Stardate 20021117.1717

(On Screen): In response to an article I posted yesterday, Bill Quick sez:

Because, you see, despite all the smoke and mirrors, despite all the election victories, despite all the triumphalism from warbloggers and warmongers, despite all the warterror emanating from the pacifist left, nothing has changed!

Got that? NOTHING HAS CHANGED!

Saddam is still in power in Iraq, and in full control of his weapons of mass destruction. The foul Oilbag Princes and their vast terror supporting-and-financing system is still in place and functioning perfectly. Despite rumor of revolution, the Mad Mullahs still rule in Iran, the Boy Dentist still oppresses Syria and supports terror training camps in the Bekkaa Valley, Hizbollah still rules southern Lebanon and attacks Israel, Yassir Arafat is still in charge in Palestine and his minions are bombing and murdering to this day...

I ran into this problem when I was an engineer. Bill isn't correct: a lot has changed. Our problem here is that perceived progress doesn't always match real progress.

Outsiders gauge progress by major accomplishments, substantial achievements, deadlines made. On that kind of basis, progress seems very digital. Nothing apparently happens for a long time, and then suddenly a major amount of achievement seemingly happens all at once.

The reality is that progress is very linear and quite gradual, but a lot of it is invisible. But a lot of that is unglamorous preparation which is nonetheless essential. That's also how it is in war.

The progress of a war that you didn't start but which you win (which, presumably, we all hope we'll do on this one) goes through three main phases: stabilization, buildup, counteroffensive.

In the first phase, your enemy is on the offensive and what you're trying to do is bring his offensive to an end. In the Pacific in 1942, that happened at Midway. In the North African campaign there was much ebb and flow, but the British finally stabilized the situation in the Battle of Alam Halfa.

Once you've managed to halt your enemy, then there will be a period of seeming stalemate, where no one seems to be doing much of anything. Sometimes that means everyone's sitting on their asses; sometimes it means you get low level battle (or even high level battle) where no one seems to make any headway. But within this concept, what you're really doing is to build your strength.

In the Pacific war, this period is mainly marked by months of combat at Guadalcanal, as well as grinding battle on PNG. Macarthur and Halsey were able to make slow headway, but it was achingly slow.

But the reality was that much progress was being made during that period. It's just that it wasn't in the theater. Back home, workers were working like mad to create a huge new navy for the US, with the first major ships (most notably the Essex and her many sisters) coming off the blocks in late 1943. And to a great extent, once the US began pouring new carriers and destroyers and battleships into the Pacific, the US counteroffensive against Japan really kicked in and gained more and more speed.

So was there progress during the second half of 1942 and most of 1943, before Essex launched? Of course there was; plenty of it. But it was slow, steady, plodding work in the shipyards; it was grinding tedium of code breakers working away reading Japanese communications. It was submarines shooting cargo ships, one at a time, whittling down the Japanese supply of raw materials. It was totally unglamorous, almost invisible, and it was the foundation on which the rest of the war was won.

So it is here. Bill complains because we haven't gone on the offensive against Iraq yet. Patience, grasshopper; it will come. But the intervening time has not been wasted; much has been done. All of it was important, none of it was particularly glamorous, and almost none of it hit the headlines. But progress has been made nonetheless.

For instance, Bill and I both know that everyone's public protestations notwithstanding, Saudi Arabia is one of our enemies in this war and we're eventually going to have to deal with them. (In good time.) But in the mean time, it was important to try to reduce our vulnerability to Saudi acts, and one of the most important things which had to be done was to move our primary regional command center, and our most important airbase, out of Saudi Arabia and into somewhere much more reliable, which turned out to be Qatar. That's not a process you can really do in a couple of weeks; it's taken most of a year. But it's done now; the new base in Qatar is open and ready to go, and General Franks has moved his headquarters there from Florida. Last January, Saudi Arabia was in a position to be able to cripple us by refusing to let us use their facilities. Now they have far less ability to affect our operations, because we don't really need their facilities. (They'd be useful, but they're no longer essential.)

That's this war's equivalent of building the Essex. It's unglamorous; it's slow; it's painful; and we can't win without it. But it's done now. We're getting near to being ready to go onto the offensive, which is what Bill wants to see.

But going on the offensive before you're ready is a prescription for failure. War is a complex business, and anyone who ignores the overwhelming importance of logistics will be confused by how modern wars are planned and fought.

In this particular war, it was also necessary to lay a lot of political groundwork, but that's all done now, too. Yes, it would have been nicer if it had been done faster, but given that the logistics was going to take this long anyway there was little benefit in trying to make the political process move faster, and though it ground slowly, it ground fine indeed. Would any of us have believed, in July, that going into December the US would have a reasonable congressional mandate for war in Iraq and a unanimous UNSC resolution supporting us? I sure didn't expect it.

War is very complicated.

And it's also very slow. When an information-age military finally starts to fight, the resulting combat can be extremely rapid. But part of the reason why is that information-age war requires even more elaborate preparation than any previous kind of war. It's worth the wait, though, because it gives you an overwhelming victory at a low price in blood. I'm in no hurry to sacrifice American soldiers and sailors unnecessarily.