Is white guilt making America be wimpy in war?

[esday1]

It's much easier to make this sort of argument when you can avoid specifics about what it actually is that you're proposing. For all his posturing, Mr. Steele doesn't have the cojones in this article to say what exactly he thinks a strategy for total victory would entail. Is he proposing a nuclear first strike on an entire region? Sowing fields with salt? Massive aerial bombing? I think that if he put a little more meat on what it is he's suggesting, then it wouldn't be quite as appealing to anyone. All he's doing is pushing a simple fallacy that if we're "tougher" in some undefined way then abracadabra, no more terrorists. There's an interesting extended strawman fallacy- pretty much every reasonable objection to what it is he might be proposing is redefined as "white guilt." In his world the outcry over Abu Ghraib is just the extension of political correctness, not an objection to something that was morally wrong by almost any standard regardless of the "whiteness" involved.

A lot of stuff like this just makes whoever is writing it feel better about themselves. This kind of article is almost a perfect mirror image of a bunch of hippies sitting around in a field of wildflowers smoking dope and thinking that "if we just give up all our weapons and be really nice to everyone, then the world will be a happy place." It feels good to say if you buy into it, but it has little relevance to how the world really works. Likewise, I doubt that Steele would have much luck translating this rhetoric into anything functional. Inventing reasons to blame everything on an abstract concept like "white guilt" is a lot easier than making compelling logical arguments about complicated strategic questions. When you really get down to it, he's not saying much of anything.

 

[Brett327]

It's much easier to make this sort of argument when you can avoid specifics about what it actually is that you're proposing. For all his posturing, Mr. Steele doesn't have the cojones in this article to say what exactly he thinks a strategy for total victory would entail. Is he proposing a nuclear first strike on an entire region? Sowing fields with salt? Massive aerial bombing? I think that if he put a little more meat on what it is he's suggesting, then it wouldn't be quite as appealing to anyone. All he's doing is pushing a simple fallacy that if we're "tougher" in some undefined way then abracadabra, no more terrorists. There's an interesting extended strawman fallacy- pretty much every reasonable objection to what it is he might be proposing is redefined as "white guilt." In his world the outcry over Abu Ghraib is just the extension of political correctness, not an objection to something that was morally wrong by almost any standard regardless of the "whiteness" involved.

A lot of stuff like this just makes whoever is writing it feel better about themselves. This kind of article is almost a perfect mirror image of a bunch of hippies sitting around in a field of wildflowers smoking dope and thinking that "if we just give up all our weapons and be really nice to everyone, then the world will be a happy place." It feels good to say if you buy into it, but it has little relevance to how the world really works. Likewise, I doubt that Steele would have much luck translating this rhetoric into anything functional. Inventing reasons to blame everything on an abstract concept like "white guilt" is a lot easier than making compelling logical arguments about complicated strategic questions. When you really get down to it, he's not saying much of anything.

Mark datum! I actually agree w/ the legal wannabe for once - just don't get used to it.

Brett

 

[mmx1]

Edsay is spot on.

To parrot my Limited Wars/Low-Intensity Conflicts final that I'm writing up tonight,

WWII was rather an oddity as the Germans understood that once the Furher fell, it was time to turn over a new leaf and start afresh. The Japanese went along willingly with the peace because their Emperor surrendered. In a sense, we were sort of lucky that the peace turned out the way it did.

Unfortunately, that left us with the impression that all it takes to win is to hit them with every weapon in our arsenal until they cry uncle. There are unfortunately far too many of that persuasion in the right-wing camp. (I should know, I was of that persuasion until career decisions forced me to analyze the mechanics of winning wars more closely).

Ultimately, the violence we wreak is only a tool of coercion (c.f. Clausewitz, and the drill sergeant's speech on the utility of a knife in Starship Troopers). Too much is as harmful as too little. As a recent example the public outcry for blood after the contractors were lynched in Fallujah was counterproductive. The perpetrators were all eventually tracked down and killed by subtler means. But the visible "show of force" raids we launched to sooth the domestic outcry only inflamed tensions in Fallujah.

It has always been hearts and minds. Once upon a time, winning that was easy as toppling the alpha male/king/emperor, so we measured victory in simpler terms of domination/subjugation - who could be the badder wolf. In the days of democracy and media, that's not the case anymore, and hearts and minds have become impenetrably hard to fathom.