There have been quite a few retrospective’s recently about how badly wrong some September pundit prognostications were. Unfortuneately Samizdata was not then in existence so my thoughts were spread amongst numerous private email groups and private “conversations”. I looked at some of these this evening as I was doing some system admin and came to the conclusion that I did much better than most. The essay below is one I mailed to a small private policy discussion that sprang up shortly after September 11th and lasted only a week or two. I won’t specifiy any names but there were some interesting people on it. I also know it circulated a bit in amongst some policy types but whether anyone “in high places” read it I do not know.
I’ll leave it to you the reader to judge, but I think I deserve at least a B grade.
Wed, 19 Sep 2001 00:28:09 +0100
Comments to a small group of friends.I’ve a few thoughts on the prosecution of this war, and although I’ve stated a number of them in assorted public lists, some may be of interest to this small selection of what appears to be rather more than average in terms of policy analysis.
One issue that is paramount to me is that we do not give an inch on the liberties we value. There is no sense prosecuting a war against a potential oppressor if we are willing to do to ourselves what he would do to us if victorious. I hear all to many calls for invasions of privacy, restrictions on civil liberties and the like. If such are indeed required for the prosecution of the war, they should be carefully limited to what is needed only for the prosecution of that war and sunsetted so that they must either be re-enacted at a specific time and unconditionally terminated with the end of the war, regardless of how much time there is left in the sunset clause.
The country has a significant libertarian and libertarian leaning component now, and if those (myself included) are to give wholehearted backing, we must know that by so doing we are not driving a stake into the heart of our liberties.
If we are to prosecut a war, we must have a clearly defined target and a clearly defined end point. The information supplied on bin Laden shows that we do indeed face a foe who is effectively one of the new nonterritorially based states. His is based on hatred and violence whereas as most of the others which are developing are not. The concept of a nation as a place with borders is blurring and will continue to blur. I, for instance, am an american by birth living in the UK/Ireland and dealing real time with a peer group that spans the globe.
So we have a new form of warfare as well. bin Laden is the first virtual state to declare war on another state. Defeating his virtual state will require application of force that is independant of borders. To do that there will have to be strong international acquiesance. And to retain support at home it will have to be clear that we are not creating a tool that will be turned to other, highly undesirable uses.
On the home front there are several battles:
* ongoing public support
* classical law enforcement and security
* the average citizen as a soldier
* dealing with the 5th columnI’ve touched on the first issue. We have to be sure we are fighting for our liberty.
The second issue is the one the press and most policy types seem to be focusing on. I probably cannot add a great deal to what has been said there.
The third issue is one that has been almost ignored. What is new about this war over others is that there are no lines. The battlefield is anywhere at any time. The enemy will attempt to chose those times and places such that miniscule force will be overwhelming force. That is what they did on Tuesday. However if we learned no other lesson on that day, we have better have learned this one;
Terrorists will always be victorious when surrounded by sheep.
That was the force multiplier that allowed them to capture an airliner despite being outnumbered 10:1 and most likely in fact *outarmed* at least 5:1 as well. Most guys carry small knives just as dangerous as the mattknives carried by the enemy; additionally, large numbers of americans are trained in martial arts.
The only reason that they succeeded in the first two cases was that what they planned to do had never been done. All previous hijackings ended in extended negotiations. The vast majority of all passengers hijacked sat quietly and eventually returned to friends and family.
But that all changed. The second flight may have found out about the WTC; the news has not told us, but I would suspect that at least one of the known cellphone calls passed the info on. However there was simply no time to react for them.
But the time line for the 4th plane was enough for the fact to be communicated and discussed. There in lies the flaw in the enemies logic. Americans are rational; but they are not sheep. The terrorists in aircraft number for died for their mistake.
This is what I would call the “citizen as soldier”. In this kind of war, the enemy will strike when and where they want, and they will not go where either military or police are in abundance. Neither will security measures at airports or elsewhere stop them from hijacking if they can get on board at all. Remember the dictum:
“There are no dangerous weapons, there are only dangerous people”
Trained enemy can kill with their bare hands. Or with a bit of string for a garrot, or a pen through the eye into the brain, or…
If there is a single guard on the plane, he will be taken out first and then they will proceed. However the citizen is now aware that they are a soldier. Perhaps the average american is not thinking in those terms, but it is almost certainly that case that if a plane is hijacked, the passengers will assume that no matter what the hijackers say, their intent is to kill thousands. Americans will make the rational decision and they will kill the hijackers with their bare hands, even if they all die.
This is a fact proven by the new crater in Somerset.
Next on our agenda. There is a 5th column in place in American and it has had years to bury itself in the flesh of the american islamic community. It will have to be dug out.
I have suggested to some friends that moslems who are truly citizens of the US or UK or where ever should back a Fatwah against bin Laden and his organization.
If they do not do so, they prove they are either unreliable, traitorous or afraid of retribution. A movement by patriotic american moslems to make such a declaration would drive a wedge between moslems. The moslem community must be split into the part which belongs in a modern society like America, and the part which is the enemy to be defeated.
Like others before them, american Japonese, Germans and Italians, they should be offered the chance to stand up and be counted. After WTC there can be no mixed loyalties on the issue of bin Laden. Either you is with us or you ain’t.
Now to move to the international side of things. While bombs and technology and push button warfare have their place… they will only be a backup part of this war. I suggest an air cavalry able to insert divisions onto a target anywhere in the world, with whatever other assets are necessary.
They should be prepared to operate without the permission of the harboring state; they should be intended not for holding ground but for reaching, confirming and destroying (or killing) a specific objective. It also avoids many disastrous mistakes. And if the target has moved or dug in, you will know it and can act on that knowledge immediately. A cruise missile is a hell of lot dumber than the lowliest grunt, and I for one hope that it stays that way.
It does look like there is a great deal of common cause with Russia on this; there have also been been news that the Northern Alliance is willing to back us wholeheartedly; and that Turkmenistan has offered support because it would like a peaceful environment in which to develop it’s (alleged) massive oil and other resources in peace. US investment to extract those resources could change it from dirt poor to one of the wealthiest per-capita countries over night if what I have heard is indeed true.
We may also turn the Taliban’s threats of invasion to our own advantage. They may do very well in their own mountains, but the mathematics of offense are very different from those of defense. If they can be taunted into acting, they can be made to take massive casualties.
Afghanistan is a nation held captive by a (relatively) small number of fanatics. Our goal should be to work with the Russians, the NA and such to get the civil war there going against the Taliban. With the Iranian border closed to them, they have their backs to Pakistan.
So ideally we assist existing forces to install a moderate government that is sufficiently friendly to Russia to give them a stake in this, and under ideal circumstances, friendly enough to us to allow continued hit and run operations against any bin Laden or similar groups who attempt to operate in those fearsome mountains.
In other nations the battles might be entered by working with the local government, as perhaps in the Phillipines; to inserting a commando squad without that government’s knowledge to take out the bin Laden organization members manu a manu.
