Here are the five points:

1. Making Afghans responsible for their own security within two years
2. Training and operationalizing a 352,000-man Afghan security force
3. An enduring partnership with the United States providing training and counter-insurgency guidance
4. Pursuing a negotiated peace with the Taliban
5. Building a global consensus for peace

Afghanization—the practical consequence of the withdrawal of American forces—requires the strengthening of the Afghan military to withstand the Taliban. Elements fundamental to its success involve improving and modernizing the Afghan military, pacifying rural areas, strengthening the national political apparatus, delivering essential services while building a viable economy and, most importantly, ensuring security for the people.

Subsidiary tasks include expanding and improving the police, establishing democratic institutions down to the village level, restructuring the agricultural economy away from opium production, and rooting out the Taliban infrastructure. Given the non-specific nature of goals four and five in the president’s plan, the three essentials of Afghanization are: self-defense, self-government, and self-development.

Neutralizing the Taliban infrastructure is critical to extricating the U.S./NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan for the past decade. In part, this overly long commitment resulted from misjudging the nature of the war from the start, thinking it would be relatively easy to destroy al Qaeda and replace the Taliban government that nurtured and protected the terrorists. What are the obstacles to successful Afghanization?

On the plus side, the Afghans are tough, resilient fighters who defeated Alexander the Great, thwarted British imperialism, humiliated the Soviets, and frustrated the U.S./NATO coalition. Molding the Afghans into a Western military image will be difficult. Unlike the Iraqis and Pakistanis, Afghans lack the British military tradition. That 86 percent of Afghan recruits are illiterate makes building a modern U.S.-style military a challenge. Leadership tends to be tribal and reflects the corruption rife in Afghan politics. Warriors abound but many of them are Taliban. Modern armies, however, require trained soldiers and effective leaders. Additionally, the security of advisors and trainers is integral to building a viable Afghan fighting force. So far, 20 percent of U.S. casualties have come at the hands of Afghan military personnel. This does not bode well for the advisory phase.

Item four in the Obama plan specifies a negotiated peace. Leverage is key to successful negotiations. President Obama declared, “A path to peace is now set before them (the Taliban). Those who refuse to walk it will face strong Afghan Security Forces, backed by the United States and our allies.” Is the president’s threat credible?

The Taliban knows that U.S. forces are leaving and 1,834 combat deaths (as of May 3, 2012,) have depleted American will. Given that Washington’s objective seems to be the extrication of U.S. combat forces by 2014, with an advisory contingent remaining, the enemy senses the “new day on the horizon” belongs to them. The Taliban responded to President Obama’s pre-dawn declaration with a daybreak attack within earshot of the U.S. embassy coupled to a strategic proclamation targeting U.S. military forces as well as Afghan security personnel and political leaders. Expect the Taliban to keep the pressure on during withdrawal.

The challenges of Afghanization mirror those of Vietnamization, which succeeded only in providing a patina for extracting U.S. forces from South Vietnam. The precursor to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam was the advisory and training phase that began in November 1961 but so failed to overcome cultural and military impediments that it required a massive U.S. military commitment starting in 1965 to forestall defeat. In 1969, when Vietnamization started in earnest, the original cultural and political challenges remained. Attempts to replicate the U.S. military structure focused on meeting the managerial imperatives of logistics rather than building armed forces able to withstand a North Vietnamese attack.

In the end, Vietnamization fulfilled President Richard Nixon’s vow to bring the troops home by the end of his first term. The president’s promise to South Vietnam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu to enforce the Paris Agreements of January 23, 1973 proved irrelevant following Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. Barely two years after the last U.S. troops departed South Vietnam, Saigon’s army disintegrated in the face of a concerted North Vietnamese attack. The South Vietnamese lacked military acumen and leadership and, most importantly, the will to fight … and so did the United States, whose Congress drastically cut appropriations needed to sustain the Industrial Age force Vietnamization rendered.

Afghanization succeeds only if it proceeds with a bodyguard of political and economic reforms compelling the Afghan people to fight for themselves. Otherwise, Afghanization only needs to endure until early November and the re-election of President Obama.

Dr. Earl Tilford is a military historian and fellow for the Middle East & terrorism with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. He currently lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he is writing a history of the University of Alabama in the 1960s.

