Anyone remember the Powell Doctrine? When Colin Powell was a military man rather than a statesman, he articulated the principle of overwhelming force: don’t go to war at all, the doctrine went, unless you’re willing to go all out.
The doctrine had its roots in America’s experience in Vietnam, where a whole generation of the military — including Powell himself — felt that the U.S. failed because it was unwilling to define a clear objective and commit the resources necessary to achieve it. Often criticized as being symptomatic of a military rendered combat-shy by its Vietnam trauma, the Powell Doctrine had one redeeming feature: Wherever it has been consistently applied, it seems to have worked. (If I recall correctly, the doctrine also included a bit about the importance of having the full, united support of the public back home before committing troops to battle — another Vietnam lesson.)
What is Powell thinking today as the administration he is a part of shreds his doctrine?
Most of the reports yesterday and today of problems in the field for U.S. forces in Iraq have to do with decisions that were made, and quite rightly, for political or humanitarian reasons. American troops don’t want to fight in cities because they don’t want to inflict civilian casualties — but when they bypass the cities on their march to Baghdad, they find that they have left dangerous pockets of resistance on their flanks and to their rear. Then they wind up going back into the cities, enraging the local populace and killing civilians, after all. (This New York Times report from Nasiriya vividly tells one such tale.)
Of course it would be callous to wish that the U.S. military not try to avoid civilian casualties. But it wasn’t as if the Iraqi tactics of hiding in cities, using civilians as “human shields,” and so on were a big secret. Things change in war by the moment — and, sure, if the U.S. manages to pick Saddam off with a Cruise missile tomorrow, then these questions may become moot — but right now it looks as though the U.S. has sent an army into Iraq with its arms tied. This represents a wholesale, and almost disdainful, repudiation of the Powell Doctrine.
As this grim scenario plays out we’re stuck in a no-win trap: Either we continue to do everything we can to minimize the bloodshed, quite possibly limiting our ability to bring the war to a successful close; or we untie the military’s hands, let them bomb Baghdad and other cities to bits and not worry about the “collateral damage.” In that case, we may well succeed at “regime change” — but emerge with a losing position on the global chessboard.
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