The psychology of war and warriors *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Jun 23 2011 at 11:15 am | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Military
Peter Wehner writes about Obama’s decision to draw down troops in Afghanistan, something that (just coincidentally, of course) will take place right before Obama’s reelection bid. Wehner is appalled, and he explains that this gross political calculation isn’t the way it needs to be:
I have the advantage of having served a president during wartime. And whatever faults one might be tempted to lay at the feet of George W. Bush, he never allowed politics of the Obama kind to infect his decisions. I know of what I speak. In September 2006, with the midterm elections approaching and the war of Iraq floundering, Senator Mitch McConnell, then the Republic whip, asked to see the president alone in the Oval Office. “Mr. President,” McConnell said, “your unpopularity is going to cost us control of Congress.” When President Bush asked McConnell what to do about it, McConnell said, “Bring some troops home from Iraq.”
Four months later, Senator McConnell got his reply. President Bush – who faced far more ferocious political opposition to the war than Obama ever has – not only did not withdraw troops; he increased them while embracing a strategy that came to be known as the “surge.” And he blocked every attempt at a premature withdrawal.
There are many factors that explain why the Iraq war turned around, but the fortitude of President Bush surely ranks high among them. That quality looked impressive then; it looks even more impressive now.
Apropos that not so coincidental timing, the conventional wisdom is that the troops, grateful to return home, will cast their votes for the Democrat who made it so. I wonder if that’s true.
Obama has consistently proven himself profoundly ignorant of the military mindset, something that’s true for most Leftists. Leftists are feral fighters, not principled fighters. While feral fighters will fight quite ferociously if threatened (which is why Leftist leadership works mightily to keep its followers in a blind panic, as with global warming), what Leftists really want is for the threat to stop affecting them personally.
Principled fighters, however, are willing to take ultimate risks for a cause greater than themselves. It’s a much more altruistic approach to war, and one that sees people willing to make great sacrifices for a final goal that may not even benefit them directly.
Because Dems are feral fighters, they assume all wars are Vietnam. Back then, the draft and the upheaval in America meant that way too many Vietnam troops didn’t believe in their mission, and were desperate to have a political change that would get them home. These are the kind of troops Dems recognize.
I don’t think we have a Vietnam military today. Instead, our military is made made up of volunteers, who either embrace fighting generally (the adrenalin junkies) or embrace the larger existential battle raging throughout the world, a war that burns especially hot in Afghanistan. Rather than thanking Obama for bringing them home, these principled or professional warriors may resent the way Obama is dragging them away from the good fight, destroying their hard won gains, and handing victory to an exceptionally brutal enemy who will reengage us both at home and abroad.
UPDATE: Barry Rubin, after reading what I wrote, thinks there’s something different going on: “Obama is NOT doing this to win votes in the military. He has no illusions about that. He’s doing it to win votes from average Americans to whom he can say: I brought the troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq. And it will work UNLESS those situations visibly collapse and even then it will gain votes for him.” As Barry sums it up, “Obama is making a good political calculation at the cost of a strategic miscalculation.”
Barry is so much more astute and well-informed than I am, that I don’t doubt that he’s right about Obama’s calculation. However, I do wonder how the Average American (or the Progressive voter) will view Obama’s involvement in Libya when making a balancing of interests. I also wonder if the ultimate pass will always be abortion. Since the anti-War protests stopped when Bush left, even though the wars continued and even escalated, I suspect that, while war is a real concern to the Democrat base, it’s abortion that will always be the kicker for his core constituency. And really, when one thinks about it, that’s a pretty strange issue to use as the final determiner when deciding the person for whom to vote.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News
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Ymarsakar might be able to speak more to this than I, but your comparison of feral fighters to principled fighters parallels commentaries I’ve seen on the difference between how tribal warriors and organized warriors fight.
Tribal combatants can have immense courage, but fight almost purely on emotion. Organized warfare, such as what America conducts brilliantly when it needs to, replaces bravado with technique and reaction with thought. That isn’t to say that the battlefield between two groups of organized warriors can’t be chaotic, only that the outcome will depend on actual teamwork and calculation.
The left is tribal in nature, with all that that sorry state of being implies—deference to murderous authority and power, and worth based on possession of power (one reason why the left has such contempt for unborn babies is that they have no power); feral responses to threats (thus, the squalid, unmanly and unseemly attacks on Palin); the eternal sorting of the world into other tribes—women, blacks, homosexuals—and the insistence that tribal identity trumps individuality; the squashing of expression when it does not conform to tribal practices.
Once you understand the tribal mentality of the left, you can begin to fashion a form of warfare that will leave it confused. We already see that here with abc’s continuing descent into buffoonery because none of his memes for how to engage conservatives is working, or Zach’s entrance into a sort of event horizon where he endlessly circles a black hole of repetitious themes and arguments. He now talks to himself—that is, to his tribe—while the rest of the world may humor him, but cannot take him seriously.
“The left is tribal in nature”.
Interesting, Charles. That was a central theme to Friedrich Hayek’s book, “The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism”.
Bookworm: Apropos that not so coincidental timing, the conventional wisdom is that the troops, grateful to return home, will cast their votes for the Democrat who made it so. I wonder if that’s true.
Almost certainly not. Most people in the military tend to be conservative, and like most people, will vote for the person or party they feel best represents their views and their asperations for the country.
Charles Martel: Tribal combatants can have immense courage, but fight almost purely on emotion. Organized warfare, such as what America conducts brilliantly when it needs to, replaces bravado with technique and reaction with thought.
More particularly, organized warfare depends on unit cohesion, the loyalty of each soldier to another; and pitched warfare, that is, decisive battles. This form of warfare is actually ancient, and reached a pinnacle with the highly militaristic Spartans.
Charles Martel: The left is tribal in nature, with all that that sorry state of being implies—deference to murderous authority and power, and worth based on possession of power (one reason why the left has such contempt for unborn babies is that they have no power); feral responses to threats (thus, the squalid, unmanly and unseemly attacks on Palin); the eternal sorting of the world into other tribes—women, blacks, homosexuals—and the insistence that tribal identity trumps individuality; the squashing of expression when it does not conform to tribal practices.
That’s an odd statement as it is the Right that is associated with hierarchical societies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics
Book,
I was in The Army between wars – after Korea and before Vietnam. There were a lot of combat veterans around, some had been drafted others had joined. Some had medals, most did not. But they had a Combat Infantryman’s Badge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Infantryman_Badge
This badge is worn above all other decorations and citations. They were, to a man, dedicated soldiers. They never told “war stories” – stories about whorehouses and poker games aplenty. They would have been appalled at Obama.
