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The Winning Team
By James S. Robbins, a national-security analyst & NRO contributor |
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Moments earlier, in a message taped at the signing of a proclamation in honor of the Academy's bicentennial, President Bush spoke of the achievements of West Point graduates in fighting tyranny, in the past and in the present day — fighting in Afghanistan and other faraway battlefields, some of the best soldiers America has to offer facing some of the worst criminals in the world. He noted the sacrifice of Major Curtis D. Feistner, USMA 1990, killed in the February 22 MH-47 helicopter crash in the Philippines. The president offered the audience his familiar assurance that the United States would prevail over the forces of oppression. These statements and others like them reflect a sea change in public discourse brought about by the war on terror. There has been a decided honing of rhetoric, a refreshing movement away from the equivocal. "Winning" for example used to be something that one would not talk about with much enthusiasm outside of sporting events. The culture frowned on it. After all, winning is frequently a zero-sum experience. If someone wins, someone else probably loses, and this cannot be very good for his or her self-esteem. If you win, you probably don't deserve it; if you lose, just claim victimhood. Likewise with terms like "evil." It's troubling to the liberal elite worldview, it's just too unqualified, it simply isn't postmodern. Ronald Reagan took constant hits for using the term "Evil Empire" referring to the Soviet Union. "What a bumpkin, mired in the 1950s. Besides, who was he to judge them after taking an ax to welfare?" Likewise, there was a palpable discomfort among reporters when Colin Powell made his famous cut-it-off-and-kill-it quote about the Iraqi army in 1991. "Kill it? Isn't that a bit rash? And if you cut it off, is killing it really necessary?" Through the 1990s the United States became involved in conflicts that didn't lend themselves to firm rhetoric. It is hard to talk about destroying the enemy and emerging victorious when you are undertaking a peace operation. This ambiguousness affected both the ends and means of warfighting. In Somalia what began as a humanitarian mission with clear goals became, under different leadership, a vague operation with uncertain objectives. When disaster struck, our presence in that country could not be explained, the sacrifice of our men could not be justified. We became involved in situations in which the search for exit strategy replaced the definition of victory, in which avoiding responsibility for failure was a more important strategic goal than taking the risks necessary to succeed. The result was a series of open-ended contingency operations of ambiguous purpose and continuing cost. How do you know when you have won in Kosovo for example? Sure, the Serbians have left, but we have not. Are we building an independent country? If so, why? What are our interests? What do we gain? (This is a land so dear to its inhabitants that Kosovar refugees in Australia rioted when they were told they could go home, and required cash payments to leave.) And at the base, always, self-doubt. This was least true among the services — it was not themselves they doubted — most true among the leadership and the public. If we acted it was limited and hesitant, if we didn't, we would make sure to apologize after the killing stopped. However, 9/11 changed all that. The attack on America was not a shining moment for the postmodernists. You want something objective? Check out Ground Zero. You want people who lack an excessive tendency to engage in paralyzing autocriticism? Go talk to members of al Qaeda. Look at the statements of the enemy. They are very "centered" in their feelings about us. You don't hear a lot of debate about the nature of the Great Satan coming from the radical Islamicists. When the president says they hate our freedoms, he does not mean we are having a minor disagreement open to a compromise solution. They really want to destroy us. If they had a nuclear weapon, they would use it without hesitation. So in this war we have begun to grow accustomed to hearing comments like Major General Frank Hagenbeck's (USMA 1971) description of the objectives for Operation Anaconda: "We have indications where [the al Qaeda] are and I can assure you we will track them down and kill them. We are not going to let loose of these guys. We've got good leads on them. We track them 24 hours a day. We have the means and the patience. We'll do all it takes to get them." Or Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai's somewhat undiplomatic statement, "We are determined to finish them and send them to hell." No particular self doubt there — Karzai not only knows what he wants to do to them but that they are slated for eternal damnation. It has the ring of Vice-Admiral "Bull" Halsey's pithy op order at Guadalcanal, which was not politically correct, but neither is a bayonet in the gut. War is an objective business. It cannot be made otherwise. One side wins, another side loses. A tenacious and unyielding enemy must be matched in tenacity, overawed in persistence, and, if need be, destroyed. The other side understands this -frequently better than we do. When President Johnson said (in a televised statement currently featured in the movie We Were Soldiers) that the United States would convince the North Vietnamese that they could not defeat us by force of arms, that was an invitation to the NVA to give it their best shot. How different that conflict might have been had the president not said, "we'll convince you that you can't defeat us" but "we will defeat you and we don't care what you think." At the conclusion of his observations on winning, General Dawkins recalled a recent West Point/Notre Dame football game, a tough contest that the Irish won with a last-minute field goal. The Black Knights then, as is their tradition, went to midfield and shook hands with the opposing team. It was, the general said, an example of a winning spirit, the ability to acknowledge that even though you lost, you know you did all you could do to win. The president of Notre Dame, witnessing this, commented, "We've lost our way." He meant that his team had not shown that kind of positive team spirit in defeat, at least in recent years, but the behavior of the cadets had shown them the error of their ways. Of course, the United States is not about to be called upon to show that it can be a good loser, nor will our enemies afford us the spectacle of an honorable surrender; but the war has at brought some clarity to the way the American people look at the world. Maybe this outlook can translate to other parts of the culture and better enable people to make judgments about the ideas they see on television or at the movies, or about the lines of political discourse, or the validity of claims that organized interests make against the society at large. Perhaps more Americans will understand that, in peace as well as war, you cannot prevail unless you know what you are fighting for, and that there is nothing wrong with knowing you are right. |
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