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William Sturgiss Lind,
Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism
at the Free Congress Foundation, is a native
of Cleveland, Ohio, born July 9, 1947. He
graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
from Dartmouth College in 1969 and received
a Master's Degree in History from Princeton
University in 1971. He worked as a legislative
aide for armed services for Senator Robert
Taft, Jr., of Ohio from 1973 through 1976
and held a similar position with Senator Gary
Hart of Colorado from 1977 through 1986. He
joined Free Congress Foundation in 1987.
Mr. Lind is author of the Maneuver Warfare
Handbook (Westview Press, 1985); co-author,
with Gary Hart, of America Can Win: The Case
for Military Reform (Adler & Adler, 1986);
and co-author, with William H. Marshner, of
Cultural Conservatism: Toward a New National
Agenda (Free Congress Foundation, 1987). He
has written extensively for both popular media,
including The Washington Post, The New York
Times, and Harper's, and professional military
journals, including The Marine Corps Gazette,
U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings and Military
Review.
Mr. Lind co-authored the prescient article,
"The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth
Generation," which was published in The Marine
Corps Gazette in October, 1989 and which first
propounded the concept of "Fourth Generation
War." Mr. Lind and his co-authors predicted
that states would increasingly face threats
not from other states, but from non-state
forces whose primary allegiance was to their
religion, ethnic group or ideology. Following
the events of September 11, 2001, the article
has been credited for its foresight by The
New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly.
Mr. Lind is co-author with Paul M. Weyrich
of the monograph: "Why Islam is a Threat to
America and The West." He is the author of
"George W. Bush's `War on Terrorism': Faulty
Strategy and Bad Tactics?" Both were published
in 2002 by the Free Congress Foundation.
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September 14, 2004
[Have an opinion on a William Lind column? Sound off in the Discussion
Boards.]
Last week, I attended and spoke at a conference on armor in urban
operations, put on by the U.S. Army Armor School at Ft. Knox, Kentucky.
In listening to the other presentations, the question I was asking
myself was, "What are these guys learning from combat in Iraq
and Afghanistan?"
The question is an important one, because war is a competition
in learning curves. Whoever consistently learns faster acquires
an increasing advantage. This is the Boyd Cycle or OODA Loop at
work on the macro level, and just as in the micro level of actual
combat, it is an important determinant of victory or defeat.
So what did I discover? At the level of techniques, when actual
units briefed, the learning curve seemed impressive. They had quickly
figured out that while techniques tend to be regarded in peacetime
as static, in combat they become dynamic: you can't use yesterday's
techniques that are always done the same way, the new priority becomes
adapting and inventing techniques. Again, the combat units I heard
brief seemed to have gotten this. They were innovating intelligently,
in ways that were relevant to the situation in Iraq as it is, not
as we might like it to be.
When we moved up a level, from units that have actually fought
to institutions, the picture immediately got cloudy. Here, the internal
priorities of budget and bureaucratic politics still hold sway,
despite the fact that we are fighting two wars. One example was
a brief from the Marine
Corps "Battle Lab" at Quantico (the term is a misnomer: the
office is about budgets, not battles, and unlike a laboratory, it
does demonstrations, not experiments). The briefing stated at the
outset that the keys to success in wars like that in Iraq are "Increased
Lethality and Improved Protection."
Well, no. We already have vast advantages over our Fourth Generation
opponents in both lethality and protection, yet we're losing. That
suggests there is rather more to Fourth Generation war than lethality
and protection. Indeed, we have so much of both of those qualities
that they may work against us more than for us. Recently, the lethality
of U.S. Army
attack helicopters was turned on a crowd of young men and boys gathered
around a burning Bradley, with catastrophic results for our image
among Iraqis. And our Force Protection already seals us off from
the people we are supposed to be helping, turning us into an alien
and threatening presence. At the mental and moral levels of war,
we may need less lethality and protection rather than more.
This points to the big disappointment in all of what I heard at
the conference. It was all focused on the physical level of war,
to the virtual exclusion of the more powerful mental and moral levels.
At the mental level, there were a few mentions of PSYOPS, but even
these were misconceived as what we say. Real PSYOPS are what we
do, like stepping on the heads of detainees. Only one briefing grasped
this essential point.
Of the moral level of war, which John Boyd argued is the most powerful
level, there was nothing. Worse, there was no discussion of the
central dilemma in Fourth Generation war, that what wins at the
physical level tends to lead to defeat at the moral level. Goliath
may mop the floor with his smaller, weaker opponents, but in doing
so he makes himself universally hated.
In classic Second Generation fashion, the assumption behind almost
all the briefings was that if we can only accumulate enough tactical
victories, we are certain to win strategically as well. Vietnam
should have put an end to this simplistic belief, but the lessons
of Vietnam were filed and forgotten almost as soon as that war was
over.
The fault here is not that of the combat units, which were doing
all they could to get their learning curve up, within the understanding
of war that they have. The fault lies with those institutions within
our military, such as TRADOC and the "Battle Lab," that are supposed
to grapple with the larger, conceptual issues. They have failed
for years to do their job, and they are failing still. Their learning
curves are as flat as the landscape of the Sunni triangle, where
our soldiers and Marines are doomed to continue winning lost victories.
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© 2004 William S. Lind. William S. Lind
is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free
Congress Foundation. All opinions expressed in this article are
the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.
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