What will we see when he fog of war clears?

Black Powder Smoke Over
Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862

"Fog of war" is a term used to describe the level of ambiguity in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations.

The term is ascribed to the Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote:

"The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently -- like the effect of a fog or moonshine -- gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance."

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The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding one's own capability, adversary capability and adversary intent during an engagement, operation or campaign.

With imperfect information, decisions must sometimes be made in ignorance or on hunch or speculation.

Deadlines and the press of events make it impossible to wait for certainty.

Such is the case when a President makes decisions on Afghanistan.

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Seeking guidance from von Clausewitz

Journalists. as well as soldiers, also must perennially struggle with the fog.

They must report under deadline with limited information from incomplete sources -- with the full knowledge that their reports may well be at least partly wrong when the fog clears.

For almost everyone the fog of war makes decisions even more of a gamble.

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An entire nation can be in a fog when at war...

...if there is confusion over objectives, the intentions of the enemy, the strategy to adopt in relation to the enemy, how many resources to commit -- indeed over who is the enemy.

Such is America today -- full of debate, full of uncertainty, awaiting a President's decision, a President's evaluation of the terrain, the enemy, the strategy.

A nation full of rhetoric, a nation debating the intentions of Islam, the nature of terror...

A nation of politicians and broadcasters grandstanding to steal votes and ratings, power and profits.

The louder the language, the denser the fog.

Now we have a nation buffeted by fear, by uncertainty, by hope, and paranoia.

Yet among many people an indescribable calm.

Vast parts of the country untouched by war -- with military age "children" who never pick up a gun.

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The fog of war can cloud a President or a general's view.

Or the view of any American.

It can obscure hidden opportunities or hidden perils.

Looking out over the battlefield of America's overseas military campaigns, it is tempting to see what one wishes to see or what one fears to be the case.

To justify one's view of the battlefield, one's view of the world...with imagined shadows on the wall.

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It can be argued President Obama is wise to take his time, to assess and plan systematically, to try to penetrate the fog.

To decide the nature of the enemy, how many troops to move and to where.

A question: how much time does he have -- or must he and his staff, like General Joseph Johnston below, make key decisions in sharply limited span?

Paradoxically one result of delay may be a more anxious nation as a air of uncertainty grows.

What will we see when the fog of war finally clears?

From "Fog of War," the Life
of Robert S. McNamara

McNamara's eleven lessons of war

1. Empathize with your enemy
2. Rationality will not save us
3. There's something beyond one's self
4. Maximize efficiency
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war
6. Get the data
7. Belief and seeing are often both wrong
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil
10. Never say never
11. You can't change human nature

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Let's go back to the last
Confederate attack on the Union:

Bentonville, NC, March 19-22, 1865;
A Confederate commander struggles with
the "fog of war"




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That day -- as four Rebel commands gathered in North Carolina -- General Joseph Johnston traveled to Smithfield to form the hodgepodge Army of the South.

After evacuating Wilmington in February and resisting Schofield at Kinston on March 8-10, Gen. Braxton Bragg finally had arrived at Smithfield with Maj. Gen. Robert Hoke's Division (Army of Northern Virginia)...

Hampton's cavalry was split to monitor both wings of Sherman's army. The proud remnants of the Army of Tennessee were slowly trickling into Smithfield from the west, having departed Tupelo, Mississippi, by rail in mid-January...

Others were still on the way.

As his motley units converged, Johnston waited anxiously for news.

Was the enemy moving on Raleigh or Goldsboro?

From his position at Smithfield, Johnston could swing west or southeast to block the way to either destination.

Lacking sufficient numbers for a decisive engagement, however, Johnston needed favorable ground from which to tackle one wing of the Union army while the other was beyond supporting distance. The clock was ticking...

Desperate for news, Johnston fired off inquiries to his subordinates:

"Something must be done tomorrow morning," he pushed Hardee on March 17, "and yet I have no satisfactory information."

He then queried Hampton for specifics on the enemy's position, strength, and relative distance. "[G]ive me your opinion," urged Johnston, "whether it is practicable to reach them from Smithfield on the south side of the [Neuse] river before they reach Goldsborough."

