The US Army May be at a Breaking Point.
info made accessible by
OpEdNews.com
That's the conclusion of a report written for the
Army.
The washington post covered the report:
Scathing
New Army War College Report Broadly Criticizes Bush admin on
handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of
taking a detour into an "unnecessary" war in Iraq and pursuing
an "unrealistic" quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S.
wars with states that pose no serious threat. Why
is this on page 12 of the Washington Post? It should be Page one!
Here's an incredible indictment of the incompetence and
failure of the Bush policy on terrorism and most newspapers ignore it. Fox
and CNN ignore it, and the Washington Post puts it on page 12. You can
click on the link above to read the Washington Post article, and the
original article is
Here's the link to the
whole report, followed by some excerpts. This is worth reading. it
makes it so crystal clear that the use of the term WAR ON TERRORISM may be
morally clear but it's untrue, misleading and had led the US down the
wrong path in defending itself against terrorism.
Some excerpts: :
"the administration has postulated a multiplicity of
enemies, including rogue states; weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
proliferators; terrorist organizations of global, regional, and national
scope; and terrorism itself. It also seems to have confl ated them into a
monolithic threat, and in so doing has subordinated strategic clarity to
the moral clarity it strives for in foreign policy and may have set the
United States on a course of open-ended and gratuitous confl ict with
states and nonstate entities that pose no serious threat to the United
States.
Of particular concern has been the confl ation of al-Qaeda
and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a single, undifferentiated terrorist
threat.
This was a strategic error of the fi rst order because it
ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level,
and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action. The result has
been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that
has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and
diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland
against further assault by an undeterrable al-Qaeda. The war against Iraq
was not integral to the global war on terrorism (GWOT)...
He describes the president's global war on
terrorism (GWOT) as "
Accordingly, the GWOT must be recalibrated to conform to
concrete U.S. security interests and the limits of American power.
The specific measures required include deconfl ation of
the threat; substitution of credible deterrence for preventive war as the
primary vehicle for dealing with rogue states seeking WMD; refocus of the
GWOT fi rst and foremost on al-Qaeda, its allies, and homeland security;
preparation to settle in Iraq for stability over democracy (if the choice
is forced upon us) and for international rather than U.S. responsibility
for Iraq’s future; and fi nally, a reassessment of U.S. military force
levels, especially ground force levels.
The GWOT as it has so far been defi ned and conducted is
strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver, and
threatens to dissipate scarce U.S. military and other means over too many
ends. It violates the fundamental strategic principles of discrimination
and concentration.
He quotes military icon Clausewitz, "The great
Prussian philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz, believed that the "fi
rst, the supreme, most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and
the commander have to make is to establish the kind of war on which they
are embarking, neither mistaking it for, not trying to turn it into,
something that is alien to its true nature. This is the first of all
strategic questions and the most comprehensive."
And then goes on to state, "The administration has
postulated a multiplicity of enemies, including rogue states, weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, terrorist organizations, and
terrorism itself. It has also, at least for the purposes of mobilizing and
sustaining domestic political support for the war on Iraq and other
potential preventive military actions, confl ated them as a general,
undifferentiated threat. In so doing, the administration has arguably
subordinated strategic clarity to the moral clarity it seeks in foreign
policy and may have set the United States on a path of open-ended and
unnecessary confl ict with states and nonstate entities that pose no
direct or imminent threat to the United States."
and more...
"Sound strategy mandates threat discrimination and
reasonable harmonization of ends and means. The GWOT falls short on both
counts. Indeed, it may be misleading to cast the GWOT as a war; the
military’s role in the GWOT is still a work in progress, and the
military’s "comfort level" with it is any event problematic.
Moreover, to the extent that the GWOT is directed at the phenomenon of
terrorism, as opposed to fl esh-and-blood terrorist organizations, it sets
itself up for strategic failure. Terrorism is a recourse of the
politically desperate and militarily helpless, and, as such, it is hardly
going to disappear. The challenge of grasping the nature and parameters of
the GWOT is certainly not eased by the absence of a commonly accepted defi
nition of terrorism or by the depiction of the GWOT as a Manichaean
struggle between good and evil, "us" versus
"them.""