Blind..

 

In this new century of war, Americans have lost their way. We have become existentially unmoored. The very language we use to describe war with strangely disconnected words like “asymmetric” or “hybrid” tells the world how confused and uncertain we feel when it comes to using military power effectively. But war has not changed in 10,000 years. 

We seem to think “real war” is about something else entirely: tank-on-tank, airpower resplendent, forces moving majestically on the field of battle. Other wars are somehow lesser and unworthy.

Hence even as we assault the walls or trenches right in front of us, our psychic energy is still flowing to the battles we yearn to fight. Our war-desire always overcomes reality. Because we are always dreaming of the war we want, we are blind to the war we have. Thus our failures have not been defeats necessarily on the battlefield, but deeper defeats: defeats of the mind.

This is not a problem of simply seeing war wrongly, but rather that in seeing it wrongly, there are almost immediate negative effects — on our warfighting, our strategy, and our society. We have lost wars because fighting the war we wanted was more important to us than winning the war we had. — as in Vietnam, as in Iraq.  

ARE WE BLIND TO AN ENDURING REALITY OF WAR?  MICHAEL VLAHOS -AUGUST 20, 2014