{"id":2187,"date":"2009-12-02T03:51:24","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T03:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2009-12-02T03:51:24","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T03:51:24","slug":"obamas_speech_m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2187","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s Speech, My First Reaction? Despair…"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s all grand tactics<\/a>. And those aren’t enough. From Summers<\/a> again:<\/p>\n

We thought we were pursuing a new strategy called counterinsurgency, but actually we were pursuing a defensive strategy in pursuit of a negative aim – a strategy familiar to Clausewitz in the early nineteenth century. In his chapter on purpose and means in war Clausewitz discusses various methods of obtaining the object of war. One way is what Clausewitz calls “the negative aim.<\/b>” It is, he said, “the natural formula for outlasting the enemy, for wearing him down.<\/b>” In a later chapter, Clausewitz discusses the relationship between the negative aim and the strategic defensive. “The aim of the defense must embody the idea of waiting,<\/b>” he said. “The idea implies . . . that the situation … may improve … Gaining time is the only way [the defender] can achieve his aim.<\/b>” Basic to the success of a strategic defensive in pursuit of the negative aim, therefore, is the assumption that time is on your side. But the longer the war progressed the more obvious it became that time was not on our side. It was American rather than North Vietnamese will that was being eroded. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In his review of General Westmoreland’s biography, Hannah writes:<\/p>\n

… [General] Westmoreland mentions several factors that prolonged the war, but … we are entitled to conclude that he did not regard these factors likely to be decisive. Indeed, he tells us he suffered these impediments because he believed that “success would eventually be ours.” But it was not. Why not?<\/b><\/p>\n

General Westmoreland does not directly answer the question but the answer emerges without being stated. We ran out of time. This is the tragedy of Vietnam – we were fighting for time rather than space. And time ran out.<\/p>\n

In the introductory chapter to this book we posed the question – how could we have done so well in tactics but failed so miserably in strategy? The answer we postulated then – a failure in strategic military doctrine manifested itself on the battlefield. Because it did not focus on the political aim to be achieved – containment of North Vietnamese expansion – our so-called strategy was never a strategy at all. At best it could be called a kind of grand tactics.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll think about it more and comment. I also participated in the post-speech blogger conference call…more on that as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not good enough…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}