from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals
The Stories Behind the News

Posted: 10 Feb 2009 06:56 PM PST

Imagine a game with two players. One player is playing to win, the other is playing to a

draw, without actually going in for the kill. Even if the first player is weaker than
the second player, if the game goes on long enough the odds are on his side...

because he is playing to win.

Einstein famously said, "I know not with what weapons World War III
will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Like many pacifists, Einstein assumed that war would become
more destructive. Instead the Western powers have long ago stopped fighting to
win, and rather than unleashing their full strength, chose to begin fighting to
a draw, or to maintain a slightly improved balance of power vis a vis the
enemy.

While some believed that this style of limited warfare is the product of the Cold

War's Mutually Assured Destruction, in which war had to be scaled down for

fear of unleashing a nuclear armageddon... this inability to finish the fight has

become most pronounced when Western powers fight conflicts with
third world guerrillas or terrorists.

There are several factors that explain why we stopped playing to win, and

accordingly have begun slowly losing.

1. Instant Communications - Like sausage,
wars used to be 'made' mostly out of sight. Individuals might have

personal experience of a battlefield, but few outside the military would have

much visceral interaction with the war itself. With the American Civil War

and the Crimean War that began to change. Photography and
popularized first person accounts began the process of bringing war into the

"living room", horrifying and repulsing millions.

By the time the technology had developed to the point where video broadcasts

could be conducted from the field, or any civilian could capture some of
the action on a cell phone, the barriers had been breached.

Naturally it would be the more civilized countries which placed a higher value on

life and did not censor their media, that would receive the worst of this exchange.

While the guerrillas and terrorists can always intimidate and silence, and

in any case tend to operate in cultures with higher mortality rates that place

less value on human life, Western nations cannot and do not function so.

The result is that civilized countries begin practicing excessive restraint on
the battlefield, this not only gives the enemy more freedom of movement,

it creates an entirely new strategic doctrine that involves using civilians as

human shields, hospitals and civilian areas as bases, and even deliberately
generate atrocities in order to foster propaganda victories.

In this environment, propaganda victories become real victories if they harm
the morale of a Western power. The more the civilized side restrains its forces,

the more power and territory, the enemy gains.

2. Liberalism - While the welfare of civilians on the enemy side was a

legitimate concern, it was never supposed to be a greater concern than the

lives of our own soldiers. Yet Liberalism has managed to accomplish exactly

that as on the battlefield, with civilized nations putting the lives of soldiers at

risk to protect enemy civilians.

This development has turned the human shield from a punchline, into a

potent defensive measure, and a propaganda offensive tool.

As liberalism routinely assumes that their home society is usually at fault,

and that the stronger party is also the guilty party, a liberal culture
cripples the very military that seeks to defend it.

A liberal culture

propounds that

the only legitimate

cause for war is the

defense of a weaker

party against a

stronger party.

This paradox

necessitates wars

that are no longer

defensive wars,

but nation building wars to tear down a sovereign nation,

on behalf of an oppressed populace or minority within its borders.

Such wars may be legitimate or not, on an individual basis, but they

bury the primary justification for war, that of self-defense or the
suppression of a vital and active threat. By doing so they also shift the

priority from the military to the diplomatic, and from military

accomplishment to nation building through winning the hearts and minds

of the enemy civilian population-- an approach destined to undermine any

purely military approach. Wars are no longer fought in pursuit of victory,

but in order to build a better world... and we stop playing to win.

3. The Supremacy of Diplomacy - War becomes a means of enforcing a

diplomatic objective. When diplomacy fails, we go to war. When the enemy

meets our demands, we end the war. Then we rinse and repeat the whole

cycle all over again.

Since modern diplomacy was envisioned as a peacemaking tool, these demands

must be peacemaking demands as well. This makes war inherently
contradictory and disreputable, and creates situations in which we endlessly
pursue peacemaking diplomacy to avoid war, only to be tricked, and then restart
the peacemaking cycle again. When we finally try to break the cycle of hollow
diplomatic charades with war, universal condemnation follows.

War then becomes a halfhearted effort to hurt the enemy just enough to
convince them to give in to our peacemaking demands. Unfortunately when
the enemy has no interest in giving in, the military campaign quickly becomes
a painful bloody drawn out mess with no real objective except buzzwords such as
"Stabilization" and "Reining in the Extremist Elements Who Stand in the Way of
Peace."

The latest example of such a misguided military campaign
could be seen in Gaza, but it can just as well be seen in Iraq, and for that matter
Vietnam. If you're not playing to win, but assuming that the enemy will give up

and come to the negotiating table, then you're playing to lose... particularly
against an enemy who knows how the game is played, and knows that all he

needs to do is stay alive long enough for you to give up and go away.

4. Forgetting How to Fight - When the USSR was dismantled, the Yeltsin

government attempted to give away land to farmers, only to discover that

after generations of collectivization, too few knew how to farm anymore.
So national skills can disappear under the boot of socialism. There was a time

in American history when the instinctive response to an attacker was force.

Today the instinctive response is to run away and wait for the police to take

care of it.

After a generation we have very nearly forgotten what war is, and

what it's for.

Afghanistan and Iraq proved that our soldiers still know how to
fight, but our politicians and military command have often forgotten. As war
becomes subservient to diplomacy, as the culture of liberalism and
instant communications bring war into the living room and treat all
military actions as atrocities-- we lose the ability to play to win and
to fight to win, instead snatching diplomatic defeat from the jaws of a

military victory.

But Playing to Win is the only real game in town. As Western powers and

civilized nations stop playing to win, the terrorists who do play to win,

begin winning. Our advantages in resources, organization and numbers

can only hold out for so long unless we too begin playing to win.