-Caveat Lector-
>From LA Times
Sunday, May 2, 1999
MILITARY
When Considering Ground Troops in Kosovo, Remember Sherman
By CALEB CARR
<N>EW YORK--And so, finally, the use of ground troops in Kosovo is being
spoken of as not a possibility but a probability, perhaps an inevitability.
Barring a dramatic diplomatic breakthrough (in all likelihood bartered by
the Russians), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States
will not be able to achieve their stated objectives of returning the ethnic
Albanian Kosovars to their homes and ensuring they live there in safety
without conventional action on the ground. The five-week-old air campaign,
like all long-range, high-explosive bombardments, has only stiffened the
enemy's resolve, caused death and suffering among civilians, including some
we are supposed to be aiding, and worsened an already bitter conflict.
Pentagon officials began this sorry affair by asserting the objective
could be achieved by air, and most politicians believed them. It was left to
a few brave legislators, as well as the odd military historian, to shake
their heads and see in such thinking classic military hubris and, further,
the possibility that Kosovo could become the ugliest, most prolonged
European conflict since World War II. Naturally, U.S. commanders didn't
listen to any such military progressives: They never have. Ghostly
precedents have pervaded this story from the start: the unhappy examples of
Vietnam, and the Nazi blitz of Britain and Allied "strategic" bombing of
Germany during World War II, all of which only toughened enemy resistance,
have now been discussed at length. But perhaps the most pertinent parallel
to the use of ground forces in Kosovo is that of the man who was, by general
consensus, the father of modern "total war": William Tecumseh Sherman, the
great Union general of the Civil War.
There was no shortage of fruitless, long-range artillery bombardments
(the 19th-century counterpart of air campaigns) during our savage
internecine struggle from 1861-1865. In fact, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant stands
as the supreme exponent of the belief that slow, grinding, merciless attacks
on cities, as well as armies, would bring victory. In pursuing this course,
Grant made a genius of Gen. Robert E. Lee, a military engineer who
determined, early on, that he could build defensive fortifications that
would withstand any long-range bombardment, and, so long as his people had
food and his soldiers ammunition, such Union tactics would only strengthen
the Southern revolve to resist.
But Sherman, the greatest military genius to emerge from the Civil War,
was a different case: He knew long-range bombardment of nonmilitary
installations in the South would have to be accompanied by carefully
orchestrated ground campaigns against key Confederate military units and,
even more important, their supply routes. In fact, Sherman never failed to
recognize it was this second part of his two-stage attack that was key:
While he allowed his men to ravage the Southern states they passed through,
creating generations of bitterness among the residents, he never hesitated
to admit that only about 20% of the work his army did--the 20% aimed at
military targets--was of real use in winning the war. It was that 20%--and
not his men's rape of the Southern countryside or Grant's relentless
hammering of cities such as Richmond--that deprived Lee's army of food and
supplies, and thereby forced the Grey Fox to surrender.
But we, as a military culture, have not enshrined the crucial 20% of
Sherman's thinking that led to victory. We have, instead, made legend of the
remaining 80%. We focused on the civilian destruction wrought by his troops,
creating a false conception of the "March to the Sea," and thereby coming to
believe Sherman succeeded because he was, in his own words, willing to make
"war with every man, woman and child" in the South.
This is what we did in Vietnam and, again, what we did in Iraq--all
hype about wonder weapons and dismissals of "collateral damage" (surely one
of the most obscene phrases ever devised by the military mind)
notwithstanding. It is what we are now doing in Yugoslavia. The units whose
destruction are most crucial to ending Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic's reign of terror--his well-trained, hard-fighting and
well-equipped ground troops in Kosovo--have thus far largely been spared.
The only potent weapon we have been willing to consider using to hunt them
down--Apache helicopters--took weeks to reach the combat theater, and even
managed an embarrassing training-mission crash once there, thus again
dimming any hope that the United States will develop what it needs most: an
effective, rapid-deployment conventional force to deal with precisely the
kind of conflict we are currently bogged down in. Meanwhile, Belgrade and
other Yugoslav cities are targeted by "strategic" bombs, more powerful than
those used in the bombardments of the Civil War but no more effective.
One suspects that Sherman--brilliant, irascible and impatient with
fools--is rolling over in his grave about what is happening in Kosovo,
wondering why we have not yet undertaken what he always knew should be our
primary objective: Not pounding the enemy from afar, but destroying his
supply lines and soldiers by entering his territory and wreaking havoc on
the ground. We've focused, instead, on breaking the "hearts and minds" of
the Yugoslav population from far away, the thing Sherman knew could never be
done--and certainly not within the brief span of a military campaign.
