Part III: What A Tour Of Duty Says About A Country's Intent
To Win The Wars It Fights
The
Hidden Message
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A tour of duty in WWII thus became: Take the most direct
route possible to the center of power and influence in
Germany, dismantle that power base, imprison its leaders,
and replace it all with a functioning government that would,
from that point forward, serve society and the world.
If one looks at the war in the Pacific the same is true. All
of the little engagements from Port Moresby to the Aleutian
Islands and more were nothing but maneuvers designed to find
the most expedient way to march America’s Army across the
Pacific to the steps of Tokyo, there to dismantle the
government that existed and imprison its leaders. In terms
of a tour of duty for a soldier in the Pacific, it was
little different from that of his fellow soldier in Europe,
except, of course, for the geography, heat, humidity, and
perfidy of the enemy.
Defining a tour of duty this way may strike some as an
oversimplification, but we would say not. The fact is that
when the task was accomplished, in both Europe and the
Pacific, the tour of duty ended… and when it did the
soldiers were returned home… to their families and loved
ones. And if this still does not convince you that the form
of the tour of duty an American soldier had says a lot about
America’s goals in fighting its wars, we would point out
that not only was this the case in WWII, it was also the
case in WWI, the Indian wars, and the Civil War. America’s
policy in fighting all of its wars has until recently been
simple and direct: drive to the seat of the enemy’s power,
dismantle it, arrest its leaders, and replace both the form
of government and its leadership with one acceptable to
America.
For the sake of simplicity, let us call this approach to war
“Dynamic Warfare.” Its attributes include an overwhelming
determination on the part of America to bring the enemy not
just to its knees, but to totally destroy that enemy and its
ability to rule. In Dynamic Warfare the war is not over
until the seat of power is dismantled, the political system
that supports it is torn asunder, and the leaders who foster the war are arrested, brought to trial and either
imprisoned or released back into society, depending on the
severity of their crimes. When these elements are accomplished such a war can be declared over, the troops
sent home, and an effort got underway to rebuild the country
involved with a new form of government and a new set of
leaders acceptable to the U.S. and the world at large.
Dynamic Warfare… a concept invented long ago that, because
of how it was waged and the objectives it held, forced the
creation of what we in this article will call a “traditional
tour of duty.” Without a traditional tour of duty, the
capacity to wage Dynamic Warfare simply would not exist. One
begets the other, and vice versa. Or, in other words, if one
looks at a war by first studying the kind of tour of duty
employed in that war, one can sense and determine the level
of resolve a country, America in this case, has in winning
that war. If the form of the tour of duty is traditional,
then one can expect that America will have entered into
Dynamic Warfare, and therein intends to win the war at all
costs by decimating the enemy, its power base, its political
system, and its leaders.
What then does it say if one looks at American soldiers and
sees them experiencing something other than a
traditional tour of duty? Is there such a thing? If so, what
does it look like? And most importantly, if a traditional
tour of duty says America is out to win at all costs, what
does it say about America’s resolve when its military falls
back on non-traditional tours of duty as a means to
accomplish its wartime objectives?
To answer these questions one need only look at America’s
modern day wars… beginning with Vietnam and continuing
through to Afghanistan.
With little doubt the tours of duty soldiers experienced in
Vietnam were not traditional. Then again, the war itself was
certainly not an example of Dynamic Warfare either.
In Vietnam soldiers were shuttled between units like rental
bicycles at a beach. Got a hole somewhere that needs to be
filled? Then send a man from one unit to another. Better
still, shorten the tour of duty from “the duration” to only
1 year, and then rotate people endlessly from the States to
Vietnam, back to the States, then on to Europe or Korea, and
then back to the States, and maybe even back again to
Vietnam one more time if a man’s time in service lasted long
enough to allow for two tours. With such an approach to
staffing, it was only natural that in Vietnam there was no
such thing as unit cohesion. Instead, the people that made
up a unit became bifurcated, broken into new guys, middle
timers and short timers. Few of one type mixed with the
other, as there was no value in building relationships that
would only be torn apart by the vagaries or war, death,
reassignment, or the end of a man’s tour of duty. Knowing
that anyone you became close to would be gone in, on
average, 4 months, suggested that it was a waste of time to
make friends among the new guys coming in, or the short
timers about to rotate out. In Vietnam a tour of duty was
most definitely not traditional. In Vietnam a man’s tour of
duty was his own tour of duty. No one else had one like his.
