Blame Canada

"Retired Generals Criticize Bush’s Plan for Iraq," The New York Times reports on a Senate committee hearing last Thursday:

The American effort in Iraq has gone badly because the United States did not understand the consequences of deposing Saddam Hussein, said Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, a former director of the National Security Agency. He said the principal beneficiary of the war was Iran and al-Qaida, not the United States.

“There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests,” he said.

So, more than 3,000 American service members killed, half a trillion tax dollars down a hole, and the primary beneficiaries are Iran and al-Qaida. That's not good.

But I'm most interested here in Lt. Gen. Odom's statement that "There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests."

Let's illustrate that with a hypothetical example. If the United States went to war with Canada, we would lose.

Sure, on paper, we could take 'em. Even in its current overstretched state of extreme unreadiness, the American military is much bigger and much better armed than its Canadian counterpart. We have bigger and more expensive toys. So the U.S. could certainly win the fight and rack up far more points on the Who Killed the Most People scorecard.

But none of that would matter. America would still lose, because there is no way to win a war that is not in your interests.

"Victory" would not be among the available options. No matter how many troops we sent to go door-to-door in Toronto. No matter how many bombs we rained down on the streets of Ottawa. No matter if American forces were decidedly victorious in every battle waged "in the field." None of that would ever lead to winning, because winning would not be possible.

America would therefore lose. Our defeat might never appear "in the field," but it would be real and substantial, perhaps even devastating.

Our security at home would be grievously harmed by the presence of a new, chaotic destroyed state. Our prestige and influence around the world would be crippled. Our economy would suffer -- from the loss of resources misallocated to this fiasco, from the alienation of our international trading partners, from the instability wrought by a war that created two new enemies for every old one killed. And we wouldn't just end up at war with Canada, but with all of Canada's friends. (Canada has a lot of friends.)

A certain kind of leader would be unable to grasp that. They wouldn't be able to see beyond our mightier military and superior firepower, beyond our unrivaled capacity for killing people and blowing stuff up, beyond our unbroken string of battles "won in the field." Obsessed with all of these impressive facts, such leaders would convince themselves that we could turn the corner and rescue victory from defeat with one more surge of battles and bombs.

But that's not the way to win a war that is not in your interests. There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests.

Eventually, the nature of reality would begin to sink in with even the most obstinate and obtuse. They would realize that, since victory was not an option, more battles and more bombs would only constitute losing harder.

And then -- this is the scary part -- then they would order more battles and more bombs. They would do so without expecting, or even hoping for, victory. They would do so in order to buy time to sow, nurture and cultivate an explanation for why anybody and everybody other than them was really to blame for the defeat they chose and pursued with such zeal.

"There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests."

If that sounds depressing or "defeatist," take heart. This was just a hypothetical example. No one yet has been foolish or reckless enough to start such a perverse and unnecessary and doomed-to-fail war.

At least not against Canada. Yet.

Comments

[ScottDaly]

I don't think that is quite right. For example, if it was in our interests to build a major naval base in Cuba that logic says that we would win. I think a better statement is that 'You can not win a war that is not in your interests, and if the resulting peace is not in the interests of the people you have fought.' If a war is not in the interests of the people that start the war then there will not be enough support to bring it to a successfull conclusion. The public won't make the necessary sacrifices, the soldiers will not fight their best, and the politicians will fight each other playing blame games. But the other important factor is that the people of the country you have invaded must. 1) Accept that you have a right to be there at some level. 2) See that you are making their lives better. 3) Accept the plans that you have for their county.

In WWII Germany and Japan both accepted, at some level, these factors. Both had declared war on the US and saw the military occupation as a just result of their loosing. The reconstruction efforts were massive, visible, and effective so their lives got better. And both countries accepted the political, economic, and social changes that were made by the victors.

In Iraq at least two of those three condtions have not been met. The result, an insurgency. I realize that this is a bit of a gross oversimplification. But my main point is that, if the people that you have invaded do not recognize your right to be there you will never have a peace that is not maintained through force.

[12xu]

My answer to those who ask "Don't you want to win?" is: The US won the war. This is what victory looks like.

[histrogeek]

It's odd that the power-worshippers who claim to revere Clauswitz never seem to have read his book. He specifically pointed out that victory on the battlefield meant nothing if the best case scenario would leave you worse off. And that larger sense had to consider the wider context (economy, allies, neutral opinion, etc.), not just the other nation involved. The realistic best-case scenario for Iraq, replacement of Saddam with a similar tyrant, a stronger Iran, alienating the Arab world, annoying our own allies, etc. were never going to be better than the earlier containment policy.
Of course if you stack the deck with experts proclaiming leaving Saddam contained means a nuclear armed Iraq while intervening meaning flowers and unicorns, you can justify it.