As to the current attitudes I offer this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIHz5tevLAw
Qestion asked, question answered.
Roy
It may be our military is able to salvage some measure of success in Afghanistan – Peter Wehner
So what is success in Afghanistan?
I don’t think any parallels can be drawn between Afghanistan and any success we may be seeing in Iraq. Iraq had a memory of a civil society to draw upon.
I don’t care if Obama gets some political gain from this, since he is still vulnerable if the case can be made he withdrew troops and increased their risk. If the withdrawal is done orderly without risk to our soldiers, I say do it.
And there will certainly be unintended consequences– it increases the risk of bad things in Pakistan and increased tensions between India and Pakistan. We’ll have to deal with that.
But I haven’t heard an achievable goal to our presence in Afghanistan.
Charles Martel: The left is tribal in nature.
Danny Lemieux: Interesting, Charles. That was a central theme to Friedrich Hayek’s book, “The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism”.
Hayek is using it in quite the opposite manner, that tribal ethics are communalistic, and effective in small social groupings. Instead of balkanizing society, Hayek is saying that the Left wants to extend the communal ethics of small social groupings to modern populations, and that this is a fatal error.
Iraq had a memory of a civil society to draw upon.
So did Rhodesia. Memories have nothing to do with strategic interests or obtainable goals.
But I haven’t heard an achievable goal to our presence in Afghanistan.
You’ve heard one since 9/11, finding and killing Osama Bin Laden. That was not the direct operational goal, but it was the ultimate one that started the invasion of Afghanistan to begin with. And it’s been accomplished, more or less, leaving AQ and the Taliban with what’s left.
Since when did people forget about the lack of intelligence and proactive decisions that led to 9/11? You do remember, BrianE, that not having troops near enemy bases was why we had no idea what they were doing. And that leaving terror bases alone, is a good way to let the enemy get in a few blows every decade or two.
You weren’t told of a strategic objective in Afghanistan, Brian, really? You couldn’t conceive of one, really? That’s hard to believe.
Zach shows their European side: That’s an odd statement as it is the Right that is associated with hierarchical societies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics
Zach, you conflate and confuse “right” or “conservative” as meaning the same thing in Europe (which is very hierarchical) and the U.S. (which is not). What American conservatives seek to conserve is very different than what European ancien regime conservatives seek to conserve. It’s apples and oranges. This helps to explain the misconceptions on your website.
BTW – I don’t see the contradiction that you present re. Hayek. Hayek’s point was that the ethos of the Left was basically atavistic, drawing from values that defined tribal societies in a largely mythical past. His point was the same you made, that you can’t project those values onto large, pluralistic societies.
Charles Martel: The left is tribal in nature, with all that that sorry state of being implies—deference to murderous authority and power, and worth based on possession of power (one reason why the left has such contempt for unborn babies is that they have no power); feral responses to threats (thus, the squalid, unmanly and unseemly attacks on Palin); the eternal sorting of the world into other tribes—women, blacks, homosexuals—and the insistence that tribal identity trumps individuality; the squashing of expression when it does not conform to tribal practices.
Z-Team:
That’s an odd statement as it is the Right that is associated with hierarchical societies. [Wiki link to "Right Wing Politics," with no discourse on the Wiki article.]
You are not going to convince many people here with a naked Wiki link in lieu of a discussion. Another poor practice you have: links to graphs without the articles they came from. Not good at all.
If you don’t like what Charles Martel/Maccabeus writes, and want to convince others of the correctness of your point of view, you need to discuss the points that he makes, not inundate us with naked Wiki links. Naked Wiki links are not substitutes for thought.
A skimming of the Wiki article brought up French monarchists. While the original Charles Martel was a monarchist, I doubt very much that the individual who comments here with the blog name “Charles Martel” considers himself a monarchist. Not to many of those left in the US. Conclusion: a substantial proportion of what the Wiki article says has no relevance to this discussion.
And if you believe that throwing naked Wiki links is a substitute for thought, then you have no relevance to this discussion.
You weren’t told of a strategic objective in Afghanistan- Y
Nation building wasn’t one of them. That seemed to be more of an afterthought so we wouldn’t view ourselves as a colonial occupying force. Not interested in nation building.
You give me a compelling strategic objective for occupying Afghanistan for the next __ years. And fill in the blank.
BrianE – the original goal in Afghanistan was to deny Al Qaeda a base from which to launch against the U.S.. Remember, it was the Left that blamed the U.S. for “abandoning” Afghanistan after the removal of the Soviets, thereby allowing the Taliban to take power.
I can tell you that the worst thing for a soldier is not to complete a mission, especially after so much loss of life. This will be perceived by the rest of the world as a retreat by and defeat of America, which will only embolden our enemies…and especially if Libya fights NATO to a draw or worse. As far as EUrope is concerned, the faster we dismantle NATO and leave them to live up to their own responsibilities, the better.
This is a pathetic state of events that is setting the stage for the next world war.
A factor affecting my view on this is the current Rules of Engagement. If this is a police action, let’s send policemen. If this is a military action, don’t create an environment that puts them in unnecessary risk.
It’s an environment the enemy has created by hiding behind women and children.
When Obama finally announced his “surge”, he also announced his troop draw down at the same time. It was political then, and it’s political now. I’m not going to let my position put soldiers in the middle of a political fight.
If the soldiers want to complete the mission– then tell me what the mission is, and how many years it will take.
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I am totally with you on this, BrianE.
Tribalism in terms of warfare has a historical context. The Romans laughed at the tribes as they prepared for battle. They confidently faced huge odds because they knew that the opposition would fight as individuals. One description of tribal war was that they will (sic) “..jump up and down, blow horns, beat drums and work themselves into a frenzy. They will shout insults, usually about our masculinity, perhaps throw some feces. Then they will charge our formations as a mob of individuals to fight with great courage and ferocity, and be slaughtered.” That description held true until they faced the Huns, and others who had learned discipline and unit tactics–often from the Romans.
It is very clear from contemporary reports and memoirs that Bush had no intent to stay in Afghanistan over the long term, or in large numbers. He intended a small footprint for a short duration to allow the Afghans to organize after the Taliban were overthrown. For reasons that are murky, he turned the military commitment pretty much over to NATO. We soon learned, and have had it recently reinforced, that NATO is a hollow, if not rotted, military organization.
