Why War Won't Work

Amid all the loose talk of how Iraq is the new Vietnam, we need only look at recent history and a few hundred miles to the east of Baghdad to realize that Iraq is in fact the new Afghanistan. Afghanistan, of course, is still Afghanistan as well, which is bad enough. The truly intriguing parallel for the American war in Iraq is the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

Like the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Americans in Iraq encountered little effective resistance during their initial invasion and their drive to the capital. They then declared their mission to be accomplished and set about initiating a political process that would safeguard the interests of the invading power. They left years later humiliated, bloodied, bankrupted, their acts of "liberation" having served only to spawn innumerable new enemies.

Despite what militarists perennially claim, war empowers none; it merely grants the more temporally powerful actor a euphemistic and tendentiously temporary illusion of power. Modern mechanized armies allowed the superpowers to thrust deeply into their defenseless prey's territory, but they simultaneously created a dependence on supply lines which snaked through terrain whose residents were as hostile as the natural environment itself.

To invade a country with a modern army is to create an instant and total dependence on roads, airfields, and communications networks. All of these are weaknesses for the "powerful", who realize once they reach their destination, be it Baghdad or Kabul, that they really have no power at all, as their entire enterprise can be derailed by relatively small bands of bandits.

The superpowers were able to control most major cities (the Americans in Iraq were rarely able to accomplish even that), but in the countryside all the armor in the world could not conceal their vulnerability. They controlled only what their weapons could destroy, but every time something was destroyed, new enemies were created. Therefore, their weapons were useless.

The way to defeat big weapons is not through ever bigger weapons, but through little war (guerrilla being Spanish for "little war"). For some reason, despite all its vaunted "rationality", this elemental truth is something that most of the global north never grasped (I am tempted to say "the West", but the Soviets fell into the same trap).

In both countries, the superpowers repeatedly explained how their armies could never be defeated in battle. And, just as sure, they blamed the guerrillas for not lining up in uniform before the tanks and gunships of the invaders. The USSR and the USA would have won these wars if their enemies had fought according to superpower doctrine. But, unfortunately for the superpowers, poor nations are neither disproportionately stupid nor disproportionately suicidal.

For years, the superpowers floundered in Afghanistan and Iraq, insisting that it had won every tactical battle, slaughtering at will an enemy with precisely zero airplanes or helicopters, but never winning. Large weapons are of no use against little warriors, and a guerrilla can run away quicker than a tank can turn its massive turrets to fire a body-sized bullet at him.

In both countries, the superpowers maintained a level of approximately 140,000 soldiers for years. The superpowers could not use their most destructive weapons (nuclear) because one can not control what one has totally destroyed. Even lesser weapons (by their standards) such as heavy bombers, tanks, and artillery were totally useless against small groups of guerrillas.

In fact, these weapons were worse than useless; they were counterproductive, since their use resulted in the deaths of innocents, which swelled the guerrillas' ranks. This did not stop the "rational" armies from using overwhelming force, of course.

What was actually achieved by the use of overpowering conventional forces? The Soviets got to Kabul. The Americans got to Baghdad. There, they became the proud owners of chaos. Their weapons were useless, and their fundamental weakness was laid bare for the world to see. Put simply, what can be achieved by war is not worth fighting for, and what is worth fighting for can not be achieved by war.

The irrationality of force, and specifically of large scale destruction, applies to nuclear weapons just the same as standing armies. We have seen that nuclear weapons did precisely no good for the "powerful" in Afghanistan or Iraq. In addition, they were utterly useless in preventing the dissolution of the USSR itself.

The stance of the "rational" powers regarding nuclear weapons would be comedic if it were not so manifestly tragic. As we can see in the present hysteria over Iran, our 30,000 fussion weapon arsenal is a "stabilizing" force governed by "responsible" men. Iran's 1 fission weapon, of course, would represent a "destabilizing" force governed by "irresponsible" men. Ah yes, the insatiably bloodthirsty Persians, who have not launched a war since the foundation of the United States.

It is necessary, for the "rational" paradigm to conceal its decrepit intellectual foundations, to pretend that a single Iranian bomb is a greater threat than the 50,000 bombs held by the United States and Russia. One Iranian bomb could destroy Tel Aviv, they say, as if 50,000 bombs, rational or not, could not destroy every living organism on the Earth.

The myth, of course, is suspended on a thread of racism which begs the listener to believe that certain countries are so eminently level-headed that they should be allowed the authority to end life on earth, while other countries are so inherently psychotic that they must not be allowed to deter foreign invasion.

Iran, of course, is not rational (rational being defined by, for, and of the West). "Rational" countries squander blood and treasure on ultimately useless military machinery, which they insist on using anyway in the commission of aggression against defenseless enemies. Underpinning this propensity for violence is the capability to destroy all that ever was.

"Irrational" countries invest their comparatively puny treasure in"defense". "Irrational" nations define "defense" as "defense". "Rational" countries, such as our, define "defense" as "the ability to incinerate all of God's creation".

So, the good news is that war is unnecessary and counterproductive in today's world. The bad news is that the ones with all the weapons will be the last to realize this.