[Lucia]

histrogeek, the key word is realistic. A person unacquainted with reality is not the best judge of what's likely or even possible.

[Llelldorin]

ScottDaly, the goal to a war doesn't have to be to topple the opposing government. You could grab the naval base, then start negotiations for peace that let you keep it.

The key thing is that the net effect of all the results have to be in your national interest, not just the good part. If the naval base is so important that it's worth screwing up your entire diplomatic position in the world to get, then you could "win" such a war. If it isn't, then getting it isn't in the national interest, even if the naval base by itself would be.

Put another way, I'd very much like to drive a hot car. It's not in my interest to go that deeply into debt, or to end up in prison for grand theft auto. Thus, it's not in my personal interest to get a hot car. You have to consider net effects, not just gross.

Thus, in Iraq, getting rid of Hussein, by itself, was in our national interest. It wasn't worth destroying our diplomatic position and getting the army bogged down, though, so, as a whole, the war wasn't in our national interest.

[noah cicero]

the reason we went to Iraq was for oil. Our soldiers are there protecting oil fields. In Bush's mind as long as his friend's companies are getting oil and his other friends are selling tanks they are winning.

Nobody is talking about the point of the war. The point is that a small group of people become richer than they already were.

The only way to stop the war is to imprison those who are making money off of it.

[Simon St.Laurent]

Invading Canada would bring Satan and Saddam Hussein to rule the world - if the movie the title of this post comes from is right. Save us, Kenny!

[Jesurgislac]

The Canadians. They walk among us. William Shatner. Michael J. Fox. Monty Hall. Mike Meyers. Alex Trebek. All of them Canadians. All of them here.

[LL]

I've long thought we should invade Canada. It's ham, dammit, not Canadian bacon. And they keep coming down here and stealing all our hockey player jobs. And some of them speak French. They're sittin' up there, all quiet like, they must be up to something. Just askin' for a preemptive strike.

[RedEnsign]

Just try it. We could take you.

[LL]

We will send every elderly person in America up there for your socialized medicine and you will fold like a tent.

[Alexela]

Naw, it's brilliant. You just need to get a few Canadians to set up arm manufacturing companies... Wouldn't be hard, we sound just like the americans, they can't tell us apart... Then we keep up enough of a fight to keep the American army busy dropping everything we can produce on any given swamp we can convince them people are hiding in.

I mean shoot, keep it up for a year or two and we could refinance our healthcare, even with your seniors, and have enough left over to rebuild the few scattered parts of the country anyone actualy lives in. If it looked like they were slowing down ever, you'd just have to drop a bomb on somewhere close (Chicago, Phily, NYC... I'm not sure anyone'd notice Cleveland), and they'd go nuts all over again.

Dude, I'm calling Harper tonight. If he weren't such a dedicated US suckup it'd be Paris by Christmas... ohWait...

[Morgan]

Too bad the Canadian government didn't think this through before we went to war in Afghanistan.

Us Canadians lost more than a few of our friends by following our "best friend - the United States" into that war.

Another war we can not win.

[Alexela]

Morgan I'm going to disagree. Afghanistan was the war we COULD win, precisely because it really WAS cralling with terrorists. Everyone agreed that it was right to clear that country out. if the US hadn't diverted most of their attention to Iraq, it would probably still be in even better shape than it was... But basically, at reasonably little military cost, a huge nest of terrorists was cleared out, and almost nobody in the world was pissed at us for doing it. Afghanistan was a war we ALL had an interest in.

[Darryl Pearce]

Hmm, I'm reading James McPherson's This Might Scourge, which addresses at some length why the Confederacy and Union lost and won (respectively). Could it be as simple as Odom's Law? "There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests"

[ellis]

Odom's Law is an interesting idea, but I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around it.

I've been trying to think up counterexamples--wars that have been won that were not in the interests of the winners--and have been having the following difficulty: it seems that whenever a nation has (or is considered to have) won a war, there is some way in which the victory can be said to have advanced their national interest. But I wonder if this is really just due to the definition of victory. Nothing counts as a victory unless it achieves some national interest. If this is true, then Odom's Law is just a tautology.

