Thinking Out Faith
Incidental Writings on Books, Ideas, Theology and Culture

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

To Retreat In War: Protesting Strategies and the Strategy of Protest in Democratic Societies


It has been all too common when discussing the current war in Iraq, as with perhaps any war, for someone critiquing the war or advocating any kind of pull-out to be personally accused of any number of things. First and foremost, it will be alleged that the critic dishonors the military service of those risking their lives and profanes the memory of those who have already made the ultimate sacrifice. I say, "Baloney!"

The theologian, novelist and essayist G.K Chesterton, addressing his own day's controversial war, wrote that, "A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it."

The much larger discussion of war and violence in general as opposed to pacifism is one which I am bracketing out here, though not because there isn’t plenty there to discuss.

My operating assumptions here are simply that, given that wars are going to continue to take place, all interested parties should care about the relative pragmatics of a given conflict and that all moral beings should care about the relative justness of how a given conflict began and how it is in fact being prosecuted. In a democracy where the government acts in the name of the people, all citizens are interested parties.

Chesterton really says it all. Unless one assumes that it is impossible for one's own country to ever take a pragmatic mis-step or make an unjust decision based on undue emphasis on self-interest, then patriotic citizens can and should critique the merits and demerits of current actions. Voicing opinion and protest if it comes to that, is an absolute civic duty.

Forget about whole wars for a moment. Let's think about this in terms of individual battles. Imagine yourself as a general in a war like the American Civil War. You're sitting astride your horse, field glasses in hand, trying to assess the status of an action through all the smoke, when your Lieutenant Colonel informs you that the most recent, now-third, wave of attack on a position has been utterly annihilated. Slaughtered to a man. It's your job to decide if it's worth sending in a fourth wave.

Now, take it for granted that you believe your side in the war is fighting for a just cause. Further, assume that you believe that attacking this particular target is mission-critical. Finally, assume also that you know each already-fallen soldier personally to be a most honorable individual who likewise believed sincerely in the cause for which you both fight. But now a junior officer is arguing it would be suicide to keep up the attack. He advises you to call a retreat immediately, re-group and live to fight another day.

Do you A.) Give the officer's opinion the appropriate weight given his relative amount of experience, weigh the pros and cons and decide? Or, B.) Would you denounce the officer as a coward and traitor to the memories of your fallen comrades-in-arms, and immediately call up the next attack? It seems to me this isn't much of a choice. You might decide it’s worth another try, but that would mean you’re doing your job just as the junior officer was doing his. Our leaders are bound to lead us, and the decisions rest with them, but in a democracy, we’re all junior officers.

It is of necessity a soldier's duty to engage in actions when he or she does not fully understand the overall strategy. Thus any sacrifice an individual soldier makes as a result of following orders is equally to be honored. (This is separate from the consideration of whether any action an individual takes as the result of orders is equally defensible, so not so fast with the Nuremberg objections.) So a soldier's sacrifice is in no way to be seen as less honorable if the battle in which they fall turns out later to be the most infamous miscalculation of commanders than it is if it were the most glorious victory effecting a critical turning point in the campaign. It seems to me the people arguing that the honor due to a soldier doing his duty is contingent upon the mission’s success are the ones dishonoring their service.

So back to the current conflict in Iraq. The most consistent criticisms of that engagement have had to do with its efficacy given that the United States sees itself as being in a wider war on terror or fundamentalist Islamic Jihadists. Since the administration that went to war in Iraq, specifically framed it in terms of a wider war, it is absolutely correct to judge it in terms of that wider context. If the war is that against 'terror', and Iraq is just a supposed battlefront, then to call for retreat is to suggest a strategic option whose merits should be duly weighed. To shout down or label cowards, those of the opinion that a tactical retreat and re-deployment is the best strategy is disingenuous at best.

While I'm on the topic, it is amazing to me how minor the difference in timetable in Iraq ended up being. Obama has been consistently pledging to have the majority of combat forces out of Iraq within 18 months of taking office, as long as facts on the ground do not significantly change. The Bush administration concluded a status of forces agreement with Iraq at the end of 2008 which basically agrees to have this same thing done by the end of 2010. So the difference between the administration which planned and carried out the campaign, and consistently argued we had to stay the course, and the new president, who of the top-tier contenders in the election had probably the most serious anti-war credentials (having opposed the invasion before it happened, when that was not a popular stand, and made that fact central to the beginning of his primary battle), who was consistently and shrilly accused of advocating a cut-and-run strategy, amounts to this: six months. Six months! Sheesh.

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