The best defense.....
is not a good offense. The best defense correctly balances solid defensive tactics, strategies and execution with the ability to go on the offensive when required. Over-commitment to offense leaves the defense weak and allows a quick counter-attack if the offense drops the ball.
I think the main problem here is in the sport metaphor used for wars. In America, two sports reign supreme. The first is baseball. In this sport, offense is completely separated from defense. One team tries to score, and the other team stops them. When the engagement ends through the completion of three outs, the teams change sides and try again. And the battle is over after a set number of turns.
Baseball as a war analogy, then, is like fighting under the Marquis de Queensbury rules. The engagement is considered a gentlemanly contest of wills and strength, and is fought under strict limitations. This is nothing like a war. This idea, however, is often used as a straw-man by proponents of the Iraq invasion and of torturing "enemy combatants". If they won't play by the rules, why should we? The answer, of course, is that's the only way we can differentiate ourselves from those we label as terrorists.
The other American sport, the sport of "real men"(tm), is American Football. The kind of football you play with your hands. Many football fans talk about the "gridiron" like it is a war, and this seems to be the primary metaphor for war used in the USA. Yet this is also an extremely flawed metaphor. One team is on "offense", and they control the ball and the clock. They move steadily towards their objective. Sometimes they are tackled and pushed back, but ultimately they get four tries to win a battle. If they win, they get another four tries towards the next objective. If you have the ball, you have control.
As a war metaphor, this fails in many ways. In a war, there is no ball. There are usually several areas of engagement at once. Furthermore, any unprotected area can become a new engagement at any time. If the enemy senses a weakness, they can pick up and move the fight to somewhere more advantageous to themselves. Or, if you will, there are multiple balls in play, and anybody can add or remove a new ball at any time at any place on the field.
Another major problem with the football metaphor is the specialization in the "troops". As originally played, the men on the field played both offense and defense, and the game was fluid. Today, football has specific offensive and defensive players, as well as an entire "special teams" unit. A team can have 46 men on the game-day roster, of which only 11 play at any time, and substitutions are freely allowed with no cost. This means that the player is trained on only one kind of tactics, and is not therefore as ready to deal with changes of ball possession that leave a defensive player with the ball or forces a quarterback to make a score-saving tackle.
In war troops attacking a target may be forced to become a defender in an instant. We do have "special teams", like pilots, artillery units, and medical units. But war is a highly fluid enterprise, and most personnel trained in a specific discipline are also generalists. Just the other day I was talking to a military air traffic controller who served in Afghanistan. He worked 8 hour shifts on the radar, and then did 8 hours of digging trenches, laying cable, or setting up camp. In the army, you can't just return punts.
So let's say that we buy into the idea that the best defense is a good offense. The football metaphor works. And we send our troops oversees to prevent the enemy from fighting us here. I'm sure we can all imagine that. So, what are the chances that our offense play works?
From http://www.footballoutsiders.com/ramblings.php?p=48&cat=1 I state the cost of a "turnover" at a net loss of four points for the offensive team. Looking at this year's NFL stats, I see that the ratio of touchdowns to giveaways in the NFL is about 2-1. So that's 14 points scored for every 4 lost. Or, if an offensive war is a football game, the odds of our "offensive" preventing the "defense" from "scoring" an attack on the US is 14-4. Which means that an offensive strategy has a 28% chance of allowing another attack on the US.
Much of the rest of the world plays soccer, or "football where you use your feet". And it's common knowledge in those countries that an all-out attack moving forward into the enemy end of the field leaves you wide open for a counter-attack. There are even teams built to this specification, with 8 solid defenders and 1 or 2 speedy men who have the job of getting a loose ball up the field past the over-stretched defenders and beating the lone goalkeeper with a quick bomb in the back of the net, And these teams, while not exciting to watch, can win championships.
Obviously I'm not arguing that the invasion of Iraq is a football game. Quite the contrary, in fact. But I do believe that the average American viewpoint of war is that of a "football game" or a "chess match". And in those terms, the common wisdom that "The Best Defense is a Good Offense" is statistically valid, but it still means you expect your offense to give up points. It just means you expect to score more in the long run, and those will be enough to win the game.
In the case of Iraq, I'm not sure what the "points" are. Or what the point is. But we've been told that we need to attack them there or they will attack us here. Even the football metaphor shows us that it's not an either-or situation. If we press there, we should expect them to force a fumble every now and them, and we should expect them to run a few of them back on us. And given that they can create a new ball any time they want to, well, the likelihood of them "scoring" is greater than in football. The only way to prevent them from scoring is to either build a wall around the end zone, or get them to stop playing the game. The first is the job homeland security is failing to do, and the second can only be done by coming to some agreement that the game is over. And yes, there are a few hard-core people who will not give up until we convert to their religion. But, frankly, those people are on both sides, and it's up to the rest of us to come to an agreement and make a peace that it costs the terrorists more to violate than they gain from continuing their current path.
