From William Grimes review of Gen. Rupert Smith's The Utility of Force:
As often as not, failing to grasp the new rules of warfare, political leaders and military planners rely on force in situations when it has no utility, commit troops without defining strategic and political objectives and — operating on the old industrial-war model — plan for the decisive engagement that never comes. In war amongst the people, he writes, “no act of force will ever be decisive: winning the trial of strength will not deliver the will of the people, and at base that is the only true aim of any use of force in our modern conflicts.”
That's not particularly revelatory, but it remains an underpowered insight in relation to its applicability. Over the past few days, various bloggers have offered interesting arguments as to when war is justified. That discussion tends to end the conversation -- the overwhelming assumption is that our technologically remarkable and fiercely professional army will figure out how to make the conflict work. Indeed, outside of military circles, there's rather little talk of when force will be useful. But that, as we're finding out in Iraq, may indeed be the more important metric. That our political class and cultures so lavishly mythologizes our army makes such conversations tricky, though.