Obama ran on a platform plank that blasted Bush for taking his eye off of Al Qaeda and Afghanistan to pursue Iraq. He called Afghanistan essential because he still equated Afghanistan with Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. Outdated thinking. As we know, Al Qaeda has long since moved on to other more hospitable locales. But, he committed to a wider commitment. I believe that there were roughly 30,000 troops in country when he took office. He bought off on the surge strategy, then, ignored the advice of his military commanders by weaseling and giving them about 1/2 the numbers they requested, and added a ridiculous time limit.
The Taliban are not Al Qaeda. By all accounts that I have read, much of the Taliban rank and file hated Al Qaeda, which was essentially a foreign presence. For reasons beyond my understanding, they refused to turn them out in the face of the U.S. ultimatum after 9/11. The Taliban are backward, cruel and ruthless; but they are Afghan. I do not know if they have aspirations for a unified pan-regional movement which might try to overthrow Pakistan. That would be an existential threat. I hope our intelligence people know more about this. If it is a reality, then our President should tell us, instead of his continued simplistic and false focus on Al Qaeda and the no longer breathing Bin Laden. Also, if it is a reality we should stay there and eradicate them.
I have mixed feeling about Afghanistan. Other than the possibility cited above of a region-wide Taliban threat, I do not believe that we any longer have a national interest there–except to the extent that if we depart weakly, we invite increased boldness by our adversaries. They watch these tendencies, and they have told us that our scampering out of Beirut after the Marine barracks debacle, and our response to other provocations encouraged them to strike harder. This is, in part, why I blame Obama for getting enmeshed in Libya. We cannot start something that we are not willing to finish because too many people draw encouragement from any show of weakness.
I am also sympathetic to the Afghans who have sided with us. I know that most Americans consider Afghanistan to be beneath our contempt; but, in fact pre-Soviet, at least in the cities, there was an educated and forward thinking population. Since the over-throw of the monarchy and the soviet invasion, they have suffered decades of deprivation, abuse and eradication. Many have emigrated. Some went back after 2001; many at the request of the U.S. We do owe these people something.
Gringo to Zach: “If you don’t like what Charles Martel/Maccabeus writes, and want to convince others of the correctness of your point of view, you need to discuss the points that he makes, not inundate us with naked Wiki links. Naked Wiki links are not substitutes for thought.”
Thank you, Gringo, for stating something I have often thought. Zach has proven again and again that without his Zachodex of links, he is incapable of knowing what to think, let alone engaging in a real conversation.
Danny Lemieux: you conflate and confuse “right” or “conservative” as meaning the same thing in Europe (which is very hierarchical) and the U.S. (which is not).
The term was Left, which is contrary to the Right. We provided one source. Here’s another, Merriam-Webster.
Right, often capitalized : individuals professing support of the established order and favoring traditional attitudes and practices and conservative governmental policies.
Left, often capitalized : those professing views usually characterized by desire to reform or overthrow the established order especially in politics and usually advocating change in the name of the greater freedom or well-being of the common man.
Danny Lemieux: Hayek’s point was that the ethos of the Left was basically atavistic, drawing from values that defined tribal societies in a largely mythical past. His point was the same you made, that you can’t project those values onto large, pluralistic societies.
That’s exactly right. Hayek was referring to altruism within tribes, which he considered atavistic and a dangerous mistake when applied to modern society. The meaning posited by Charles Martel was exactly the opposite as Hayek’s, such as “deference to murderous authority and power” rather than Hayek’s “genetically inherited instincts serving to steer the cooperation of the members of the troop, a cooperation that was, necessarily, a narrowly circumscribed interaction of fellows known to and trusted by one another.”
Gringo: You are not going to convince many people here with a naked Wiki link in lieu of a discussion.
It’s an established word with an established meaning. It really is something you “look up in a book.”
Danny Lemieux: BrianE – the original goal in Afghanistan was to deny Al Qaeda a base from which to launch against the U.S.
That’s correct. The U.S. not only wanted to remove the Taliban, but wanted to make sure that its enemies couldn’t organize freely there. In addition, the U.S. had legal obligations as an occupying power. Unfortunately, at present, the strongest native power in Afghanistan is the “Mayor of Kabul,” Hamid Karzai.
Oldflyer has raised an issue I hadn’t considered, the consequences of those who sought a more civil society and helped us, possibly at their own risk.
If I thought there were a chance some sort of civil society emerging from the rubble, I could be convinced to support our continued presence. If Karzai is the best we can hope for, I’m afraid it isn’t worth the cost.
As I’ve written before, I’m not sending my son to establish and defend a country that will condemn their citizens to death for converting away from Islam. I don’t expect their values to mirror mine, or their society to look like ours, but religious freedom is so fundamental I fail to see a distinction between a Karzai government and the Taliban.
If Karzai is the best we can hope for, I’m afraid it isn’t worth the cost.
Karzai has little to nothing to do with American national interests. You actually think US interests can be improved by assassinating a Diem and replacing it with somebody Washington DC decided to put it?
Try and imagine what has happened to the US in the past few decades precisely because DC has been putting people in charge of American affairs.
I don’t expect their values to mirror mine, or their society to look like ours, but religious freedom is so fundamental I fail to see a distinction between a Karzai government and the Taliban.
That’s a failure of imagination and of cultural understanding. For example, do you actually think Americans are wasting their lives because California and other Americans don’t enforce the US Constitution?
It’s not the appearance or even the goal that matters, but the process and the rate of change.
“The meaning posited by Charles Martel was exactly the opposite as Hayek’s, such as “deference to murderous authority and power.’”
Once again, Zach demonstrates what happens when you reflexively seek out a contrarian position and then, when you find it, fail to examine it.
If Zach knew how to engage in a discussion, rather than a belching contest, he would have asked me to expand on my statement rather than automatically attempt to disprove it. I would have explained “deference to murderous power and authority” with several examples:
—Stalin
—Castro
—Ho Chi Minh
—Mao
—Hamas
—Islam
—Abortion
—Euthanasia
The common element among these people or authorized acts is an indifference to life and a willingness to kill without conscience. Those people who had to pretend to love Stalin or Islam because they lived/live under them have an excuse. The U.S. left has no excuse for its historical support of these murderers and causes.
I note, too, that Zach did not dispute my other descriptions of the left’s tribal mentality. Whenever Zach cannot find an authority he can use to substitute for his own thinking, he simply avoids the topic and gnaws away from whatever small part of the peanut gallery he can wedge himself into.
Nation building wasn’t one of them.
Not being told there was an achievable objective in Afghanistan isn’t the same as stating you weren’t told natioal building was an achievable objective in Afghanistan.
Let’s be clearer here.
You give me a compelling strategic objective for occupying Afghanistan for the next __ years. And fill in the blank.