No one else lived the same experience.
In Vietnam a man moved through the system by himself, bereft
of unit integrity, value or purpose. The only thing that
mattered was coming out the other end… “rotating home.”
Don’t misunderstand us. We are not criticizing what a
Vietnam tour of duty was, we are only defining how it was
different from the traditional kind that existed in WWII,
when people spent their entire time in the service together,
fighting the same war in the same way… usually for 3
straight years or more… within one unit, their
unit, soldiering with men they had been with for that entire
3 year period. It’s not that Vietnam’s tour of duty was
worse, it’s that it was different, and in that difference a
person can see something of how determined America was to
prosecute and win the Vietnam war.
With a non-traditional tour of duty structure like that of
Vietnam, it was only natural that the objective of
obliterating the enemy would fall by the wayside, to be
replaced with something more akin to working towards a
negotiated settlement of the conflict. The reason for this
is that a disjointed, incoherent approach to warfare simply
is not up to the task of defeating the enemy at his
doorstep. So true is this that one could even laugh at the
idea that Uncle Sam ever had the slightest intention of
marching to the doorstep of power in Hanoi.
What then does the non-traditional tour of duty of Vietnam
say about America’s intention to win that war? It says that
America never had any such intention. The objective was
never to “Take the most direct route possible to the center
of power and influence in [Hanoi], dismantle that power
base, imprison its leaders, and replace it all with a
functioning government that would, from that point forward,
serve society and the world.” The intention with North
Vietnam was never the same as that with Germany or Japan.
Instead, the intent was to clear and hold a piece of
amorphous territory not even contained within the national
boundaries of North Vietnam. The idea was not to stop North
Vietnam from being able to wage war, it was to go out into
the South Vietnamese country side, secure a series of
population centers, hold those centers, and from them then
project power into the surrounding countryside. That may be
a way to bring security to those who live in the
countryside, but it sure is no way to win a war.
Power Projection, that is what it was all about. Where in
WWI and WWII one could see a tour of duty formed around
Dynamic Warfare, in Vietnam the tour of duty was structured
to support Power Projection across dozens of small,
irrelevant population centers. Across 43 provinces and 4
military regions, soldiers were sent on 1 year tours of duty
to try to project America’s power into places like I
Corps: Quang Tri, Thua Thien, Quang Nam, Quang Tin,
Quang Ngai, Hue, Da Nang; II Corps: Kontum, Binh
Dinh, Pleiku, Phu Bon, Phu Yen, Dar Lac, Khanh Hoa, Ninh
Thuan, Tuyon Duc, Quang Duc, Lan Dong, Binh Thuan, Can Raah;
III Corps: Binh Tuy, Long Khanh, Phou Long, Binh
Long, Dinh Duong, Tay Ninh, Hay Hghia, Bien Hao, Phuoc Tuy,
Long An, Gia Dinh, Vung Tau, Saigon; and IV Corps:
Go Cong, Kien Tuong, Kien Phong, Dinh Tuong, Kien Hoa, Vinh
Binh, Vinh Long, An Giang, Kion Giang, Chunong Thion, Phong
Dinh, Ba Xuyen, An Xuyen, Duc Liou.
Along the way firefights and search and destroy missions
made even smaller, more irrelevant places famous. Places
like Tuy Hua, An Khe, Khe San, An Loc, Dong Ha, the Ia
Drang Valley, Dak To, Qui Nhon, Phu Kat, Song Tre, and on,
and on. Yet never in all of this was a serious effort
mounted to take the battle to the front door of the power
center and people who ruled North Vietnam... Hanoi, to end
their capacity to wage war in the south. Never were the
generals at the top of the NVA under threat of arrest and
imprisonment. Never did the political leadership face an
American force intent on tearing down the political
structure they had built and replacing it with one less
warring and aggressive. Never was the intent to have
America’s soldiers march across the world to the power
center of North Vietnam, to “dismantle that center of power…
to decimate it, grind it into the ground, and forever put an
end to its ability to rule its people and therein do the
world harm.”
Why?