The real question, of course, is figuring out when war actually is in our interests, and I'm not sure Odom's Law helps us with this much. The argument over Iraq, from the very beginning, was always an argument about whether invasion and occupation would be in our interests or not. I think it obviously wasn't, and thought it obviously wasn't from the beginning, but I don't think the people who favor continuing the war think they are taking this position in spite of the national interest.

[Rachel]

This is why we shouldn't invade Canada.

[Steve]

Didn't John Candy already try this?

[Roger Reynolds]

It's not technically a case of invasion by the US, but the Green Mountain Boys tried to take on Canada during the Revolutionary War, and failed. It seems that Montreal had better ammo and the British had better boats.

[Lurker]

I'd say that the US has a way to win the war in Iraq, which has been recommended by "Gary Brecher", aka "War Nerd". The means to win is called genocide: killing every Iraqi would "win" the war, but with considerable cost. It would be possible, of course, as the US has the needed physical power, but resorting to genocide would undermine the foundations on which the United States has been built. However, the Roman Empire did quite well using this tactic against enemy nations and lasted several centuries. It is just that I would not like to live in Roman Empire.

[Roger Reynolds]

I can imagine what other nations would think and say if we resorted to outright genocide, but what might they do? Russia still has nukes, but we've got more, and in better shape. Even though China's been a nuclear power for decades, it's stockpile is paltry by comparison. France and Israel have even fewer. We might look forward to some WWII-esque group of allies coming after us, but our armed forces would soon fill with bored 18 year olds. In the end, after nukes had been exchanged and the leftovers besieged on all fronts, we'd probably lose; but it would take billions of lives to do it.

Let's not, shall we?

[wintermute]

Rachel:

Or rather, that's why any invasion of Canada must come from Alaska...

[ScottDaly]

Llelldorin, I don't argue the point you have made. I fact I agree that there are many many factors that define a nations interests. The point that I was trying to make is that unless the people you have fought at some level recognize that the war was justified you are setting yourself up for resistance whether it be passive or active. Say for example, and a rediculous one at that, that we invade Brazil to set up a major naval base. The rest of the world sees it as justifiable or is at least neutral, and it is economically, politically, and socially in our best interests. So we have won the war. However, the people of Brazil don't think so. As a matter of fact they hate our guts. So the base becomes an armed camp. The soldiers and sailors assigned to the base can't leave without being in danger. The local merchants won't sell goods to us. The local government won't supply electricity, water, or sewer service. The local population throws rocks at the guard towers. All the food has to be shipped in. Eventually the local population starts lobing mortar shells into the base. So while the war was won, the stage has been set for future wars that will also have to be won. I guess it is a bit of a semantics argument, 'please define the word won'. But the way I see it winning a war means that you have to significantly win the peace that follows as well. So, in my opinion, you could legitimately argue that the Allies didn't win World War I because the peace that they set up was so fundamentally flawed as to be a direct contributor to World War II. Please note that the preceding is only my personal opinion, your mileage may vary.

[Llelldorin]

Why posit Brazil when you can just look at Gauntanamo Bay in Cuba? If it's important enough you can make do--ring the base with mines so the locals can't get close enough to lob mortars, threaten massive retaliation if the government attempts to retake the base by force, and you're done. We've held on to Guantanamo Bay for years, now.

I think we basically agree. My only point is "the locals hate us and want to kill us" disproportionately matters in Iraq because the ultimate goal that we absentmindedly drifted into (leave Iraq a stable democracy) simply can't be achieved without active support from the Iraqis. In a nutshell, that's why we can't "win" Iraq--we can't use military force to get the populace to want to help us achieve our aims, which is what would be required.

If there was ever a chance to win (which I doubt), we lost it when Bush sent in the College Republican Clown Squad to rebuild Iraq in 2003. Now it's far, far too late.

[Rachel]

To Wintermute:

I have it on good authority (i.e. I met this girl in college who said) that the moose have already infiltrated Alaska.

[Jeff]

However, the Roman Empire did quite well using this tactic against enemy nations and lasted several centuries.

The Pax Romana lasted largely from the Empire leaving its client states alone. Only if the locals did something nasty to the Roman Consule would the Empire take action. Thus was Pontius Pilate able to "wash his hands of this man" -- he had comitted no major offence against the Romans, and it was thus up to the local Govenor to rule on the matter.

The large-scale wars and genocides were among the reasons the Pax failed -- the Celts and the Gauls (among others) rejected the Govenor and when the Romans slaughtered mass numbers, more were convinced that the Romans Must Go.

