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WASHINGTON, Nov. 1, 2011 – Calling on the nation to celebrate  military families’ service and sacrifice, President Barack Obama today  signed proclamations designating November as Military Family Month and  National Family Caregivers Month.

“With every step we take on American soil, we tread on ground made  safer for us through the invaluable sacrifices of our service members  and their families,” the president said in his Military Family Month  proclamation.
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Marine Corps Capt. Lucas Frokjer reunites with his family on Marine  Corps Base Hawaii,  Kaneohe Bay, Sept. 17, 2011, after returning from a  seven-month deployment with HMH-463. Frokjer is officer in charge of the  flightline assigned to Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 463. The  squadron arrived at Hangar 105 and were welcomed home by a large crowd  of family and friends. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Jacob  Barber

This month is devoted to celebrating military families’ exceptional  service, strength and sacrifice, he said. Their commitment to the  nation, he added, “goes above and beyond the call of duty.”

“Just  as our troops embody the courage and character that make America’s  military the finest in the world,” Obama said, “their family members  embody the resilience and generosity that make our communities strong.”

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President Obama’s expected decisionto reduce our troop level in Afghanistan from 100,000 to 90,000 by the end of 2011, and to 70,000 by the end of 2012, seems reasonable.

The more important issue — how to do it — is likely to be quietly decided this fall based on recommendations from a new military team consisting of the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the United States Central Command, and the commander in Afghanistan.

Here are the factors that will matter.

First, the United States’ goal is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist sanctuary as the U.S. draws down. Unlike the situation in the 1990s, Pakistan won’t give the Taliban the arms and vehicles for a conventional assault along major highways to seize Kabul. The Pakistanis are in no mood to antagonize the U.S., and our air power would devastate any such overt attack.

Instead, the concern inside our military command is that the Taliban can build momentum in the rural areas. In this scenario, as the Taliban gain control in the countryside, the Afghan army would fall back to the cities and to their home tribes. In essence, the concern is about a collapse of the Afghan army. The Afghan army, not the population’s attitude, is the key to stability.

The “surge” strategy decided by Obama in 2009 increased U.S. troops from 70,000 to 100,000. The surge is working in the south, due to U.S. efforts. Aggressive U.S. Marines cleared Helmand Province — but at a cost of twice as many casualties as elsewhere. If all U.S. forces fight as aggressively as the Marines for four more years, then by the end of 2014 U.S. troops may hold most of the key populated terrain in Afghanistan.

But given that Pakistan remains as a 1,500-mile sanctuary, U.S. troops can’t win the war. The Taliban will still be able to attack in 2015, the date when Obama has promised that the U.S. will no longer be in a combat role. This means the real fight starts when U.S. troops leave.

If U.S. troops fight aggressively for four more years, the cost to the U.S. through 2014 may be as high as 1,700 more fatalities and $400 billion. The U.S. is fighting a war of attrition that may force a weakened Taliban to negotiate.

But this fight hasn’t won over the people, which is supposed to happen in order to win with a counterinsurgency. In Iraq, that did happen. Sunni Muslims turned against the insurgents and the government was able to take over the fight from the Americans. In Afghanistan, the tribes have not supported the American surge. The tribes along the border survive by being chameleons. They expect the Taliban to return when the Americans pull out.

The attitude of the tribes in Afghanistan has not changed, despite the $18 billion the Relations Committee reported that we poured into economic projects. Instead, over 10 years we have succeeded in creating a culture of entitlement.

Afghans expect us to fight for them and give them money. The committee report cited 16,000 economic projectsinitiated by the U.S. military alone, as if its mission were to act as a giant Peace Corps. Most of this money has resulted in no change in the war, and has weakened the willingness of the Afghans to rely upon themselves rather than foreigners.

U.S. military leaders believe our soldiers must fight for several more years, because currently 20,000 Taliban can defeat 200,000 Afghan forces. The reason is that the Taliban believe in their cause and replace leaders from the bottom up, despite their losses to attrition. So the U.S. is developing a large Afghan army to substitute numbers for fighting spirit.

But the U.S. has scant influence in selecting Afghan military leaders. This is a huge and perhaps fatal problem. The Afghan army’s will to fight and leadership dwarf all other concerns.

So the major issue is not the modest reduction in the number of troops that Obama is about to announce. Instead, the issue is what the new military team will recommend in the fall as the strategy to accelerate Afghanization.