First, understand the historical context. The Vietnam intervention resulted from a Cold War mindset that assumed the war in South Vietnam was part of a larger “communist plot for world domination.” That made Vietnam more important than it was. The resulting intervention into a local struggle tied U.S. prestige to a dubious cause. Lesson: Look closely at the local situation before commitments become irrevocable.

Second, there are dangers in incrementalism. It is a myth that the United States “blundered” into a Vietnam quagmire. American intervention resulted from a series of small, incremental steps, each seemingly low in risk. By the end of 1965, with over 100,000 American service personnel committed to Vietnam, the U.S. presence was hostage to a faulty policy. The political cost of getting out seemingly outweighed the military cost of staying in.

Third, there are limits to what military power can achieve. In 1961, when the Kennedy administration decided to “draw a line in the sand” in Vietnam, the general military assumption was that U.S. military power, sufficient to defeat Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan in less than four years, could easily handle an insurgency in South Vietnam supported by an impoverished military power in North Vietnam. Surely a nation reaching toward outer space had little to fear from a country where few people knew how to drive a car.

History shows that small nations and dedicated movements can defeat major powers. England defeated the Spanish Empire in the 16th century. The American Revolution succeeded against the British Empire. Japan defeated Russia in 1905.

In March 2003, with Operation Iraqi Freedom, the assumption was U.S. forces would be in Baghdad within a month. It took three weeks. Then the real war started and U.S. forces languished there for the next eight years.

Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant understood, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog that counts.”

Fourth, know your enemy. From the start of the Vietnam War, the fatal assumption was that Hanoi and the National Liberation Front—the Viet Cong—could be coerced with incrementally applied force. Their goals were not amenable to our logical frames of reference. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were willing to pay an enormous price for victory.

The “War on Terror” suffered from the failure to identify the enemy as Islamist fundamentalist-Jihadists determined to defeat the United States and, ultimately, bring down Judeo-Christian civilization. Knowing yourself corresponds with knowing the enemy.

Fifth, Americans are not patient. In 1946, General of the Army George C. Marshall stated, “America cannot fight a Seven Years’ War.” In 1968, the Tet Offensive occurred almost precisely seven years after the Kennedy administration drew the line in Vietnam. Frustrations grew throughout the subsequent administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, weakening public will.

Sixth, beware of open-ended commitments to regimes of dubious legitimacy. In Vietnam, first the United States committed its power and prestige to the support of Ngo Dinh Diem, a self-described “16th-century Spanish Catholic” who governed like a mandarin in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country struggling to throw off its colonial past. When in late 1963, Diem proved ineffective, the United States acquiesced in a coup resulting in a succession of military dictators.

History’s not so tidy that mistakes in the War on Terror are entirely analogous to those in Vietnam. The current war proceeded with an all-volunteer force, not a conscript-driven force. From October 2001 to the present, American military leadership, at every level, has been outstanding. The Bush administration’s big mistake was not clearly identifying the enemy. The Obama administration’s blunder was to set a deadline for withdrawal.

Wars are the most unpredictable of human endeavors, fraught with the unexpected and quite often,when strategically ill-conceived, much longer and bloodier than anticipated. That’s why over 2,000 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote, “War is a matter of vital importance; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied.”

Much ink has flowed over the recent apologies from President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and General John Allen, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, following the burning of copies of the Koran and their careless disposal. An apology may have been justified. A national mea culpa was not.

It’s now been over 65 years since the U.S. militarily defeated an enemy in a great crusade.

More than military strength accompanied the moniker, “Leader of the Free World.” American values of freedom and liberty were held up as standards to which all humanity should aspire. U.S. economic leadership surged to the fore between 1946 and the advent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. The world looked to the United States for moral leadership.

From 1953 to the present, for a variety of reasons, U.S. military forces never “closed the deal” in major conflicts, whether the effort in Korea, where a tense truce is still in effect two generations later; or the bug-out from Indochina culminating in the fall of Saigon in April 1975; or the ongoing retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which constitute nothing so much as “declaring victory and going home.”

Today, a test for world leadership is playing out. The Assad regime, connected politically and culturally to Tehran, relies on support from Moscow and Beijing. More than the fate of Israel is at stake. Leaders throughout the Arab world anxiously await the outcome. The strategic stakes involve global economic and political implications. Who leads? Short answer: no one. That means chaos until a leader emerges.

