Thoughts on the secrecy of military plans
One of my friends on LJ recently mentioned censorship and made the distinction between moral censorship, which is always bad, and military censorship, which is bad but occasionally necessary. I don't know that I accept that military censorship is ever good, either. I talked briefly with someone else about it and because this kind of conversation tends to get swiftly bogged down into historical arguments, one of my key points was ignored - and I have a mind to express it more fully.
I said, roughly, that secret information stinks. It stinks because . . .
1. We don't know where it came from
2. Or the agenda of the person or people who provided the secret information.
3. We don't know the process through which it was decided that any given piece of secret information was worthwhile
4. Or the agendas, educations, morals, etc. of the people who decided what information matters.
Taken together, I think that anyone should be deeply suspicious of secrets information, including military plans. These guys are not infallible, as gets proven pretty much every war.
(The other side is that publicly available information is generally regarded to be the best information there is. Science, jurisprudence and democratic governments are all based on the principles of freely available accurate information - so is capitalism, too, at least in theory, but that never gets put even a little bit into practice. There's a whole lot of reasons to believe that information being free creates better information faster and, really, no reasons to suspect this wouldn't be true of the military.)
Above all of that is the fact that the idea that secrets are necessary to successful war is axiomatic. It is just assumed by everyone, everywhere to be the case. But, it is wholly untested! And military history is full of untested axioms that ended up being untrue when actually tested.
I am aware this belief might be ideological and not practical - because it has been fully untested, there's no information to say one way or the other. In every war in history, both sides have loved their secrets. Every victory and every defeat has been accomplished by people who were not free with their information, much less fairly assessing critiques of their information. There is simply no meaningful information with which to directly talk about the subject - that it has always been the case isn't really a good argument, however.
And on a whole different level, I again wonder why people believe the military to operate differently than every other human enterprise. This seems such an intellectually indefensible position given even very recent military history much less pre-modern military history. These guys make mistakes. They make big mistakes. They're no less corrupt and venal than any other person in a position of power. But the military seems to be the last widespread vestige of the cult of the hero - where individuals with superior powers and destiny are responsible for the fate of the nation and, indeed, the world. We have dispensed with that in almost all over areas of life - we no longer belief that kings and queens work, we've consistently diminished the power of church leaders to the point where most of them are irrelevant. The only other area where we believe in the heroic ideal seems to be business, where it's just assumed that CEOs have unearthly powers, and like military leaders this belief is in the face of giant volumes of evidence to the contrary. But it does make it hard to discuss the military because all of the military's faults tend to be shifted off to civilian leaders while their successes are theirs and theirs alone (so people focus on Eisenhower and MacArthur more than the incredible industrial capacity of the US - the war was won by generals and soldiers, not factory workers, though the war was really won by factory workers).
Come to think of it, that's how capitalism gets discussed, too. It's like all the poorest nations aren't also capitalist (with the exception of Zimbabwe). But while praising the virtues of capitalism, always bringing up countries like the US and Japan and Germany, it's like Haiti and Somalia don't exist . . .
Which is probably how it's all linked together - a lot of people worship power and wish to curry its favor. I know that's the worst part of the existence of power that it creates a strong urge in many people to love it regardless of its form, who possesses it or how it is used. I mean, I've gotten letters from dudes who want to see monarchy return! And I've met hundreds of people who have really admired Adolf Hitler for all of his perceived virtues - how he "unified" Germany and made it "strong" again. Which sort of ignores in 12 years of rule he levelled the country and killed tens of millions of people - but a lot of people have a twisted admiration for him. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it's hard to keep everything I know in my head all at the same time so I constantly find myself surprised by things I know!
I said, roughly, that secret information stinks. It stinks because . . .
1. We don't know where it came from
2. Or the agenda of the person or people who provided the secret information.
3. We don't know the process through which it was decided that any given piece of secret information was worthwhile
4. Or the agendas, educations, morals, etc. of the people who decided what information matters.
Taken together, I think that anyone should be deeply suspicious of secrets information, including military plans. These guys are not infallible, as gets proven pretty much every war.
(The other side is that publicly available information is generally regarded to be the best information there is. Science, jurisprudence and democratic governments are all based on the principles of freely available accurate information - so is capitalism, too, at least in theory, but that never gets put even a little bit into practice. There's a whole lot of reasons to believe that information being free creates better information faster and, really, no reasons to suspect this wouldn't be true of the military.)
Above all of that is the fact that the idea that secrets are necessary to successful war is axiomatic. It is just assumed by everyone, everywhere to be the case. But, it is wholly untested! And military history is full of untested axioms that ended up being untrue when actually tested.
I am aware this belief might be ideological and not practical - because it has been fully untested, there's no information to say one way or the other. In every war in history, both sides have loved their secrets. Every victory and every defeat has been accomplished by people who were not free with their information, much less fairly assessing critiques of their information. There is simply no meaningful information with which to directly talk about the subject - that it has always been the case isn't really a good argument, however.
And on a whole different level, I again wonder why people believe the military to operate differently than every other human enterprise. This seems such an intellectually indefensible position given even very recent military history much less pre-modern military history. These guys make mistakes. They make big mistakes. They're no less corrupt and venal than any other person in a position of power. But the military seems to be the last widespread vestige of the cult of the hero - where individuals with superior powers and destiny are responsible for the fate of the nation and, indeed, the world. We have dispensed with that in almost all over areas of life - we no longer belief that kings and queens work, we've consistently diminished the power of church leaders to the point where most of them are irrelevant. The only other area where we believe in the heroic ideal seems to be business, where it's just assumed that CEOs have unearthly powers, and like military leaders this belief is in the face of giant volumes of evidence to the contrary. But it does make it hard to discuss the military because all of the military's faults tend to be shifted off to civilian leaders while their successes are theirs and theirs alone (so people focus on Eisenhower and MacArthur more than the incredible industrial capacity of the US - the war was won by generals and soldiers, not factory workers, though the war was really won by factory workers).
Come to think of it, that's how capitalism gets discussed, too. It's like all the poorest nations aren't also capitalist (with the exception of Zimbabwe). But while praising the virtues of capitalism, always bringing up countries like the US and Japan and Germany, it's like Haiti and Somalia don't exist . . .
Which is probably how it's all linked together - a lot of people worship power and wish to curry its favor. I know that's the worst part of the existence of power that it creates a strong urge in many people to love it regardless of its form, who possesses it or how it is used. I mean, I've gotten letters from dudes who want to see monarchy return! And I've met hundreds of people who have really admired Adolf Hitler for all of his perceived virtues - how he "unified" Germany and made it "strong" again. Which sort of ignores in 12 years of rule he levelled the country and killed tens of millions of people - but a lot of people have a twisted admiration for him. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it's hard to keep everything I know in my head all at the same time so I constantly find myself surprised by things I know!