One option will be the creation of a 20,000-member Adviser Corps. This is more important than continuing a surge to control more terrain that must be turned over to Afghan soldiers who are incapable. We need more advisers at the point of combat to call in fire, so that the Afghan soldiers gain a sense that they can win. Presently, we have too many adviser teams that are too small to go on patrols. The advisers can’t infuse confidence in the Afghans unless we bolster the size of the adviser teams from about 20 to 60.

The new military team must evaluate whether the better strategy is to stick with U.S. soldiers doing the fighting, or replace many of our combat units with enlarged adviser teams. Currently, there is one American in Afghanistan for every two Afghan soldiers. The new high-level military team must decide whether a better ratio is one American for every 10 Afghan soldiers.

In addition, for the next 10 years, the U.S. should pay members of the Afghan army directly, without going through unreliable civilians in Kabul to do so. If there is a negotiated settlement, the Taliban will emerge as an armed faction of subversion within the state. But without a settlement, the Afghan army faces a long war. Either way, the Afghan army must be confident of direct U.S.support — at a cost of $10 billion a year, even when our forces are gone

The war room of our cinematic nightmares (Stanley
Kubrick’s masterpiece, “Dr. Strangelove,” 1964)

China has been pre-approved for kinetic war strikes from the United States at any time.  Let me explain how.

First off, what the strategy says (according to the same WSJ front-page article Mark cited yesterday):

The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

In other words, if you, Country C, take down or just plain attack what we consider a crucial cyber network, we reserve the right to interpret that as an act of war justifying an immediately “equivalent” kinetic response (along with any cyber response, naturally).  If this new strategy frightens you, then you just might be a rational actor.

Theoretically, this means if you, Country C, hack and disable the net of crucial US installation X, America can fire missiles at your equivalent civilian or military installation (C)X.  Of course, by responding to your “act of war,” we are initiating our own war response, meaning we’d need presidential approval to start the fireworks.  But the key point is, by hacking something that we consider to be national security-sensitive, you leave yourself open to a state-of-war response from the United States at the time of its choosing, so be forewarned.

Which facilities fall into this “eye for an eye (or ear or . . .)” category?  Naturally, America shouldn’t say, so as to keep Country C in the dark (the essence of deterrence), but putting us in the dark (take-down of an electric grid) is an obvious one cited in the WSJ piece.  Again, theoretically, almost anything can be described as crucial on some national security scale (e.g., hack Monsanto in just the right way and maybe you put US food security at risk), because the small damage that you, Country C, choose to create in our nets might easily cascade into something far larger, so virtually any hack emanating from your networks puts you at risk for a US war response.

Second, while we can make all sorts of arguments about various governments and non-state actors giving us a hard time, we all know that the only player that matters in this new strategy is China.

Third, we know that China does this sort of hacking all the time.  On any day of the week, we could justify any number of equivalent attacks – kinetic or otherwise.  Inside the national security community, you hear about these attacks constantly, ones that involve all sorts of sensitive companies, technologies, networks, etc. Virtually all of them track back to China, truth be told.  I’m not talking secrets.  This is common knowledge – day-to-day operational reality.
Time to jump, doc. (“The Fugitive,” 1993)
Point being, China is now essentially – and at all times – pre-approved for retaliatory strikes, unless it were to immediately cease and desist all such hacking activity. Of course, the Chinese government can always pretend that any hacking attacks that are traced back to its nets reflect non-state activity beyond its control, but this new cyber strategy basically pre-loads the Tommy Lee Jones response from “The Fugitive”:

Dr. Richard Kimble: I didn’t kill my wife!
Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard: I don’t care!

This is an destabilizing step sideways in our security relationship with China:  Beijing is being warned that its current and ongoing behavior can – at any time – be loosely interpreted as an act of war.  Whatever situations or crises ensue, that handy rationale is now always sitting in the Pentagon’s back pocket, because I guarantee you, whenever big-war enthusiasts want to play that card, the Defense Department will be able to muster – at a moment’s notice – a long list of Chinese hacking attacks over the previous X hours/days/weeks/months.  So when the President asks, “Do we have evidence that the Chinese are targeting us at this time for cyber-sabotage?”  The answer will always be yes.

Are you fearful of a “Guns of August” scenario erupting with the Chinese?  You should be now.  “Archduke Ferdinand” currently lives inside virtually any US cyber network you care to cite.

