Motivation

GIs' morale dips as Iraq war drags on

With tours extended, multiple deployments and new tactics that put them in bare posts in greater danger, they feel leaders are out of touch with reality.

"I don't see any progress. Just us getting killed," said Spc. Yvenson Tertulien, one of those in the dining hall in Yousifiya, 10 miles south of Baghdad, as Bush's speech aired last month. "I don't want to be here anymore."


Arthur's latest post highlights the oft overlooked and/or actively denied reality of the deliberate manner in which the U. S. has forced its will upon the nations of the world merely for the sake of doing so.

He cites a passage from The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman, part of which follows:

Wooden-headedness, the "Don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts" habit, is a universal folly never more conspicuous than at upper levels of Washington with respect to Vietnam. Its grossest fault was underestimation of North Vietnam's commitment to its goal. Enemy motivation was a missing element in American calculations, and Washington could therefore ignore all the evidence of nationalist fervor and of the passion for independence which as early as 1945 Hanoi had declared "no human force can any longer restrain." Washington could ignore General Leclerc's prediction that conquest would take half a million men and "Even then it could not be done." It could ignore the demonstration of elan and capacity that won victory over a French army with modern weapons at Dien Bien Phu, and all the continuing evidence thereafter.

American refusal to take the enemy's grim will and capacity into account has been explained by those responsible on the ground of ignorance of Vietnam's history, traditions and national character: there were "no experts available," in the words of one high-ranking official. But the longevity of Vietnamese resistance to foreign rule could have been learned from any history book on Indochina. Attentive consultation with French administrators whose official lives had been spent in Vietnam would have made up for the lack of American expertise. Even superficial American acquaintance with the area, when it began to supply reports, provided creditable information. Not ignorance, but refusal to credit the evidence and, more fundamentally, refusal to grant stature and fixed purpose to a "fourth-rate" Asiatic country were the determining factors, much as in the case of the British attitude toward the American colonies. The irony of history is inexorable.


The colonial Americans were committed to their independence from the rule of Imperial England under George III in a much stronger way than the British army regulars and hired Hessian guns were to quelling the rebellion (insurgency?).

Andrew Bacevich(h/t Arthur):

The communists of North Vietnam were less interested in promoting world revolution than in unifying their country under socialist rule. We deluded ourselves into thinking that we were defending freedom against totalitarianism.

They were much more committed to this goal than the French and later U. S. forces were to stopping the misperceived push for worldwide totalitarian revolution (which was ill communicated to the ranks anyway)

Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the insurgent groups are all similar in at least one way: They all want to see the U.S. out of the region physically, politically, and economically. They don't want to destroy our way of life, they just want to be able to live their way of life in their homeland(s). The fact that we may not agree with some of what that way of life entails (and there are some egregious facets to it to be sure) and that we don't like the way they want to develop natural resources that rightfully belong to them is not an acceptable motive for our actions over the past several decades.

The attempt to tell these people what to do, when to do it, and to do all of it with a smile and shows of grateful subservience only serves to strengthen the resolve of these people to resist these efforts. They're not stupid. They know when they're being told what to do. And it's certainly not the first time, either.