We revel, guiltily, perhaps, but with persistence, in the theatrically
stunning precision bombing of Belgrade and other cities. Sherman, however,
despised the siege and bombardment of Atlanta, the phase of his campaign
analogous to our current activities. Only when he vanished with his ground
troops into the hinterlands of Georgia and the Carolinas did he feel he had
the chance to bring the war to a rapid conclusion--and he was right. If NATO
wishes to bend Milosevic to its will, it will do so only when its ground
troops, supported from the air, cut his units off from their sources of
supply and then engage them. This becomes more clear daily, even to those
who know nothing of military history or Sherman.
Of course, Pentagon and White House officials can answer that their
goal thus far has been to weaken support for Milosevic and for the war
inside Yugoslavia, in imitation of Sherman's campaign in Georgia and the
Carolinas. But such a comparison is, first of all, fallacious, because the
civilian destruction wrought by Sherman's army brought only generations of
resentment, and meant little to the war effort, as he himself admitted.
Second, it is pernicious: promising a quick end to civilian suffering when
all it will do is prolong misery and terror.
It is understandable that the United States does not want to enter a
ground war in Kosovo: As Sherman admitted, once you turn on army loose on an
enemy, you cannot hope to control it with the kind of polite precision the
Joint Chiefs of Staff constantly aspire to. We will certainly see civilian
casualties that will make the recent accidental bombings of refugee trucks
pale by comparison. But this is the course the Clinton administration has
elected to take. If it wants to finish the job, it now must join the British
and the unusually bellicose and bilateral French in endorsing a powerful
ground invasion of Kosovo.
Such an invasion might not be short. Let us remember that Sherman, when
he predicted at the Civil War's outset that the affair would be a long and
horrifying one, was dismissed as a lunatic and relieved of command. But long
or short, a ground war in Kosovo is the only end game to the current NATO
strategy.
True, we do have the option to change our strategy: President Bill
Clinton could declare that we have done all we can; that strife in the
Balkans is something a majority of Balkan citizens seem to want (and have
wanted for centuries); and we could simply withdraw--just as we withdrew
from Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. But this would require an outspoken,
clear-eyed, experienced thinker and fighter, like Sherman. He and his kind
are not only ghosts these days: They are forgotten ghosts.
- - -
Caleb Carr Is a Contributing Editor to Mhq: the Quarterly Journal of
Military History and the Author of "The Alienist" and "The Angel of
Darkness."
Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<<I'm beginning to find it amazing that the newer generation of Brits and
other Europeans don't appreciate / can't remember the resolve their
countries had about 55-60 odd years ago. It would seem they'd have some
sort of instinctive concept of solidarity with the FRY in view of the
bombings. Of course, other nations capitulated early in the '40s and their
well-preserved architecture shows this, for which their actions and lack of
perception about solidarity might be understood. >>
<<
"" "It isn't going to be British troops humping up the road to Belgrade." ""
A point I share with Pat. My concern is not focussed on those who are
perpetuating their centuries-old squabbling over this turf or that turf. It
IS, rather, focussed on those who Prez Bill, as CINC-US, recognised recently
as they who swore an oath "to support and defend the Constitution ...",
those who would be humping up the road. A<>E<>R >>
>From www.afr.com.au/content/990501/world/index.html
(Australian Finance Review)
Via http://www.gopatgo2000.org/b2k-newswire.html
(Buchanan 2000 Web Site)
Excerpt
<<begin excerpt / quote>>
Tony Blair shows he
can hawk his wares
Europe Observed,
By Sheryle Bagwell
It may go down as one of the great ironies of British politics, although so
far few seem to have got the joke.
Just as the Tories were busily cutting their apron strings to their
ex-beloved leader Margaret Thatcher and her strict economic doctrine for
rolling back the state, Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair was said to be
calling her up for advice on how to wage a war.
That a one-time anti-nuclear campaigner (Blair) should be seeking words of
encouragement from that good friend of General Pinochet (Thatcher) on how to
proceed in a cruise missile bombardment on a former wartime ally (Serbia) -
as Thatcher's very own disciple (Tory leader William Hague) goes wobbly on
the free market - might seem a trifle Orwellian to some. But then again,
Europe is supposed to be in the grips of its first "humanitarian" war, waged
not for the sake of Texaco or Shell but for "ethical" reasons, namely the
protection of besieged Kosovar Albanians.
--- break ---
"Tony Blair is the mouse that roared," commented the firebrand Republican
presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, dismissively.
"It isn't going to be British troops humping up the road to Belgrade."
Buchanan has a point. Words come cheap when your armed forces are
contributing fewer planes to NATO's bombing operation in Serbia and Kosovo
than even the French. But war is as much rhetoric as it is hardware. The US
might be providing the bulk of the firepower, but it is Blair who seems to
be providing the moral leadership.
© This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying
or mirroring is prohibited.
<<end excerpt / quote>>
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
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