Black Swan, meet the War Powers Act, because now nobody is in charge of initiating great-power war anymore.  It has all been pre-approved – like some credit card application.

The timing here on the announcement (long anticipated) couldn’t be better:  with Osama dead, America is now empowered to launch pre-emptive/retaliatory kinetic strikes against China whenever the President wants to.  Talk about a quick strategic pivot!

Just so you’re clear on what I’m implying here:  This is the most serious scaling back of the threshold of great-power war since Mutually Assured Destruction – in its meme-like spread across the 1960s/1970s – basically outlawed such high-end conflict for all but the strategically nutty.  Fast-forward to Sarah Palin being sworn-in on 20 January 2013 and you’ve got yourself a real party.

Of course, all such concerns will be downplayed by sensible national security types:  “This doesn’t mean . . ..”  But the underlying capacity will remain.  Hence the resulting need for some sort of “arms control” understanding with the Chinese (brought up at the end of the solid WSJ piece) before one or both sides blunders the world into a shooting war nobody wants.

By STEVE GRIFFIN

U.S. Army AlaskaSgt. Jose Merced, B Company, Warrior Transition Battalion, is shown at the Black Rapids Training Site in Fairbanks, Alaska.

It is a theme that has been delivered over and over — war brings out the best and worst in people.  Watch any old war movie starring Lee Marvin, or read the papers from the early days of the Iraq war, and you will see deeds of valor peppered with foolish and disgraceful acts of cowardice.

But combat will also show you things you would never expect to see in a person.  Attributes hidden beneath the surface that come out only in the darkest hours. I once had a good friend ask me, “When the bullets started flying, how did you know who you could really trust?”  With a look of consternation on my face, I had to stop and think for a second.  “I guess I never really thought about it,” I replied.  “The guys who truly wanted to fight just seemed to rise to the challenge on their own accord.”

So what qualities make a good soldier in combat?  What differentiates those few, true warriors from the rest of the crowd?  I can only speculate that it is having the internal fortitude to take action when action is needed.  It is not being reckless or seeking medals, but fighting in a keen and undaunted manner.  It is acting on a will to win and refusing anything short of it.

That same friend who asked me whom I could trust also asked if I could identify those battle-savvy troops before we entered into combat.  I could only respond, “Some leaders are a better judge of character than others; I happen to fall into the category of those that are not.”  Officers and noncommissioned officers alike spend countless days training their troops, learning their unique personalities, and trying to pinpoint the few who might be worthy of more responsibility or even a promotion.  But no matter how prescient one tries to be, sometimes even the most unlikely candidates turn out to be the best fighters.

As a green, yet bombastic second lieutenant, I was confident I could pick out the soldiers who could be counted on when that time came. But then there were guys like Pfc. Jose Merced, one of the 20 soldiers in my platoon.  A young, taciturn kid from Newark, Private Merced was the loader in my tank crew.  A little over 5 feet tall, he could not have weighed more than 130 pounds.  He had a phlegmatic personality, doing as he was told when he was told to do it, seldom with complaint.  Although he had a history of juvenile misconduct, Private Merced performed as expected during training and generally stayed out of trouble during down times. In short, there was nothing troublesome about him. As our unit deployed to Iraq in 2006, Private Merced was promoted to specialist and assigned as the tank’s driver.

We entered the city of Ramadi knowing that it was one of the most contested and battle-scarred areas in the Iraq theater. Likened by some as a modern-day Stalingrad, the landscape we witnessed during the first morning’s daylight shocked us. A mere skeleton of what was once a grand city remained. Decimated buildings and roads pock-mocked from blasts from I.E.D.’s – improvised explosive devices — were all that could be seen.   A sobering wave of quiet and concern came over the soldiers in the platoon as they surveyed this horrendous scene.

Courtesy of Steve GriffinSgt. Jose Merced in Ramadi, Iraq.

Given these conditions, it was not a surprise when we made contact during our first patrol. Typical of an insurgent foray, it came in the form of a complex attack – a roadside bomb coupled with heavy machine-gun fire.  It was something that not even my most seasoned NCOs had ever seen, and it scared the death out of most of us.  After surviving a few days of these attacks and watching our brothers in the rifle platoons endure theirs, an atmosphere of circumspection began to set in. The senior NCOs became quiescent. Most of them had wives and children back home and were three-quarters of the way to a 20-year retirement. Their motivation to patrol actively and fight our enemies head-on was quickly replaced with a cautious mind-set.