Haven’t you come across the benefits already given the raid on Osama. Where do you think the SEAL insertion team came from? Do you want to risk American lives flying over Pakistan and Iranian air? Where else do you think helicopter insertion team comes from if there is no US land base in the near vicinity. Even drones need to refuel. Without land bases to supply logistics, you cannot project power or snatch people or do force reconnaisance, or anything else that allows one to gain intel on enemy movements and locations. And without intel, there is nobody and nothing to bomb, except “weddings” which we will have no proof was “anything but”.
Instead of looking for a “compelling strategic objective” for occupying Afghanistan for the next X years, you should study and absorb the strategic benefits that the United States of America has already benefited from occupying and operating in Afghanistan. Then once you have located such benefits, extrapolate them into the future by finding out greater ways to harvest them from Afghanistan. Afghanistan has a number of uses which would benefit the US. But you’ll never see them, Brian, if you don’t already see the benefits we have gained over there.
Zach – along with that atavistic tribal sense comes a subservient obedience to a tribal authority, a chieftain. I believe that it is to this that Charles M was referring.
Hayek emphasized this aspect of socialism in his Road to Serfdom.
With regard to your Merriam-Webster definition, I believe that it is a more accurate representation of “Right” in the American sense than your Wiki-link’s definition. So, score one there.
However, the “Left” definition, as quoted by M-W, is very misleading: simply advocating the overthrow of the existing order applies equally across the political spectrum. American conservatives and Tea Partiers certainly want to overthrow the existing order, although our methods and goals are very different than those of the Left.
And, although your definition does characterize the Left according to its rhetoric regarding freedom and well-being of the common man, well…talk is cheap. The Left’s goals are quite the opposite (as brilliantly illustrated in Orwell’s Animal Farm). The Left, after all, is the vessel that carries the ideologies of of Cuba, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Kampuchea, etc. Of course, this spectrum encompasses quite a range – there’s socialism and progressivism (Left wing-lite) and hard communism (Hard Left). For many of us, though, it’s not a difference of ideology but rather a different in its practical implementation. It’s all fundamentally flawed and its outcomes ultimately destructive and evil.
Thus you have a Merriam-Webster definition that defines “Right” by its goals, but “Left” by its rhetoric, without saying anything about the Left’s ideological objectives.
Btw, if SF training the locals is nation building, we’re essentially building 100 or so nations, because US Special Forces are in a lot of countries training foreign and indigenous locals in military craft.
he would have asked me to expand on my statement rather than automatically attempt to disprove it.
Z doesn’t understand anything about that. For example, Z believes that it is obvious that he said my scaffold execution idea was scandalous and reprehensible, even though he said nothing. He just quoted me. And that was the sum total of his comment. Yet he said months afterwards, that he expected it to be obvious that he was against it and was aghast that Bookworm denizens like Martel didn’t speak out against what I had proposed to reduce crime in Britain. I raised the hypocrisy of a Z demanding others speak out against my quote, when in fact all Z did was copy and paste my quote. He gave no other comment than that. That’s the “speaking out” that Martel and others here should have done, right…
Another thing, Z writes “US Government” but then later claims that he was talking about LBJ and Democrats. This is like Leftist moros who use a survey asking “Does the Bush administration have plans in place to invade Iraq as early as 2000, before 9/11″, and use the answer “yes” to mean Cheney was planning on invading Iraq, personally working behind the scenes, in order to “steal oil”. But it wasn’t CHeney they mentioned, just the Bush Administration. Cheney does not equal Bush, or his administration. Cheney is just one person. Just like LBJ is one person and the US government has a lot more than one person.
The Left functions on cognitive dissonance so I very easily understand why they want to muddy the waters and prevent clear answers from being given by the Left to the public. After all, if the Left gave clear and honest answers as to what they really intend to do with America, could they be elected to anything ever again?
Dishonest people and morally amputated widgets like Z, don’t have clear answers. They don’t have clear questions to begin with.
If I thought there were a chance some sort of civil society emerging from the rubble, I could be convinced to support our continued presence. If Karzai is the best we can hope for, I’m afraid it isn’t worth the cost.
That’s not your decision to make. The people that will decide what kind of society is produced are those on the ground in Afghanistan. All the people elsewhere can do is get in their way or give them more resources.
So it’s impossible for you to be “convinced” when you aren’t there doing the work. How can you be convinced of some abstract goal you have neither seen, felt, nor suffered to gain? Human motivations aren’t so nebulous that we value free stuff or goals that mainly affects other people’s quality of life. You’ve mistaken what you should be focusing on Brian. Your goals shouldn’t be “what happens to Afghanistan’s government and civil society”. Your goals should be focused on “what happens to the men of women of American citizenry inside Afghanistan”. THAT’s the only thing you can be “convinced” of either way.
The nation of Afghanistan is no more KARZAI than America is OBAMA. Do you really not care if the US goes up in civil war simply because it has a leader you don’t like and find is worthless? Yet you would consign Afghanistan to the same simply because of one person, Karzai. That’s an interesting judgment phase there, Brian. Interesting, but wrong in my view.
When Americans believe that Obama is working against America’s civil society, they don’t give up and move to Australia. They stay and work on the problem, because that’s their own problem they have to deal with You don’t live in Afghanistan, Brian, so you have the luxury of choosing to ignore the problem, but the people of Afghanistan, including those actually there doing the work, don’t have that luxury. So what does this mean? It means that Americans making judgments about what should go in Afghanistan is meaningless as well as worthless: it’s impossible to derive truth given information lag between American and Afghanistan. If you think DC doesn’t listen to the concerns of individual Americans… try a capital on the other side of the world.
My point is pretty basic. Trying to convince people that live outside Afghanistan, that something is worthwhile in Afghanistan, is like convincing the US federal government that the locals know how to run their own economy. It doesn’t work the way you think it does.
People who try to see meaning in Afghanistan as a “nation building” project are naturally going to find zero American benefit there. That’s because you don’t get an American interest by interfering with other people’s national and local concerns. That’s their nation and their local concerns, not yours. You get little to no benefit from interfering in their judgments and decisions. The STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE in Afghanistan centers around stuff that benefits Americans. People who are thinking about “nation building in Afghanistan” are thinking about the wrong thing to begin with. Of course they aren’t going to find easy to digest answers then.
Zachriel: The meaning {of tribalism} posited by Charles Martel was exactly the opposite as Hayek’s, such as “deference to murderous authority and power.’
Charles Martel: I would have explained “deference to murderous power and authority” with several examples: Stalin …
Hayek’s use of the term tribalism refers to cooperation between “fellows known to and trusted by one another”.
