President Obama is using the al-Qaeda label to obfuscate and to avoid examining what common threat doctrine binds the global and domestic jihad against the U.S. and other infidels.
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To defeat stateless Jihadi groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban, we must jettison our Cold War national security thinking featuring limited war and instead realistically reassume our World War II strategic offensive posture. The lessons of RAF colonial air control and Allied interdiction in World War II lay out a clear blueprint the US could use to disarm our implacable Islamic enemy, the mullah government of Iran. Dealing a deathblow to the Iranian resupply of Shi’ite and Sunni Jihadists would strike at both the insurgents' capability in Iraq and the motivation of Islamic Jihadists throughout the world. As was the case in the World War II Pacific Theater, the Islamic enemy’s disregard for any human or Judeo-Christian standard of morality makes the application of normally acceptable jus in bello criteria absolutely impossible and therefore inapplicable. Trying to subdue “savagery” with “civilized ideology” is, as Clausewitz long ago demonstrated, absurd. The American political elite, the American media, and the American public have lost the ability to see war with the same clear-sighted understanding that led us to victory in World War II. That is, to prevail in war often involves unpleasant and devastating choices. Thomas Schelling brought his game theory to the Johnson administration and gave a bad President a “strategy cover” for not destroying the enemy’s center of gravity in the Vietnam War, thus formally incorporating appeasement as an integral element of American war strategy. The key to winning or losing the Iraqi Theater resides in the strategic vision of US politicians and the military command to clearly identify the enemy, locate their command and control centers, and destroy them. If this means Tehran, it means Tehran.
Clear and hold is absolutely essential in counterinsurgency because providing security for the indigenous population must be the first order of business in order to separate the insurgents from the people. Just as President Johnson “successfully” evaded confronting the external source of the Vietnam War — North Vietnam — so President Bush is also “successfully” evading confrontation with the sources of the continuing jihadist violence in Iraq.
The Korean War began the change in the American concept of war away from total war to a form of war that was more “civilized” and “less dangerous” in the minds of social scientists. American political leadership failed to destroy the strategic re-supply capability of North Vietnam for 14 years and the American will was worn down to an eventual state of collapse. |
 
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