Instead of aggressively pursuing our attackers, the platoon stubbornly wanted to sit in built-up observation posts, providing “overwatch” from afar as others continued to do the most dangerous work.

As their leader, I struggled immensely with this. I wanted my soldiers to be aggressive. I wanted them to want to fight, and not just because I ordered them to or because they were being shot at. I wanted to show the guys on our left and right what we were capable of.

As time pressed on, the number of wounded and killed continued to skyrocket across the unit. Conditions became so bad that our soldiers could hardly stand outside of an armored vehicle in daylight without being shot at by snipers. The I.E.D.’s planted in the roads were so deadly that the company was forced to abandon their Humvees and patrol exclusively in heavily armored tracked vehicles. Then the call came – a direct order from above to have the tanks begin patrolling again. The intent was to rely on their heavy armor in hopes that they might better absorb the massive I.E.D. strikes. I was thrilled. Finally, we would have a chance to get back out there and prove our worth.

But the mood in the platoon had not changed. Before delivering the mission briefing, I received word that a tank in one of our sister platoons had just struck a devastating deep-buried I.E.D. The blast effectively broke the driver’s back, shattered another crewman’s legs and mangled the tank. The news could not have come at a worse time. As I began the briefing, I could see that not everyone was paying attention. They were instead focused on the half-mutilated, half-melted vestige of a tank that was being towed from our motor pool. It was heading to the notorious vehicle graveyard, a place where the mechanical casualties of war went — and a constant reminder of what was possible in battle, even for tankers.

When it came time to determine the order of march, I decided to ask for volunteers to see which crew was willing to take the lead in the patrol. It was a last-ditch effort to spark some motivation in the platoon and a desperate search to find just one person who was willing to take a risk. That is when Specialist Merced stood up. “It’s us sir,” he said, “We’ll take point.”  I couldn’t believe it. While the platoon leader typically is not supposed to be in the lead vehicle, I was not about to argue with him. I was just happy to have someone who wanted to fight.

Our tank led the patrol that day and continued to lead each patrol for the next week. With Specialist Merced in the driver’s hull, we patrolled as aggressively as possible.  He drove the tank like I had never seen before, running down enemy fighters in speeding cars, charging through I.E.D.’s, and using the tank’s heavy armor and superior weaponry to draw insurgents into fights that they were certain to lose. He took control of our tank like an experienced NCO would, showing poise under fire.

It was after this display of gallantry that I realized Specialist Merced was something special. He was a warrior at heart. He loved to fight, and his mental toughness radiated in battle. Desperately needing more of this brashness, I pushed for his promotion to sergeant and made him the tank’s gunner. When his fellow platoon members saw this, they quickly fell in step, not wanting to be shown up by one of their peers. Before I knew it, the platoon had become eager to fight. It was all I could do at that point just to keep up.

In the end, I was just as shocked as anyone that the small, spindly kid from Newark became one of my best soldiers in battle. Sergeant Merced motivated me to be a better leader, and his intrepid attitude in the face of danger became infectious throughout the platoon. He exemplified the warrior spirit that is essential to win in tough battles, and he proved what true warriors can do when faced head-on with the ultimate sacrifice.

Every leader preparing for combat should be on the lookout for these unique service members.  As Andrew Jackson once wrote, “one man with courage makes a majority,” and sometimes that is all it takes to turn the tide in war.  And while these hidden gems might be difficult to identify at first, they invariably emerge in the heat of battle. Personally, I cherish the thought of how lucky that next platoon leader is when he or she realizes they have a Merced fighting for them.

Sgt. Jose Merced is still on active duty in the Army.  He currently serves as a noncommissioned officer, or cadre, for the Warrior Transition Unit in Fort Richardson, Alaska. Sergeant Merced has not deployed again since his last combat tour to Iraq in 2006-2007.


Steve Griffin spent five years as an Army officer. He served two deployments to Iraq, as a tank and rifle platoon leader in 2006 and then as a civil military officer in 2008. Today he is a program manager for a military contractor in Florida.

President Barack Obama says he’s intervening to prevent atrocities in Libya.
But details of behind-the-scenes debates at the White House show he’s going to
war in part to rehabilitate an idea.