(This is actually a teeeeny bit pertinant because as long as Hussein behaved like a local Govenor, no matter how barbaric, he was acceptable, and we could quash any rebillion. Only when he decided to take on the Empire did we stop him. Now the locals are free to revolt and are convinced that the Romans Americans Must Go.)

(Oooh, strike-through works!!!)

[LMM]

Actually, Roger Reynolds, we tried invading more recently than that -- the Fenian Brotherhood attempted repeatedly to invade Canada immediately following the Civil War, aided at times by the US government.

[Blackadder]

I know the whole idea of "exemplary terror" (i.e., the kind of reprisal killings, city sackings, and semi-genocidal behavior exhibited by the Romans, Mongols, Assyrians, etc. in response to political or military opposition) is an unpleasant one. I certainly don't recommend the United States engage in this kind of behavior. However, I also don't think we should let our natural distaste for exemplary terror lead us into intellectual dishonesty. Contrary to the most recent post on the subject, exemplary terror WORKED for the Romans. The Roman Empire was not in any way destroyed by internal revolts; it succumbed to overwhelming numbers of external invaders in conjunction with a military manpower shortage caused by decades of civil wars and epidemics. While the Empire was being built and maintained, exemplary terror WORKED.

Some specific examples:

1) Rome sacked the Macedonian capital of Pella in 146 BC, putting an end to a series of wars between the two nations. The entire population of the city was put to the sword and the city was never rebuilt. Macedon remained a quiet Roman province until lost to Slavic invaders in the seventh century AD.

2) Also in 146 BC, Rome put a final end to the Punic Wars by burning the city of Carthage. The ground was sown with salt and 50,000 surviving inhabitants were sold into slavery. The Roman province of Africa never rebelled and was lost to Vandal invaders in the fifth century AD.

3) Also in 146 BC (clearly a bad year to make the Romans angry), the rebellious Greek city of Corinth was totally destroyed and its inhabitants sold into slavery. A Greek writer described people and even dogs "cut in half" and "hacked to bits" by Roman soldiers. Greece never rebelled again and remained a part of the Roman (slash Byzantine) Empire until lost to the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century AD.

4) Rome suffered a series of slave revolts in Sicily and Italy between 135 and 76 BC. Following the defeat of the Spartacus Revolt, 10,000 slaves were crucified along the Appian Way; there were no more slave revolts.

5) Following Caesar's initial (and obviously unsuccessful) pacification of Gaul, the natives under Vercingetorix revolted in 52 BC. The Romans responded with extreme ferocity, including mass reprisal killings, burnings of villages, etc. Contrary to the bizarre assertion in the previous post, the Gauls had nothing to do with the fall of Rome; Gaul remained a loyal province of the Empire until lost to invading Germans in the fifth century AD.

6) In the first century AD, Roman soldiers unwisely horse-whipped the British Queen Boudicca and gang-raped her daughters. Boudicca raised a rebellion during which thousands of Romans in Britain were killed. Roman reprisals were every bit as awful as one might imagine. Britain remained a loyal province until abandoned by the Romans in the fifth century AD.

7) The Romans tried various methods to end the repeated revolts in Judaea, including sacking Jerusalem and burning the temple. Finally Hadrian resorted to mass deportation of the Jews in the second century AD; there were no more revolts in Judaea and it was lost to the Arabs in the seventh century AD.

There are many more specific examples. In general, exemplary terror was an important element in the "carrot and stick" approach Rome used to build its Empire between 264 and 30 BC and maintain it until the fifth century AD (the fifteenth in the East). If a nation or city surrendered to the Romans, they were given lenient terms and fringe benefits such as civil engineering and codified laws; the Romans responded to stubborn resistance, betrayal, or revolt with massacre and slavery. This approach was successful for many centuries, until Rome encountered a series of overwhelming EXTERNAL military challenges. I haven't even mentioned the very successful use of this policy by the Assyrians and Mongols. I agree that exemplary terror is IMMORAL, but let's not revise history and pretend it never WORKED. Other approaches, such as the American habit of coddling our enemies (for example, not leaving post-WW2 Japan and Germany in the smoking ruin their ruthless aggression had so richly merited), can also be successful at a lower cost to our souls.

[Jesurgislac]

Blackadder: I agree that exemplary terror is IMMORAL, but let's not revise history and pretend it never WORKED.

For a given value of "worked". If the idea is to establish an Evil Empire with a succession of rulers who have absolute power, who retain power depending how popular they are with the military forces, and who punish rebellion by torturing rebels to death in public and enslaving their families - then yes, the Roman Empire worked.