Danny Lemieux: along with that atavistic tribal sense comes a subservient obedience to a tribal authority, a chieftain. I believe that it is to this that Charles M was referring.
In primitive tribes, authority is by consensus and respect. That’s how Hayek was using the term. Strong chieftains are a step towards more advanced societies where there are enough excess resources to support a royal family and military caste.
Danny Lemieux: American conservatives and Tea Partiers certainly want to overthrow the existing order, although our methods and goals are very different than those of the Left.
Which is why we originally pointed to a more developed description in Wikipedia. The Right may want to overthrow usurping modern institutions and return to a more moral past. A typical example is the institution of marriage which people on the Right feel is threatened by modern reforms. In previous times, those reforms included divorce, inter-racial and inter-religious marriage, the right of women within marriage, and today, gay marriage.
Danny Lemieux: Of course, this spectrum encompasses quite a range – there’s socialism and progressivism (Left wing-lite) and hard communism (Hard Left).
That’s right. They all stress reform based on egalitarianism principles.
Danny Lemieux: For many of us, though, it’s not a difference of ideology but rather a different in its practical implementation. It’s all fundamentally flawed and its outcomes ultimately destructive and evil.
Historically, the Left has included everything from universal suffrage, outlawing child labor to the Civil Rights Movement, so you can’t just sweep it all away. What has happened is that the center has been moving left since the Renaissance. What was once radical is now not only acceptable, but held as fundamental principles.
The media dumps on Karzai every day, but never gives specifics. Supposedly his brother is involved in the drug trade–supposedly. I take it with a grain of salt. Karzai was elected in the Afghan version of a convention made up of all elements of Afgan culture–I forget the term. He stays in office in a very tough neighborhood through strength and wiles.
Lately certain American members of the Barack Hussein Obama administration have been criticizing him also. The outgoing–fired?–Ambassador for one. Karzai’s sin? He criticized the killing of Afghan civilians due to the increased use of drones. Another knock on Karzai is that he has floated the idea of negotiations. Surprise? Obama gives a date for leaving, and doesn’t expect Afghans to start trying to cut deals with the killers whom they will face in the future?
Was it Z who was bleating about lack of religious freedom? Hello. It is a Muslim country. That is a foreign concept to Muslims. There can’t be anyone on this forum who doesn’t realize that, so it is just chatter to invoke the concept.
Ymarsakar: Z believes that it is obvious that he said my scaffold execution idea was scandalous and reprehensible, even though he said nothing. He just quoted me. And that was the sum total of his comment. Yet he said months afterwards, that he expected it to be obvious that he was against it and was aghast that Bookworm denizens like Martel didn’t speak out against what I had proposed to reduce crime in Britain.
Months? Rather, we bumped your statement to be sure others saw it in the expectation that they would take issue with proposal. Here is a brief history.
Ymarsakar, May 21: “What you need is to build an execution stand, take around 80% of the Leftists and bureaucrats in government, and execute them. That’ll solve the {crime} problem soon enough.”
Zachriel, May 21: bumped Ymarsakar’s statement
Zachriel, May 24: quoted Browning in response to Ymarsakar’s taunt
Zachriel, May 24: bumped Ymarsakar’s statement
Zachriel, May 24: “Ymarsakar calls for the murder of millions of people because of their political views—repeatedly does so. And you don’t speak out because you are not a Leftist.”
Zachriel, May 24: “We were curious why none of the ‘conservatives’ on this blog would take you to task. In case you missed it, your call to kill millions of people for their political beliefs is heinous and reprehensible.”
Zachriel, May 25: “Your proposal is heinous and reprehensible. Sorry to be the one to tell you. We would have thought your friends would have helped you understand that.”
Ymarsakar, Jun 13: “I describe this simply to allow people to understand that when I talk about killing 80% of Leftists enabling criminal behavior in Britain, I’m not talking about some cold and efficient outsourcing of the execution. I’m talking about personally overseeing and doing the deed myself, for as many as I can before my arms fall off from the exhaustion.”
Z tried to explain his hypocrisy in demanding that Martel make some comment with the claim that “Z already spoke out against Ymar’s comment”. But as you notice now, now he says all he did was “bump” my comment. A new line over an old propaganda con.
It was only after repeated hammering of Z’s hypocrisy that forced Z to actually make a direct comment about what he actually “thought” about my proposal to end crime in Britain.
Months afterward, Z made the mistake of saying his initial quotation of mine was already “speaking out against” me. Now, even more time after, Z now tries to redefine it as “bumping”.
In the end result, he’s still a hypocrite, calling on Martel and Bookworm Room denizens to do what he either can’t or won’t, and he’s still copying other people’s comments and expecting the readers to “read Z waves” in order to understand what his entire point is to begin with.
Btw, the Left is still afraid of getting their hands dirty, like the clownish cowards that they are. They aren’t against hacking up Jewish children or blowing them up, they’re just against doing it themselves. They’re perfectly fine with Planned Parenthood and Hamas getting in the strikes and dong the deed, but they’re afraid to consider the issue from their own moral responsibility.
Personally, that’s a lot more despicable and unsightly than fanatics willing to kill people for their beliefs. At least the fanatics have the courage of their convictions. They don’t talk about being against war and torture, when supporting the people creating wars and torturing Americans. Islamic master minds do that, and perhaps that’s why they have allied with Leftist leadership. Their methodologies appear similar. Islamos send young idiots to blow themselves up while the Left sends in cult addicted Democrats to take the streets.
Zach, sweetie, care to address the rest of my examples of the left’s tribalism?
Didn’t think so.
Y, my son is a Marine. My best friend’s son is Army.
So you’re right, I have a personal interest in it.
My son did a tour in Iraq, but fortunately his unit was passed over this time for Afghanistan. My friend’s son just got back from there.
I don’t want my son dying for a country that shares none of my values. Like I said convince me that it’s possible to establish a civil society (even a Muslim society) that respects religious freedom. You can be sentenced to death if you convert from Islam in Afghanistan.
I’m sorry they treat their women and girls like chattel. I understand they’re trying to change that. But that is a fight that the Afghan people will have to wage. That is not something we can impose on them.
Otherwise, we’re just an occupying army.
Ymar, Zach’s “heinous and reprehensible” mantra was as convincing as a Dukakis monologue. The point being that Zach could not tell any of us why your proposal was such, based on what moral reasoning. He is as close to soulless as I’ve ever seen anybody on this site.
But we’ve all been through that a million times. I’m kind of hoping Zach will fold up his tired old tent and go join abc at Daily Kos or HuffPo. It really does get tiring dealing with somebody who despises us so much.