Three weeks ago, I posted an article
headlined, “Will Obama Order U.S. Intervention in Libya?” It began: “It seems
preposterous to suggest in the wake of Iraq that the U.S. might intervene
militarily to help bring down another Arab regime. But the growing danger of a
humanitarian catastrophe created by Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, combined with a
surprisingly broad confluence of interests, has crisis watchers inside and
outside the administration seeing the telltale signs of a conflict that could
compel Obama into action.”

My main argument was that if Gaddafi committed large-scale human rights
violations against his own people he would provide an opening to those in the
administration who wanted to rehabilitate the doctrine of humanitarian
intervention eight years after the Iraq war discredited U.S.-led military
actions abroad. As it turns out, Gaddafi hasn’t done enough to justify
humanitarian intervention—despite their rhetoric to the contrary, the
administration and human rights organizations admit that reports of potential
war crimes remain unconfirmed. Instead, interviews with senior administration
officials show that the rehabilitators convinced Obama to go to war not just to
prevent atrocities Gaddafi might (or might not) commit but also to bolster
America’s ability to intervene elsewhere in the future.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The ability for the U.S. to muster
international force to prevent thugs from killing innocent people is important.
But the president and some of his advisers are so eager to rehabilitate the idea
of preventive intervention that they’re exaggerating the violence they say they
are intervening to prevent in Libya. “The effort to shoe-horn this into an
imminent genocide model is strained,” says one senior administration official.
That’s dangerous. Americans deserve an honest explanation when their leaders
take them to war. Moreover, the rhetorical focus on the crazy things Gaddafi
might do obscures the debate America should have before intervening: does the
value of preventing possible war crimes against Libyans outweigh the risks to
America’s national security that come with intervening?

Obama and his aides know they are taking a big risk. “It’s a huge gamble,”
says the senior administration official. The administration knows, for example,
that al Qaeda, which has active cells in Libya, will try to exploit the power
vacuum that will come with a weak or ousted Gaddafi. They also know that the
U.S. will have to rely on other countries for the crucial task of rebuilding
Libya and that the region may in fact be further destabilized by intervention.
Outweighing that, the National Security Council’s Ben Rhodes says, are the
long-term benefits of saving lives, protecting the possibility of democratic
change elsewhere in the region and—tellingly—ensuring “the ability of collective
action to be a tool in circumstances like this.”

One of the strongest voices in America for the idea of collective action to
prevent war crimes is Samantha Power, a senior director at the National Security
Council. In late 2006, Power told me that international humanitarian
intervention had been “killed for a generation” by the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Then a professor at Harvard best known for her Pulitzer prize-winning history of
America’s response to genocide (a book she wrote after covering the wars in
Bosnia and Croatia and studying the genocide in Rwanda) Power was a strong
believer in international intervention to prevent war crimes. Like many others,
she was frustrated that the cause of preventing genocide had been undermined by
George W. Bush’s unilateral intervention in Iraq, which discredited U.S.
military action abroad and made building coalitions to stop war crimes seemingly
impossible.

But the Libyan uprising gave the humanitarian interventionists an unexpected
reprieve. The universal hatred of Gaddafi in the Arab world, Europe’s energy
interests, fears of regional instability and the backdrop of Arab democratic
uprisings provided interventionists in Washington unlikely allies at home and
abroad. Power has argued from the start of the Libyan uprising that the U.S.
needed to be prepared to intervene to prevent humanitarian atrocities. She was
joined in this argument by Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations
who was in the Clinton administration during the Rwanda genocide. As early as
February, a senior official told me, supporters of intervention were “laying the
predicate” for military force.

Obama has espoused the interventionists’ position in the past. In his Nobel
peace prize acceptance speech, he said, “More and more, we all confront
difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own
government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an
entire region. I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as
it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war.
Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later.
That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a
clear mandate can play to keep the peace.”

But on issues like closing Guantanamo Bay and trying terrorism suspects in civilian courts, Obama has abandoned previously stated
principles when facing opposition from the defense department, the intelligence
community and hawkish close advisors. In this case, the Pentagon was again
positioned against Obama’s principles. “On the military side there was a lot of
skepticism in the initial days that a no-fly zone by itself was going to achieve
what we wanted militarily,” says a senior administration official. Another
senior administration official is blunter: “[Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates
tried to stop it.”