War remains an act of force to compel the enemy to do your will where the political outcome is paramount. The latter is strategically vital, encompassing as it does the reason for using military force. With the United States’ precipitous withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, standing aside while Mediterranean “powers” like Italy and France led in deposing Qaddafi, and now the political dithering by the White House over whether Israel should thwart Iran’s pledge to wipe it off the face of the earth—coupled with standing aside as Syrian forces slaughter their own—make it obvious that America views itself as one of many actors on a world stage rather than the director, producer, and leading player.

Strategic abdication is dangerous. American political culture, founded as it was on concepts of human liberty and freedom, is unique. It has also produced an economic powerhouse and a level of living unmatched in human history. The reality is that only the United States has the power and moral authority to maintain its position as a world leader. If this administration blows it, there are powers ready to step forward: China, Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Venezuela among them. Imagine a world in which these leaders articulate their visions for the world of the 21st century. In such a world, “American exceptionalism” will be as strategically irrelevant as Swiss or Finnish exceptionalism and, as Shakespeare put it, “full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

The world is at the precipice of strategic catastrophe. Israel may soon strike Iran. Leaders in Jerusalem know that if Assad reasserts control of Syria, his army will present a major threat on Israel’s northern border, especially since it is linked militarily with Hezbollah in Lebanon. To the south, where Egypt roils in social and political upheaval, a radical Islamist regime hostile to Israel is likely to emerge. If nothing is done, these regimes, linked to a nuclear-armed Tehran vowed to destroy Israel, will be the deciding strategic factor in the Middle East. This is the price of strategic abdication.

Now is the time for the United States to lead. If America fails, the world may descend into a dark and ominous future made more sinister by the moral imperatives of a radical religious ideology.

Used by permission of The Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College. 

In the mid-1960s, the Pittsburgh Steelers drafted Notre Dame’s Rocky Bleier. Unfortunately, Steeler management failed to protect the prized rookie with the paperwork necessary to take advantage of a myriad of available conscription-law loopholes, and Bleier ended up in Vietnam where a grenade blast tore apart his legs, almost ending his football career. After Bleier recovered to become a star running back, he revealed bitterness about only one aspect of his war experience. No one-not his training sergeants stateside, not his platoon leader, nor his company commander in Vietnam, no one-ever told him why he was there or what he was supposed to accomplish, other than to survive. Why? Because nobody knew the mission. Vietnam became the classic case of “systemic failure.” Then, as always, the fish rotted from the head down.

In 1970 and 1971, I served in Thailand as an Air Force intelligence officer. By then the war was lost. The objective seemed to be for top Air Force leaders, the generals I briefed and their staff officers, to get through the war with their careers intact. Meanwhile, an emboldened enemy attacked America’s retreating, increasingly demoralized forces. Today, a reinvigorated al Qaeda has seized the initiative in Iraq and Afghanistan, widened the war throughout Pakistan and Yemen, and struck twice in the last two months within the United States. American casualties are climbing.

Systemic failure is a bureaucratic phenomenon. Poor leadership generates a virulent uncertainty that infects and disables bureaucracies. The 16 agencies comprising the American intelligence communities each contain a plethora of sub-bureaucratic fiefdoms, many competing with one another for funding. That didn’t change during the Bush administration, not even after 9/11. But at least then, although the Bush administration made numerous strategic missteps, the intelligence community believed the president “had their back.”

President Barack Obama’s worldview is inimical to the primary intelligence ethos: think of the worst possible challenge the enemy might pose and prepare to counter it. Intelligence professionals see the enemy with frightening clarity. It’s their job to do so. Obama, on the other hand, pretends the world wants to love us-and to enable this love, all we have to do is show how “good-hearted” we are, and maybe then, our enemies will shower us with kindness rather than attack us with the most deadly of intentions. Administration attitudes and policies have inspired a timidity that can wreak havoc throughout the intelligence community. Here are a few examples:

First, threats to investigate the intelligence community for alleged misdeeds associated with water boarding and other interrogation techniques-mostly fantasies in the minds of the far left-instilled uncertainty throughout the community. Bureaucrats are by nature cautious when it comes to turf and retaining their potential for promotion. An overly cautious intelligence community is also an insipid one.