BrianE: Like I said convince me that it’s possible to establish a civil society (even a Muslim society) that respects religious freedom. You can be sentenced to death if you convert from Islam in Afghanistan.
That’s probably not possible. As you point out, many fundamental social changes have to come from the people themselves. However, U.S. goals are much more modest, that is, to establish a stable government that can prevent the return of international threats emanating from Afghanistan, and for the Afghan people, a chance to have a say in their own futures.
I don’t want my son dying for a country that shares none of my values.
That is also another decision that is not yours to make. That is just reality. People die in vain all the time. Whether it’s due to their inability to finish their life goals, or whether their government betrays them, or whether their allies betray them, what are you going to do to prevent it?
It is not your choice to make, so you cannot make a choice to prevent it by doing the obvious. You cannot acquire the Commander in Chief to ensure the safety of your son, either because he won’t or can’t even if he wanted to. And you are not the one making the decision to re-enlist or maintain his commission, if it exists, in order to avoid “military threats” and only risk “civilian death and maiming due to crime or accidents”.
Nothing about nation building or no nation building in Afghanistan, is going to change this. If you think it’s possible for me to say something or describe something that would “convince you”, you’re looking at a fundamentally different layer of what’s going on. The layer I call “impossible”. It’s impossible because your son wouldn’t live or die for Afghanistan. He wasn’t born there nor does he have family there. What work or sacrifices he does, is designed to benefit his personal connections in life, that goes hand in hand with the abstract, national, and idealistic goals. It would be the same as worrying over whether US Marines die for Californians that hate the US military with a vengeance. Why would anyone worry about that. They don’t get a choice in who they die for, which state they die for, because they don’t die for Any of Them. They live and fight for the United States of America and its Constitutional protections which guarantee the possibility of a better life for their family and loved ones. That’s all most people need to fight. Some are more idealistic, others are more cynical or just practical. But none of them dies for a bunch of ungrateful Californians or strange and alien Afghans. Unless they choose to do so on a personal level, at least.
The choices you can make are as limited as the choices I can make on this matter. I can provide money. You can provide money to organizations or people you deem worthy. You can provide moral support. I can provide moral support. You can provide information and propaganda boosts to the morale of allies, as can I. But there’s nothing I or you can say or do given the limitations of reality, that would change the decision of those in the military or in charge of the military to make dramatic changes in their judgment and decisions. I can’t make someone refuse to enlist, if they wish to re-enlist. I cannot make the Commander in Chief start a war or stop a war. That’s not my decision to make. Do you really think “words” can convince you given the limitations of reality here?
“Like I said convince me that it’s possible to establish a civil society (even a Muslim society) that respects religious freedom. You can be sentenced to death if you convert from Islam in Afghanistan.”
What I can do is give Afghanistan a societal structure and legal system to start making incremental changes. It doesn’t matter to me that someone can be sentenced to death, for in our society we have worse judicial punishments than that. But if we did have an issue like that in America, I would say the same if an Afghan asked about their own problem in Afghanistan. You decide what is just about, say slavery, by having a war and fighting it out between the true believers and the hypocrites. Who wins, often aren’t the hypocrites. Sometimes who wins are the cheaters and those with more power. But we try to make sure it isn’t the hypocrites at least.
Americans don’t die to ultimately aid Afghans. So it matters not a whit whether they like or dislike our efforts. What matters to American interests is what use, what benefit, we can derive from our activities in Afghanistan. That goal requires the question to be “what do people need” not “what do Americans and Afghans want”. That is what ultimately American lives are sacrificed for, if they are done so not in vain. It matters little whether Afghans want the death penalty for conversion or not. It does matter what we need to have in Afghan in order to secure American and Afghanistan national security. If the religion thing mattered first, then you would see irreconcilable differences between what Americans want and what Afghans want, leading to collapse of mutual interests. But if the goal is to see what people need, then we have a commonality between Americans and Afghans. It doesn’t matter what people want. Security and leadership should address the needs of the people and stop there. Needs have higher priority than “wants” or “desires” or “entitlements”.
Tribal warriors fight for one reason alone: blood loyalties. As civilizations became more advance and support systems ensure prosperity for non-blood related individuals, then such things as nobility and abstract concepts as “helping the innocent and the poor” take root. But a soldier, a son, a brother, a father, or a mother, cannot SUBSIST on that as a motivation.
If your loved one is in danger, it Does Not Matter what idealistic “goal” is being accomplished. That doesn’t matter nearly as much as the “personal” goal that is called “watching your important and beloved person grow up and be happy”. Nothing about “Afghan nation building” is going to convince a parent that it’s better that some nation of strangers benefit while they lose a child. Humans don’t work like that. And socialist totalitarian tyrannies can try but not even they can change that little issue.
If you want to know what your son is potentially going to die for, ask him why he risks his life. He’s the one with the authority to make such decisions, along with a bunch of his superior officers and comrades. All I can tell you is that soldiers and civilians are not motivated to fight for something “abstract” like building up a nation full of alien strangers. They’re not going to be convinced even if they believed such a nation was “possible” because they really don’t care about it as much as they do more personal issues. Idealistic crusaders are far and few between. They are the abnormality, rather than the norm.
What Leftists despise the most isn’t us, but their mirror reflections.
KABUL, Afghanistan — A special court set up at the behest of President Hamid Karzi ordered on Thursday the reinstatement of 62 candidates who had lost their seats or had been disqualified from last year’s parliamentary elections, reviving the prospect of a constitutional crisis for the nation.
….
Abdullah Abdullah, a former presidential candidate, also denounced the court’s action as unconstitutional and said it raised questions about the independence of the Afghan judiciary. Mr. Abdullah lost the 2009 presidential elections to Mr. Karzai, a vote widely regarded as fraudulent. He said he believed the president was trying to rule without Parliament in the hopes of eventually changing the Constitution so he could stay in office when his second term ended in 2014.
“President Karzai does not believe in the rule of law; he thinks democracy doesn’t work in his favor,” Mr. Abdullah said. “It all comes down to one thing: Karzai cannot be a candidate for the next elections.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/world/asia/24kabul.html?_r=1&src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Findex.jsonp
It’s true I don’t know for sure what is happening there– who is to be trusted and who is not.
The process of elections has already been decided. What they end up with is not set in stone. There is a difference between a citizen’s militia protecting American cities and MS13 controlling the streets of Los Angeles, however.
To the original post, Obama is shoring up his base, which are none too happy with him at this point.
