1、Posted to IOP Temporary Proceedings, 28 Jan 06 1The Counterrevolution in Military Affairs Fashionable thinking about defense ignores the great threats of our time. by Ralph Peters The Weekly Standard, 02/06/2006, Volume 011, Issue 20 REVOLUTIONS NOTORIOUSLY IMPRISON THEIR MOST committed supporters.
2、 Intellectually, influential elements within our military are locked inside the cells of the Revolution in Military Affairs-the doctrinal cult of the past decade that preaches that technological leaps will transcend millennia-old realities of warfare. Our current conflicts have freed the Pentagon fr
3、om at least some of the nonsensical theories of techno-war, but too many of our military and civilian leaders remain captivated by the notion that machines can replace human beings on the battlefield. Chained to their 20th-century successes, they cannot face the new reality: Wars of flesh, faith, an
4、d cities. Meanwhile, our enemies, immediate and potential, appear to grasp the contours of future war far better than we do.From Iraqs Sunni Triangle to Chinas military high command, the counterrevolution in military affairs is well underway. We are seduced by what we can do; our enemies focus on wh
5、at they must do. We have fallen so deeply in love with the means we have devised for waging conceptual wars that we are blind to their marginal relevance in actual wars. Terrorists, for one lethal example, do not fear “network-centric warfare“ because they have already mastered it for a tiny fractio
6、n of one cent on the dollar, achieving greater relative effects with the Internet, cell phones, and cheap airline tickets than all of our military technologies have delivered. Our prime weapon in our struggles with terrorists, insurgents, and warriors of every patchwork sort remains the soldier or M
7、arine; yet, confronted with realitys bloody evidence, we simply pretend that other, future, hypothetical wars will justify the systems we adore-purchased at the expense of the assets we need.Stubbornly, we continue to fantasize that a wondrous enemy will appear who will fight us on our own terms, as
8、 a masked knight might have materialized at a stately tournament in a novel by Sir Walter Scott. Yet, not even China-the threat beloved of major defense contractors and their advocates-would play by our rules if folly ignited war. Against terrorists, we have found technology alone incompetent to mas
9、ter men of soaring will-our own flesh and blood provide the only effective counter. At the other extreme, a war with China, which our war gamers blithely assume would be brief, would reveal the quantitative incompetence of our forces. An assault on a continent-spanning power would swiftly drain our
10、stocks of precision weapons, ready pilots, and aircraft. Quality, no matter how great, is not a reliable substitute for a robust force in being and deep reserves that can be mobilized rapidly.There is, in short, not a single enemy in existence or on the horizon willing to play the victim to the mili
11、tary we continue to build. Faced with men of iron belief wielding bombs built in sheds and basements, our revolution in military affairs appears more an Posted to IOP Temporary Proceedings, 28 Jan 06 2indulgence than an investment. In the end, our enemies will not outfight us. Well muster the will
12、to do what must be done-after paying a needlessly high price in the lives of our troops and damage to our domestic infrastructure. We will not be beaten, but we may be shamed and embarrassed on a needlessly long road to victory.Not a single item in our trillion-dollar arsenal can compare with the ge
13、nius of the suicide bomber-the breakthrough weapon of our time. Our intelligence systems cannot locate him, our arsenal cannot deter him, and, all too often, our soldiers cannot stop him before it is too late. A man of invincible conviction-call it delusion, if you will-armed with explosives stolen
14、or purchased for a handful of soiled bills can have a strategic impact that staggers governments. Abetted by the global media, the suicide bomber is the wonder weapon of the age.The suicide bombers willingness to discard civilizations cherished rules for warfare gives him enormous strength. In the C
15、ain-and-Abel conflicts of the 21st century, ruthlessness trumps technology. We refuse to comprehend the suicide bombers soul-even though todays wars are contests of souls, and belief is our enemys ultimate order of battle. We write off the suicide bomber as a criminal, a wanton butcher, a terrorist.
