Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [73]
Rumsfeld himself returned repeatedly to this point. In the invasion of Iraq, “speed was more important than mass,” he emphasized during a television interview on April 13.18 Speed facilitated the good and precluded the unwanted. At a meeting with Pentagon employees soon after Baghdad fell, Rumsfeld expanded on this theme: “What’s happened is amazing for the speed with which it was executed, but also for all the things that did not happen, all the bad things that could have happened [but didn’t] because of that speed.” Speed cleansed war of undesired collateral effects that traditionally compromised its utility. Thanks to the speed and precision of U.S. operations, he continued,
There are no large masses of refugees fleeing across borders into the neighboring countries. And humanitarian relief is flowing in through ports and rail and roads to assist the Iraqi people. There has not been large-scale collateral damage. The infrastructure of the country is largely intact. Bridges were not blown, for the most part, and rail lines were protected. The dams were not broken and floods did not occur. And there have not been massive civilian casualties because the coalition forces took such enormous care to protect the lives of innocent civilians.19
Rumsfeld had shaped the design of Operation Iraqi Freedom to validate his concept of transformation. He now declared his test a success. Together, Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom had seemingly buried the putative lessons that Colin Powell had drawn from Desert Storm. Numerically large armies with their “big footprint” were now problematic. Small contingents of highly trained, high-tech ground forces moving like quicksilver: Here was the template for all future U.S. military operations. Deliberate planning, massed formations, top-down control, operations unfolding according to a ponderous, predetermined sequence: All of these had become as obsolete as close-order drill. Swift, precise, flexible, agile, adaptable: These qualities had now become the hallmarks of U.S. military operations.
As Afghanistan and Iraq seemed to indicate, to commit U.S. forces to battle was to achieve assured victory. Washington need no longer view force as a last resort. Among the instruments available to policy makers, force now ranked as the preferred option.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz may not have hankered for war, something with which they had no direct personal experience. What they and other semiwarriors craved was not slaughter but submission—unquestioned political dominance as an expected by-product of unquestioned military dominion. Writing not long after the fall of Baghdad, one enthusiast put it this way:
[T]he strategic imperative of patrolling the perimeter of the Pax Americana is transforming the U.S. military . . . into the cavalry of a global, liberal international order. Like the cavalry of the Old West, their job is one part warrior and one part policeman—both of which are entirely within the tradition of the American military.
Even as the military remains ready to wage a full-scale war focused against a specific aggressor nation, the realignment of our network of overseas bases into a system of frontier stockades is necessary to win a long-term struggle against an amorphous enemy across the arc of instability. . . . Although countless questions about transformation remain unanswered, one lesson is already clear: American power is on the move.20
This defined the brand of militarism to which Washington now fell prey.
WAIST DEEP IN THE EUPHRATES
During the run-up to, and execution of, Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom,