Most Americans equate winning a war with ``unconditional surrender.'' Our Civil War ended with Lee's unconditional surrender to Grant. World War II ended with Germany and Japan surrendering unconditionally. But there is a second way of winning wars, a way little understood by Americans.
Since World War II, wars have not ended with unconditional surrenders. Nevertheless, wars have been won. Modern wars are won by not losing, by outlasting your opponent, and by keeping your opponent from winning. Too many Americans have become impatient with the war in Iraq. Five years have passed, we appear to be bogged down with 3,000 dead, and we have not yet won an unconditional surrender. But by the alternate definition of victory, a definition subscribed to by our enemies, we are winning. As long as Saddam is out, and as long as the radical Islamists can't take over Iraq, we are winning.
But there is an obvious problem with this definition: our enemies can also claim they are winning. They still have their troops in the field, and America bleeds. They are winning because they fight on. But they know we are also winning. We are blocking them from controlling Iraq, its people, and its resources. And they are dying in greater numbers. Our enemies, however, are far less concerned with casualties. They think rather in terms of annihilation and survival. Two examples serve to explicate this point.
Mao Tse-tung, by word and deed, spelled out the theory of winning a war by outlasting your enemy. Of course, his first option was annihilation.
"[T]he basic demands of war [are] the annihilation of the enemy, and the preservation of oneself. The aim of preserving oneselfis to annihilate the enemy, and to annihilate the enemy is in turn the most effective means of preserving oneself.''
In On the Protracted War, Mao also recognized that when his army was not strong enough to achieve a total annihilation upon the enemy, stalemate was his ally.
"In the stage of stalemate, the army should continue to utilize the elements of annihilation and attrition found in guerrilla and mobile warfare to further wear out the enemy on a large scale.''
Therefore, during times when his Red Army lacked the strength to crush his enemies, Mao's goal was twofold: to avoid annihilation, and to wear down his enemies until they quit.
The prime example of Mao's persistence was the Long March. In the late 1920s, Mao and his communist followers, in a desperate effort to avoid annihilation at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek's stronger army, set up their base at Chingkangshan, on the remote Hunan-Kiangsi border.
In October 1933 Chiang Kai-shek mobilized 900,000 troops to tightly encircle and destroy Mao's base. A year later, a million of Mao's supporters were dead. To prevent his complete annihilation, Mao led his Red Army out of Kiangsi, and embarked upon the Long March. It lasted a year, and covered more than 8,000 miles. (New York to Los Angeles is 2,780 miles!)
Of the 100,000 Red Army troops that fled from Kiangsi on Oct. 16, 1934, only 20,000 survived the march. The Red Army had marched an average of 24 miles per day for 253 days. They had fought a skirmish per day. They spent 15 days in pitched battles, crossed 18 mountain ranges, forded 24 rivers, occupied 62 cities, and broke through 10 enveloping armies.
Mao later stated the event's significance:
"The Long March is a manifesto. It proclaims to the world that the Red Army is an army of heroes ... It announces the bankruptcy of the encirclement ... by the imperialists.
"It declares to the approximately two hundred million people ... that the road of the Red Army leads to their liberation. Without the Long March, how could the broad masses have known so quickly that there are such great ideas in the world as are upheld by the Red Army?
"The Long March ... has sown many seeds in eleven provinces, which will sprout, bear fruit and yield a harvest in the future. To sum up, the Long March ended with our victory and the enemy's defeat.''
But what was the nature of that victory? Survival. Nothing more. The Red Army, had sustained losses of 80 percent, or 80,000 men. But Mao's communist movement survived. It survived to rebuild and eventually win.
The North Vietnamese used a similar strategy against America during the Vietnam War. In the words of Ho Chi Minh, ``You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.'' The Vietnam War began in 1965. Three years later, our enemies undertook the Tet Offensive, a series of coordinated offensives, undertaken by battalions of the Viet Cong, and divisions of People's Army of North Vietnam.
During the Tet offensive 1,100 Americans and 2,300 South Vietnamese were killed. Between 25,000 and 45,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were killed . The Viet Cong was effectively wiped out. The organization was preserved for propaganda purposes, but for all practical purposes, the Viet Cong had ceased to exist. Viet Cong formations, thereafter, were largely filled with North Vietnamese replacements. America had been victorious.
Nevertheless, the Tet offensive is generally seen as the turning point of the war. The American media turned against the government, and led the demand for the government to bring the troops home.
In his "special report on the war'' of Feb. 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite told the American public,
"We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders ... to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest cloud.''
He told the American public that the U.S. was ``mired in a stalemate'' and called for a negotiated end to the conflict. A majority of the American public came to accept Cronkite's assessment, and America withdrew. Saigon fell. North Vienam won the war.
During the war, 58,209 American soldiers were killed. An estimated 600,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers were killed. Our enemies lost every major battle. But they won, because they had the will to perservere. We lost because we lacked the national will to win.
The Vietnam War provides a game plan for all our enemies: II you can stay the course, in the end, America will tire, quit and go home. Additionally, it taught our enemies how to use the American press against us.
"I say to you: that we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media.'' Ayman al-Zawahiri
Osama bin Laden also understands the lesson of Vietnam.
"We had patience in our fighting with the Soviet Union with simple weapons for 10 years. We exhausted their economy, so they disappeared. We will not abandon our fight (against the Americans) until the weapons run out.''
The people of the East do no think in terms of unconditional surrender, nor do they obsess upon the loss of 3,000 men. If we are going to be successful against people with such a mindset, we have but two choices: annihilate or outlast them.
In earlier wars, our nation had the will to win. At Gettysburg, 3,155 Union soldiers died. At Iwo Jima, 6,821 died. In World War II, 407,300 Americans were killed. In each case, we fought on until victory. We can only win, only by having a national will to win. To win we must annihilate the enemy, or fight on until the enemy quits. Make no mistake. If we redeploy to Okinawa, we lose. If we withdraw, we lose. And there will be consequences.
Originally published in Moline Dispatch, page A5, December 10, 2006.
Copyright 2006
John Donald O'Shea
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