BlackHat's Journal: Get in/ Gonna get in the water/ Gonna make me sweat

Claz'ies insights[see previous JE], Noam's blog entries for the 21's mixed with 1954' end to the Fraco-Cong war all brought to mind this other bit of Dixon's rant about failure in the more modern context.

Quote:
In the words of a contemporary American: 'One of the chief differences between ourselves and the ancients lies not (unfortunately) in human nature, but rather in the proliferation of our skills, and our institutions, and therefore in the number of niches in which the incompetent can now instal themselves as persons of consequence.'

To be more specific there are three factors which predispose towards errors in modern generalship. Firstly, thanks to Marconi and the thermionic valve, larger armies can now be controlled from much farther away by minds which might still have been selected and trained for an earlier form of warfare and are now prevented by sheer distance from obtaining any real feel for the battle. Secondly, the whole complexity of modern war has meant larger staffs with a consequent multiplication of the sources of distortion in the flow of essential information. Finally, there is the sad irony that the best intentions of modern generals, particularly at the level of commanders-in-chief, may be hazarded by the sheer wealth of technological resources now placed at their disposal.

The first concatenation of these three factors occurred in the First World War, with terrible results. In this war, generals, shielded by distance and their staffs, their hands unstayed by witnessing the outcome of their orders, could send thousands, even millions, of men to their deaths without any feeling of being wasteful, and safe from retribution. In short, they lacked incentives to act otherwise than they did.

And, like an old person with a weak heart, they might be deliberately kept in ignorance of unpalatable facts. For example, one of the reasons for the costly aftermath of the Cambrai offensive in 1917 was that Haig had been grossly misled by his staff as to the German strength. It seems that before the battle his intelligence chief, Brigadier Charteris, was approached by a more junior staff officer with documentary evidence that a German division from Russia and other reinforcements were arriving in the Cambrai area. On Charteris's orders this inconvenient fact was kept from Haig because 'he did not accept the evidence, and in any case did not wish to weaken the C.-in-C.'s resolution to carry on with the attack.' (My italics. [Norman Dixon])

As to why Haig should have retained a man who could perpetrate such deceptions, one can only point out that to preserve loyalties and affectionate ties within the in-group (in this case his staff) at the expense of disasters for an out-group accords with what is known of the authoritarian personality. It requires greater moral courage to fire a congenial subordinate whom one knows personally than to accept the death of an army whom one does not. Haig evidently lacked this particular brand of moral courage.

But all this, product though it was of those factors which distinguish modern from old-fashioned generalship, happened many years ago. Perhaps they were only the teething pains of modern generalship? It seems not.

Any doubts as to whether the three factors of remote control, swollen staffs and a wealth of resources make for incompetence are removed by contemplation of Vietnam. In this most ill-conceived and horrible of wars there was the Commander-in-Chief, Lyndon Johnson, aided by his advisers, dreaming up policies and even selecting targets at a nice safe distance of 12,000 miles. And there was the man on the spot, General Westmoreland, a by no means unintelligent military commander by bemused by the sheer weight of destructive energy and aggressive notions supplied by his President. Together, the Machiavellian mind of the one, coupled with the traditional military mind of the other, produced a pattern of martial lunacy so abject and appalling that it eventually did for both of them.

Like the Boer leaders half a century earlier, the versatile General Giap and his commander-in-chief, a little old man with a wispy beard, made the huge professionally trained and over-equipped army of their enemies look utterly ridiculous, and their leaders helplessly irate. Unfettered by traditional militarism, lacking an excess of brute force, and without an obsession with capturing real estate, Ho and Giap relied on poor men's strategies -- surprise, deception and the ability to melt away. They relied on the fact that Westmoreland would expend his energies swatting wherever they had last been heard of while they got ready to sting him somewhere else. And as Lyndon and 'Westy' got madder, so that vast tracts of South-East Asia reeled beneath their rage, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong flitted round them and through them, puncturing the myth of American supremacy.

This brings up yet another hazard of modern war -- government by committee. From the long history of earlier disasters it might well have been concluded that all future military decisions should be left to committees rather than individual commanders, if only to dilute the effect of undesirable personality-traits. Unfortunately such a conclusion would probably be fatal. According to a study by I. L. Janis, four of the worst military disasters in recent American history are directly attributable to the psychological processes which attend group decision-making.