This time, Obama used the military’s arguments against them. Last Tuesday at
4 pm, Obama convened a meeting of his top advisors to decide whether the U.S.
should support a U.N. resolution tabled by Lebanon supporting a no-fly zone in
Libya. Rice, Power and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supported the
resolution. The president listened to concerns from the Pentagon and his top
national security advisors that a no-fly zone would not prevent violence against
civilians. But he did not abandon the idea.

After the meeting, Obama had dinner with his combatant commanders and
discussed intervention. Later that evening, at 9 pm, he reconvened the National
Security Council, and after a two hour meeting, tasked Rice with trying to get
U.N. approval for tougher action. On Thursday, she delivered a resolution with
broad support for “all measures necessary” to protect civilians.

The next day, Obama said the U.S. was intervening in Libya not just to
prevent attacks by Gaddafi on civilians but to set a precedent. If Gaddafi were
not stopped, he said, “the words of the international community would be
rendered hollow.” Maybe the administration will get lucky: intervention could
set Libya on the road to democratic development and help continue the political
change sweeping the region. Most importantly for the rehabilitators, perhaps it
will bring new credibility for the idea of humanitarian intervention. But even
those administration officials who most want to see the return of humanitarian
intervention realize how big the stakes are. “I’m praying that this works,” says
one.

By Ralph Zuljan

The fact that 59 years after the fact books are still written justifying the bombing of Dresden speaks volumes about the dubious morality guiding such raids. Nazi Germany was all but defeated in February 1945. There were no targets of any military importance left to bomb. Furthermore, Dresden was on the verge of being captured by the Red Army. That reality was accepted by the German high command as well since that happens to be why Dresden was designated a “fortress” like just about every other place that was about to be overrun by Soviet forces. What was the point of bombing a city that was known to be crowded with refugees and was going to fall to the Soviet advance shortly anyway? Bombing Dresden had no impact on the outcome of World War II in Europe but it highlighted nagging doubts in the Allied camp over the morality of the strategic bombing campaign.

The question of the morality of area bombing in general, and instances such as Dresden in particular, was very much historically present in the Allied camp. Various public figures argued against its employment on moral grounds. In private correspondence, the Marquess of Salisbury pointed out that “of course the Germans began it, but we do not take the devil as our example.” By the time the results of the Dresden firestorm became clear even Churchill is believed to have expressed doubts about the morality of bombing cities. Even Bomber Command’s commander-in-chief, Arthur “Bomber” Harris, probably understood that area bombing was a morally questionable activity but he also firmly believed that it would win the war for the Allies and that end justified the means. Harris was determined that the Nazis should “reap the whirlwind.” The problem with area bombing was that, without question, it targeted enemy civilians and that did not fit comfortably with the self-image of the Allies as having a morally superior position.

The deliberate targeting and killing of civilians had not been considered acceptable practice in wartime among western nations since around the time of the Thirty Years War 1618-1648. The Great War of 1914-1918 which was the experience most people identified with as the model of modern warfare had resulted in minimal civilian casualties even though the carnage wrought was in the millions on all sides. The foundations of strategic bombing had already been laid by the end of it, however, and World War II saw the practical application of it on a large scale for the first time. By 1945, the tonnage of bombs dropped in a single raid had reached levels inconceivable a mere five years before. There could be little doubt that success in the bombing raids was measured in the death of enemy civilians and the spreading of terror among the survivors. The moral line drawn in western civilization between killing soldiers and murdering civilians had been crossed.

So long as Nazi Germany continued to be threatening, there was less interest in an esoteric on the morality of strategic bombing. There was little doubt about victory by February 1945 yet only at that time did theoretical targets like Dresden come to be considered for bombing. Defenders of that choice tend to focus on the minutiae of industry and railways in Dresden while losing sight, in the process, of the reality in Europe. Nazism was all but defeated. If Dresden was second only to Berlin in terms of military significance in February 1945, there was nothing militarily significant left to bomb. Berlin, being the capital, had political significance. Even so, the raids on Dresden would probably have been forgotten had it not been for the firestorm and massive casualties that drew attention to it. The very success of the bombing was what caused questions to arise. What had been viewed as a great battle in the skies, as the Allies tended to portray the air war, now seemed to appear more like a deliberate massacre. Victory at Dresden revealed the nature of the strategic bombing mission.

