{"id":16,"date":"2007-06-12T11:43:15","date_gmt":"2007-06-12T10:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=16"},"modified":"2012-05-05T11:24:20","modified_gmt":"2012-05-05T10:24:20","slug":"history-repeats-wiser-heads-than-bush-and-blair%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=16","title":{"rendered":"History repeats (wiser heads than Bush and Blair)"},"content":{"rendered":"

General Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz (01\/06\/1780 – 16\/11\/1831) wrote between 1816 and 1830 his acclaimed and (even now in the 21st Century) influentially pivotal text ‘On War<\/em>‘.<\/p>\n

‘On War<\/em>‘ is the strategic thesis that effectively dictates what will win\u00a0and what will lose the modern military battle.<\/p>\n

Von Clausewitz’s thought-provoking exploration in to the logical rule of war is required reading at most modern military colleges – the Army college at Sandhurst is no exception.<\/p>\n

The learned General makes it plain that ‘a war should never be fought on two fronts’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Book 6, Chapter 7 – The Offensive Battle – is particularly interesting in the following observation of the flanking\/outflanking manoeuvre:
\n‘To be able in turn to operate with success against the flanks of an enemy, whose aim is to turn our line, it is necessary to have a well chosen and well prepared position.’<\/em><\/p>\n

Indeed Von Clausewitz’s contemporary, the Prussian Field Marshall Alfred Graf von Schlieffen sought to ignore this rule when he put forward a plan to fight a campaign on two fronts.<\/p>\n

Von Schlieffen’s plan was later executed by the advancing German forces in the early stages of the First World War and resulted in a massive, costly (in human terms) and unbelievably painful period of trench warfare in which the better-armed,\u00a0better-fed and better-equipped Germans comprehensively lost the battle.<\/p>\n

It seems that two modern-day Generals haven’t read von Clausewitz’s definitive philosphy on warfare.<\/p>\n

Bush and Blair.<\/p>\n

It was a huge error in military judgement for Bush and Blair to commit a massive amount of military materiel to the open-ended and undefined ‘War or Terror’ which has resulted in the wilful slaughter that now defines the US-led invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n

But this error was compounded and magnified a hundred times when taken in the context of the other two<\/em> military fronts that the US and UK were already fighting.<\/p>\n

Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Yes, the war in Afghanistan is being fought on two<\/em> fronts – and that’s something worth reminding ourselves of:<\/p>\n

Afghanistan is currently host to the NATO-led military force which includes a large number of US forces.<\/p>\n

Outside of this deployment – and external to\u00a0this military structure, chain of command and communications model –\u00a0are the US-led forces (almost exclusively composed of US ‘Special Forces’) who are fighting the local<\/em> ‘War on Terror’.<\/p>\n

So we have two distinct military operations in Afghanistan:
\n*\u00a0The ‘regular’ forces that comprise the NATO operation and,
\n*\u00a0The ‘special’ forces that comprise the ‘War on Terror’.<\/p>\n

And in Iraq we have a third military operation; tens of thousands of staff fighting under the US-led ‘War on Terror’ (Iraqi Chapter) banner.<\/p>\n

So the ‘alliance’ is actually fighting a war on three<\/em> fronts.<\/p>\n

I wonder what von Clausewitz would have said about that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

General Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz (01\/06\/1780 – 16\/11\/1831) wrote between 1816 and 1830 his acclaimed and (even now in the 21st Century) influentially pivotal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}