How Do We Win? -- An Introduction

Technological advances made in firearms during the Civil War made direct assaults against defesnsive enemy positions suicidal. Tactics previously known during the Napoleonic era, where manouevre proved decisive, were easily defended against, and men began to fortify their positions by digging into the earth. Trench warfare, most notably in the Battle of Petersburg, was born.

Trench warfare was absolutely horrific. The trenches themselves became cesspools of rats, lice and disease--and that was before it rained. Tactically, the defender gained even more of an advantage with the adoption of fixed machine guns firing in concert with riflemen at advancing enemy lines who had to cross open ground covered in mines, barbed-wire and other obstacles. If that wasn't enough, advances in artillery (exploding steel shells, hydrolic recoil, fire control and sighting devices) made attacking practically suicidal.

Progress in this type of war became a measurement of feet and inches. Human wave assaults produced casualty rates almost double of WWII, and because medical advances hadn't yet caught up, most wounds led to death. Technology and tactics hadn't yet caught up for the attackers, but the remainder of WWI would be spent trying to figure out just how the stalemate could be broken.

Infantry was re-organized from 150 men (Company) down the squad level (squad). Infantry became harder to hit as it was faster, more mobile, and spreadout.

But, a new technology founds its way into the war which would ultimately make trench warfare obsolete: the tank. The actual impact of the introduction of tanks WWI was mixed, as their maintenance was pretty unreliable and no one yet knew how to use them. But, by the end of the war, tanks improved and made enourmous contributions by being able to cross no-man's land impervious to enemy fire, through obstacles and over the trenches (side note: in typical fashion, the first German name for tank was translated as "the machine-for-getting-the-men-out-of-the-trenches" before it was rename "Panzer" - this had to make the teletype men go insane).

This illustration is point out in "no-shit" fashion that warfare is never a static problem. A dynamic battlefield requires new solutions to new problems, even ones that may take many years to solve.

Today, we face a battlefield tactical used by our ragtag, unsophisticated enemies, which has found a way neutralize armies vastly superior in training, equipment and firepower. Here is the image below:

These are Hezbollah fighters who have parked a mobile heavy gun in a residential neighborhood. These soldiers are not wearing uniforms, but civilian clothes, which allow them to blend into the general population once they've moved their hardware into civilian building after they've done their job.

These might be the tactics of a coward, but they are tactics that have to a lesser extent plagued the United States's effort in Iraq and are now leading to the possibility of a strategic victory of Hezbollah over Israel in this latest Battle in Lebannon.

This will not be a problem solved overnight, but the War against Islamic Facism will be a long one. Our war colleges have been crunching and developing methods to fight irregular wars since Vietnam. But the assumption they've always had to use as constant for actual doctrine, relies on the make-up of our modern military that is mostly designed to combat large Cold War-era, sophisticated armies, run by a reasonably rational actor (i.e. one that generally wouldn't use civilians and unlawful methods to defeat an opponent).

Our intelligence methods and abilities have been shown to be behind the game at this point as the United States and Israel found their intelligence prior to engagement to be woefully inadequate--to the point of aiding our enemies in the critical information war. Improvements and gains in this area will be necessary to defeat and enemy that shape-shifts, has no honor, and will, without hesitation, use woman and children as human shields. The war on terrorism is shaping up to be one that will be decided on who can better use intelligence to defeat his enemy, while also controlling the information war so that political victory will be seized with battlefield victories (see Stephen Green fantastic essay "The Arm of Decision").

This post is just a contextual introduction, pointing the future efforts of this blog towards seeing just how this will be playing out in our current engagments. I'm not a military expert, just a regular citizen, who in his spare time, likes to think these questions through. Now we are finally getting a fair amount of public information on what our political and military leaders are doing to combat this nefarious foe, and as I've read through them, the picture is mixed, yet hopeful. Just as with the tank and our reorganization of infantry in WWI, we'll figure out a way to ultimately beat these guys. But it may take some time--in combination with ingenuity, resourcefulness and new thinking--to get there.