The strategic bombing campaign deliberately targeted enemy civilians. This distinction is highlighted by considering the employment of the same bombers in tactical missions during the Normandy campaign. When a bomb killed civilians in Normandy, the responsible Allied command viewed this as a mission failure or at worst unavoidable collateral damage. There were clear and defined military objectives for the bombers to hit. But in the bombing of Dresden, every civilian killed or even just terrorized was considered a part of the mission’s success. This disturbing mindset inherent to the Allied strategic bombing campaigns in Europe and Japan laid the foundations of a moral critique of Allied methods in World War II that took on greater urgency with the development and use of atomic weapons, an outgrowth of the bombing mindset. Kenneth Bainbridge, witnessing the Trinity Test, commented: “Now we’re all bastards!” It was an admission of guilt that was deservedly shared by everyone.

By Ralph Zuljan

Although a discussion of the role of women in the military generally breaks down into a familiar debate on brains versus brawn in combat, there is a central point that such discussions tend to ignore. As a species humans are subject to a survival model similar to that of any other species. Individually, in the short term, we survive by finding food, shelter and the like. In the long term, we survive through reproduction. Perhaps an analogy for the short and long term survival of societies may be drawn as well. I realize that this treads on notions of social Darwinism and such ideas have limited application. However, I would consider it as more of a social learning process that differentiates social functions on the basis of profound physical differences. To suggest that a statistical variation in upper body strength or the like is all that underlies the historically evident exclusion of women from battle seems rather trite. Likewise, the historical record makes clear that evidence of female fighting ability is not enough to overcome the long-standing exclusion of women from battle.

A cursory look at the history of women in the military suggests that women are only involved in combat on an equal footing with males insofar as immediate survival of the social grouping is at stake. From early tribal collectives to the Soviet experience in World War II and the Israeli experience in the first years after achieving statehood, when the society is threatened with imminent destruction, there is little or no regard given to gender differentiation in combat. This makes intuitive sense since there is no point in worrying about future survival of a society if it is at risk of destruction in the present. However, once a social grouping achieves a level of security, women tend to be removed from combat and all associated activities. From the earliest city states to the present day, fighting in an organized armed force has tended to be a male function except in the most desperate of circumstances. Females have tended to be reserved for carrying out their reproductive function. A large set of social norms is built around this basic differentiation but at its core the distinction seems to lie in the reproductive process.

It takes a female roughly nine months to produce one offspring. A male merely participates in the conception process. This difference is only enhanced by the roughly thirty year limit to the female reproductive period when contrasted to the puberty to death period of males. Interestingly enough, that thirty year reproductive period for females would also engulf the most common age group engaged in military service. Consequently, males are relatively expendable and their possible loss to a society is relatively less impacting. To put this in perspective, if 50% of the reproductively capable males were eliminated from this society, it would be relatively easy to recover the population loss when compared to a 50% loss of reproductive females. After all, one male can fertilize numerous females but one female can only produce one offspring per year — more or less. From a collective perspective, there is a greater risk to societal survival if females are lost in combat than males and the higher that percentage is the more likely the society will fail to reproduce successfully. Hence, it will fail to survive.

The conclusion I would draw is that females are withdrawn from combat activities because, from a collective perspective, their time consuming reproductive function is an equally important but gender specific element in the long term survival of the collective. If there are sufficient males available for existing threats, it would seem rational to preserve the females — at the expense of the males — in order to carry out further reproduction. The success of this social differentiation is reflected by its universal application by societies. In a period of peace female (re)production increases the pool of expendable males and in war it provides replacements. Females are therefore dedicated to the (re)production of new generations of soldiers to replace those lost in combat and the long term survival of the society. Males are dedicated to the short term survival of the society.

I would think this implies that, from the collective’s perspective, reproduction is an equally important factor in the successful building of a society and state and the collective’s security. Social collectives that thrive in a world where warfare is commonplace can only do so in the long term if they are capable of replacing their casualties and they can only do so through reproduction. It is a function that is still very much gender specific.

Turning to the present day, I can see no mental or physical reason that women cannot participate fully in the military. Perhaps the only reservation is that which has already been expounded. There is a fairly common belief that wars today are meaningfully different from those in the past. Yet, none of the western states has engaged in a significant war for more than fifty years now. This is not an excessively long period of peace for a given set of states in the international system. The wars that have been engaged in recently are minor and local in scale. They do not reflect the expectations of a major war and the potential casualties resulting from an experience such as the world wars. I do would wonder what the social implications would have been if the military casualties of the world wars had been equally distributed among males and females. Furthermore, it is assumed that the armed forces will remain relatively small organizations which would reduce the risk of catastrophic loss of reproductive capability. One of the greatest assumptions, however, and an expectation derived from some recent experiences, is that of near zero casualties. In so far as all these assumptions are correct, there is really no meaningful differentiation between males and females with respect to military service. Equality in the armed forces is therefore a reasonable direction to pursue. However, if these assumptions are ever shown to be in error, the societal consequences could be severely damaging for the long term. The historical record shows that integrating women into the military services entails a risk to the reproductive viability of the society that does so. Whether or not supporting a currently fashionable ideological position is worth this risk is the only question worth asking.

