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.That's fine if you live in Mosul or Basra, where the Iraq question is a questionabout Iraq.But, for the rest of the world, what's at issue in the Iraq war is not the future ofIraq but the future of America.Can the world's leading nation still lead, or is John Kerry'sVietnam Syndrome "seared" (as he'd say) into its bones? If so, how likely is it that Americacan stick out the "long war"? Especially if it's fought not in sudden swift total devastatingmilitary campaigns but in arenas where our military and technological advantage is peripheraland other factors come into play.Facing a foe who has nothing but will and manpower, dowe have the strength to (in Liddell Hart's phrase) subjugate that will? The enemy wascertainly impressed by the speed with which U.S.forces raced to Baghdad.But the invasionbecomes a liberation and the liberation becomes a policing operation and the further you getfrom that first month of hard power the more constrained the hyperpower becomes, the lesswilling to use any but a tiny proportion of his awesome might until in the end he's Gulliverensnared by more motivated Lilliputians.Do you remember when that statue of Saddam came down? It proved to be hollow.TheIslamists think Western Civilization's like that: tough exterior, but empty inside; protected bya layer of hard steel--the U.S.military--there's nothing underneath.Why would they get that idea? Well, from a million and one little things--itsy-bitsy foot-of-page-thirty-seven news items, none too important in itself but cumulatively an avalanche.Take one trivial example: just before Christmas 2003, Muslim community leaders inCalifornia applauded the decision of the Catholic high school in San Juan Capistrano tochange the name of its football team from the Crusaders to the less culturally insensitiveLions.Meanwhile, twenty miles up the road in Irvine, the schedule for the Muslim FootballLeague's New Year tournament promised to bring together some of the most excitingMuslim football teams in Orange County: the Intifada, the Mujahideen, the Saracens, and theSword of Allah.America Alone Page 108 That's the spirit.I can't wait for the California sporting calendar circa 2015: the SanDiego Jihadi vs.the Oakland Culturally Sensitives, the Malibu Hezbollah vs.the SantaMonica Inoffensives, the Pasadena Sword of the Infidel Slayer vs.the Bakersfield Self-Deprecators, the San Jose Decapitators vs.the Berkeley Mutually Respectfuls.I suppose the rationale, conscious or not, behind such trivial concessions as schoolsports team names is that a big powerful wealthy culture can afford to be generous to aweaker culture.Unfortunately, magnanimity is often seen as weakness by those on thereceiving end.It's easy to be sensitive, tolerant, and multicultural--it's the default mode of theage---yet, when you persist in being sensitive to the insensitive, tolerant of the intolerant, andimpeccably multicultural about the avowedly unicultural, don't be surprised if they take it forweakness.If this is a "long war," then in the long run, which is the real battlefield? The sands ofAraby? Or the football fields of Orange County and a thousand others? When it chose toexpose the U.S.Treasury program for tracking terrorist finances, the New York Times washeavily criticized for damaging national security and responded that, au contraire, it took itsresponsibilities very seriously and would never reveal "troop movements." But this isn't a"troop movement" war: in asymmetrical warfare, the troop movements are the wiretransfers--getting the money from Saudi Arabia to America not just to pull off September 11but to advance its cause in all manner of slyer ways.We know the jihad hasn't got anythingto match the Third Infantry Division.But what about the other fronts?If you go to war colleges or strategic studies institutes in almost any country, they teachthe importance of looking at all elements of national power.For example, from the 2004U.S.Department of Defense Strategic Deterrence Joint Operating Concept: "Strategicdeterrence requires a national deterrence strategy that integrates and brings to bear allelements of national power: diplomatic, informational, military, and economic."Nothing unusual about that.I'd add a fifth element: judicial power, law enforcement.The difference between military power and the others is obvious: with military power, yougive the orders and somewhere at the other end someone carries them out.With the otherelements of national power, the chain of command isn't that direct.So let's consider howthey're going:Military PowerThe United States has the most powerful armed forces on the planet.The fact thatWashington's responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending pales incomparison to the really critical statistic: it's responsible for almost 80 percent of militaryresearch-and-development spending, which means the capability gap between it andeveryone else widens every day.In Afghanistan, a handful of prototype robots assisted in thecave-by-cave search for al Qaeda