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are two types of necessary military leaders — the organizational
men, adept at marshalling forces, keeping diplomacy open as an option,
and seeking alternatives to fighting; and the more blunt firebrands
of history, who understand that armies are for battle, and battles
the only way to settle the differences politics cannot. We need
both — but not always at the same time or for the same purposes.
The tactful see complications and repercussions everywhere in war,
and so rightly worry about what the enemy might do to them. The
more combative envision lasting clarity arising out of the chaos
and know all too well what they can do to the enemy. The former
seek to consolidate gains during a lull in the fighting, the latter
to push on and finish the business for good.
Unfortunately,
seldom do such antithetical gifts of diplomacy and war reside in
the same man — a Pericles, Washington, Lincoln, or Churchill
appears rarely in history. And so nations turn to one or the other,
as either sobriety or audacity is needed. Most often before and
after the shooting, democratic peoples appreciate the steadiness
and experience of ex-generals like a proven Colin Powell, who understand
the tricky nexus between state- and warcraft.
But despite
the apparent present pause in Afghanistan, we are still in the midst
of a deadly struggle that we did not foresee but surely must see
through. Cessation of this war, even the appearance of hesitancy
and conciliation, could still prove disastrous — as we learned
both in the Gulf and in Somalia. The only thing worse than not retaliating
to unprovoked attack is doing so in half-measures that leave aggressors
wounded but not eliminated, defeated but not ruined. So it is time
not to rest on our laurels, but to turn to our stable of grim generals,
who must finish the job and end those who plan — then, now,
and always — to destroy us.
The Athenian
general Nicias, one of the richest and most restrained men at classical
Athens, saw clearly that the bellicose Alcibiades's simultaneous
war with Sparta, Sicily, and others of the Greek world was fraught
with risks. But once that deadly gambit commenced, it was Nicias's
trademark conservatism — not Alcibiades' nerve — that
would prove the ruin of the Athenian armada at Syracuse.
George McClellan
crafted the Army of the Potomac out of a mob through patient drilling
and stern discipline — and then was unwilling to use his creation
for what it was intended, and thereby nearly wrecked his cause.
His manners, wit, and brilliance would make him a viable presidential
candidate in November 1864. But he lost to an ascendant Lincoln
when a different sort of man, William Tecumseh Sherman, stormed
Atlanta before burning his way through Georgia and into the Carolinas.
Chief of Staff
Henry Halleck — neither liked nor hated by many — was
an effective emissary between Lincoln and his generals. But when
he took command after Shiloh, his memo writing disguised as pursuit
ensured that thousands of beaten Confederates would escape —
and kill thousands of Northerners — the next year.
George S. Patton
was a disaster as a proconsul in postwar Bavaria. Yet Eisenhower
and Bradley — nicer, steadier, and more judicious men both
— failed to close the Falaise Gap, unwisely restrained Patton
at the Seine River and near the German border, and employed orthodoxy,
not creativity, at the Battle of the Bulge. Thank God that both
of them, and not Patton, later became fixtures of American government;
but weep for the thousands of GIs dead because they, and not Patton,
ruled the American battlefield in Europe.
Now we are
on the threshold of a great decision, where this age-old dichotomy
in military leadership will become ever more marked, as we ponder
Iraq and beyond. There is no disagreement that Saddam Hussein stands
as a peril to his neighbors, a threat to world peace, and an obstacle
to our war on terrorism. After all, he invaded both Iran and Kuwait,
gassed his own people, fought America, violated the tenets of the
armistice, reneged on United Nation inspections, sought to assassinate
former president Bush, stockpiles biological weapons and perhaps
worse, and may have abetted past terrorist attacks on the United
States — and have known in advance the events of September
11.
All agree on
all that — and only that. The voices of the Niciases, McClellans,
and Hallecks now in our State Department quite properly remind us
that we have no recent pretext for war with Iraq, and that when
the initial bombs drop we will be roundly condemned by every world
leader from Mr. Mandela to Premier Putin. No doubt some of the specters
that haunted the elder Bush and his team are with us still: Will
not the Arab street blow up? Chaos ensue in the Middle East? The
Intifada widen? Europeans balk? Missiles rain down on Tel Aviv?