No single payer– even though the ACA will do more to push us to single payer than anything the Democrats have done since Medicare. Medicare has exploded in cost through the years, while the market solution to welfare– Medicare part D has surprised everyone with how efficient its provided drugs to seniors (40% under expected costs, IIRC).
His NLRB is pushing the union label, but that probably won’t help him as much as the hits he’s taking in states that are trying to put their budgets in order by reigning in the public unions. Even with his $1 billion campaign fund, it will take support of the unions to push him through, IMO.
Next to socialized medicine, “ending” the war will give him the best bang with his base. Of course, even if he ignores the advice of the experts, and withdraws 33,000 troops before the election, that still leaves 66,000 troops to fight. While this is a political calculation, it might not be all bad. Surely after 10 years, the Afghan military can take up some of the slack– espcially in the north, while the US can concentrate and going after the taliban.
Personally, Y’s analysis leaves us in Afghanistan indefinately. And our choices seem to be supporting bad against worse, which is certainly reminiscent of Vietnam. Doesn’t the saying go “The perfect is enemy of the good” and I’m a realist in that area.
Which brings me back to ROE. Unless the ROE was recently changed when Petraeus assumed command again, it may be working to make our soldiers more ‘friendly’ to the Afghans, but it seems to me by putting them in greater danger. That is unacceptable. If I’m wrong, I’m sure that will be pointed out.
If I understand Y’s comments, it doesn’t leave me with much to say. I can’t influence other voters, which in the long run, will influence US policy, and I can’t influence my son, since he’s the one doing the fighting. While in the short run, that’s true, I do think I have an obligation to speak out if I think that other parent’s children are being used as political tools. And that was much of the objection to Vietnam.
Granted, with the nearly non-existant coverage of Afghanistan these days, it’s hard to evaluate our effectiveness in the mission. What I read is the Taliban still exerts considerable influence in the South reminiscent of the Vietcong. Identifying who the enemy is was a problem then and I think is still a problem.
That’s why special forces, the CIA and drones may be more effective. I see that as applying tactics to disrupt their operations, keeping them on the defensive while Afghans take on the traditional fighting against their enemies– if there are enough Afghans who view the Taliban as the enemy.
I thought Olflyers comments in #17 were germain to the discussion and much more knowledgeable than mine. I think it should be required reading.
The size of the military budget is going down.
That is going to mean fewer soldiers, or less technology. And it is the technology that has made our soldiers so overwhelmingly superior. That and discipline and the Puritan work ethic.
My rather limited experience suggets that the idea we are wearing out our military isn’t just rhetoric. We have overused the National Guard, to make up for the smaller regular forces. That needs to change, and may have already happened as our presence in Iraq winds down.
But the reduced military budget– less than half of what it was in the Vietnam – Cold War era can’t be ignored.
Personally, Y’s analysis leaves us in Afghanistan indefinately. And our choices seem to be supporting bad against worse, which is certainly reminiscent of Vietnam. Doesn’t the saying go “The perfect is enemy of the good” and I’m a realist in that area.
I’m not analyzing the situation in Afghanistan with my previous comments. I was analyzing the thoughts and emotions of people living in the United States, as they perceive events in Afghanistan and start making judgments about a foreign nation.
I didn’t present a strategic goal for Afghanistan or a end game scenario because that wasn’t going to solve the issue at hand. How long to stay in Afghanistan depends upon one’s personal and long term goals. We have not yet determined just what those goals are or should be, because it differs with every person and nation.
And that was much of the objection to Vietnam.
That’s not going to be changed by anything going on in Afghanistan. The United States government already plays with the lives of US military as if they were pawns. Mogadishu and transfering trained Stryker units for Iraq to Afghanistan and transfering another trained Stryker unit for Afghanistan, to Iraq, to replace the Iraq trained unit that was transfered out, has been going on constantly under the Obamanation. If you got rid of Iraq and Afghanistan, then you’d just have the US government manipulating the lives of Americans for Libya. The only way to temporarily forestall this is to kick the evil people out of power, not to change policies. Good people can make good things happen even with bad policies. But evil people can only create havoc and destruction, regardless of what policy they set in store, simply because they don’t care to do it right.
As I said before, one’s goals should be clear and a mistaken goal does not fulfill your objectives. If your objective is Afghanistan’s welfare, then concurrently the objective of keeping your family safe is SUBORDINATE to the first objective. If you aren’t clear about things, you start to lose sight of what’s important. But if your objective is family first and Afghanistan second, then the US government is not going to stop manipulating deployment orders just because they don’t have Afghanistan to use as an excuse.
Improving conditions in Afghanistan deployments will improve the local conditions of Americans and Afghans, for awhile. But that’s not necessarily going to continue to benefit your family should they be deployed to Afghanistan. If Afghanistan gets a government like the state of Georgia in the US, that may be a success, but it does not necessarily make your children any safer, for they can die to accidents or to Obamanation type political machinations of deploying US soldiers for unnecessary conflicts. In the end, American soldiers are dying for this nation and its policies, not anyone else’s. That’s because the US government is the one making the decisions, backed by a body of citizens who should have been voting their interests, not the interests of evil totalitarian tyrants.
That’s why special forces, the CIA and drones may be more effective.
As I said before, there are no BASES to launch Special Forces from if you don’t have control of significant parts of Afghanistan’s territory. Thus it is not realistic or doable or feasible. It’s logistically impossible to drop in SF from a carrier off the coast of Pakistan, and then pick them right up and safely bring them back. Thus it concurrently doesn’t call for significant changes in occupying Afghanistan if your goal is to use SF and CIA intel/assassination/drones.
For some reason, helicopters don’t like the Middle East. They break down easily. They crash in sandstorms. Or fail to start up and have engine problems and must be demolished on the landing pad. Local bases in Afghanistan is the only reason why the CIA and Special Forces can conduct local operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan at this time.
Going on the offensive requires controlling the people and the territory those people live on. That requires ground troops or SForces operating in tandem with local militias. Currently Petraeus is applying the seek, destroy, control matter with the additional troops deployed to Afghanistan. A lighter foot print was well and good when operating with NOrthern Alliance fighters against the Taliban, but when constructing a defense force for an entire nation against a hostile foreign power, Pakistan, that requires conventional forces as well as unconventional forces. That means the Afghan forces do not have the organization and experience to carry the fight well to the enemy, yet. Thus US forces are leading the lead for the moment and doing what is called “leading by example”. Such tricks tend to work far better in Arabic and ME tribal mentalities than here in the US.
Obama, by withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan, will cripple the strategy being employed and make all the losses to date in Afghanistan, meaningless, because the goal, the strategic objective, will become unachievable.
