Why didn’t America win in Vietnam? As I understand it, we killed about 3,000,000 Vietnamese in that war, and the Vietnamese killed about 60,000 American troops. So we killed roughly 50 Vietnamese for every 1 American soldier killed. And yet, the Vietnamese kept fighting, and eventually the American public was forced to recognize that we had “lost” the war.
In my view, we lost because our strategy was flawed — our strategy was based on the idea that we could force the North Vietnamese to accept defeat. Ultimately, it was up to the North Vietnamese to decide whether or not to accept defeat — and so we could never win until they conceded. Our goal was to break their will to continue fighting, and it was a goal we were incapable of achieving, no matter how many Vietnamese we killed, no matter how many bombs we dropped.
Consider the following from an article about released audiotaped recordings of President Lyndon Johnson’s conversations, including a conversation with Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara:
Johnson asked McNamara about the defense budget and supply shortages. McNamara told him there were shortages of a “new rifle” called the M-16, and shortages of some ammunition and rounds used to illuminate areas for night fighting. But McNamara said there were plenty of bombs — 265,000 tons of them, either in Southeast Asia or on the way.
“Frankly, we’re going to just snow the place under with bombs,” McNamara said. “And I’m doing it purposely to make them cry, `Stop.’”
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. (Please forgive the cliche.) Similarly, you can lead an enemy to the point where you believe they will feel compelled to accept defeat — but if they don’t, then what have you accomplished? McNamara thought he could “make them cry, ’stop,’” but he couldn’t. And so 3,000,000 Vietnamese and 50,000 Americans were killed without any benefit to the United States.
In a roundtable discussion of the current Israeli-Palestinian war in the Gaza strip on the NPR program, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, Washington Post columnist and editor David Ignatius outlined a similarly flawed strategy, this time being implemented by the Israelis.
IGNATIUS: To me, the Gaza episode has illustrated, again, the essentials of the impasse in the Middle East. The Israelis faced a real security problem in the rockets that were being fired from Gaza. Hamas had agreed to cease fire that expired Dec. 19 and refused to renew it. The rockets began to launch again into Israel, and the Israelis decided to take very decisive action. The problem is, once you begin these things — and this is what we saw in Lebanon in 2006, what I saw in Beirut in 1982, long ago, when I was a correspondent there — once you start these things, how do you stop them? What are the terms under which you end them? And the Israelis are seeing in this instance, as in the past, that a decisive resolution to this kind of fight is almost impossible, because of international opinion, because of the danger of civilian casualties, a whole series of reasons. So you end up, looking for, at the end of the day, a cease-fire. And that’s where we are now. And the dickering is over when the cease fire should come, and can the Israelis get inclusion of some tough measures to reduce the flow of weapons into Gaza.
ASHBROOK: But Israel went in here saying, clearly indicating that its goal was more than, you know, some churning around and then a cease-fire –
IGNATIUS: Yes, it said that, Tom, but I think the point I want to make is that, that kind of decisive resolution that people talk about is not realistically possible. The Israeli Interior Minister, Meir Sheetrit, in the first days of this, said something that I found haunting. He said, “We’re going to continue this until we break the will of the Palestinians to continue to target us.” If there’s one thing that we’ve learned in this conflict, it’s that breaking the will of the other side just doesn’t work. People keep talking in those terms, but it doesn’t happen. So you end up having to settle for halfway things that patch together a new version of the status quo ante. That doesn’t make Israelis happy. Certainly, the fighting has not made Palestinians happy. I think, for Obama, the events of the last two weeks show that a decisive, new American approach to these things — I’m talking about a new approach to the Middle East, it sounds like a hopeless task — but somehow, breaking out of the lanes in which everybody is stuck, is crucial.
Setting aside the issue of whether the war in Gaza is moral or justified, there remains the crucially important question of whether the war can achieve anything for the security of the Israeli people. Do Israelis seriously believe they can accomplish the goal of “breaking the will” of the Palestinians? Is this what the Israeli people are waiting for? Are they not concerned that a new round of horrible violence in Gaza will only harden the will of a new generation of Palestinians to fight the Israelis?
