Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [79]
In reality, Bush no more understood the implications of committing U.S. forces “to protect the local population” than he had the “innovative doctrine and high-tech weaponry” he once proudly proclaimed were revolutionizing warfare. Yet in unveiling this new approach—subsequently enshrined as “the surge”—he officially buried the previous new American way of war. Events had already rendered shock and awe defunct. As a slogan for waging modern war, “speed kills” had long since fallen from favor. Now it disappeared altogether.
The old script having lost its power to persuade, the president recited a new text that others had thrust into his hands. Staring defeat in the face and seeing no alternative, he decided to give counterinsurgency a whirl. Thus did a self-described conservative Republican endorse national security techniques last employed with disastrous results by liberal Democrats during the Kennedy-Johnson era.
The shift marked another sea change in American military thought and practice. To shore up the Washington consensus, Washington was once again reinventing war. Winning hearts and minds now displaced fire and maneuver atop the pyramid of soldierly priorities.
Among the unwritten duties that every modern president must shoulder is to explain to the American people “why we fight.” Up to this point, in justifying the Long War, Bush had expressed himself using the ideologically charged language typically employed by his predecessors. The global conflict begun on 9/11, he had regularly insisted, represented a continuation of a long-standing commitment to spreading liberal democratic values.
Throughout U.S. history, such imagery has resonated with many (perhaps most) Americans, even those who, in the ever shorter interval between wars, evidenced little concern for the inalienable rights of unfortunates beyond America’s own borders. Yet when presidents use phrases like fighting for freedom, eliminating tyranny, and liberating the oppressed, they speak in code. Their real meaning, easily deciphered by their listeners, is this: Safeguarding the American way of life requires that others conform to American values. Military victory offers the medium through which American warriors impose that conformity. Given the stakes, forcing adversaries to submit becomes a political and moral imperative. Gen. Douglas MacArthur captured the essence of this imperative in the aphorism for which he is best remembered: “There is no substitute for victory.”
With the advent of the surge, President Bush quietly detached the Long War’s political rationale from any expectations of victory. By the end of 2006, the purpose of Operation Iraqi Freedom was no longer Iraqi freedom. American warriors were now fighting not to advance the cause of liberty but to create conditions that might enable them to leave Iraq without acknowledging explicit defeat. The principles defining the sacred trinity were being pressed into service in support of an amorphous conception of warfare in which victory had essentially become indefinable and the benefits accruing to Americans were at best obscure.
Designating the surge the basis of a new “strategy” had a further effect: It devalued, even trivialized, the very concept of strategy. The Bush administration had, after all, originally conceived of the Iraq War as but part of a global war, one campaign among several intended to transform the Islamic world.
By 2007, even the president had abandoned any expectations of presiding over such a regional (or civilizational) transformation. The Bush administration’s post-9/11 domino theory—its reliance on American power to remove regimes hostile to American values—had misfired.