16、 Yet, within his spiritual universe, hes more heroic than the American soldier who throws himself atop a grenade to spare his comrades: He isnt merely protecting other men, but defending his god. The suicide bomber can justify any level of carnage because hes doing his gods will. We agonize over a p
17、risoners slapped face, while our enemies are lauded as heroes for killing innocent masses (even of fellow believers). We continue to narrow our view of warfares acceptable parameters even as our enemies amplify the concept of total war.Islamist terrorists, to cite the immediate example, would do any
18、thing to win. Our enemies act on ecstatic revelations from their god. We act on the advice of lawyers. It is astonishing that we have managed to hold the line as well as we have.The ultimate precision weapon, the suicide bomber simultaneously redefines the scope of “legitimate“ targets. Delighted to
19、 kill our troops, this implacable enemy who regards death as a promotion is equally ready to slaughter men, women, and children of unknown identity who have done him no harm. His force of will towers over our own. He cannot win wars on the traditional battlefields we cherish, but his commitment and
20、actions transcend such tidy limits. In the moment of his deed, the suicide bomber is truly larger than life. The worlds a stage, and every suicide bomber is, at least briefly, a star.We will develop the means to defeat the majority of, if not all, improvised explosive devices. But the suicide bomber
21、-the living, thinking assassin determined to die-may prove impossible to stop. Even if we discover a means to identify him at a distance from our troops, he has only to turn to easier targets. Virtually anything the suicide bomber attacks brings value to his cause-destruction of any variety is a vic
22、tory. The paradox is that his act of self-destruction is also an undeniable assertion that “I am,“ as he becomes the voice from below that the mighty cannot ignore. We are trained to think in terms of cause and effect-but the suicide bomber merges the two. The gesture and the result are Posted to I
23、OP Temporary Proceedings, 28 Jan 06 3inseparable from and integral to his message. Self-destruction and murder join to become the ultimate act of self-assertion.And his deed is heralded, while even our most virtuous acts are condemned around the world. Even in the days before mass media, assassins t
24、errorized civilizations. Today, their deeds are amplified by a toxic, breathtakingly irresponsible communications culture that spans the globe. Photogenic violence is no longer a local affair-if a terrorist gives the media picturesque devastation, he reaches the entire planet. We cannot measure the
25、psychological magnification, although we grasp it vaguely. And the medias liturgical repetition of the suicide bombers act creates an atmosphere of sacrament. On a primal level, the suicide bomber impresses even his enemies with his conviction. We hasten to dismiss his deed as a perversion, yet it r
26、esounds as a vivid act of faith. Within his own cultural context, people may hate what the suicide bomber does, yet revere his sacrifice (and, too often, they do not hate what he does).We may refuse to accept it, but suicide bombing operates powerfully on practical, emotional, and spiritual levels-a
27、nd it generates dirt-cheap propaganda. To the Muslim world, the suicide bombers act is a proof of faith that ensnares the mind with a suspicion of his righteousness. He is a nearly irresistible champion of the powerless, the Middle Easts longed-for superhero, the next best thing to the Mahdi or the
28、Twelfth Imam.We praise Nathan Hales willingness to die for his cause. Now imagine thousands of men anxious to die for theirs. The suicide bomber may be savage, brutal, callous, heartless, naive, psychotic, and, to us, despicable, but within his milieu he is also heroic.The hallmark of our age is the
29、 failure of belief systems and a subsequent flight back to primitive fundamentalism-and the phenomenon isnt limited to the Middle East. Faith revived is running roughshod over science and civilization. Secular societies appear increasingly fragmented, if not fragile. The angry gods are back. And the
30、y will not be defeated with cruise missiles or computer codes.A paradox of our time is that the overwhelmingly secular global media-a collection of natural-born religion-haters-have become the crucial accomplices of the suicide bomber fueled by rabid faith. Mass murderers are lionized as freedom fig
31、hters, while our own troops are attacked by the press they protect for the least waywardness or error. One begins to wonder if the bombers suicidal impulse isnt matched by a deep death wish affecting the Wests cultural froth. (What if Darwin was right conceptually, but failed to grasp that homo sapi
32、ens most powerful evolutionary strategy is faith?) Both the suicide bomber and the “world intellectual“ with his reflexive hatred of America exist in emotional realms that our rational models of analysis cannot explain. The modern ages methods for interpreting humanity are played out.We live in a ne