If so, the Israelis are destined to lose, and this loss will leave them in a weaker position than before the war began.
I think the idea that supporting the current conflict is somehow “pro-Israel” is a bit misguided. It seems completely obvious that the predictable result of this kind of bombardment will be a further radicalization of the Palestinian civilian population. If you saw your neighbor and this three children blown up by a Canadian cluster bomb, you wouldn’t decide “Oh, we deserved that; we’re responsible for our own destruction.” If you saw yourself as locked in a war of liberation against an occupier, the carnage would only reinforce the narrative that you’re embattled by a vicious enemy. I would say that likewise Hamas’s strategy is completely insane as well; raining rockets down on Israel isn’t going to make reaching a settlement any easier, nor is it likely to lead to the ending of the Gaza blockade. Mass nonviolent civil disobedience seems like the only plausible model for resistance in cases like this.
Comment by Lee — January 11, 2009 @ 6:33 pm
Indeed, I’m arguing that supporting the current conflict is anti-Israel, in the sense that it runs counter to what is in the best interests of the Israeli people. This is true even though I completely agree with you that Hamas’s strategy is completely insane and utterly stupid, since Israel’s reaction was so predictable. Violence begets more violence.
However, when you refer to “mass nonviolent civil disobedience,” are you advocating that for the Palestinians? For the Israelis who oppose their country’s self-destructive course of action? For Americans? If you’re advocating it for the Palestinians, I wonder what form it would take. I don’t disagree with you, I’m just wondering what such an action would look like and how it would work.
Comment by Ian — January 11, 2009 @ 8:30 pm
Bags — nice blog. I think, though, that there’s a problem in both your and Lee’s characterization of the Hamas strategy.
It might be — it probably is — insane (insofar as the organization’s goals are insane), but the strategy is not necessarily stupid — not in light of Hamas’ goals.
You’re right, Ian, that Israel’s reaction was “so predictable,” which is why Hamas started heaving rockets over the border in the first place. And you’re right, Lee, that “raining rockets down on Israel isn’t going to make reaching a settlement any easier… nor … the ending of the Gaza blockade.”
Well, does Hamas want a settlement? No.
Do they particularly need an end to the blockade? Not with the Egyptian tunnels.
Lee, as for Israel’s contributing to the cycle (harsher and harsher crackdowns which lead to a further radicalization of the Palestinian civilian population), well — yes, I’d say they are. And in that light, far from a stupid Hamas strategy, it’s (unfortunately and diabolically, even) rather smart.
Comment by Sub — January 13, 2009 @ 3:52 pm
Sub! Thanks for your comment! Welcome to the blog!
I think there’s a lot of truth in what you’ve written above, but what is Hamas’ goal?
It may be that Hamas goal is the destruction of Israel, pure and simple. In that case, it may be that they fired the rockets in order to provoke Israel into retaliating in a way that would draw international condemnation of Israel, inflame anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian sentiment throughout the Middle East, and undermine any peace process (since any kind of settlement that leaves Isreal standing is failure, as far as Hamas is concerned.)
In that case, you’re right that Hamas’ strategy isn’t insane — it’s Hamas’ goal that is insane, since the chance of Israel ceasing to exist anytime soon is nihil. In this case, doesn’t Israel’s response to Hamas’ provocation just play into Hamas’ hands? Isn’t Hamas obviously winning this battle, since everything is going the way Hamas intended?
In a situation such as this — where the enemy is an entire population motivated by a religious conviction that you must be destroyed — you have two options: either (a) eliminate the threat by eliminating the enemy completely (which is unthinkable), or (b) implement a long-term, possibly multi-generational strategy designed to undermine the religious commitment that motivates the war.
The current conflict is neither (a) nor (b). It won’t eliminate the enemy, but it may strengthen the enemy’s will to fight.
Comment by Ian — January 13, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
I would add that there is some evidence that Hamas is willing to negotiate with Israel — though there are people who counter that public gestures toward negotiation are only a ruse designed to lead to the eventual destruction of Israel. People made the same claims about the PLO, though it finally proved it was willing to negotiate a settlement until the Tabba talks ended.