nutters.If these innovations have certain snot-nosed Brittoffs pining for the dash and élan of old-school imperialism, America's enemies project theirown prejudices onto them, too: the Great Satan prefers antiseptic technological warfarebecause he can't stomach a three-figure death toll.Therefore, the trick is not to provoke himinto walloping you with daisy cutters and bunker busters but to gnaw away at himincrementally, with one or two casualties per evening news bulletin.As for America's "friends," there's another paradox of the non-imperial hyperpower: theUnited State garrisons not remote ramshackle colonies but its wealthiest allies, therebyfreeing them to spend their tax revenues on luxuriant welfare programs rather than on tanksand aircraft carriers and thus further exacerbating the differences between America and theAmerica Alone Page 109 rest of the free world.Like any other form of welfare, defense welfare is a hard habit tobreak and damaging to the recipient.The peculiarly obnoxious character of modern Europeis a logical consequence of America's willingness to absolve it of responsibility for its ownsecurity.In 1796 George Washington wrote to Alexander Hamilton:"The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness,is in some degree a slave.It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which issufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."That neatly sums up the Euro-American relationship: the United States has become aslave to its habitual if largely misplaced fondness for Europe, while Europe has become aslave to its habitual if entirely irrational hatred for America.There's a line conservatives arefond of when they're discussing welfare: what's better for a man--to give him a fish or toteach him to fish for himself? That goes double for defense welfare.So, just as the only guy in town with a tennis racket isn't going to be playing a lot ofmatches, the logic of America's military dominance is that both its allies and enemies haveevery interest to find some other form of battlefield, whether (for France) the internationaltalking shops or (for Islamist clerics) the suburban mosques of North America, just to nametwo venues where the hyperpower is far less confident.Judicial PowerWhat about law enforcement as an element of national power? Well, in the words of theso-called "twentieth hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui, upon being sentenced to lifeimprisonment: "America, you lose."Hard to disagree.On the day Mr [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.That's fine if you live in Mosul or Basra, where the Iraq question is a questionabout Iraq.But, for the rest of the world, what's at issue in the Iraq war is not the future ofIraq but the future of America.Can the world's leading nation still lead, or is John Kerry'sVietnam Syndrome "seared" (as he'd say) into its bones? If so, how likely is it that Americacan stick out the "long war"? Especially if it's fought not in sudden swift total devastatingmilitary campaigns but in arenas where our military and technological advantage is peripheraland other factors come into play.Facing a foe who has nothing but will and manpower, dowe have the strength to (in Liddell Hart's phrase) subjugate that will? The enemy wascertainly impressed by the speed with which U.S.forces raced to Baghdad.But the invasionbecomes a liberation and the liberation becomes a policing operation and the further you getfrom that first month of hard power the more constrained the hyperpower becomes, the lesswilling to use any but a tiny proportion of his awesome might until in the end he's Gulliverensnared by more motivated Lilliputians.Do you remember when that statue of Saddam came down? It proved to be hollow.TheIslamists think Western Civilization's like that: tough exterior, but empty inside; protected bya layer of hard steel--the U.S.military--there's nothing underneath.Why would they get that idea? Well, from a million and one little things--itsy-bitsy foot-of-page-thirty-seven news items, none too important in itself but cumulatively an avalanche.Take one trivial example: just before Christmas 2003, Muslim community leaders inCalifornia applauded the decision of the Catholic high school in San Juan Capistrano tochange the name of its football team from the Crusaders to the less culturally insensitiveLions.Meanwhile, twenty miles up the road in Irvine, the schedule for the Muslim FootballLeague's New Year tournament promised to bring together some of the most excitingMuslim football teams in Orange County: the Intifada, the Mujahideen, the Saracens, and theSword of Allah.America Alone Page 108 That's the spirit.I can't wait for the California sporting calendar circa 2015: the SanDiego Jihadi vs.the Oakland Culturally Sensitives, the Malibu Hezbollah vs.the SantaMonica Inoffensives, the Pasadena Sword of the Infidel Slayer vs.the Bakersfield Self-Deprecators, the San Jose Decapitators vs.the Berkeley Mutually Respectfuls.I suppose the rationale, conscious or not, behind such trivial concessions as