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It’s amazing that decades later no one seems to have learned anything from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Gen. Petraeus decided to use the Hamas war to plug his latest book with advice about winning hearts and minds.
“In our research of wars of all kinds since World War II, we found that the key to winning is sound strategic leadership. What exactly is sound strategic leadership? As we examined in writing Conflict, good strategic leadership — that at the very top of a government and a military command — has to be both practical and visionary. Big ideas are at its core, and getting them right is of paramount importance; without the right big ideas, all else will be built on a shaky intellectual foundation. Hence, a strategic leader’s first task is to develop those big ideas, ones that reflect an astute understanding of all aspects of the conflict at hand.”
Winning a war doesn’t need big ideas. War is not a TED talk. It requires intelligence, common sense, flexibility, a good working knowledge of the battlefield, the tools at hand and the enemy.
As Benjamin Netanyahu contemplates his options for punishing Hamas for the worst single massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, he must above all, provide sound strategic leadership, performing the four tasks of a leader at the very top — and, above all, getting the big ideas right.
There’s a wartime cabinet which needs to destroy Hamas, deter Hezbollah and other Iranian allies, while being prepared for drone warfare in ways that they may not be yet.
“The ‘big idea’ for Israel to offer ordinary Palestinians who are not members of Hamas might include a resuscitation of the two-state solution, in which they are offered their own state, despite the two obvious pitfalls to any actual implementation of that in the short to medium term… Needless to say, the situation in the West Bank has also been intractable for many years, as well. Were Netanyahu somehow able to square these seemingly impossible circles, he would emerge as one of the greatest statesmen of the modern Middle East. Nonetheless, he would be wise to provide a vision of the future for those in the West Bank, as well as Gaza, as he also describes the mission he is assigning the Israeli Defense Forces.”
Have 1,400 of your people just been killed? Figure out a way to offer the enemy a “vision of the future”.
If you want to understand why we lost in Afghanistan, this is as good a starting point as any. I don’t hate Petraeus. Of the various generals, I think he was probably the most competent. But this is a genuinely scary read because it perfectly captures a military leadership that has lost touch with its fundamental mission.
Forget for a moment that the two-state solution was an unworkable delusion for a moment, Petraeus is brushing past the actual military challenges to emphasize it as a political and philosophical phenomenon. The problem isn’t winning a war, it’s appeasing enemies.
Or winning hearts and minds.
Templer’s experience — and that of the coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — remind us of the question that should always be asked before operations are conducted: “Will this operation take more bad guys off the street than it creates by its conduct?” Needless to say, that question looms over the campaign Israel is contemplating for Gaza.
Templer’s call for winning “hearts and minds” — a very big idea — has so often been cited as to become a cliché in the decades since. Nonetheless, that concept remains the most succinct explanation for how to win a counterinsurgency.
How many counterinsurgencies have we won through ‘hearts and minds’ campaigns? How many against Islamic terrorists?
Petraeus clings to the ‘cycle of violence’ and ‘hearts and minds’ stuff that wasted so many American lives, lost wars and squandered our resistance to terrorism in futile nation-building, and the saddest part is he hasn’t learned a thing. He’s offering Israel the same advice that bled us endlessly without accomplishing anything. And he doesn’t seem to even understand that it’s lacking.
And it’s not just Petraeus. You would be hard-pressed to find political and military leaders who don’t think like this.
Reading this you have to wonder, could Petraeus really be this shallow and clueless about, of all things, war?
Zelenskyy subsequently prevented military-age Ukrainian men from leaving the country, delivered inspirational nightly updates to the Ukrainian people, and mobilized the totality of his country to repel the invaders. These decisions, together with his brilliant communications to the world, including pitch-perfect messages to the parliaments of key countries, and his energy, example and fortitude have all earned him the right to be regarded as a leader in the mold of Winston Churchill. He was, in fact, the first wartime leader since Churchill to address the U.S. Congress, something he did movingly in December of 2022.
Delivering inspirational speeches, ordering mass mobilization and a draft do not make one a Churchill.
What made Churchill who he was, among other things, was seeing the war coming early on and the futility of compromise. Along with the willingness to make big, bad, and highly controversial decisions. Like attacking the French fleet to keep it out of enemy hands.
Churchill had military experience and used it to make important decisions. His “inspirational” skills were debatable. We look back on his addresses as inspirational, but they were far from universally cheered at the time. But then Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was reviled at the time. They’re compelling in retrospect because they were ahead of their time.