Second, sending terrorists back to the battlefield, rather than detaining them for the duration of the war, is stupid squared. The Bush administration started this inane policy out of a desire to appease the left. The Obama administration supports and seems determined to continue this policy because it fits its worldview. This demoralizes not only the intelligence community; it also inspires the intelligence community to doubt the wisdom and commitment of the administration. The U.S. Constitution does not offer the same protections to foreigners that it does to U.S. citizens. Furthermore, Geneva Convention protections that govern enemy combatants do not apply to terrorists. Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest said it best, “War means fighting and fighting means killing.”

Third, bureaucracies fearing possible budget cuts become overly cautious. Managers, by nature, are not warriors. Instead of taking risks, they enforce caution to avoid attracting unwelcome attention. The systemic reality is that bureaucrats focus on sustaining their bureaucracies, and thus protecting their own careers.

Fourth, the fact that political appointees head the CIA, Justice Department, and Homeland Security, and that the National Director of Intelligence is also a political appointee, is dangerous. There needs to be a system for picking professionals from within the community for top leadership positions. Sometimes the appointees are competent, Tom Ridge being an example. They will, however, reflect the mindset of the administration in power. And when the administration is conflicted and uncertain, then the fish rots from the head down.

Getting back to football. On Thursday, the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Texas Longhorns played for the national championship. Alabama’s Nick Saban and Texas head coach, Mack Brown, knew only one team would claim college football’s top spot, and nobody but the loser would remember who came in second. Their staffs studied their respective opponents and worked out game plans to minimize their vulnerabilities and maximize their strengths. Every assistant coach and every player knew the mission. The best-prepared team, the one most determined to win, would prevail. The Obama administrations could learn a lot in Tuscaloosa and Austin.

In 1944, B-24 Liberators taking off from a base in Italy began exploding when they “rotated,” after the pilot pulled back on the yoke bringing up the nose of the aircraft. Planes fully loaded with fuel and bombs blew apart. Debris littering the runway stopped operations, meaning that the day’s planned bombing mission either went on with aircraft already airborne or was completely cancelled. Additionally, each incident destroyed a B-24 bomber and cost the lives of 10 crewmen.

Army investigators soon discovered the cause: When the plane’s nose came up, the spring in the front landing gear extended to detonate an explosive charge. It was a case of sabotage, probably carried out by an American soldier.

Further investigations focused on an enlisted man working in maintenance who was sending home large sums of cash. When questioned, he stated that the windfall resulted from luck at poker. When his poker partners told how much they had lost, the sum paled in comparison to the amounts going into the suspect’s bank account back home. After further interrogation, he admitted German agents paid him to sabotage the planes. The wing commander convened a court-martial that convicted him of treason, sabotage, and murder. The death sentence was carried out immediately. It was wartime. We knew the enemy and what to do.

The “alleged human-made disasterist,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attack on Christmas Day, succeeded. Why? And what are the lessons?

First, know your enemy. Abdulmutallab is a terrorist and not a “human-made disasterist.” Second, his acts were not “alleged,” as President Obama stated on December 28. He detonated a bomb on an airliner. Fortunately, it failed to explode. Had it done so, everyone on board would have been killed along with innocent people below celebrating Christmas with their families in their homes. Third, it was clearly a case of Islamic terrorism for which al Qaeda in Yemen claimed responsibility.

The definition of modern terrorism is, “an act of violence perpetrated against innocents to achieve a political purpose.” This act fits the definition. The airliner was loaded with innocents: civilians, men, women, and children, people of many religious convictions, Americans and non-Americans. Additionally, since the timing coincided with an established religious holiday-Christmas-it should be classified a “hate crime,” thus intensifying the penalties. Expect those charges just after it snows in Gitmo.

Although no one was killed, the Christmas attack succeeded in at least three ways:

First, hundreds of people endured hours of inconvenient post-event interrogation. Many missed connecting flights. Friends and relatives spent Christmas Day anxiously awaiting news from loved ones on the flight. This was its lowest order of success.