--Mark A. Moore

General Joseph E. Johnston

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When the fog from the guns clears, what is the view?
Results of Artillery at Bentonville

We are all soldiers - honor the miracle of survival

The Battle Begins: Prologue and Aftermath


Walter Cronkite covers the battle

When I saw snippets of this movie, "We Were Soldiers," on TV, I was intuitively struck.

Was this hyperbole? Is this the way it really was?

I had a nagging fear that this time Hollywood had "got it right."

So I called a friend, "Dave," who fought in Special Forces on the Laotian Vietnamese border in 1969.

"Are there any movies which catch your experience in combat?" I asked.

We talked for an hour.

"We were Soldiers" was his answer. The 2002 movie starring Mel Gibson.

So I rented and viewed the entire film.

The movie is based on the book "We Were Soldiers Once....and Young: Ia Drang -- The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam," by Harold G. Moore and Joseph Galloway.

Hal Moore, the commander of American forces during the Ia Drang battle, has called the movie seventy five percent accurate and twenty five percent "Hollywood."

He was a consultant in the making of the film.

Joseph Galloway was a United Press International correspondent who covered the battle.

Moore and Galloway wrote a second book, "Soldiers Still: a Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam."

A tale of reconciliation, chronicling meetings with the officers and men fought nearly thirty years before.

See Brad Knickerbocker's review of this book, including an audio clip of an interview with both Moore and Galloway, in The Christian Science Monitor, April 26, 2008.

The interview probes the attitudes of both men toward war in general and America's current wars.

A third book, "A General's Spiritual Journey," is a memoir by Moore's "driver."

General Moore's Definition of "Humility"

General Moore's Philosophy
of Life and Leadership

Combat Today in Afghanistan

I would compare this astonishing book to a collective memoir of the atom bombing of Hiroshima.

Or to a journalistic account of the Trojan war by Greeks who fought there.

It was the first major battle of the war between the American army and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

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On Nov. 14, 1965, the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry, commanded by Lt. Col. Moore and accompanied by UPI reporter Galloway, helicoptered into Vietnam's remote Ia Drang Valley, the so-called "Valley of Death."

To thwart an North Vietnamese Army (NVA) plan to attack eastward, the American force made their assault directly into the enemy assembly area.

The Americans found themselves surrounded by a massively superior number of NVA regulars.

The Vietnamese were familiar with the terrain and highly skilled from bloody encounters with the French army, also in the Central Highlands, eleven years earlier.

The Vietminh take on the French: 1954

For a more detailed description of the significance of this battle, see U.S. Military History Companion.

The Americans were forced to withdraw after inflicting casualties on the Vietnamese up to four times what they suffered themselves.

Massive air and artillery fire, including strikes by B‐52 bombers, helped push the NVA back into their Cambodian sanctuaries.

Most significantly the NVA used the battle to learn how to counter American hi-tech weaponry. See original video footage, detailed daily battle accounts, and maps.

This story is a tribute to 234 young Americans who died during four days in Landing Zone X-Ray and Landing Zone Albany in the Valley of Death, 1965.

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If you see this movie, you will truly wonder how veterans survive.

Mel Gibson Sends his Troops to War

Forty Four Years Later Marines Depart

Camp Lejeune for Afghanistan

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No written review can possibly portray what you will see in this film.

Nor what my friend shared with me.

It is important to see a movie such as this -- to understand why so many veterans were angry either at their government or at the civilians and anti- war activists who later treated them with contempt -- or at both.

It is important to know how much pain and fear so many experienced -- then came on home to try to live normal lives.

It is important to understand why they so often cannot accept that their suffering, and the loss of comrades, might have been in vain.

Why they may lash out when politics is discussed.

So very many of us were spared this.

We owe it to those who return to show the kind of compassion which they too rarely experienced on the battlefield.

This is an old story, in this case a true story.

We better get used to it. It is not going away.

Let us "honor survival."

It is a miracle for all seasons.

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General Moore's Personal Account of Ia Drang


The Battle's Aftermath

For the battle is everywhere -- with Vietnamese soldiers popping up in bushes 25 yards away.

Napalm delivered close in right on the edge of American lines.

Close on combat, people dropping on every side.

Four hundred and fifty Americans trapped by superior Vietnamese forces.

Continual eruptions of violence for hours, for days.