In an analysis of the events which led up to the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the destruction of Pearl Harbor, America's participation in the Korean War, and the escalation of the war in Vietnam, Janis draws attention to the staggering irrationality which can beset the thinking of otherwise highly competent, intelligent, conscientious individuals when they begin to acting as a group.

Take the decision to invade Cuba with a group of Cuban exiles. In approving the C.I.A. plan, Kennedy and his key advisers made six assumptions. Each was wrong.

They assumed that no one would guess that the U.S. Government was responsible for the invasion.

In their contempt for the Cuban Air Force they assumed it would be annihilated before the invasion began.

They assumed that the small invasion force led by unpopular ex-officers from the Batista regime would be more than a match for Castro's 'weak' army of 20,000 well-equipped Cuban troops.

They assumed that the invasion would touch off a general revolt behind Castro's lines.

They assumed that even if unsuccessful in their primary objective the exile force could hole up in Cuba and reinforce anti-Castro guerrillas.

In the event each assumption proved a gross miscalculation. Nothing went as planned. Nobody believed the C.I.A. cover story. The ships carrying reserve ammunition for the invasion force failed to arrive -- two were sunk and two fled. By the second day the invaders were surrounded by Castro's army, and by the third they were either dead or behind bars. Seven months later the United States recovered what was left of their invasion force for a ransom price to Castro of 53 million dollars. Kennedy was stricken. 'How could I have been so stupid as to let them go ahead?' he asked. As Sorensen wrote: 'His anguish was doubly deepened by the knowledge that the rest of the world was asking the same question.' Arthur Schlesinger Jr noted that 'Kennedy would sometimes refer incredulously to the Bay of Pigs, wondering how a rational and responsible Government could have become involved in so ill-starred an adventure'? Others who had participated in the initial decisions were similarly afflicted. Dulles offered to resign as head of the C.I.A.; McNamara publicly acknowledged his personal responsibility for misguiding the President.

All in all, it had been 'an operation so ill-conceived that among literate people all over the world the name of the invasion site has become the very symbol of perfect failure'.

If the central shared illusion in the Bay of Pigs action was 'the plan can't fail', that which sealed the fate of Pearl Harbor was 'it can't happen here!' --Dixon

If you subscribe to one school of thought 'it can be made to happen, anytime'. Tinfoil has a tendency to turn to black cast iron in the revealing light of truth. Too bad she's skipped off for a three-sum with Peace and Midas. Mars is un-amused and will, no doubt, make his displeasure known to us in the near future. Until then.

News, Berger and Freedumb-fries:
The women of the European parliament today took revenge on Godfrey Bloom, the Ukip MEP, when they thwarted his attempt to join a committee devoted to women's rights. Mr Bloom caused uproar on Tuesday - his first day in Strasbourg - by attacking maternity rights, saying pregnant women should resign from their jobs. He then added that women should spend more time "cleaning behind the refrigerator". [golf clap, hand Mr. Bloom the exit prize ... a tube of doorknob cream].

Rummy's boys and girls have been very busy. Better wipe that "Santorum" off your dick there, Uncle Sam. And BTW, the "Not In My Name(tm)" brand bondage gear, is not fooling anyone.

While Kerry's campaign headquarters get a quick 'Drop, Copy and/or Scoop'? Shrubs want information? Or chance to plant? Let's go see what Lurch's talking point is today... fancy that. [cue clip of Tina Fay turning a page and smirking, ~5 sec]

BBC CYA is thought to have worked. Richard Sambrook, the BBC news chief at the centre of the cataclysmic row that led to the departures of director general Greg Dyke and chairman Gavyn Davies, was today moved sideways to a new post as head of the World Service and the corporation's global news division.

Dead agit-prop always looks so flacid and putrid. George Galloway(silly party) Anti-war MP George Galloway has been cleared by the charities watchdog of any wrongdoing over the Mariam Appeal, which he set up to pay for the treatment of an Iraqi girl suffering from leukaemia.

Free and not dead press.

Texttoon:
Fumetti: Photo of George W. Bush walking with Bill Clinton. Overlayed speech bubble has them saying to each other; "Worst!", "I know your are, but what am I?", "Eh-var!", "Not!" etc-etc until the whole panel is filled at the bottom. Inset oval with a photo of Ali Abbas and a bubble for him saying; "Go fuck your selves!"