Why was there no tour of duty where soldiers served for the
duration... until a march could be completed up the Ho Chi
Minh trail to Hanoi, where the enemy would then be engaged
on its doorstep? Or an amphibious landing at Haiphong
followed by a quick sprint to Hanoi? Of a simple crossing of
the DMZ with an overwhelmingly powerful push to Hanoi, to
tear the government asunder and imprison its leaders, in the
manner of what the NVA did on its way to Saigon in 1975?
The answer is that defeating the North by winning the war
was never in the cards. It was never the objective. One can
see that by looking at what a tour of duty was in the
Vietnam War… it was an exercise in Power Projection, not
Dynamic Warfare. And we venture to say the same is true of
Afghanistan today. America never had an intention to win
that war either. At most it intended to fight to a
stalemate, and in the process do its best to weaken to the
point of failure the Taliban’s ability to mount a serious
offensive against America again… for, oh, say, another 5 - 7
years from now, by which time the world will have moved on
and hopefully the Taliban will be just one more
inconsequential group of extremists playing at power games.
The fact is, America’s intentions in the wars it fights have
changed from WWI and WWII until today. To understand why, we
need to know exactly when that change come about, and what
caused it.
In terms of when the change came, we would posit that it
came about on 11 April 1951. Yes, on that day the way
America fights its wars changed, and in the process the
composition of a tour of duty changed too. From that point
forward it was no longer necessary to structure a soldier’s
tour of duty around winning a war by defeating the enemy.
From that point forward the intention was no longer to
follow a path to the enemy’s door, there to decimate him and
imprison his leaders. From that point forward the objective
was merely to project power into his country and make his
ability to govern it difficult, until a settlement could be
negotiated and agreed to.
On one side, this is all well and good. However, it would
have been nice if someone had told the American people of
this change in policy. More importantly, it would have been
even better if someone had told America’s fighting men, the
ones living through their individual tours of duty. It would
have been nice if someone had said that the goal is no
longer to defeat the enemy, it is to weaken him to the point
where he cries uncle, at which point you can then let him up
off of the floor, to return again to ruling his own country,
hopefully with an improved mindset.
Nonsense.
As to when this change came about, it came about in the
middle of the Korean War when one of America’s most
influential Dynamic Warfare generals took it upon himself to
disagree with the President as to how to win the Korean War,
and what should be done about it. That's what caused the
change, and the impact of this change has been rippling down
through history ever since.
From that commanding general's standpoint, the only way to
win the war was to push his soldiers up a path that ended at
the gates of the power center fighting the war: Beijing.
There he would overthrow the government, as was done in the
case of Berlin and Tokyo, imprison its leaders, and then set
about rebuilding the government of China as had been done in
Germany and Japan.
Seen from a different angle, from his perspective the real
power behind the Korean War was not the North Koreans, it
was the Chinese Communist soldiers, their material, and the
orders that sent them into the Korean peninsula to drive
America into the sea. And the power behind the Chi-Com
soldiers lay in Beijing, in a compound known as Zhongnanhai
(中南海).
Zhongnanhai was China’s Reichstag. In it lived the men that
ruled Communist China, including a fat old man that loved to
dally with frightfully young girls, a man named Mao Zedong
(simplified Chinese: 毛泽东). In order to defeat this foe,
more had to be done than just fighting the men he sent to
the battle fields of North Korea. What had to be done was
what was done in Germany and Japan. A path had to be cleared
to the steps of Zhongnanhai, where the power base, political
system, and people who ruled these two could be done away
with. Winning all the battles you could on the fields of
North Korea would not stop more Chinese from coming south to
contest again and again the useless hilltops that American
men were losing their lives defending. To win this war,
Dynamic Warfare had to be undertaken.
There was only one problem with this: the President of the
United States was not interested in winning this war if it
meant taking on the Chinese. At this time his interest was
in finding a way to de-escalate the fighting, sue for peace,
and let the peninsula be sliced into two, with the top half
becoming puppets of the Chinese, and the bottom half
becoming puppets of America, until such time as they might
show a propensity to rule themselves on their own.
And so it was, Truman and MacArthur clashed. MacArthur saw
the folly of fighting a war that could not be won with the
tactics being employed. Truman saw the folly of dragging
America into yet another war in the world, so soon on the
heels of the end of WWII, for a purpose most American’s
could barely fathom and a country most Americans barely knew
existed. Surely there could be no good reason for turning a
police action into an overt war with China? Surely. Surely
there was no nuclear threat coming from this bedraggled
little area of the world? Surely.