For Hamas to attempt to destroy Israel is identical to their attempting to destroy the Palestinians. If the state of Israel were “destroyed” the Palestinian population would with almost complete certainty be destroyed in the process along with them. There is no realistic scenario I’ve ever heard in which Israel is destroyed but the Palestinians survive intact, or vice versa. Perhaps one might invoke a form of “demographic” destruction, but that’s not what people are referring to when they say, as Commentary does in a recent issue, “we should take Iran’s threats against Israel [and, automatically, by definition, the Palestinans] seriously.”
That said, even assuming Hamas holds insane Apocalyptic goals, it seems important to differentiate between Hamas and the Palestinian population. I don’t know what public opinion polling reports — I’m gonna look it up and post here when I find it — but I’d be willing to bet that the blockade and the rocket fire were intimately linked in the minds of Palestinians living in Gaza.
Israel’s counterattacks have likely only reinforced this link. A smarter strategy for Israel, in my view, would be to de-couple the blockade from the rocket attacks — and to move unilaterally toward what most I think rightly regard as the most plausible peace settlement: two viable states along the ‘67 borders, with Palestinians retaining water rights in a continuous West Bank free of Israel settlements and border controls, etc.
If attacks continue after that, I think it’ll be much easier for Israel to marshall world public opinion to its side.
Comment by Lee — January 13, 2009 @ 6:44 pm
Just to clarify, I don’t think Hamas’ goal is to kill every living Israeli or to reduce the Israeli countryside to some kind of post-nuclear wasteland — but merely to destroy the government of Israel, and replace it with an Arab state. They want “regime change” in Israel. Presumably, there are Palestinians who think this goal can be achieved, although I think those of us with a western perspective (like me) tend figure Israel would blow up the entire Middle East (literally) rather than give up the ghost.
I’m very interested to know whether a majority of Palestinians in Gaza support the goal of destroying Israel. So good luck in your efforts, Lee!
Comment by Ian — January 13, 2009 @ 8:38 pm
Any Palestinian who thinks that “regime change” in Israel is viable, in my opinion, is living in a fantasy world. The Israeli government would probably rather unleash full-scale war than permit that outcome. So the only “viable” form of destruction of the Israeli state that I know of is total mutual destruction.
Comment by Lee — January 13, 2009 @ 10:29 pm
Fortunately, a wide majority of Palestinans favor a two-state solution, according to a 2008 public opinion poll (that included Gaza).
A 2006 US Institute for Peace report concludes that “Palestinian public opinion is not an impediment to progress in the peace process; to the contrary, over time the Palestinian public has become more moderate.” And: “Public support for violence increases in an environment of greater pain and suffering and decreases when threat perception is reduced.”
So the idea that the Palestinian population is fanatically dedicated to the destruction of Israel is simply not accurate. Whether that opinion (as of mid-2008) changes in the wake of these recent attacks is uncertain.
Comment by Lee — January 13, 2009 @ 10:40 pm
“Public support for violence increases in an environment of greater pain and suffering and decreases when threat perception is reduced.”
Good find, Lee. Especially since (I feel) it makes my point. The Hamas strategy is sound, not because this current flare-up will lead to the destruction of Israel, but because the rockets they fired into Israel led to an overwhelming response which led to pain and suffering for the greater Gaza population, which — as this study finds — leads in turn to destability and (wait for it) … support for Hamas.
That’s what’s so horrible about this. It’s entrenched and timeless and thousands of years old — but it’s also an ugly political fight, whereby one radical faction is trying to, well, shore up its base. (And yes, Lee, you’re absolutely right about the necessity of keeping Hamas distinct from the Palestinian population).
Finally, yes, Ian: Hamas is winning this battle — that was my point. Though I see now I didn’t say that explicitly. Even though the Palestinian people are incurring the significant losses, Hamas is not getting the blame, Israel is. Hamas is not popular anywhere, remember — and it’s trying to stay popular enough in its own backyard.
Comment by Sub — January 14, 2009 @ 11:04 am