[
Dutch46 wrote:
I must have expressed myself very poorly because I do not see most of the arguments that you put forth as having any bearing on what I meant. So, it's back to the wordsmithing drawing board for me to see if I can come up with a better way to make my point.
My response was in the context of the original "special forces" thread and the suggestion that special forces should be used behind enemy lines for — among other things — infrastructure raids, assassinations, sabotage, etc., and the Charisian decision specifically
not to do anything of the sort because of the reprisals it would produce against local civilian populations. You said:
Dutch46 wrote:Under all but exceptional circumstances, a commander cannot allow himself to be influenced by what the enemy may or may not do to innocent civilians which he cannot control or protect. He must instead, execute what he believes to be a strategy that inflicts the maximum amount of damage on the enemy with the forces he has available. Defeating the enemy in the fastest way possible is, after all, the best and least costly way to eliminate the danger these innocents and everyone else faces.
Which I interpreted to mean: (1) that a commander should plan his operations without allowing the possibility of civilian casualties to influence his pragmatic decisions; and (2) since this was in the context of the special forces thread, that you felt that "special forces operations" would, in fact, be part of a strategy "that inflicts the maximum amount of damage on the enemy with the forces he has available." I have no argument at all with the final sentence of that paragraph, but within the context of the possible employment of special forces — and my explanation of why the inner circle had specifically rejected the possibility of operations which would provoke reprisals — I took issue with the first two sentences. First, because Charis disagrees with you about whether or not a commander should take the possibility of civilian casualties into consideration, and, second, because the types of special forces operations you had discussed in an earlier post:
Dutch46 wrote:There have been many versions of 'Special Forces' over time. If folks have the idea the Charisian units would, in any way, resemble todays units that is a mistake.
The idea is to form small highly trained or even single person units that would be tasked with special assignments that could not be carried out any other way. Removal of a particularly valuable individual from the gene pool, sneaking up on the enemy camp and killing every other guard, planting explosives in the road to be set off as the command unit marches over it and a myriad of other assignments designed to introduce uncertainty and terror in the enemy. Granted, these would all be on a small scale but one should never pass up an opportunity, no matter how small, to inflict damage, casualties and uncertainty on the enemy.
are precisely the types of operations most likely to produce reprisals and
least likely to be militarily effective under the conditions of military campaigning which apply on Safehold. That is, they do
not constitute a way to inflict " the maximum amount of damage on the enemy with the forces he has available."
You
also wrote, however:
Dutch46 wrote:If one allows the consideration of what are euphemistically called collateral damages to dictate one's strategy, the enemy will soon figure that out and collocate with those entities they know will not be attacked or will not be attacked with full force. It seems to me that that is a strategy that will, over the longer term, result in higher casualties and a longer conflict.
This is both self-evidently true and utterly false. It is indisputably true that if one allows oneself to be
controlled or, perhaps a better way to put it would be
neutralized, by the possibility of civilian casualties — whether the direct result of your own operations or inflicted by your opponent as reprisals or in a terror campaign — you might as well give up the war right then. It is not true that the enemy "will soon figure that out and co-locate with those entities they know will not be attacked" (or certainly not in a Safeholdian context, at any rate), which is what makes this a false argument, at least in part. But if someone like a Clyntahn figures out that there's a way to dissuade you from carrying out offensive operations by threatening his own civilian population, and if the someone like Clyntahn is
right about that, then you are operationally screwed.
The problem that I have is twofold.
(1) This is the sort of logical, cold-blooded argument which is most often put forward by someone who will not have the blood of the "collateral damage" on his hands.
And it is also the sort of logical, cold-blooded argument which is most often put forward by someone who has not "seen the elephant." I have a friend who is a highly experienced and decorated Marine veteran with whom I have war gamed on many an occasion, and he's told me how often he finds himself being appalled by the casualty totals civilians against whom he games are cheerfully willing to accept. It is important for a military commander to avoid being paralyzed by the possibility of civilian casualties, but it is equally — or perhaps even more important — for him to consider and remember the pragmatic as well as the moral reasons for
avoiding preventable civilian casualties.