By the end of the day on April 11, 1945, MacArthur was on
his way home, relieved of duty. Matthew Ridgeway stepped
into his shoes, and dutifully wound the war down, while
others negotiated a stalemate truce with the grandfather of
the child who currently rules North Korea today, and rattles
his nuclear weapon pacifier above his head whenever he
doesn’t get his way.
Back then, from that point forward, Dynamic Warfare as a
means to an end, of a type designed to depose those sitting
in the seat of power so that they pulled their men from the
battlefield and sued for peace in order to save their own
lives, would no longer be part of the Korean War. From that
point forward Power Projection, in the form of continued
stubborn episodes of defense for the numerous but
essentially useless hills and choke points of the Korean
peninsula that were constantly in contention, was to replace
it.
Reflecting on this change in America’s objectives in going
to war, and especially on her abandoning the intention to
win the wars she engages in, we can see today that an entire
philosophy started to be built up at that time. A philosophy
centered around justifying
America's change from Dynamic Warfare to Power Projection
Warfare. From then until today, the objective has been to
improve on and embellish the justification for this change,
until the reasoning behind the concept of Power Projection
Warfare ended up sounding like unassailable scientific logic. Among the most recognized and
widely accepted of these forms of justification is a concept Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld liked to toss around when he was in office: the
idea of asymmetric versus symmetric warfare.
To hear Rumsfeld speak of it, the concept of symmetric
warfare where one country pits itself against another is
long dead and likely not to be seen again. Proper nation
states do not fight each other anymore, instead, non-nation
state extremists do. These stateless groups of “dead enders”
are the real threat to the world, not countries like Russia,
Syria, China, Iran or North Korea. Asymmetric warfare is the
byproduct of this change in the world's approach to
political governance... it is the result, and with that
result comes a new form of warfare: short scrappy wars where
Power Projection rules... and a new type of tour of duty...
one based on a short stint of duty in a dangerous country,
for, oh, say, 10 - 14 months, after which the soldier will
return home to his loved ones. And if the war hasn’t been
won by then, well, we’ll just send another contingent of men
to pick up where the others left off. All well and good.
Hogwash. All well and good, except that the new arrivals
will have about as much experience in the situation on the
ground in Afghanistan as the FNGs had when they arrived in
Vietnam.
If you ask this author, it’s a lousy and a losing way to
fight a war. Asymmetric warfare: baloney. It’s nothing more
than the redefinition of clear and hold or
guerilla warfare with a phrase
that some military officer with an MBA in strategic thinking
presumes will make the concept sound more important and believable.
Clear and hold does not win wars.
Fighting a guerilla war believing that the guerillas are
truly on their own and there is no government behind them is
idiocy. There is always a government behind
guerillas, you just have to look for it. So absurd has the
concept of asymmetric warfare being a legitimate concept
become that there are now dozens of scholarly articles that
have been published claiming that Vietnam was an asymmetric
war. It wasn't. In case someone out there missed the memo,
the Viet Cong were fully backed by the government of North
Vietnam. They were not guerillas, they were a separate
military group that recruited fighters from South Vietnam,
but answered to and were supported by
the government of North Vietnam. If anyone wanted to defeat
the Viet Cong all they had to do was take Hanoi and the Viet
Cong would have dried up as a fighting force within 4
months.[1]
In this regard, the VC were much like the U.S. National
Guard, a group of organizations that recruit their fighters
from the regions within the states they represent. They are
separate and distinct from the Marines, Army or Navy, much
as the VC were separate and distinct from the NVA... but in
the VC's case they were still backed by the government of
North Vietnam, just as the National Guard is backed by the
DOD and Federal Government. Without North Vietnam's backing
the VC would have had no weapons, no ammunition, no medical
supplies, and little food. In fact, if it weren't for the
backing of the VC by North Vietnam there would have been no
need for the Ho Chi Minh trail.
In closing we would say this: asymmetric warfare is not
asymmetric. It's nothing more than a misapplied phrase that
masks the true symmetry of any war being fought. Outside of
a dictionary, there is no such thing as asymmetric
warfare... there is only symmetric warfare portrayed as
being asymmetric. In each case, if looked at carefully, what
one will see is that behind any group of bad guys conducting
asymmetric fighting is the backing of a real country, with
leaders who have formed a real power base, a political
system, and people whose job it is to enable the fighters to
do their work. Or put another way, behind every asymmetric
threat is a real country whose political system, power
structure and leadership should be the target of American
led Dynamic Warfare.