The goal of an Afghan civilization requires short term objectives to be accomplished. Until those objectives are accomplished, worrying about the end game of withdrawal in Afghanistan does no one any good (except for power corrupt Dems).
That’s why Petraeus couldn’t tell anyone in Congress when he was going to leave Iraq. Until the situation is stabilized by strategic overturn, that’s when. And for that to happen, people’s short term goals must be about fixing the problems in front of them, not worrying about Iraq’s legal or constitutional or political problems.
By solving the security problem, most of the political issues go away or are resolved in a tolerable fashion. If the US military is unable to secure the southern border with Pakistan because Obama is messing up the strategy Petraeus and McChrystal adopted under Bush 2… then American lives will truly have been lost for nothing.
Obama wanted troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan long ago. He has been rolled by the military for a long time. Petraeus wanted to do the surge and since it worked in Iraq he had to let him try. Now that he has given it ample time he ought to be able to pursue his original plan that the majority of the country happens to agree with. The military is not the only expert panel on this. And while politics definitely is a motivator for Obama, judging by the militarism of conservatives, apparently Bush’s decision to go in also boosted him politically. And the conservatives here invent reasons to hate Obama so their opinion of him should be ignored unless it is attached to fact rather than baseless and unprovable claims about how much he loves the military.
Btw, the only way to discredit the media with a death blow is by feeding them disinformation and allowing them to discredit themselves.
Currently the mainstream media is occupying most of the broadband Americans use, with territory being taken by the New Media on the net and on the radio waves. But it is slow going. Many people still believe Sarah palin said she could see Russia from her house and that Andrew Breitbart lied about (stuff they never remember to say). By feeding the media erroneous information and allowing the media to use their own broadcasting to inflict a fatal wound on themselves, it’s an efficient and aesthetically pleasing coup de grace in my eyes.
A’s a despicable useful idiot. That’s about it for the closing case.
“And the conservatives here invent reasons to hate Obama so their opinion of him should be ignored unless it is attached to fact rather than baseless and unprovable claims about how much he loves [sic] the military.”
Yes, conservatives invented Obama’s insulting lapse of memory. We need to dispatch somebody here to root out the traitor who tampered with Teleprompter of the United States and tricked Obama into appearing to not care about the military.
I suggest we send our bestest, brightest, mostest smartest Pavlovian responder to D.C. to ferret out that person. Abc, you appear to have a lot of time on your hands. . . interested?
Obama wanted troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan long ago.- abc
As has been stated here already, Obama campaigned on the policy that Afghanistan was the right war and Iraq was the wrong one. He had no choice but to double down, since he, not the military had made it a theme of his foreign policy. Remember during the campaign, he would invade Pakistan if he got intelligence as to the whereabouts of bin Laden. He did keep that campaign promise, and got away with it.
I wonder what the left’s reaction would have been had Bush sent the military into Pakistan without Pakistan’s knowledge to take out bin Laden? I wonder if they would have been as supportive?
He has been rolled by the military for a long time.- abc
So it was the military behind the decision to attack Libya? Who would have thought?
He got rolled by Hillary, IMO.
>>…if there are enough Afghans who view the Taliban as the enemy.>>
That’s ultimately the critical question. They lived with the Taliban in control, and they’ve lived with a more democratic government – though certainly not democratic according to _our_ standards. Once our soldiers are out, it will be up to the people to make their decision whether relative freedom is worth dying for, or if they’d rather live with extreme islamism. My guess is that the decision won’t be cheap whichever way they go.
Afghanistan has too many tribal and religious factions to be called “one people”. The Afghans aren’t really the Afghans. They don’t think like a single national entity. Rather than “the people of Afghanistan”, we’re doing with a “bunch of factions calling themselves residents of Afghanistan”.
People see this problem and recognize, but then when trying to solve it, they think of Afghanistan has being composed of the same type of people thinking the same way.
Some Afghan tribes will side with the Taliban. Some won’t. Some will try to remain neutral. Others will ally with the Taliban because they have no choice. Others will ally with the Taliban because they’re terrorist and bandits.
What people fight for tends to fall into two broad categories: personal reasons and abstract reasons.
So an idealistic and abstract goal is “to liberate the oppressed” and “conduct humanitarian aid to the indigenous people of poorackistan”.
The lower people’s morale gets, the more stress they have, and the more dangerous the circumstances, the more people need to rely upon personal reasons and less on the abstract goals.
You have heard that the most popular reason soldiers gave for “why they fight” was “their buddies in arms”. The Left and other contemporary post-modernists took that to mean the soldiers had no broader, abstract goals, such as defending America from foreign and domestic enemies. But there were many other reasons given and humans are complicated enough that they aren’t limited to just fighting for one thing. Humans fight for a lot of things. They just don’t have it all straightened out at any one time.
As death and chaos comes closer, it becomes easier to motivate humans to fight by hitting them with the personal reasons in front of them. Coincidentally, what tends to be in front of their eyes are their comrades in arms. Whodadunk that. In humanitarian conflicts, curiously the soldiers are more motivated, the ones actually on the ground providing relief or killing terrorists terrorizing civilians. That’s because the answer is simple. Think about it. To them “humanitarian relief” isn’t an abstract goal in the future. It consists of the men, women, and children right in front of them. They can touch that goal. They can see it. They can feel it. They can absorb human emotions from it. What about the rest of you, who are back in the United States, can you see and feel the “humanitarian relief” on the other side of the planet? Mostly the answer is, “no”. What you see is an abstract goal. And abstract goals don’t motivate humans to give it their all when hardship comes arriving knocking on the door demanding that you pay off your debt or be cut off at the knees.
The best and most elite forces are those motivated by both types of goals: abstract long term goals in the far off future and more immediate personal goals right in front of their eyes. It makes sense, you know. Human motivations can fail. If all you are motivated to do is fight for your “buddies” then what happens when all your buddies are “gone”. Will you stop fighting? Abstract goals provide the ability for warriors and soldiers to continue the fight, regardless of whether they see their friends or not. It allows greater organization of human resources. Larger armies, better run militias, and so forth. The Special Forces motto in the US Army is “De Oppresso Liber”:To Liberate the Oppressed. Only a disciplined elite force of combat personnel can afford to have such an “idealistic” goal. Because it is only their inner drive and fortitude that gives them motivation to carry on the fight and if they lacked that inner drive, they could never usher in enough determination to kill and die for the “Oppressed”. Personal reasons to fight and inner drives are “individual based”. While abstract goals are more attuned to one’s culture and civilization.
If you wish to see the “psychology of war”, that would be a good starting place. Ask those who fight what their personal and abstract reasons to do so are.
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