(2) I've studied military history for fifty years, and your comment that "under all but exceptional circumstances, a commander cannot allow himself to be influenced by what the enemy may or may not do to innocent civilians which he cannot control or protect" gets perilously close to the argument that "the ends justify the means." I realize that you did not specifically say that the military commander should not take measures to avoid the infliction of unnecessary civilian casualties
by his own forces, but when you juxtapose that with the concerned about the enemy's "co-locating" his assets as a means to paralyze your own offensive options and bring in the phrase "what are euphemistically called collateral damages," what
I am hearing is the same argument which has been made over and over again to justify attacks or strategies which one
knows are going to inflict those civilian casualties in horrifying numbers. The proponents of strategic bombing in the interwar years talked about the enormous casualties which would be inflicted upon the civilian population which would thus paralyze the national will, fatally dislocate the means of production, and compel the adversary to surrender without ever engaging him on the field of battle. The fact that they were talking about hundreds of thousands of civilian dead didn't keep them from proposing this because, after all, it was pragmatically inevitable since the side which was willing to do it first would inevitably defeat the other. The area bombing of Germany I alluded to with my reference to Bomber Harris — the strategy which was euphemistically called "de-housing" — was actually an attempt to kill enough of the civilian workforce (and of the workers' children, spouses, pets, what-have-you) to disrupt the workforce. And what that amounted to, of course, was terror bombing. The American fire raids on Japan were actually more justifiable — on a pragmatic basis, at least — given the distribution of Japanese industry, but they too amounted to a deliberate attack on civilian populations in the name of pragmatism and if you had to accept a few hundred thousand dead women and children, well, that was simply the unavoidable "collateral damage." And the use of the atomic bomb was an extraordinarily clear-cut application of "defeating the enemy in the fastest way possible" by that stage of the war. (Mind you, I happen to be one of those who believe that it was almost certainly the correct decision at that point in the war, given the psychology of the adversary and the number of civilians who were already being killed in fire raids, not to mention the number of casualties any invading army would have suffered, but it remains an appalling example of military pragmatism and expedience.)
My point is that there are two mutually contradictory elements to what we might call the philosophy of the art of war. One is the recognition that William Sherman was correct when he said that "War is cruelty; you cannot refine it." The very reason why one should not allow oneself to be pushed easily into the waging of war as a means to solve problems is that once begun,
any war is going to be ugly and vile and is going to inflict "collateral damage" beyond the most pessimistic calculations of whoever chooses to inaugurate it. At the same time, one has to recognize that there are outcomes
worse (or at least less acceptable) then the consequences of fighting the war. But, that's where the second element comes in. In many ways, the side most prepared to be absolutely ruthless in the tactics and strategies it adopts has a clear advantage in warfare. If that side fails to secure victory quickly, however, its ruthlessness recoils upon it. It provokes its opponent into doing
whatever that opponent needs to do to survive against it, it invites reprisals, it turns occupied populations against it, and quite often it ultimately alienates its
own population. Completely disregarding the fashion in which this will poison the moral wellsprings of your own nation, there are enormous
pragmatic advantages in creating a situation in which occupied populations — even the populations of your
enemies — prefer to see
your army coming rather than the other side's. Terror enforces obedience; compassion engenders trust; and trust engenders support and acceptance of the goals for which you are fighting the war in the first place, and there is a great difference between that and simple terrified obedience.
In the specific context of Safehold, Charis and the inner circle have every reason imaginable to hold the moral high ground throughout the war against the Church and — specifically — against the Group of Four. It's not simply a question of operational and strategic advantages
during the war, but also a matter of the world situation they know Safehold is going to face
after the war. The inner circle is looking ahead to the time at which the Empire and Church of Charis are going to have to tell the rest of the human race the truth about the Archangels. When that happens, they are going to need all of the moral credit and credence they can possibly bank during the war. If that means that there are occasions when Charisian forces have to take otherwise avoidable casualties to avoid
civilian casualties,
Charis will do just that.
The above may not seem to you to constitute a direct response to what you intended to say. Within the context of how I understood the thread to be moving, I think it does constitute a response, but I also acknowledge that it is an explanation of both my own views on what I suppose we might call the morality of warfare and of the
Charisian view of the moral decisions and options confronting the inner circle.