Can that ever be forgotten?

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It is no wonder my friend, when stressed, sleeps with a revolver under his pillow.

He will never sit in a restaurant with his back to the door.

Vigilance is the name of the game.

His nightmares have receded. He comes across as gentle, kind.

Still he worries if he can keep it together should he lose his wife.

He seems a caring man who treasures his son and daughter, both officers in the military.

That is what he loves, their following in his footsteps in the profession to which he almost gave his life.

But he will not take a job as a server of injunctions, lest his violent side come out.

"When he got close, I hit him with my gun barrel, then shot him with my rifle," recalled my friend.

I did not press him for his total "body count."

"We often could hear them creeping up on us at night."

While out on a reconnaisance patrol, one half of my friend's 12 man squad was burned to death by misdirected American napalm.

"I picked up a .45 pistol from one charred body --- and cleaned off the burned flesh so I could use the thing."

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From Chapter 2, "We Were Soldiers Once.....and Young:"

"One month of maneuver, attack, retreat, bait, trap, ambush, and bloody butchery in the Ia Drang Valley in the fall of 1965 was the Vietnam War's true dawn -- a time when two opposing armies took the measure of each other.

"The North Vietnamese wanted their foot soldiers to taste the sting of those (new American) weapons and find ways to neutralize them.

"Their orders were to draw the newly arrived Americans into battle and search for flaws in their thinking that would allow a Third World army of peasant soldiers who traveled by foot and fought at the distant end of a two-month-long supply line of porters not only to survive and persevere, but ultimately to prevail in the war -- which was, for them, entering a new phase."

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In this movie you see Vietnamese generals planning flanking actions from their tunnels, little space between the combatants.

Few bayonets, just close in rifle shots.

Helmeted Vietnamese popping up in the bushes, unpredictable, unrelenting.

A strange kind of balance in this movie...for all are caught up in a world that banishes every nuance of civilized life.

"Tipping point:" guns or doctors? China watches

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No, folks, it's hardly rocket science.

True, it is not yet "closing time."

But the "tipping point" may be near.

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China, like the rest of us, must ask if the American superpower has approached, is approaching, or will approach what the Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz called the "tipping point."

When a nation on the military offense reaches the point in its aggressive operations where it is ever more costly to defend its acquisitions.

Where garrisoning troops, supplying them, defending them drains a nation's power and eventually requires retreat.

As did Napoleon after he sent his forces in to occupy Russia in 1812.

As did Hitler after he attempted to do the same thing in 1941.

As the U.S. did after it attempted to occupy and and shape Vietnam.

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Now is a magical moment.....

Let's put together President Obama, Carl von Clausewitz, Afghanistan, Iraq, the American Medical Association, healthcare reform...

Let's add to that shrinking credit cards, shrinking credit, unending exploding deficits -- and the prospect of spending one million a year for every additional American soldier sent to Afghanistan.

Remember "Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

A slogan by Americans who resisted the Vietnam war....

Back when President Lyndon Baines Johnson thought he could have "both guns and butter."

The choice is different today.

"Can we have both guns and doctors?"

As Obama has ramped up his decision on more troops to Afghanistan, scarcely anyone has asked the question:

"What can the United States afford?"

It has been an easy assumption that anything is possible.

That "no bridge is too far."

But Obama is clearly asking the question -- and so are China's leaders.

The New York Times reported November 15 that the Obama Adminstration is costing out its Afghanistan choices.

That it is increasingly sensitive to the prospect that going whole hog for an extended occupation of Afghanistan may clash with the enormous long term fiscal liabilities of health care reform.

On the eve of Obama's visit to China The New York Times also reports that Beijing is concerned that the American budget deficits escalated by health care reform may make America a poor investment.

China wants assurances the U.S. will remain solvent, that it can pay back its debts to the "Middle Kingdom."

It is no one's "dirty little secret" that it is China that will indirectly finance both Afghanistan and health care reform.

If America's piggy bank breaks, China's path forward will be hampered.

So President Obama is expected to downplay any lecturing of China over how to handle human rights.

It is not wise to hector the bank that feeds you.

Instead he must do some reassuring that he heads a country that is not a foolish spendthrift.

Now it is America that appears to be the Prodigal Son.