Even the Bush administration still gives lip service to the notion of the US as a beacon of democracy and freedom. In order for that to be convincing, it's necessary to have rebels against the US tortured and murdered only in private, with plausible deniability when it's done by US soldiers.

[Rachel]

"The ground was sown with salt"

Carthage was not sown with salt. This is an error that was introduced in an old edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary.

[Joy]

Exemplary terror is terrorism. If we resort to that we have become the enemy we fear.

[Blackadder]

Not that it's too terribly relevant, but...

The Greek historian Polybios, who served as an aide to the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus and who was personally present at the final siege of Carthage, specifically said the city was burned, plowed under, and the "ground sown with salt." It's possible this was an exaggeration, or a metaphor for the Romans "cursing the land", but this notion definitely predated the Oxford Classical Dictionary (and English for that matter!) I'll be glad to dig up the exact Greek phrase if someone insists. In any case, the Romans were pretty hard on their enemies and their policy of exemplary terror "worked" in the sense of meeting their political goals and putting an end to rebellion and opposition, even though we may all agree those goals were not always laudable, moral, or reasonable from our point of view.

[dr ngo]

Yes, Blackadder, please do confirm the Polybios reference.

I got as far yesterday as tracking down (via Google) various citations to an article which purports to find the earliest reference to salting the earth of Carthage (as opposed to plowing it up, generally wreaking havoc) from the time of (Pope) Boniface, ca. 1400??

These sources suggest that a Cambridge reference book (not the OCD) picked this up in the early 20th century and made it the "received" view it has now become.

It all seems very unlikely to me, but since I can't easily get at the key article in question (in the Journal of Classical Philology or some such), I'd appreciate any help on resolving the question.

[Blackadder]

Hmmm...

It seems the key parts of Polybios and Diodoros referring to the Third Punic War are now lost. The earliest classical writer whose account of the destruction survives (Appian from the second century AD, who probably copied the earlier guys) mentions burning, plowing the land under, and enslaving the populace, but not salting the land. He does say the land was "cursed" by the Romans, which may mean the same thing (assuming the "salting" was metaphorical and not literal). However, the eyewitness account of Polybios has not survived and so I stand corrected: there is no direct evidence that the ruins of Carthage were salted.

I must add that there is no real evidence that Carthage was NOT sown with salt either. This unusual belief dates back to the Middle Ages at least; it is not a 20th century or even Renaissance idea. The general assumption is that it originated in those portions of the ancient historians that have not survived. Countless classical works were lost during centuries of barbarian invasions and fanatics burning any book that was not an Approved Religious Text. However, there is no direct proof that the "sowing with salt" was not a medieval invention. I should point out the claim that it was a medieval invention comes from modern revisionist/deconstructionist historians trying to sell books. It always sells more books to take a contrarian position ("Oswald didn't shoot JFK," "Abe Lincoln was gay," "Carthage wasn't sown with salt") than to repeat the established conventional wisdom.

So I don't know if Carthage was really "sown with salt," and I don't believe anyone else knows either. It does seem implausible that this happened in a physical sense (salt was valuable, for one thing). My interpretation of this is more like a curse on the land, a detail which Appian mentions. Either way, the Romans were plenty ruthless to their defeated foe, especially since the Third Punic War was completely unnecessary and started by Rome on a very flimsy pretext (sounds kind of familiar...)

[John Owens]

Jeff:
"Americanes eunt domus"?

Blackadder:
I'd taken the sowing with salt thing to be true as well, but I'd always found it a bit odd since salt was used as a form of currency (hence our word "salary"). Seemed a rather expensive, exorbitant way to depopulate the area to me.

[Jesurgislac]

"Salt" needn't necessarily have been sodium chloride. It could have been another chemical. I can't at this moment think what would have been readily available to Romans at the time that would have equally destroyed farmland, but I'm sure there would have been such...

Or, as you say, it could have been a misunderstood reference to a curse that involved sprinkling the ground with salt in a symbolic way.

[Rosina]

And if it did happen, it seems to have been limited to the city of Carthage and its immediate surroundings, since the hinterland was wanted to provide grain for the population of Rome, and the armies, and became very fertile and pretty prosperous, both for the Roman-citizen colonists and the native people (although both terms "Roman" and "natives" refer to peoples with a variety of origins).

I saw something recently about the Carthaginians cornering the Mediterranean market in salt, and this being part of Rome's beef against them. Might the Romans have considered it poetic justice to symbolize their conquest and their acquisition of the salt trade, by 'sowing the land with salt'.

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