The oil fields ignite? Germs (and worse) be unleashed? Americans
die in the deserts of the Middle East? Indeed, all that and more
could transpire.
But the voices
of Pericles, Sherman, Grant, and Churchill answer back that our
war now is for self-preservation, and thus restraint in battle is
madness. Our way of war, tested in the Gulf, Serbia, and Afghanistan,
is ready to end Mr. Hussein's repugnant reign of terror. Rarely
do morality and military superiority reside in one cause, but in
our present quandary they most surely do. If led by audacious leaders,
once more in Baghdad we will see what we saw in Kabul — a freed
people who hated their terrorist government more than its orchestrated
mobs hated us, and conscripted soldiers who preferred life and freedom
to annihilation in an evil cause.
Iraq is the
Gordian knot of the present crisis, whose interwoven cords must
be cut, not pondered. With the removal of Saddam Hussein, problems
will abate, not arise. Nearby Iran will be more likely to emulate
the new freedom of its neighbors than to endure the continued dread
of its mullahs. Our illegitimate "friends" in the Gulf
will now not have a madman as a neighbor, but may perhaps
find better government on their borders than inside their own countries.
We can begin a domino theory of democracy that will be our honest
— though unwelcome — gift to them in exchange for their
own past perfidy to us.
After the removal
of Saddam Hussein, to be followed by internationally sanctioned
successors, it will be difficult for Syria, Yemen, Libya, and the
other thugocracies of the Middle East to claim that America is either
impotent or unjust — or to welcome terrorists onto their shores.
Recent history in Afghanistan teaches us that they, along with Egypt,
Jordan, and other "moderates" of the region, will profess
to have wanted reform and an end to terror all along, not Round
Three with the United States.
Just as the
confirmed capture of bin Laden will cripple his al Qaeda network
both materially and psychologically, so the end of fascism in Iraq
will enervate satellite sanctuaries everywhere in the region. In
the same way as the death of Hitler ended the Nazi party, and the
ruin of the Third Reich finished the advance of fascist power in
Europe, so the defeat of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi dictatorship
will erode both clandestine support for terrorists and murderous
tyranny well beyond Iraq.
The armed struggle
to remove Saddam Hussein is not the ideal solution — who after
all, could have envisioned September 11? — but it is now the
only solution. For better or worse, we are on the back of
global transformation with the reins in our hands. Mr. Rumsfeld,
along with his Pattons and Shermans, sees clearly that we cannot
dismount, but rather must hang on and keep galloping. It is not
the time to tell Sherman to stay put in Atlanta, or to shrug to
Patton poised at the Siegfried Line that there is no more gas. We
should not announce to the great Theban liberator Epaminondas that
he is to stay out of the Peloponnese and let the helots of Sparta
be — nor order Scipio to leave a wounded Hannibal well enough
alone down in Carthage.
We have been
lectured endlessly about consultation, sobriety, the dangers of
unilateralism, and all the other diplomatic doublespeak that would
have ensured that we never struck back in Afghanistan — or
pressed us to seek an armistice during Ramadan, or a coalition postbellum
government of "former" and "moderate" Taliban.
Had such analysts had their way, we would now be witnessing an endless
stream of EU diplomats, Chamberlain-like, smiling for cameras at
Mullah Omar's spread in Kabul, or perhaps a UN General Assembly
debate on the use of "racist" American force in the Middle
East — while Ground Zero smoldered and al Qaeda still trained.
Just as they are warning us now that it would be "illegal"
to attack Saddam Hussein, the violator of the 1991 agreements, so
they only recently once lectured that the Taliban was a really a
"third party" and therefore could not be found legally
culpable for September 11.
Instead it
is time that we reflect on what constitutes morality, and remember
that history is replete with examples of self-professedly sober
and circumspect "moderates" who reassured allies and courted
the media — but who also got thousands of people killed through
their smug caution and cheap forbearance.
And just as
we must end the glorification of the cautious, so we should stop
the slander against those who seek to finish off our enemies. American
leaders who want to end the terror in Iraq are not "saber-rattlers"
and "hawks" out to "take out" or "get"
Mr. Hussein. Rather Mr. Rumsfeld and his associates are the true
moralists in a difficult crisis, who understand that real humanity
lies in the often dirty business of ending, not tolerating or ignoring,
evil.
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