33、w age of superstition and bloodthirsty gods, of collective madness. Its icons are the suicide bomber, the veil, and the video camera.Posted to IOP Temporary Proceedings, 28 Jan 06 4One of the most consistently disheartening experiences an adult can have today is to listen to the endless attempts by
34、 our intellectuals and intelligence professionals to explain religious terrorism in clinical terms, assigning rational motives to men who have moved irrevocably beyond reason. We suffer under layers of intellectual asymmetries that hinder us from an intuitive recognition of our enemies. Our rear-gua
35、rd rationalists range from those convinced that every security problem has a technological solution, if only it can be found, to those who insist that members of al Qaeda and its affiliates are motivated by finite, comprehensible, and logical ambitions that, if satisfied, would make our problems dis
36、appear.Living in unprecedented safety within our borders and lacking firsthand knowledge of the decay beyond, honorable men and women have convinced themselves that Osama bin Ladens professed goals of driving the United States from the Middle East and removing corrupt regional governments are what g
37、lobal terror is all about. They gloss over his ambition of reestablishing the caliphate and his calls for the destruction of Israel as rhetorical effects-when they address them at all. Yet, Islamist fanatics are more deeply committed to their maximalist goals than to their lesser ones-and their unsp
38、oken ambitions soar beyond logics realm. Religious terrorists are committed to an apocalypse they sense within striking distance. Their longing for union with god is inseparable from their impulse toward annihilation. They seek their god in carnage, and will go on slaughtering until he appears to pa
39、t them on the back.A dangerous asymmetry exists in the type of minds working the problem of Islamist terrorism in our government and society. On average, the “experts“ to whom we are conditioned to listen have a secular mentality (even if they go to church or synagogue from habit). And it is a very
40、rare secular mind that can comprehend religious passion-its like asking a blind man to describe the colors of fire. One suspects that our own fiercest believers are best equipped to penetrate the mentality-the souls-of our Islamist enemies, although those believers may not be as articulate as the se
41、cular intellectuals who anxiously dismiss all possibilities that lie outside their theoretical constructs.Those who feel no vital faith cannot comprehend faiths power. A man or woman who has never been intoxicated by belief will default to mirror-imaging when asked to describe terrors roots. He who
42、has never experienced a soul-shaking glimpse of the divine inevitably explains religion-driven suicide bombers in terms of a lack of economic opportunity or social humiliation. But the enemies we face are burning with belief, on fire with their vision of an immanent, angry god. Our intelligentsia is
43、 less equipped to understand such men than our satellites are to find them.All of our technologies and comforting theories are confounded by the strength of the soul ablaze with faith. Our struggle with Islamist terror (other religious terrors may haunt our descendants) has almost nothing to do with
44、 our actions in the Middle East. Its about a failing civilizations embrace of a furious god.We are not (yet) at war with Islam, but the extreme believers within Islam are convinced that they are soldiers in a religious war against us. Despite their rhetoric, they are the Posted to IOP Temporary Pro
45、ceedings, 28 Jan 06 5crusaders. Even our conceptions of the struggle are asymmetrical. Despite the horrors we have witnessed, we have yet to take religious terrorists seriously on their own self-evident terms. We invaded a succession of their tormented countries, but havent come close to penetrating
46、 their souls. The hermetic universe of the Islamist terrorist is immune to our reality (if not to our bullets), but our intellectuals appear equally incapable of accepting the religious extremists reality.We have no tools of persuasion effective against a millenarian belief. What logic can we wield
47、against the soul fortified by faith and barricaded beyond argument? Even if we understood every nuance of our enemys culture, the suicide bombers intense faith and the terror chieftains visions have burned through native cultural restraints. We are told, rather smugly, that the Koran forbids suicide
48、. But our enemies are not concerned with how we read their faith. Religions are living things, and ultra-extremists are improvising a new and savage cult within Islam-even as they proclaim their return to a purified faith.Security-wise, we have placed our faith in things, in bright (and expensive) m
49、aterial objects. But the counterrevolution in military affairs is based on the brilliant intuition that our military can be sidestepped often enough to challenge its potency. Certainly, we inflict casualties on our enemies-and gain real advantages from doing so-but we not only face an enemy who, as observed above, views death as a promotion, but also one who believes he has won even when he loses. If the suicide bomber completes his mission, he has won. But even if he is kil