I think the main problem here is in the sport metaphor used for wars. In America, two sports reign supreme. The first is baseball. In this sport, offense is completely separated from defense. One team tries to score, and the other team stops them. When the engagement ends through the completion of three outs, the teams change sides and try again. And the battle is over after a set number of turns.
Baseball as a war analogy, then, is like fighting under the Marquis de Queensbury rules. The engagement is considered a gentlemanly contest of wills and strength, and is fought under strict limitations. This is nothing like a war. This idea, however, is often used as a straw-man by proponents of the Iraq invasion and of torturing "enemy combatants". If they won't play by the rules, why should we? The answer, of course, is that's the only way we can differentiate ourselves from those we label as terrorists.
The other American sport, the sport of "real men"(tm), is American Football. The kind of football you play with your hands. Many football fans talk about the "gridiron" like it is a war, and this seems to be the primary metaphor for war used in the USA. Yet this is also an extremely flawed metaphor. One team is on "offense", and they control the ball and the clock. They move steadily towards their objective. Sometimes they are tackled and pushed back, but ultimately they get four tries to win a battle. If they win, they get another four tries towards the next objective. If you have the ball, you have control.
As a war metaphor, this fails in many ways. In a war, there is no ball. There are usually several areas of engagement at once. Furthermore, any unprotected area can become a new engagement at any time. If the enemy senses a weakness, they can pick up and move the fight to somewhere more advantageous to themselves. Or, if you will, there are multiple balls in play, and anybody can add or remove a new ball at any time at any place on the field.
Another major problem with the football metaphor is the specialization in the "troops". As originally played, the men on the field played both offense and defense, and the game was fluid. Today, football has specific offensive and defensive players, as well as an entire "special teams" unit. A team can have 46 men on the game-day roster, of which only 11 play at any time, and substitutions are freely allowed with no cost. This means that the player is trained on only one kind of tactics, and is not therefore as ready to deal with changes of ball possession that leave a defensive player with the ball or forces a quarterback to make a score-saving tackle.
In war troops attacking a target may be forced to become a defender in an instant. We do have "special teams", like pilots, artillery units, and medical units. But war is a highly fluid enterprise, and most personnel trained in a specific discipline are also generalists. Just the other day I was talking to a military air traffic controller who served in Afghanistan. He worked 8 hour shifts on the radar, and then did 8 hours of digging trenches, laying cable, or setting up camp. In the army, you can't just return punts.
So let's say that we buy into the idea that the best defense is a good offense. The football metaphor works. And we send our troops oversees to prevent the enemy from fighting us here. I'm sure we can all imagine that. So, what are the chances that our offense play works?
From http://www.footballoutsiders.com/ramblings.php?p=48&cat=1 I state the cost of a "turnover" at a net loss of four points for the offensive team. Looking at this year's NFL stats, I see that the ratio of touchdowns to giveaways in the NFL is about 2-1. So that's 14 points scored for every 4 lost. Or, if an offensive war is a football game, the odds of our "offensive" preventing the "defense" from "scoring" an attack on the US is 14-4. Which means that an offensive strategy has a 28% chance of allowing another attack on the US.
Much of the rest of the world plays soccer, or "football where you use your feet". And it's common knowledge in those countries that an all-out attack moving forward into the enemy end of the field leaves you wide open for a counter-attack. There are even teams built to this specification, with 8 solid defenders and 1 or 2 speedy men who have the job of getting a loose ball up the field past the over-stretched defenders and beating the lone goalkeeper with a quick bomb in the back of the net, And these teams, while not exciting to watch, can win championships.
Obviously I'm not arguing that the invasion of Iraq is a football game. Quite the contrary, in fact. But I do believe that the average American viewpoint of war is that of a "football game" or a "chess match". And in those terms, the common wisdom that "The Best Defense is a Good Offense" is statistically valid, but it still means you expect your offense to give up points. It just means you expect to score more in the long run, and those will be enough to win the game.
In the case of Iraq, I'm not sure what the "points" are. Or what the point is. But we've been told that we need to attack them there or they will attack us here. Even the football metaphor shows us that it's not an either-or situation. If we press there, we should expect them to force a fumble every now and them, and we should expect them to run a few of them back on us. And given that they can create a new ball any time they want to, well, the likelihood of them "scoring" is greater than in football. The only way to prevent them from scoring is to either build a wall around the end zone, or get them to stop playing the game. The first is the job homeland security is failing to do, and the second can only be done by coming to some agreement that the game is over. And yes, there are a few hard-core people who will not give up until we convert to their religion. But, frankly, those people are on both sides, and it's up to the rest of us to come to an agreement and make a peace that it costs the terrorists more to violate than they gain from continuing their current path.