Second, terrorists often carry out attacks to prompt an over-reaction. Certainly the U.S. national security apparatus must react, but the reaction should be well thought out and effective. After a sickeningly hesitant start, the reaction more resembles a mother goose flapping her wings. So far the response involves expanding existing figurative boxes that must be checked: more frisking, going through luggage, hassling everyone so as to not seem insensitive towards anyone, making travel even more uncomfortable than it already is by keeping passengers in their seats an hour before landing. The next step may be to insist passengers shut the blinds on the window so they can’t tell when the plane is landing. The sound of flaps coming down and landing gear locking into place, however, cannot be muffled. A determined human-made disasterist will still know when to punch the “gateway to paradise” button.

Third, the attack will render a long-term economic effect. Today’s traveling public looks forward to air travel like they do visits to the dentist. Terrorists persist because terrorism works and it is cheap. The total cost to al Qaeda for 9/11 was less $500,000; half the cost of a single cruise missile. They killed almost 3,000 people and destroyed $80 billion in property.

Wars cannot be won unless the nation under attack understands it is in a war, the nature of the aggressor, and the enemy’s goals. The Obama administration refuses to acknowledge that the United States is at war. Worse, it continues to blame the Bush administration rather than al Qaeda for the current “overseas contingency operations.” The administration also refuses to acknowledge the nature of the enemy. Dubbing them purveyors of “human-made disasters” rather than “terrorists” has all the strategic acumen of sticking one’s head in the sand to avoid recognizing a threat.

There have been two terrorist attacks in the United States since last November, with Maj. Nidal Hassan’s at Fort Hood, Texas being the first. Terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq are up. The scent of blood carries far, and our enemies sense our weakness. If the United States is en route to a human-made disaster, it is one of our own making.

Within one week, North Korea detonated a nuclear device, restarted its nuclear-production facilities, fired a half dozen or so short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan, and abrogated the 1953 truce that ended fighting along the 38th parallel. The Kim Jong Il regime took this final step after the South Korean government announced it was joining the Proliferation Security Initiative involving 90 nations committed to stopping the maritime shipping of banned nuclear goods.

President Barack Obama responded by calling last Monday’s underground nuclear test a “blatant violation” of international law while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that North Korea faces “consequences” for its nuclear and missile tests and its “provocative and belligerent” threats. If the earth shook, it was from the aftershock of the detonation at Kilju, and not from anything said from the White House or Foggy Bottom.

The United States has few options, none of which are appealing. The diplomatic option is foremost, and China, now a regional military hegemony, holds the high cards. America’s military options revolve around its nuclear capabilities along with its naval and air forces. A major war on the Korean Peninsula, given the U.S. commitment to Iraq and Afghanistan, would be a nightmare. Eight of the U.S. Army’s 10 divisions, three-fourths of all active Army combat battalions, and a third of its support battalions are committed to Iraq and Afghanistan. It takes up to 18 months to reconstitute returning units to combat-ready status. Furthermore, American economic power, now committed to owning unprofitable auto manufacturing conglomerates and investing in universal healthcare, is unavailable to support a major war. President Obama admitted Wednesday, “we’re out of money.” With diplomatic and economic “instruments of national power” out of the picture, that leaves the military instrument.

There are military options, but none are good:

1. Bomb nuclear production facilities. Easy to say, difficult to do. North Korea’s production facilities are widely dispersed and hardened. Storage facilities lie deep within mountains. Even if we know where they are, it would prove difficult if not impossible to destroy them.

1. Take out launchers. This involves more than the easy task of bombing static launch platforms from which Taepodong missiles soar. Clever concealment and the diversity of launch vehicles complicate this option. Mobile rocket launchers and jet fighter-bombers constitute only part of the problem, in fact the easy parts. North Korea can strike South Korea with nukes in trucks or ox-drawn carts driven through tunnels beneath the demilitarized zone. Submarines and fishing boats bearing nukes could close down South Korea’s main ports at Pusan and Inchon, making it impossible to bring in sufficient U.S. ground forces to fight any invasion from North Korea.

1. Preemptive attack. Such an attack would rely on the out-manned, but not out-gunned, Republic of Korea Army (ROKA), backed by roughly a division of U.S. forces and the precision-strike capabilities inherent in U.S. air power. Any strike north across the demilitarized zone (DMZ), however, would run into the teeth of an entrenched force deployed to a depth of more than 50 miles and covered by conventional artillery, surface-to-air missiles, and anti-aircraft artillery. Airborne or amphibious operations to the rear would encounter North Korean military and paramilitary forces that vastly outnumber ROKA and U.S. forces combined.

1. Nuclear pre-emption. In July 1961, President John F. Kennedy considered a preemptive nuclear attack on Soviet strategic forces, including missile launch facilities and long-range bomber bases. He shelved it. Considering such an attack on North Korea today, therefore, would not be novel. Ultimately, it constitutes a viable—if highly unappealing—military option.

Under the following circumstances, nuclear war on the peninsula could become an awful reality:

1. North Korea uses nukes first. If North Korea used nuclear weapons against South Korea or the United States, a nuclear response by the United States would be warranted and necessary. Likewise, if a terrorist group struck an American target with a nuclear weapon traceable to North Korea, retaliation would be imperative.

1. North Korean forces threaten to overwhelm ROKA/U.S. forces. If ROKA and U.S. forces could not contain a conventional attack from the North, nuclear weapons might be the only way to stave off a humiliating and costly defeat.

1. To end a war of attrition. The United States cannot fight a war of attrition with North Korea given its present commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Turning to the nuclear option might be the only way to win.

Drawbacks to using nuclear weapons are enormous. Any first strike by the United States would bring international condemnation, branding the United States an “outlaw” nation. Furthermore, radioactive fallout would descend on people living in southern China and Russia along with parts of Japan. The political consequences for any American administration opting for first-usage nukes would be as catastrophic as not responding to a nuclear attack with a retaliatory strike.

Those are the options, and none of them are better than idle threats and belligerent banter. It takes a super power to be a superpower. When a nation is economically strapped, more concerned with continuing comfortable living for the present than overburdening its progeny with debt, so uncertain of its moral efficacy as to begs the world’s forgiveness for sins more imagined than real, and has gutted its military and intelligence capabilities to this extent, it finds itself unable to respond to “the gravest provocations,” even when issued from someone as ridiculous as North Korea’s “Dear Leader.”

The reasons behind Powell’s endorsement are complex. True, Obama and Powell share the same ethnicity. Although his actions were muted by military regulations governing political activities, Powell achieved the goals of the Civil Rights struggle: a man judged by the “content of his character rather than the color of his skin.” Powell’s extraordinary leadership capabilities, not race, propelled his Army career.

As Secretary of State, Powell fit the George C. Marshall mold. Both generals proved able coalition builders by working across rigid service lines and international barriers to achieve their goals.

In most administrations, the positions of Secretary of Defense and State constitute the two most important cabinet appointments. In Bush’s first cabinet, the moderately conservative Powell at Foggy Bottom balanced the ultra-conservative Donald Rumsfeld across the Potomac. With the wartime situation extant after 9/11, it would seem a “dream team” was in place. Things were not as they seemed.

In Beltway politics, the struggle between State and Defense resembles that between ancient Sparta and Athens. The two institutions are vastly different. Department of State operates on less than 10 percent of DoD’s budget. Additionally, the two cultures are diametrically opposed. They use language differently. Soldiers, demanding clarity, speak bluntly and pointedly. Military decisions presage potentially deadly actions that must be carried out quickly, efficiently, effectively, and decisively. Diplomats, on the other hand, work for compromise and conciliation. Their language is subtle, refined, and often purposefully nuanced.

Donald Rumsfeld sought to be the kind of Pentagon reformer Robert S. McNamara tried to be. His vision for reform revolved around turning the American military into an ultra-high tech power projection force capable of meeting the perceived (if somewhat contrived) “Chinese threat” circa 2025. Stealthy long-range bombers, submarine and surface forces capable of commanding the seas, coupled with space-based assets comprised the essence of this vision. Soldiers, and to a lesser extent, Marines, were an afterthought. Rumsfeld’s vision would not abide fighting insurgencies in the Third World. It was better suited to quick take-downs of second-class military forces like the Iraqi Army. Terrorism and insurgencies are not amenable to the kind of military forces envisioned by Donald Rumsfeld; nor did they fit his into his neo-conservative worldview.

President Bush made two critical strategic mistakes clearly apparent to any strategist, especially one as capable as Colin Powell: First, he failed to properly define the war, dubbing it a “War on Terror” when by Tuesday night September 11, 2001 it was clear al Qaeda, a group supported by Islamist radicals globally, had attacked the United States. Second, Bush intended to take out Saddam Hussein all along. His first inclination after 9/11 was to march on Baghdad.

The Vietnam experience figured heavily into the thinking of officers who achieved flag rank in the 1990s. Months before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, a Vietnam combat vet, warned Congress that invading Iraq risked a long war of attrition. Rumsfeld rewarded Shinseki’s candor with early retirement. General Wesley Clark and retired Marine General Anthony Zinni also warned against going into Iraq.

Bush used the weapons of mass destruction argument to obtain support from the Congress and Americans and exaggerated the threat to get what he wanted all along: an end to Saddam’s bloody regime. Having based the war on an erroneous assumption, the Bush administration inherited its legacy: an end to the Republican control of Congress and quite possibly loss of the White House.

Bush hung with Rumsfeld until it became apparent American ground forces faced a possible meltdown due to overuse and misuse. Bush then turned to his constituency at Texas A&M University, home of the George H. W. Bush School, naming Robert Gates, president of Texas A&M, to replace Rumsfeld.

Ultimately, the way politicians and generals mishandled the Vietnam fiasco probably figured far more heavily in Colin Powell’s endorsement equations than anything a raggedy, aging terrorist-turned professor did 40 years ago. Army Vietnam veterans, officers like Colin Powell-Norman Schwarzkopf, Wesley Clark and Eric Shinseki-worked to restore and rebuild the Army prior to Desert Storm. Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama issues from a lifetime of service and insights much more reflective of Army green than any shade of skin color.

Some experts maintain that a U.S. government economic relief package might lead to socialism. I am not an economist, so I will let that issue sit. However, as a historian I know what happened when the European and American economies collapsed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The role of government expanded exponentially in Europe and the United States. The Soviet system, already well entrenched in socialist totalitarianism, saw Stalin tighten his grip with the doctrine of “socialism in one country,” which allowed him to dispense with political opposition real and imagined. German economic collapse contributed to the Nazi rise to power in 1933. The alternatives in the Spanish civil war were between a fascist dictatorship and a communist dictatorship. Dictatorships also proliferated across Eastern Europe. In the United States, the Franklin Roosevelt administration vastly expanded the role and power of government. In Asia, Japanese militarists gained control of the political process and then fed Japan’s burgeoning industrial age economy with imperialist lunges into China and Korea; the first steps toward the greatest conflagration in the history of mankind … so far … World War II ultimately resulted. That’s what happened the last time the world came to a situation resembling critical mass. Scores upon scores of millions of people died.

Could it happen again? Bourgeois democracy requires a vibrant capitalist system. Without it, the role of the individual shrinks as government expands. At the very least, the dimensions of the U.S. government economic intervention will foster a growth in bureaucracy to administer the multi-faceted programs necessary for implementation. Bureaucracies, once established, inevitably become self-serving and self-perpetuating. Will this lead to “socialism” as some conservative economic prognosticators suggest? Perhaps. But so is the possibility of dictatorship. If the American economy collapses, especially in wartime, there remains that possibility. And if that happens the American democratic era may be over. If the world economies collapse, totalitarianism will almost certainly return to Russia, which already is well along that path in any event. Fragile democracies in South America and Eastern Europe could crumble.

A global economic collapse will also increase the chance of global conflict. As economic systems shut down, so will the distribution systems for resources like petroleum and food. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that nations perceiving themselves in peril will, if they have the military capability, use force, just as Japan and Nazi Germany did in the mid-to-late 1930s. Every nation in the world needs access to food and water. Industrial nations — the world powers of North America, Europe, and Asia — need access to energy. When the world economy runs smoothly, reciprocal trade meets these needs. If the world economy collapses, the use of military force becomes a more likely alternative. And given the increasingly rapid rate at which world affairs move, the world could devolve to that point very quickly.

The United States is at the epicenter as the world edges toward critical mass. And the ship of state appears rudderless. The current crisis is as much one of leadership as economics. This is the time for statesmen to come to the fore. So far, political leaders, anxious to preserve and to advance partisan agendas, have engaged in behavior bordering on the infantile. Whether or not men and women of selfless character, statesmen devoted to the preservation of the nation and its precious but always fragile democracy will emerge, remains unclear. But it is clear that if our leadership fails at this critical juncture, the fate of our nation and the world lies in the balance. At this point of critical mass, while rife with politicians, we are impoverished for leadership.

