“That
no instruction should have been drawn from constant and adverse experience;
that the same confidence should have repeatedly grown from the same failures”
------Edward Gibbon, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”
As noted in the previous post, Gibbon’s
observations concerning Europe’s persistent commitment to failure and folly
reveal a truly troubling aspect of human nature. The internal logic governing every conflict
in which sacrifice must be vindicated by more sacrifice quickly assumes command
of the commanders. The conflict in short
order assumes its own justification often pushing the conflict past
the ‘sublime’ into the ‘ridiculous’, conflicts that can transcend years,
decades, even centuries. What is
remarkable is that so little instruction is drawn from the experience. Experience, it appears, does not teach;
lessons go unlearned.
A few brief recent examples may be
instructive concerning the changing nature of war and the lessons
unlearned. The American Civil War was a
bloody affair, killing nearly 600,000 men as a result of poor sanitation and
treatment of wounds, but also because the tactics of war were not equal to the
innovations in weapons and armament.
With the introduction of the mini-ball and later the repeating rifle
weapons became much deadlier at longer ranges producing horrendous casualties
whenever a general ordered a frontal assault on an entrenched defensive position.
The Federals suffered great loss at Fredericksburg,
Lee and his Confederates were to do the same a few months later at
Gettysburg. Yet as late as 1864 we find
General Sherman making just such an assault at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia with
the wholly predictable results.
One would think that lessons would be
learned. But even though the European
powers had observers on both sides of the line during the American Civil War,
as well as the British engagements in the Boer conflict in South Africa later
in the century, the lessons went unheeded.
Accordingly throughout the First World War the commanding Generals could
think of no better strategy than to amass thousands of men and have them walk
in tight formations into the teeth of machine gun fire. One would assume that one or two encounters
would be sufficient to teach a lesson that should have been learned decades
earlier by simple observation.
Experience, it appears, proved powerless to instruct, and the world was
left to witness attack after attack for four long years. At the Battle of the Somme alone the British
suffered 60,000 casualties on the first
day, but the battle raged on for another two months. Repeatedly employing the same tactics both
sides suffered losses of over a million men before it was over, with very
little ground gained or lost. As late as
1917 at Ypres, the British force advanced again this time gaining only a few
miles at a cost of a quarter of a million men before they were driven
back. In the end it wasn’t the military
that found a solution but the civilian leadership that demanded the
introduction of tanks and mortars in a last ditch effort to break the
stalemate. Such is the folly of war.
April 30 marked the 40th
anniversary of the fall of Saigon. From
the beginning of the recent conflicts in the Middle East we have been assured
by our leadership, citing the examples of Algeria and Viet Nam, that we will
win these ‘wars’ against an ever growing insurgency throughout the region. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Yemen and Syria
the Middle East is exploding before our very eyes as the insurgent forces
gather strength. Still we employ many of
the same tactics, losing in the bargain the hearts and minds of those in the
region. Not only have we failed to learn
the military lessons, but we failed to learn the more important historical
lesson: that as is in the case of the Crusades so it was with Algeria and
Viet Nam. We lost those conflicts, it was in all the papers.
Experience has proven powerless to instruct.
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