Take Afghanistan. The problem there is not the Taliban, it
is both the Afghan government itself, as well as the
Pakistani government... and all of the corrupt, self serving
miscreants that work within those governments. If they chose
to, either one of these two countries could roll up the
Taliban in short order. The problem is that they do not
chose to. In other words, the symmetry behind the asymmetric
Taliban are the corrupt governments of Afghanistan and
Pakistan, who would rather continue the status quo than risk
losing their access to the riches that come with corrupt
government. Whether it is al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam, ETA,
Hamas, Hezbollah, Jaish-e-Mohammed, or any one of the other
144 organizations that are listed as terrorist groups,
behind them there is a symmetrical threat in the form of a
government that either actively or passively supports them,
all so that the leaders of that government can continue to
enjoy the spoils of their own malfeasance, exploitation and
racketeering.[2]
However, knowing this and doing something about it is
another thing. If Truman was not going to take on China to
win in Korea, you can bet that President Obama is not going
to toss out the existing Afghan government and start over
again, nor threaten to overthrow the government of Pakistan
if they do not immediately invade and take control of the
tribal areas that provide support for the Taliban and
al-Qaeda. Instead he and his associates will obfuscate. As a
group they will call it asymmetric warfare and claim there
is little they can do about it except fly a few drones
around, and otherwise try their best to harass the
"stateless" bad guys who are harassing the world.
Why would they do this? In part they have no choice. As a
country we no longer have a consensus that says that we
should go to war over the problems that populate our planet,
never mind fight to win by employing traditional forms of
Dynamic Warfare to assure the enemy, his government and its
leaders are deposed. Take Syria: over 70,000 people have
been killed in that nasty little war. Does anyone think America
wants to put boots on the ground there to save those that
are left? Hardly. Things are fine in Dubuque right now,
thank you, there's no need to stick our nose into someone
else's dirty little war and mess up what's going on at home.
Or put another way, there is no way in hell that you are
going to draft my son so that he can experience a
traditional tour of duty in Syria. Fuhgettaboutit.
The world has changed. People today believe it is better to
live in a more risky world than step out and clean up the
world we live in. You can see it happening before your eyes.
Look closely at what comprises a tour of duty and you will
see therein exactly how determined America is to win the
wars it takes on. In our view, it no longer is. No longer is
the goal to march America’s military to the doors of power
of the government being fought, dismantle that government,
imprison its leaders and then set about rebuilding the
country. Instead, today, what we are told is that there is
no government for us to fight to right the wrongs the world
suffers from. America’s enemies are stateless. That being
the case, we might as well develop some form of asymmetric
warfare capability where we project power into the countries we find
ourselves fighting in… project power to stateless enemies
who could care less about our power.
Footnotes:
[1] For an example of a very scholarly presentation on what asymmetric
warfare is, click
here. Be sure to note on slide #6 the listing of the Vietnam War as an
example of asymmetric warfare... and this from a prestigious think tank
associated with the U.S. Marines. - To return
to your place in the text, click here:
[2] Since it is clear that America no longer has an intention to use Dynamic
Warfare as a means to lay waste the seat of power of our next enemy, by
decimating its capital, dismantling its political structure and arresting
and imprisoning its generals and leaders, all that is left is to accept
Power Projection as our sole means for fighting wars. Employing Power
Projection means fighting each war as an asymmetric war. So, if America has
no intention of decisively winning the wars it fights, it will need to
develop the skills it needs to fight future wars to a stalemated condition.
Among the skills needed will be skills in minimizing casualties, checking
and cross-checking the enemy's advance, and the other chess board moves that
fall short of winning the game. Fortunately the Army is already preparing to
do just that: learn how to fight wars that end in a stalemate. To see how
the Army is preparing, click
here and enjoy reading about the new "let's not lose the war, but
let's not win it either..." team called The United States Army Asymmetric
Warfare Group. All humor aside, they mean well... but it sure would be nice
if America returned to fighting its wars with an intention to decisively
beat the bastards we fight against. - To return
to your place in the text, click here:
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