schoolsports team names is that a big powerful wealthy culture can afford to be generous to aweaker culture.Unfortunately, magnanimity is often seen as weakness by those on thereceiving end.It's easy to be sensitive, tolerant, and multicultural--it's the default mode of theage---yet, when you persist in being sensitive to the insensitive, tolerant of the intolerant, andimpeccably multicultural about the avowedly unicultural, don't be surprised if they take it forweakness.If this is a "long war," then in the long run, which is the real battlefield? The sands ofAraby? Or the football fields of Orange County and a thousand others? When it chose toexpose the U.S.Treasury program for tracking terrorist finances, the New York Times washeavily criticized for damaging national security and responded that, au contraire, it took itsresponsibilities very seriously and would never reveal "troop movements." But this isn't a"troop movement" war: in asymmetrical warfare, the troop movements are the wiretransfers--getting the money from Saudi Arabia to America not just to pull off September 11but to advance its cause in all manner of slyer ways.We know the jihad hasn't got anythingto match the Third Infantry Division.But what about the other fronts?If you go to war colleges or strategic studies institutes in almost any country, they teachthe importance of looking at all elements of national power.For example, from the 2004U.S.Department of Defense Strategic Deterrence Joint Operating Concept: "Strategicdeterrence requires a national deterrence strategy that integrates and brings to bear allelements of national power: diplomatic, informational, military, and economic."Nothing unusual about that.I'd add a fifth element: judicial power, law enforcement.The difference between military power and the others is obvious: with military power, yougive the orders and somewhere at the other end someone carries them out.With the otherelements of national power, the chain of command isn't that direct.So let's consider howthey're going:Military PowerThe United States has the most powerful armed forces on the planet.The fact thatWashington's responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending pales incomparison to the really critical statistic: it's responsible for almost 80 percent of militaryresearch-and-development spending, which means the capability gap between it andeveryone else widens every day.In Afghanistan, a handful of prototype robots assisted in thecave-by-cave search for al Qaeda nutters.If these innovations have certain snot-nosed Brittoffs pining for the dash and élan of old-school imperialism, America's enemies project theirown prejudices onto them, too: the Great Satan prefers antiseptic technological warfarebecause he can't stomach a three-figure death toll.Therefore, the trick is not to provoke himinto walloping you with daisy cutters and bunker busters but to gnaw away at himincrementally, with one or two casualties per evening news bulletin.As for America's "friends," there's another paradox of the non-imperial hyperpower: theUnited State garrisons not remote ramshackle colonies but its wealthiest allies, therebyfreeing them to spend their tax revenues on luxuriant welfare programs rather than on tanksand aircraft carriers and thus further exacerbating the differences between America and theAmerica Alone Page 109 rest of the free world.Like any other form of welfare, defense welfare is a hard habit tobreak and damaging to the recipient.The peculiarly obnoxious character of modern Europeis a logical consequence of America's willingness to absolve it of responsibility for its ownsecurity.In 1796 George Washington wrote to Alexander Hamilton:"The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness,is in some degree a slave.It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which issufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."That neatly sums up the Euro-American relationship: the United States has become aslave to its habitual if largely misplaced fondness for Europe, while Europe has become aslave to its habitual if entirely irrational hatred for America.There's a line conservatives arefond of when they're discussing welfare: what's better for a man--to give him a fish or toteach him to fish for himself? That goes double for defense welfare.So, just as the only guy in town with a tennis racket isn't going to be playing a lot ofmatches, the logic of America's military dominance is that both its allies and enemies haveevery interest to find some other form of battlefield, whether (for France) the internationaltalking shops or (for Islamist clerics) the suburban mosques of North America, just to nametwo venues where the hyperpower is far less confident.Judicial PowerWhat about law enforcement as an element of national power? Well, in the words of theso-called "twentieth hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui, upon being sentenced to lifeimprisonment: "America, you lose."Hard to disagree.On the day Mr [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]