’s day, which had not lost a battle in a century until it met the French at Rocroi. Sooner or later, we will march to our Rocroi, and probably sooner the way things are going.
Why? Because war is the province of chance. You cannot predict the outcome of a war just by counting up the stuff on either side and seeing who has more. Such “metrics” leave out strategy and stratagem, pre-emption and trickery, generalship and luck. They leave out John Boyd’s all-important mental and moral levels. What better example could we have than the war in Iraq, which the Pentagon was sure was over the day we took Baghdad? Can these people learn nothing? "
Government, by nature if not design, tends to learn nothing and remember everything.
I do not agree with Lind in every respect. The United States has not had a hyperaggressive foreign policy since 1991 but a wildly erratic one bereft of strategic direction, driven by the need to respond to the actions of others. Or worse, to ignore the actions of others based upon short-term political interests and public opinion polls. American hyperactivity has often been paired with a dolorous indolence in the face of obvious dangers.
Lind is dead square right on the folly of leaders who cut themselves off from dissenting views and attempt to manipulate their own information flows. All you accomplish by doing this in the long term is to royally screw-up your own analytical judgement by tampering with the feedback loop.
Treasure your critics, especially the ones who seem to hate you and even when they seem to always be wrong. They are like the slave of the Roman Imperator whispering " Remember, thou art mortal". ¶ 9:34 AM
Comments:
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Do they not recall some difficulties in Vietnam? Or a former superpower losing a guerilla war in Afghanistan? Arrogance can be a mighty drug that clouds reality.
Guerilla wars can be won or lost, insurgents do not inevitably win. they lost in Malaysia, the Phillipines (twice), Peru, South Africa ( Boer War) and so on.
In those instances the conventional army fighting the insurgency fought " smart" and not just " large" and tried to get as accurate a picture as possible of what was going on.
In those instances the conventional army fighting the insurgency fought " smart" and not just " large" and tried to get as accurate a picture as possible of what was going on.
Mark,
Could you write more on the Boer War? My first encounter with it was when I was researching a paper on post-WW1 Europe, where it was held as an example of German overreach. But in "Empire," Niall Ferguson argues that it ended with success for the rebels, because the "loyal" government that was created was run by Boer veterans.
Your thoughts?
Could you write more on the Boer War? My first encounter with it was when I was researching a paper on post-WW1 Europe, where it was held as an example of German overreach. But in "Empire," Niall Ferguson argues that it ended with success for the rebels, because the "loyal" government that was created was run by Boer veterans.
Your thoughts?
Treasure your critics, especially the ones who seem to hate you and even when they seem to always be wrong. They are like the slave of the Roman Imperator whispering " Remember, thou art mortal".
The false reality that they are gods is not what drives the neocons of today. Their conviction results from a belief that they can direct reality. This comment by Ron Suskind in his article "Without A Doubt" in the New York Times on October 17,2004 encapsulate this belief:
----------------------------------
I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
----------------------------------
Unfortunately there is not a simple whisper that one can conjure up that can bring reality to those who believe that reality is theirs to command.
Jim
http://rationaldebate.blogspot.com/
The false reality that they are gods is not what drives the neocons of today. Their conviction results from a belief that they can direct reality. This comment by Ron Suskind in his article "Without A Doubt" in the New York Times on October 17,2004 encapsulate this belief:
----------------------------------
I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
----------------------------------
Unfortunately there is not a simple whisper that one can conjure up that can bring reality to those who believe that reality is theirs to command.
Jim
http://rationaldebate.blogspot.com/
# posted by 
: Thursday, 12 May, 2005
: Thursday, 12 May, 2005
Jim,
Sounds like a simplistic description of getting inside an OODA loop to me
Bush: ACT
Others: Observe.. Orient... Deci...
Bush: observe-orient-decide-ACT!
Others (restart): Observe... Orie
Bush: observe-orient-decide-ACT!
Others (restart): Obser...
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/ppt/boyds_ooda_loop.ppt
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/ppt/4gw_ooda_iraq.ppt
ad infinitum
Sounds like a simplistic description of getting inside an OODA loop to me
Bush: ACT
Others: Observe.. Orient... Deci...
Bush: observe-orient-decide-ACT!
Others (restart): Observe... Orie
Bush: observe-orient-decide-ACT!
Others (restart): Obser...
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/ppt/boyds_ooda_loop.ppt
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/ppt/4gw_ooda_iraq.ppt
ad infinitum
Re Jim's account of instruction he claims to have received from a "senior Bush advisor" and the advisor's remark, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."
I suspect Bush's response to that remark would be, "What you mean 'we' Kemosabe?"
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I suspect Bush's response to that remark would be, "What you mean 'we' Kemosabe?"
# posted by : Thursday, 12 May, 2005
: Thursday, 12 May, 2005<< Home
