William S. Lind - On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009

On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009
by William S. Lind

Published by Castalia House
Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwisewithout prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

These columns originally appeared as a series written while Mr. Lind was the Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. Special thanks to Mark Sexton for his contribution to column #325.

Copyright 2003-2014 by William S. Lind
All rights reserved

Editor: Vox Day
Cover Design: JartStar
Cover Images: rjan Ruttenborg Svendsen
Version 004

Foreword

To many of those who will read this book, BillWilliam S., to be preciseLind needs no introduction. For years now he has been a familiar figure around the U.S armed forces, the Marines in particular. The list of military issues he has written about is vast; maneuver warfare, fourth-generation warfare (what I, in my book, The Transformation of War , later called non-trinintarian warfare), fifth-generation warfare (if there is such a thing), the reasons why going into Iraq was a mistake that would cost the U.S dear, the idiotic attempt to set up a new Iraqi Army which will reflect our highest ideals, the role women should and should not play in war you name it. A few of his views about the countless issues he addressed may have been wrong; for example, the claim that Israel lost its 2006 war against Hezbollah. As readers of the present volume will soon find out, though, they have always been, and still are, thought-provoking.

Nor has Lind been content with writing and lecturing. Always willing to pull an oar on behalf of causes in which he believed, he has also been active as a teacher. For years on end he ran workshops at Quantico. His students, all of whom attended in their own free time, were captains. He himself used to say that the great divide in the U.S Marine Corps officer corps, the turning point at which young, open-minded men and women (though very few women saw fit to join his courses) keen to serve their country were transformed into compliant cogs in a vast and often obtuse machine, occurred between that rank and the next one. Never have I seen a teacher more admired by his class, nor more attentive and eager students.

As those who peruse this volume will soon notice, Bill knows his way around the military as well as military history. Nevertheless he is nothing like a specialist. He truly floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. At various times he has written about democracy, politics, freedom (and its opposite, political correctness), and so many other topics as to make ones head spin. For some years he even found time and energy to run an Electric Railway Journal which advocated the revival of that means of transport. A formidable debater and inventor of pithy phrases (Arab timekeeping is usually like Scandinavian cuisine; there isnt much of it and what there is is bad) his work is a joy to read.

Those of us lucky enough to know him well are also aware of his more endearing idiosyncrasies, most of which are linked to his thought and work. Among them is nostalgia for the Cleveland of his youth, described by him as a sort of pre-lapsarian paradise; and his former house in Alexandria, Va, so filled with 1930s-vintage furniture, pictures and appliances that he could have turned it into a museum and charged an entrance fee. Nor shall I ever forget him during a visit to Potsdam, Germany, reverently contemplating a building that used to be the seat of the Kaisers garde du corps and looking as if he were caught up in a trance.

Let me end this with a story that will illuminate the man and his thought better than any other I can think of. Back when Bill was working for the Free Congress Foundation in Washington D.C, he used to run a television program. At one point he asked me whether I would appear on it. I immediately said yes; I added, however, that this might give rise to difficulties. Whereas he was a dyed-in the wool conservative trying to push a conservative cause, I in many ways see myself as what Americans would call liberal. I shall never forget the way he looked at me from his great heighthe is a good deal taller than Iand said, very softly: I knowand it does not matter.

That, in my view, is a great man. I am proud to be his friend.

Martin van Creveld

Jerusalem

Can A Government Wage War Without Popular Support?

Beginning January 28, 2003, I will offer commentary each week until the Iraq business is over and done. I suspect that may be awhile.

Who am I? In 1976 I began the debate over maneuver warfare that became a central part of the military reform movement of the 1970s and 1980s. The U.S. Marine Corps finally adopted maneuver warfare as doctrine in the late 1980s and I wrote most of their new tactics manual.

In 1989, I defined 4GW, 4th Generation warfarewar waged by nonstate entitieswhich is what paid us a visit on September 11, 2001. The article I co-authored for the Marine Corps Gazette was cited in 2002 by al-Qaeda, who declared, This is our doctrine. My Maneuver Warfare Handbook , published in 1985, is now used by military academies all over the world, and I lecture internationally on military strategy, doctrine and tactics.

In this series, I propose to look at what is happeningwith Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan and other outposts of the new American imperiumfrom the standpoint of military theory. Hopefully, that will enable us all to make sense out of the bits and pieces we get each day as news. One of the most important things military theory offers to this end is a framework developed by Col. John Boyd, USAF, who was the greatest military theorist America ever produced. Col. Boyd said that war is fought at three levels: moral, mental and physical. The moral level is the most powerful, the physical level is the least powerful, and the mental level is in between. The American way of war, which is 2nd Generation warfarethere will be more on the Four Generations of Modern War in future commentariesis physical: putting steel on target, as our soldiers like to say.

But how does the coming war with Iraq look at the moral level? Here, the U.S. seems to be leading with its chin. Why? Because the administration in Washington has yet to come up with a convincing rationale for why the United States should attack Iraq.

The argument that Iraq, a small, poor, Third World country halfway around the world, is a direct threat to the U.S.A. is not credible. Yes, Saddam probably has some chemical and biological weapons. But few tyrants are bent on suicide, and the notion that he would use them to attack the United States, except in self-defense, makes no sense. Nor does it seem likely he would give them to nonstate actors like al-Qaedaagain, except in self-defensebecause nonstate forces and 4th Generation warfare are as much a threat to him as to us.

It is of course true that Saddam is a tyrant in the model of Stalin. So what? Mesopotamia has been ruled by tyrants since before history began, and it will be ruled by tyrants long after North America is once again tribal territories. The last President who tried to export democracy on American bayonets was Woodrow Wilson. That's one of the reasons he counts as America's worst President, ever. Very few people, in America or the rest of the world, wish to see us revive the practice.

Most importantly, the real threat we face is the 4th Generation, nonstate players such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah,