Note: This is the third essay in a series. The previous are Sixty Years of Losing and Sixty Years of Moral Acid.
B.H. Lidell Hart, in his 1954 classic Strategy, spends a chapter discussing guerilla warfare, its methods, and its long-term social effects. In light of the challenges we face in Iraq and Afghanistan, the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the recent history of the progressive movement in the Democratic Party, it's worthwhile to consider Hart's thoughts on what happens when insurgency becomes infection.
Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart is widely regarded as one of the most influential military historians and theorists of the 20th century. A proponent of what he termed "the indirect approach," his theories laid the groundwork for the mobile tactics of Blitzkreig ("lighting war," a term he coined) and remain influential in the U.S. doctrine of maneuver warfare, as expressed in Robert Leonhard's 1994 study, The Art of Maneuver.
Sadly, Hart's writings on guerilla warfare gained far less attention. For many years, we were taught to lionize the anti-German Resistance in World War II, and guerilla warfare was celebrated in the 1984 film Red Dawn. It is, Hart grudgingly acknowledged, the summit of the "indirect approach," as a guerilla force must rely on mobility, stealth, concentration against enemy weakness, and avoid a head-on battle of attrition.
But with those advantages, Hart noted, came a profound danger. By its very nature, guerilla and insurgency actions are fought by "irregulars." They rarely wear a uniform - to do so would limit their capacity to move freely within the zone of operations - and must be able to organize and act in small, independent, covert cells. British General Orde Wingate, the "father" of British special forces, wrote that the guerilla soldier must have "the heart of a gangster," and indeed he recruited among criminal elements. That same congruence was noted by the U.S. Army's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II cradle of the CIA, when they struck a deal with Lucky Luciano - once head of the Genovese mafia family, and founder of the Commission organizing the five mafia families of New York - to release him from prison in exchange for his work with mafia connections in Sicily to assist the U.S. invasion.
That "heart of a gangster," Hart notes, is not suddenly transformed when the war ends. Hart cites several historical examples, from the Jesse James gang who were former Confederate guerillas, to the building of the Marseilles drug empire by former Resistance operators. Had Hart lived long enough to witness it, he would have added Al Qaeda, born of the U.S.-funded mujahadin guerilla fighters after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. I would argue the same could be said of Hezbollah, which began in Lebanon as an insurgency during the Israeli occupation, and even the Mossad, birthed by anti-British insurgents in the Mandate period.
It is, Hart argues, far more difficult for guerilla fighters than for ordinary uniformed soldiers to return to civilian life. It is hard to switch off "the heart of a gangster," to once again accept the authority of the state. For many insurgents, the excitement of rebellion, stealth, danger, and killing becomes a way of life. It is all to easy to simply find a new target and continue as a fighter, an insurgent.
Historically, insurgencies have a difficult time forming governments. They are, after all, comprised of rebels. They've learned well the skills of resistance, but not the skills of governing. Disobedience or disloyalty within the insurgency was likely punished "swift and sure," with a bullet to the head. Hardly a model for civil justice.
Rather than assume the mantle of government, and the inevitable limits involved, too often insurgents simply turn against former allies, either in criminal activity or in continued insurgency. They decide the new government has abandoned the ideals on which the insurgency was based, sold out in the name of power, and must be replaced by ... well, that's really not the issue. The issue is continuing to live the life of an insurgent, a rebel, fighting the state but without the responsibility or even intention of forming one.
And I fear the United States has bequeathed this horrible legacy to the people of Iraq. The invasion and occupation, whenever they end, birthed an insurgency that will not end with our departure. The people of Iraq will continue to suffer at the hands of insurgents who are still hungry for action, infected by the virus of insurgency itself.
Closer to home, the progressive movement in the Democratic Party has been a political insurgency, as were social conservatives in the GOP. Both now see their parties' candidates as having betrayed the ideology upon which the insurgency was fought. And too many progressives seem poised, indeed eager, to lose the war ... so they can continue being insurgents. It is, after all, far easier than governing.
Hart concluded that the military benefits of supporting insurgents rarely if ever justified the long-term dangers. More's the pity that George H. W. Bush had not read Hart before funding the mujahadin. What conservatives once hailed as "the cheapest war ever fought" - the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan - has become very costly indeed.
Political insurgencies are, I suspect, unavoidable. When one party takes power and begins to implement unacceptable policies, the minority have little choice but to become insurgents: to rabble-rouse, protest, and speak out against the state. That's how our nation came to be. It is, Barack Obama argued this week, the very essence of patriotism.
Ultimately, though, the insurgent party must be willing and able to take the reins of government, with all of the limits and compromises being in power requires. The Democratic Party now has the opportunity to do so, an opportunity presented by a GOP insurgency that knew how to take power but not how to govern.
Will we repeat that mistake, and surrender the opportunity to govern? Will we decide we'd rather be insurgents, believing ourselves victims, lounging in the comfortable absence of responsibility, nurturing "the heart of a gangster?"
Or will we seize that opportunity for which we've worked so hard, put down our pitchforks and take up the plough, working to shape a better government, a better nation, and a better world?
Will we Democrats repeat the revolution, albeit peacefully, that we celebrate tomorrow?
Or will we simply remain political gangsters, happier to fight than to govern?
Time will tell.
Biographical Note: In this series I will discuss a number of topics: military, political, and moral. I am not a "military expert." I'm not a former general, nor even a former officer. I didn't attend a military academy. I don't work for a defense contractor. I wasn't and will never be invited to private Pentagon briefings. I have no access to classified information. Just a lot of history books.
I am a former Marine, with two sons who have served in the military. I am also a pacifist, for reasons I will share later in the series. I have spent three decades studying military history, because of my lifelong hobby: wargaming. That makes me a conflicted pacifist. As someone who designs wargames - by nature are complex simulation models - I value the analytical over the anecdotal, the quantitative over the qualitative. A lot of what I write in these diaries will fly in the face of what you've read, seen, and heard in the mainstream press. I'll leave it to you to decide which of us is more reliable.