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Updated Saturday, October 6, 2007 0:00 am TWN, By Arthur I. Cyr, Special to The China Post

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Pentagon giving misleading info on number of insurgents killed in Iraq

Not surprisingly, the experience of the Vietnam War had a profound impact on the United States military, especially the Army. During the Eisenhower administration, enormous pressures grew steadily not only to increase military spending, but to use U.S. forces overseas more aggressively. Gen. Maxwell Taylor resigned from the Army in protest and wrote “The Uncertain Trumpet,’ complaining bitterly about Eisenhower policies. Taylor became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy Administration and became heavily involved in Vietnam policies.

By contrast, Gen. Colin Powell, who served in Vietnam as a junior officer in the Army, came to personify a more contemporary military emphasis on restraint. “The Powell Doctrine” emphasizes the importance of caution and the advisability, indeed often necessity, of large forces sufficient to accomplish most likely conventional war missions. Not surprisingly, when Powell returned to government as Secretary of State in the current Bush administration, tensions developed with Rumsfeld and others, and he left after President Bush’s first term.

Every armed conflict carries tremendous collective as well as individual dangers. Even very well- planned operations easily spin out of control due to human and equipment failures, the vagaries of weather, the frustrations of geography, the moves of the enemy, and other unforeseen events. In this sense, there is no such thing as “limited” war.

Dwight Eisenhower was particularly mindful of these dimensions in conflict, and it is no random coincidence that he was able to lead the United States to total victory in a total war. As Supreme Allied Commander and also as president, he worked relentlessly to develop a complete portrait of enemy strengths, weaknesses and other important factors.

President Eisenhower, obsessed with the possibility of another Pearl Harbor-style attack, initiated the top-secret U-2 high-altitude spy plane. Thanks to the resulting surveillance photos, he clearly saw the reality of Soviet strategic weakness, despite Nikita Khrushchev’s nuclear weapons bluster and threats.

In war, our most primitive undertaking, beware of the illusions spun by applying preconceptions to the evidence.

Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College in Wisconsin and author of “After the Cold War”. He can be reached at acyr@carthage.edu.

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