Can this all be reversed? Or is my analysis on target -- more than the musing of a grimly seasoned man?

Maybe yes, maybe no....

The United States is fortunate to have as President one who understands the challenge.

But to reverse all this requires more than one man.

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True Love trumps politics: let that be the lead..

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"Streets of Derry"

As I recovered from a mild senior citizen bout of George Orwell 1984 pig flu, I could not help but sip the healing wines of Celtic music -- from YouTube.

A fresh new prayer of my own came to mind:

"God protect us from the Tribes which guide us."

Cara Dillon

Streets of Derry

After the morning there comes an evening
And after the evening another day
And after a false love there comes a true love
I'd have you listen now to what I say

I swear my love is the finest young man
As fair as any the sun shines on
But how to save him, I do not know it
For he has got a sentence to be hung

As he was marching the streets of Derry
I own he marched up right manfully
Being much more like a commanding officer
Than a man to die upon the gallows tree

"What keeps my love so long in coming
Oh what detains her so long from me
Or does she think it a shame or scandal
To see me die upon the gallows tree"

He looked around and he saw her coming
And she was dressed all in woollen fine
The weary steed that my love was riding
It flew more swiftly than the wind

Come down, come down from that cruel gallows
I've got your pardon from the king
And I'll let them see that they dare not hang you
And I'll crown my love with a bunch of green

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A Gallows Tree

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When Tribes Do Prevail

"There Were Roses"

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Now it's time to dance

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Kris Kristofferson: let him speak for himself...

"Sadness Has Nothing To Do With Sanity"
"There's humans entrusted with guarding our gold and
humans in charge of saving our souls."

From "Sister Sinead"

Listen to his latest "Closer to the Bone"

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"God bless Obama. God bless the United States of America; And God bless the others outside of our borders." - Kris Kristofferson

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"To Pass It On"

Obama's "new policy:" Senator Kerry's speech

Rolling the dice again

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President Obama will lean forward to play hard with a very weak hand.

Obama will escalate US intervention in the area, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

While the nominal sovereignty of each nation would be maintained, we will see renewed U.S. efforts to turn them in one degree or another into "client states."

That is the conclusion to be drawn from an October 26 speech before Council of Foreign Relations by John Kerry, D Mass., Chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

While Sen. Kerry does not officially speak for President Obama, he is intimately involved with the evolution of Afghanistan policy.

Below, from his speech, is the bottom line:

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The U.S. will push to shake up the central Afghan government, push to change some top officials, attempt to diffuse power more to the local level -- where American advisors both military and civilian will play a growing part.

There will be a hybrid policy of clear and hold in some areas -- but a looser presence of military strikes elsewhere.

The goal of clearing and holding all of Afghanistan is rejected.

The Administration will trim down the call of General Stanley McChrystal for up to 40,000 additional troops for Afghanistan.

For Administration plans to focus on limited parts of the country, see The New York Times, October 27:

"At the moment, the administration is looking at protecting Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters, officials said. The first of any new troops sent to Afghanistan would be assigned to Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual capital, seen as a center of gravity in pushing back insurgent advances.

"But military planners are also pressing for enough troops to safeguard major agricultural areas, like the hotly contested Helmand River valley, as well as regional highways essential to the economy — tasks that would require significantly more reinforcements beyond the 21,000 deployed by Mr. Obama this year...

"Military officers said that they would maintain pressure on insurgents in remote regions by using surveillance drones and reports from people in the field to find pockets of Taliban fighters and to guide attacks, in particular by Special Operations forces."

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Major pressure on Afghan government will combine with continuing full court press on Pakistan to step up its offensive against Taliban in Waziristan.

Although Washington denies it, American aid to Pakistan will be directly or indirectly conditioned on its willingness to co-operate with the U.S. -- and break with fundamentalists in its social programs.

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In short the move is for more aggressive involvement in the affairs of both countries. The aim is to stabilize both around a pro American orientation -- and squeeze the Taliban by military pressure from both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It is clear there is already a growing anti-American backlash in both Afghanistan and Pakistan -- where the appearance of being American puppets is hardly desired.

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See this writer's analysis of the range of options open to Obama -- and the pitfalls of all of them.

