Are we a nation at war or not?

"We are not at war," a veteran who served in the Army for eight years told me Wednesday in Maryland. "Only some of us are."
I wasn't initially sure how to feel about that statement. The painful events of the next 48 hours showed that he was on to something.

So begins today’s post on The Unknown Soldiers, a blog by columnist Tom Sileo. Tom gives a brief bio of six 101st Airborne soldiers killed in Afghanistan on March 30 and asks why we didn’t hear about this on the news. It’s a good question. Seems like a couple years ago we heard lengthy reporting about every US casualty and a constant running count of our total losses in Iraq and Afghanistan – but no more.

For older people who think of war through the prism of Vietnam, it is important to make the point that these are different times. These are not wide-eyed 19 year old draftees, or men who are out of options. These are professional soldiers who could do other things if they chose to do so. These are men who have enlisted or re-enlisted, sometimes several times, since the war in Afghanistan began in the aftermath of 9/11 almost 10 years ago. 

Staff Sgt. Bryan A. Burgess, 29
Pfc. Dustin J. Feldhaus, 20
Sgt. 1st Class Ofren Arrechaga, 28
Staff Sgt. Frank E. Adamski III, 26
Spc. Jameson L. Lindskog, 23
Pvt. Jeremy P. Faulkner, 23

They had parents, wives and girlfriends, some of them had children. Spc Lindskog was a combat medic, a 68-Whiskey (Army MOS 68W), who was caring for his wounded comrades when he was killed. I wonder if we’ll see any politicians or pundits up-in-arms about this violation of the Geneva Conventions? I’m guessing not.

While I don’t know the circumstances of these soldiers, I do know personally many soldiers who have volunteered to go to Afghanistan and Iraq. In my reserve unit, we recently had one of our officers who transferred to another unit just so he could go back and keep doing his job. It’s not bloodlust or crazed desire for the ugliness of war. It’s quiet professionalism and a sense that there is a burden that needs to continue to be carried, even when their friends and neighbors seem to have lost interest. I’m reminded of my own post from October 2010 about Medal of Honor recipient Robert Miller, where I quoted George Orwell speaking of “rough men ready to do violence” on our behalf.

I’ll end with Tom’s closing words from his post:

Are we a nation at war? I still believe the answer is yes. Yet we are also a nation at a crossroads. We cannot think about war only when it's convenient or when someone from our town is killed. To stand by as this pattern develops not only dishonors the brave men and women volunteering to fight, but puts at risk everything they fight for.
To me, being a nation at war means uniting behind our troops and paying attention to their sacrifices. The time for America to do both is now.

Fun new multilateralism…now including al Qaida!

In a previous post, I questioned the wisdom of involving ourselves in Libya’s internal civil war.

Now that we’ve let dozens of expensive missiles off the chain and lost one of my favorite airplanes (and shot some friendly villagers in the rescue of the pilot), I still think it’s a really bad idea.

In fact, a couple days ago, I coined the “Pulsipher Doctrine” to reduce the decision making process for involvement in military campaigns to simple mathematics. In this case, binary mathematics…

“If France and Italy are strongly in favor of the operation, don’t do it.”

       Pulsipher Doctrine, version 1

As Jay Leno said last night, “Do you notice how shiny all the French planes are? It’s like they’ve never been used before!”

However, after reading press reports today of al Qaida support for the Libyan rebels, I have revised my doctrine:

“If France and Italy, or a worldwide terror network whom you are already fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, the Philippines and many other global garden spots, are strongly in favor of the operation, don’t do it.”

      Pulsipher Doctrine, version 2

That’s right folks…this fun new multilateralism is SO expansive and open minded that we’ve found ourselves indirectly allied with our mortal enemy. That can’t be a very good sign.

Kidding aside, let me list a few of the obvious problems with our involvement in Libya:

• NATO is not the right organization for this. NATO’s charter is to defend member states (Libya isn’t one) against aggression – this is Article 5 of the NATO charter. Article 5 is why NATO was involved in Afghanistan after 9/11 – which is the first time Article 5 was ever invoked.
• A “No Fly Zone” doesn’t normally involve interdiction of ground operations – a.k.a. blowing up tanks.
• We don’t know who we are supporting. The same is true in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia, etc. Not every conflict involves good guys and bad guys. Sometimes two bad guys fight. Is that the case here? We don’t seem interested in finding out. The British sent a team in to make contact with the rebels in early March, and the rebels captured them and sent them packing in disgrace.
• Finally, no one in the administration, from the president on down, seems to be able to elaborate on any plan or goals. They can tell us “no ground troops – ever” and “we’re going to quit soon”, but aside from informing Gadhafi of our limits, the rationale is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. If it is about saving oppressed people, there are plenty of those around who are daily being shot at and threatened and we don’t seem as eager to engage in those places.

So after complaining about two wars in Muslim countries – including one “war of choice”, President Obama has now chosen to start a third. What’s more, the “coalition” that Obama has joined (when he wasn’t busy with his NCAA brackets) is half the size of the Bush’s “unilateral” attack on Iraq. As reported, Bush’s coalition consisted of:

Coalition Countries - Iraq - 2003

Afghanistan	Albania
Australia	Azerbaijan
Bulgaria	Colombia
Czech Republic	Denmark
El Salvador	Eritrea
Estonia	Ethiopia
Georgia	Hungary
Italy	Japan
South Korea	Latvia
Lithuania	Macedonia
Netherlands	Nicaragua
Philippines	Poland
Romania	Slovakia
Spain	Turkey
United Kingdom	Uzbekistan

Coalition Countries – Libya – 2011

Belgium	Canada
Denmark	France
Germany	Greece
Italy	Jordan
Morocco	Norway
Poland	Qatar
Spain	United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom	al Qaida*

*Italy and Germany were on the list, but have sort of bailed out at this point. Luckily al Qaida has been added to the Libyan coalition based on the new information reported above. And with so few members in the coalition, another participant does help pad the list.

As a side note, just let me say about the Iraq coalition, anytime you can get Ethiopia and Eritrea on the same side of anything, that’s pretty good diplomacy.