Dr. Earl Tilford, a fellow with the Center for Vision and Values, resides in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he is working on a history of the University of Alabama in the mid- to late 1960s. He holds a PhD in history from George Washington University and served for thirty-two years as a military officer and analyst with the Air Force and Army. From 2001 until May 2008, Dr. Tilford taught history at Grove City College.

There’s a war to be won, but a winning strategy cannot be devised until the administration makes clear who the enemy is and what is at stake.

The administration’s first task is to clearly define the enemy. The United States is at war with al Qaeda, Hezbollah, associated groups and regimes that support them; namely Iran, North Korea and Syria.

Second, this is a total war. Al Qaeda’s war aims are as encompassing as were those of Nazi Germany in World War II or the Soviet Union in World War III, the Cold War. Their goal is to establish a global Islamic caliphate. There will be no negotiated peace. It may be possible to appease the enemy, but each appeasement will lead to further demands designed to move the West along the road to total subjugation. Just as the Munich Agreements of September 1938 emboldened Hitler to further aggression, appeasing terrorists will encourage them to additional acts of depravity.

Third, given the totality of the enemy’s war aims, the only alternative is for the United States to pursue total victory. Al Qaeda, along with their associates and supporters, must be decisively defeated. Kill the hard-core terrorists, and their less committed followers will understand that hanging out with mad dogs means sharing their fate. We should accommodate terrorists who seek martyrdom by sending them to their virgin-rich, wine-soaked paradise before they strike at innocent people. The less-than-hard-core will opt for life and, from our perspective, it is preferable that they spend their lives hating us rather than both hating us and trying to kill us.

Fourth, World War IV could be a very long war. Al Qaeda’s strategy is to protract the war in hopes of eroding American will and resolve through acts of terrorism carried out over time. The enemy means to fight for as long as it takes to achieve victory. The best and quickest way to thwart that outcome is to eradicate them. Time is the enemy’s ally.

Fifth, the war will get far bloodier. Al Qaeda aimed its attacks on 9/11 primarily at civilians and the American economy. Three years into World War IV, civilians make up nearly three-fourths of the more than 4,000 Americans killed thus far. Future attacks are inevitable. Al Qaeda plans meticulously and they are patient. The terrorists know that spreading their attacks over relatively long intervals lulls the American public into a false sense of security so that when the axe falls the mental impact is greater. As Clausewitz put it, “War is an act of force to compel the enemy to do your will.”

For the United States and its allies, a pre-emptive strategy makes the best sense. It may be that we will have to ferret out each terrorist cell and, when we do so, exterminate every terrorist we find. When we strike, it must be with the kind of demonstrably decisive determination that makes it clear to the terrorists’ supporters in Pyongyang, Tehran and Damascus that they are candidates for the same treatment meted out to Saddam Hussein and his terror-supporting regime. Sensitive strategies only make sense to kind-hearted and well-meaning people oblivious to the implications of terrorists flying airliners loaded with innocent passengers into skyscrapers filled with office workers.

Finally, to win, the United States needs reliable allies. Spain caved in to terror. Germany and France must decide whether they are with us or against us. Britain, Australia, Italy, and Poland along with more than thirty other nations stand with us in Iraq because they know the outcome of World War IV will determine the kind of world our grandchildren inherit. Israel remains our most reliable Middle Eastern ally. The murder of 338 children, school teachers and other innocents by terrorists linked to al Qaeda should make it abundantly clear to the Russians that terrorists have them in their crosshairs. An alliance between the US and Russia could prove historically pivotal in our common struggle with a savage foe propounding an antithetical worldview.

While many Americans seem ambivalent, there’s a war to be won. It is a war the United States and the West with its traditions of respect for individual rights and human dignity must win. What is at stake is the world of the twenty-first…and twenty-second centuries.

Dr. Earl H. Tilford is Professor of History at Grove City College. He served as a professor of military history at the US Air Force Air Command and Staff College. In 1993 he became director of research at the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute in Carlisle, PA. He has authored three books on the Vietnam War and co-edited a book on Operation Desert Storm, and lectured throughout the US and abroad on the Vietnam War and the future of armed conflict.

(This article courtesy of the Grove City News.)