Rightwords... Prudent Conservatism

Lessons from Military History

What can History contribute to our issues and conflicts of today? This question has bothered me since I have observed many of my favorite bloggers struggling to make comparisons between a current situation and one from the past—sometimes from the very far past.

Almost from the start of any discussion today, the argument turns from the situation at hand and what to do about it, to an argument about whether some past situation is a proper analogy from which to draw lessons. A cogent example is the attempts to compare our situation in Iraq with that of Vietnam in the latter part of that war. All immediacy is quickly lost in the fuzzy memories of an old conflict, spiced by the over 30-odd years of not so well-honed points of view and biases of the participants in the discussion.

Meanwhile, we are at war, and need to make many hard decisions about where we are going, what we are willing to do, and how to go about it. I get the feeling that some people had much rather win the argument about the analogy than to win the real war going on under their noses, especially if their main conclusion quite obviously fits their preconceived notions of the answer.

Misuse of historical analogies is a game anyone can play if they have the evil motives and unprincipled mindset of charlatans. Ignoring inconvenient facts is often used, for instance, to make a shady point. Again, the example of Vietnam: many claim we were defeated militarily in Nam, when by all accounts, we were extraordinarily successful militarily, to the point that later on Minh admitted that they were considering disengagement and suing for peace just at the time we announced our withdrawal. Political defeatism by our people and our elected leaders snatched the victory from us in the nick of time for the North Vietnamese.

Still, there must be value in perusing history for its relevance to today. Why should we repeat the mistakes of the past if by realizing that the past situation is sufficiently analogous that we must heed that lesson from history? The answer lies in accounting for the constants and variables in each situation, together with the strength of the general inferences and conclusions that can be drawn from the current and past situations.

Constants include: human nature; geography; topology; terrain and vegetation; population centers; road and rail system; general or average (expected?) weather conditions; types of warfare, including classic opposition of forces, and asymmetrical warfare;

Variables include: Existing political situations; actual weather conditions; current dispositions of forces; morale; will to win of the troops and of the civilian populations; relative strength of forces; quality of leadership; weapon and equipment advantages and disadvantages; logistics; strategy and tactics; mobility and speed; training and experience; command and control; communications; computers; intelligence; attack versus defense; the fog of war; adherence to the rules of war; and just plain luck.

Inferences and conclusions: In this maze of constants and variables, it is easy to abstract the wrong inference or conclusion from a situation.

Again, Vietnam is the prime example. We withdrew from Nam after building up the ARVN forces massively. The withdrawal was a politically-driven decision because of the publics view that we had lost, which in turn was driven by the mainstream media's biased portrayal of the war. We had promised the SV government that we would supply them until they had gotten well on their feet. However, our Congress refused to give them any support whatsoever, so when the NV attacked two years later, the SV quickly ran out of critical ammunition, fuel, and other ordnance items, and were overrun by the well-supplied NV. We did not lose militarily. In fact, we weren’t there! Those who say that we did lose militarily are charlatans looking to make a leftist point. This is a war that we won militarily and lost at home politically.

The inference I draw from all of this is that one must beware of loose inferences from history that are without substantial factual backup. Then too, is the effort to properly substantiate the analogy really worth the effort, as opposed to simply applying intelligence, common sense, and experience to the situation?

Labels: hypocrisy, Iraq, politics, Vietnam

# posted by Mannning @ 2:53 PM