This kind of war

You may have heard...

Witnesses said foreign troops swept into the town on helicopters, fired missiles from an attack helicopter, killed Nabhan and another terrorist, and captured two others after wounding them, Mareeg reported. Nabhan's body was recovered, ABC News later reported.

...or you may not have heard. Apparently Kanye West chose that moment to seize a microphone, prompting a brief quip from the president that was twittered to the public by a reporter while congress voted to censure a politician who called a politician a liar and expert panels were formed for on-camera discussions of racism in America as news of the suppression of the news about ACORN was... well, you get the picture.

And frankly, those involved in that page 3 sort of story shun the spotlight others seek anyway. But much (perhaps more than many would be comfortable with...) is revealed in this account:

Navy Seals from US Special Operations Forces conducted a raid in southern Somalia on Monday that killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, one of 4 co-conspirators wanted in the 2002 bombing of an Israel owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, two senior U.S. military officials told Fox News.

Ten days ago President Obama signed the Execute Order for Nabhan, who since 2006 was on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists. He was also wanted for the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Kenya in 1998.
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Intelligence operatives had been monitoring Sabhan prior to the attack. The helicopters passed once, firing on the vehicle, and then circled back around to retrieve the body so they could make a positive identification, according to an official.

One wonders at the source of such detail.

It's the stuff that a decade ago would be found in a Hollywood blockbuster. Drama: young, determined president sanctions action (perhaps determining after deep internal debate that sometimes the needs of the many trump many other considerations - but even so he harbors doubt) and men of action handle the rest. (One of them is a comedian of a sort, cracking jokes all the way and keeping spirits high...) We cut back to the home front from time to time to depict the experience of the wives and kids of our men of action, but that may be cut in final. Will Smith has reached an age where he can play the leader of such men. Is he available? Phone his agent, let's do lunch...

That's the sort of movie the very real, spotlight-shunning men of action would join their fellow Americans in viewing, perhaps afterward confiding that while the movie was great it ain't really like that.

Beyond entertainment for the masses, it's also the sort of activity that many scholars and men-at-arms agree would make a fine approach to prosecution of what we used to call the war on terror. "Off shore" (on land or sea) - occasional strikes based on good, solid intel from our boys on the scene and eyes in the sky; sometimes carried out by men who pull triggers at short range (the secretary will not confirm or deny) and often by those who use more remote controls. (We can match our capabilities to your time requirements. We can discuss the risk involved with each of the available options - but if you're busy a simple "get it done" will do.) No photos of flag-draped coffins or of soldiers in their dying moments to trouble the minds of those who pass the newsstands on their way from here to there or on the internet or cable TV. For that and other reasons such an approach is tempting, we must admit. And regardless of what any may say, we harbor thoughts at various depths wherein such men who do such things are admired, and we wonder could we do the same?

Perhaps we should try fighting only that sort of long range, off shore war. It is the kind of war that makes heroes, not the sort that wears down armies, chews up soldiers and spits them out.

The sort of war that inspires stories - like this recent one from Pakistan:

Former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on the orders of the special death squad formed by former US vice-president Dick Cheney, which had already killed the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafique Al Hariri and the army chief of that country.

The squad was headed by General Stanley McChrystal, the newly-appointed commander of US army in Afghanistan. It was disclosed by reputed US journalist Seymour Hersh while talking to an Arab TV in an interview.

And it's the kind of war that in the more distant past simply inspired...

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once again trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

...Osama bin Laden's call for jihad against America in 1998. From his view, that sort of war was evidence of failure at others, a weakness that could be exploited - if nothing else at least as a recruiting tool:

After our victory in Afghanistan and the defeat of the oppressors who had killed millions of Muslims, the legend about the invincibility of the superpowers vanished. Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. ...America assumed the titles of world leader and master of the new world order. After a few blows, it forgot all about those titles and rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers.

We, of course, thought we were on a humanitarian mission at the time - not some sort of war. We know what war is - war takes two sides, ours gets to debate it, vote on it, - and not one of us had voted for that kind of war.

Given the chance, many of us would vote no war - and others perhaps for trying out this kind of war: "And finally, your recommendation is sound," retired Marine Corps General Chuck Krulak recently wrote to George Will, responding to the noted pundit's announcement that it's "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan". Here's the recommendation he meant:

America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

I would put "hunter-killer teams" along the borders and in suspected al Qaeda strongholds. I would support them with intelligence, logistics thru use of parasail's, responsive airpower (needs to be close), armed and unarmed (fitted with cameras, infrared, etc) drones,"reach back" capability for cruise missiles, and other capability as needed. The H-K teams should be given minimal rules of engagement... when they identify the bad guys, they need to be empowered to take them out.

They are wise and learned men.

And here's a letter to the President of the United States from (by my signature count) 38 other wise and learned men. While they don't offer the level of detailed alternative expected from a Marine (perhaps each would have his own advice on that, against which others might argue) they unanimously support an anything but this kind of war:

Today, we are concerned that the war in Afghanistan is growing increasingly detached from considerations of length, cost, and consequences. Its rationale is becoming murkier and both domestic and international support for it is waning. Respectfully, we urge you to focus U.S. strategy more clearly on al Qaeda instead of expanding the mission into an ambitious experiment in state building.

These men, we are told, are Realists.

Perhaps we should remove ourselves from that useless patch of dirt we call Afghanistan, to more welcoming places nearby. Perhaps we should send in the occasional drone or HK team. Obviously (at least, if you haven't forgotten the Somalia story we started with) we do that now, but perhaps only that is better. Maybe we could provide them some humanitarian assistance, too. Or maybe not even that. Perhaps we should bring all the troops home to be with their families. They deserve that, don't they?

We don't need that kind of war. We don't need any kind of war. We don't need American mothers crying over the graves of their sons or bereaved American fathers outraged that we aren't acting tough enough... let's turn away so that we never have to see such things again.

We're safe enough over here. And besides, we have our own problems - our own differences to resolve.

And plenty of candles.

See also: This new kind of war