From SANE Works' Colonel Thomas Snodgrass (USAF retired) -

In this part I, Colonel Snodgrass begins to apply his strategic critique of Limited War in an affirmative manner to address the problem of Iran. While it is meant as a starting place for a serious discussion, it is light years beyond anything available and will quickly become the text against which others will be judged.

Why are we at war?

To answer that question during World War II, the US Army Signal Corps produced a series of seven films under the supervision of Frank Capra (director of the post–war Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”) entitled “Why We Fight.” The film series explained with graphics and newsreel footage the issues, strategies, and consequences involved in our war to the death with the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy. While the presentations in these films would be considered “dated” and “unsophisticated” by today’s standards, they were effective in their time to unite the American public behind the US war effort on the homefront as well as overseas.

Such unity of American effort is woefully lacking today. Obviously a conspicuous weakness of the Bush administration. But President Bush’ war team is not just bad at communication. Indeed, arguably, they are bad at communication because their message is so bad. For example, we were told for three years effectively that all was going as well as can be expected in Iraq. But the truth was and is that we are losing the war because we did nothing to cut off the flow of money, arms, personnel, and strategy flowing across the borders, notably the southern one with Iran. When a belligerent is not winning in a counterinsurgency, it is losing. Only after losing the last mid-term election, are we told that a reassessment is in order. But even then, the answer was a surge without any clear rationale for how the surge was going to actually make a difference beyond platitudes and wish lists.

More to the point, the Bush administration has remained steadfast in its resolve not to identify the enemy to the American people. We are only told that we are fighting terrorism and terrorists. At times, we are told they are radical Islamists who have somehow hijacked the noble religion of peace. But had President Bush made clear that our enemy is every nation, every regime, every network, every conspiracy, and every individual who preaches, teaches and advocates Shari’a (Islamic law), which is a political ideology bent on world domination, the ability to communicate war goals, progress and strategy would have become infinitely more effectively. Instead, he and his defense team insist we are fighting some kind of tactic without faces other than a few al Qaeda types which leads people to wonder why what we are doing in Iraq and even in Afghanistan.

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