During the latter half of the Cold War, a great deal of time, money, thought and effort was directed towards negotiated settlements to curb or reduce the East-West arms race. When the Cold War ended the weapons remained but all of a sudden broad agreement on disarmament could be reached without all that effort required earlier for far less. In the same sense, when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wanted peace, the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was not all that committed to peace, did not prevent their reaching an agreement. Looking at the Israelis and Palestinians in this context, it is obvious that peace is not that important to either party right now. They would rather haggle over fine print. In essence, they don’t agree, don’t expect to agree, and are merely exploring the extent of their disagreement, which is far from looking for a lasting settlement of their dispute or peace.

The very idea of a Jewish state in the former British administered territory of Palestine is certainly part of the problem. Although Israeli supporters emphasize the religious aspect of the Jewish character of the state of Isreal, a significant number of Jewish Israelis also see it in racial terms that were generally discredited more than half a century ago. Israel in its current form is a mild combination of an Iranian-like theocracy and South Africa during the apartheid period. The fact that Israel has facets of both in its constitution, however, does contribute to the inability to achieve peace within what once was British Palestine.

Portraying Israel as a theocracy or apartheid state is not particularly palatable to a Western audience that, for the most part, has an historical sympathy for the existence of Israel and neither description is entirely fair to the rich composition of Israel. In general, Israelis have a great deal in common with Europeans and North Americans; that is hardly surprising given that many of the Zionist founders of the state of Israel were Europeans. While they do not necessarily practice them as wholeheartedly as some might like, Israelis believe in Western ideals. There is a sense in which it is true that Israel is an outpost of Western civilization in the heart of the Middle East and its existence has served Western, particularly, American interests well and continues to do so. No wonder then that there is a a desire to portray Israel in a positive light in Western circles, despite occasional criticism of specific Israeli policies. Insofar as Israel serves a purpose in Western interests, it is unlikely these allies will pressure for Israelis to change for the sake of peace in Palestine.

To some extent, the unwillingness to reconsider the constitution of Israel might explain why the solutions presently offered to Palestinians, and to some extent accepted by them as the basis for a future peace, are unlikely to produce the desired result. The idea of a sovereign Palestinian homeland on the West Bank and Gaza is not a viable long term solution and that makes all of the current posturing over the details of such an agreement doomed to failure. At best, a Palestinian state founded on the territory of the West Bank and Gaza would be economically dependent on external aid and subject to the political whims of such donors. Its sovereignty would be at the mercy of the military might of Israel, which has demonstrated a willingness to intervene in weak neighboring states such as Lebanon when it perceives a threat to Israeli interests. While Israel might be seen as part of the problem, it is necessarily part of any long-term solution.

Israelis must feel that the Palestinians are being disingenuous in seeking only the West Bank and Gaza for a Palestinian state and they are probably right. Overall Palestinian claims extend far beyond having a sovereign territory encompassing the occupied territories. There are latent claims on privately held lands within Israel lost during the exodus of Palestinians during the War of Independence. A lot of Palestinians still harbor a desire to reclaim what their families lost so long ago. For all intents, Palestinians probably see the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza as nothing more than a step towards justice, as they see it, and regaining all of Palestine. For Israelis, that offers little more than having another Lebanon on their borders.

The world does not need another failed state to come into being. Perhaps that is the main reason there is no significant pressure to actually create a sovereign Palestinian state in the manner presently being negotiated. For all intents, economic viability is only possible within a unified Palestine, or to put it in what may be a less palatable form, an Israel that encompasses the West Bank and Gaza. For that to happen, Israelis must embrace the Palestinians and present them with a political identity within the constitution of Israel that is acceptable to all. In the end, a durable peace requires Israel to shed its adherence to being a Jewish homeland and that is going to take a radical shift in the self-identification most Jewish Israelis have at this