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"I just Got Punked in Afghanistan"

Obama's great grim gamble: he holds a weak hand

War, it has often been said, is the greatest gamble of all.

It is time, once again, to roll the Afghan dice.

The gamble is a grim one.....

This time President Obama holds a very weak hand.

Jack of Diamonds: "I bet you I beat you next game"

Check the cost of the gamble at iCasualties.org

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One of my old time favorites.

This classic musical allegory is "The Cuckoo"

An Appalachian Montains analysis of the complex process of going to war.

"War is the greatest grim gamble of all."

In Afghanistan the United States, like Britain and the Soviet Union before it, once again prepares to roll the dice.

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Meet the "Enemy"

Pashtun Taliban operate, recruit, and thrive off of resentment against foreign occupiers. See David Rohde, "Held by the Taliban," NYT, Oct. 17, 2009 for an account of how occupation and bombing reinforces anti-American feeling.

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This writer has reluctantly altered his conclusions.

Lots of reflection, a journalist's perpetual research and a lifetime of study go into an altered, painful stance toward an issue involving so much human suffering.

Raised with Quaker pacifist roots, he now believes that some kind of "surge" probably will be necessary -- given the growing strength of the Taliban.

In order to prevent a quick collapse -- and to lay a foundation for whatever stage comes next.

With Taliban strength growing, a "surge" may be necessary.

Important questions will be how big a "surge" to support; how large a series of operations in how much of Afghanistan over how long a period of time?

--Even if President Obama chooses a less ambitious strategy which avoids "seize and hold" counter-insurgency operations in a large part of the country.

--If American forces are to have any leverage in protecting even a limited part of Afghanistan from the brutalities of the Taliban.

--If the U.S. is to maintain a stable base from which to launch attacks on Al Qaeda.

--If the U.S. is to solidify its presence sufficiently to seek a political deal with some of the insurgents.

--If the U.S. is to help stabilize Pakistan and keep its nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists.

--Even if the U.S. eventually withdraws to pinpoint and fight Al Qaeda from offshore.

But it is highly doubtful that the U.S. government will be able to execute a limited surge with a clear exit strategy -- amidst the complexities of both American and Afghan politics.

Some things are near certain:

A large scale, long lasting military commitment is impossible.

If the American people turn against a long, costly war, it will be only a matter of time before the U.S. position in Afghanistan will collapse.

A long war would mean deep costs for the American economy and a likely decline in this country's military, economic, and political standing in the world.

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The challenge will be to find a workable mission and strategy which promise ways of getting out in a reasonable time period even as the U.S. gets more deeply in.

If the mission requires more troops, a "surge" must flow onto the beach and then back out again.

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A small surge risks being ineffective -- or of escalating into a large one.

A large surge runs the risk of escalating the conflict, getting more deeply trapped -- and producing a deadly and costly anti-American backlash across the South Asian region.

One result could be a destabilization of Pakistan -- with a theoretically increased danger that nuclear weapons could be obtained by terrorists.

Indeed a number of veterans conclude that one great danger is that the American military will again be put in an impossible position: unreachable goals with limited resources.

As one veteran puts it, "to be set up agains for defeat as we were in Vietnam because no sitting President wants to be seen as losing."

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Ahead could be another cycle of blowback -- where forces unleased by American intervention come back to strike the U.S. -- as was the case with the 9/11 attacks.

The ultimate risk in this gamble is that a new generation of anti-American terrorists will ultimately get their hands on nuclear weapons.

For testimony on the destructive effects already evident from the Obama policy see an article by Graham E. Fuller, former CIA chief in Kabul.

Also a video of an interview with Pakistani journalist Hamad Mir dealing with the impact of American drone attacks in Pakistan.

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It is time, once again, to roll the Afghan dice.

The greatest grim gamble of all.

Dance toward the future with lessons from the past

Enter Loreena McKennitt website
Night Ride Across the Caucasus
Dante's Prayer
She Moved Through The Fair
The Highwayman
The Highwayman, lyrics by Alfred Noyes

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"When in the springtime of the year.

When the trees are crowned with leaves.

When the ash and oak, and the birch and yew.
Are dressed in ribbons fair."

Follow the dance wherever it leads -- with a vision of the future and lessons from the past.

For Afghanistan: what lessons from "The Crater?"