Let's ask a series of questions before discussing the
subject at hand. Should anyone in his right mind trust the security of the United States ,
or any country for that matter, to the judgment of a Marc Thiessen? To that of
a report in the Washington Post? To an unnamed Yemeni official? A Katherine
Zimmerman? A Fred Kagan? Or a Kimberly Kagan? Obviously not; especially if one
of those, Marc Thiessen, says they all agree on something and that they
echo-repeat the same words and the same ideas.
Well, trust in these people is what Thiessen is telling us
we must do. He says that much in an article he wrote under the title: “Obama
vs. the generals,” published on September 15, 2014 in the Washington Post. The
truth is that he constructed the article around what these people have been
referring to – none being a documented quote from someone reliable – but all
being references to a hearsay, or the hearsay of a hearsay, or even a third or
forth generation hearsay.
To make himself sound serious and trustworthy, Marc Thiessen
starts the article by dropping the name of “poor Gen. Lloyd Austin” whom he
says we should pity because he gave advice to his commander in chief (President
Barack Obama,) “only to see it rejected.” Mind you, this was not any advice; it
was “better military advice,” says Thiessen. The trouble is that he does not
say what criteria he used to judge the advice this highly; he simply made the
judgment and we must accept it.
He does not stop here but goes on to say that the advice was
to the effect that some US troops should remain in Iraq despite the difficulties that
were discussed to exhaustion over the past few months. And Thiessen ventures to
assert, as only a prophet would, that “had Obama listened to Austin 's counsel, the rise of the Islamic
State could have been stopped.” Oops, this is a prophet who – unlike a moment
ago – is now a little uncertain about his power to predict. This uncertainly is
revealed by the fact that he wrote “could have been stopped” instead of “would
have been stopped.” Maybe it was a Freudian slip.
Despite the uncertainty, however, our author ventures to
predict that an air-only campaign will fail because: “The group [ISIL] governs
a swath of territory the size of the United Kingdom . It rules cities. It
collects taxes. It controls natural resources and is bringing in $3 million a
day in oil revenue. It has a conventional army – one that won battles against
other conventional armies.”
Wow! This makes us wonder if there is a better way to
demolish one's own theory than what this man just did. He must have forgotten
the talk that was aired over and over during the past decade – talk that rested
on the notion you can never be certain you have defeated a guerrilla army
because of two reasons. First, the guerillas have no high value targets you can
bomb from the air; something they don't worry about. Second, no one will come
to the deck of a warship and sign the acceptance of an armistice or the terms
of surrender.
Therefore, to say that ISIL has all the things which
Thiessen is listing above, is to say that the group can be bombed successfully
from the air. It also says that the people who head it have something they
would not want to lose; all of which means they may start behaving in such ways
as to avoid coming onto the deck of a warship to sign the acceptance of an
armistice or the terms of surrender.
And if we ask: What would the group's new behavior look
like? The answer must be that the leaders will have every incentive to
surrender before seeing their organization completely destroyed. They may seek
to be absorbed by an existing entity that would be more acceptable to the
world. If this happens, it will be a better outcome than a perpetual war, or a
war to the death.
Of course, none of these things can be predicted ahead of
time with any certainty because, like they say, war plans are always rendered
useless after the first contact with the enemy. And this means that the conduct
of a war is nothing more than a continuous act of improvisation. A real war is
always played by ear because it depends on what the other side does to you, and
what opportunities open up for you to take advantage of.