Petraeus knows that what was really relevant were things like Churchill’s focus on opening a second front, his determination to keep pushing and probing the enemy, and his commitment to strategic bombing. Or you would think he would and yet instead he talks about “big ideas” and “communications” as if those matter more than actually winning.
We’ve tried to TED talk our way through wars. Hopefully, Israel will actually try to win by killing the enemy instead of trying to come up with big ideas.
What is the purpose of war? Is it big ideas or defeating the enemy?
The Ukrainians got badly burned by following NATO advice.
Did he mention the hearts and minds he won when cheating on his wife?
We all are flawed. We all make mistakes, and there is forgiveness. However, he’s not one to give advice, based on the mistake he’s made on this subject. Maybe a different venue, but not this one.
That tells me a lot about the man.
Writing a book sleeve cover quote isn’t leadership or showing us his inability to read the situation. Currently, Hamas is winning “hearts and minds” because they understand the tactical situation of their international support for the “poor oppressed” Palestinian people. They know that liberal media will conveniently forget to mention that the Gaza Strip could’ve had their own water supply had they not dug up the pipes to build rockets and mortars. They also know that western rules of engagement prohibits attacks on hospitals, but that doesn’t prohibit them from making the insinuation against Israel.
“Hearts and minds” is how the bad guy wins in the modern world. Petraeus should know this, but I guess ending his career in disgrace by leaking classified intel to his mistress turned novelist proves he wasn’t that sharp to begin with. Enjoy the book tour.
*ability, not inability
They also did a lot of other things to mess up their water supply. I looked it up recently. One thing I remember was dumping sewage into it.
Incredible that this person is thought of as a strategist. Big ideas are what get the grunt killed. Winning hearts and minds is navel gazing insanity. While generals of Petraeus’ ilk are plotting their political schemes to advance their careers wars are lost in the fog and brave men and women are sacrificed at the altar of woke garbage. How we have gone from Eisenhower to a Petraeus and Milley is a travesty in American history.
All,
How far we’ve strayed from Ecclesiastes 9:15:
“Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man.”
Travenvesty. lol
He clings to the bad idea, hoping that Israel can succeed where he failed, thus exonerating him and those who think like him from responsibility in Afghanistan and Iraq. You see, it wasn’t a bad strategy, it was just poor execution and lack of commitment.
leftist ideas are always sound, for some reason they never seem to work in practice, but that never discredits them, it just shows a lack of commitment to executing them
“Grab ’em by the balls and tug, their hearts and minds will follow.”
My girlfriend tugs on my balls but I think it’s different from torture when a chick does it.
The “hearts and minds” of the Palestinians elected Hamas. There is nothing there to win over, Not even their Middle Eastern neighbors want to take them in.
Unfortunately, the Fakestinians and much of the Moslem world do have a “vision of the future.” It is a world without Israel, Jews and other non-believers. Read the Quran.
War is won the same way General Sherman laid it out: War is all hell, there is no use trying to reform it, the more horrible it is the faster it’ll get over.
The Civil War was won when Generals like Sherman, Grant, Sheridan and others quit trying to win the hearts and minds and waged war.
When our supposed elites going to realize that the “hearts and minds” BS is not going to work? Hamas and others of that ilk know what we have to offer and they do not want it. They want to destroy Israel and kill Jews and then start the same with the US and Europe.. If they are not defeated and destroyed they will probably succeed.
For 4 years I stayed in a state of disbelief that people who put on their pants one leg at a time (just like the rest of us)
could be treated as infallible Gods.
I felt then as I do now, it was a screwed up in military culture that has allowed this to happen.
Top Brass needs to be taken down by several notches. Made human again.
I watched one loser after the next make a successful career out of kissing the butt of some other loser that made his way by kissing butt. It may be a fact of life in or out of the military, but in the military it gets good people killed.
Hearts and minds after 20 years of failure? I dont have to wonder what his investment portfolio looks like. What an idiot. If he really believes that crap.
That deceptive procrastinator called Hearts and Minds. Hamas thrives on the concept that Israel will take time out to win hearts and minds to the approval of the rest of the world.. Petraeus seems to conveniently forget that Hamas wins hearts and minds by unconventional methods like rape, torture, and wholesale, cold blooded murder of innocent civilian adults, children and babies. Hamas are not beholden to world opinion or approval.
Israel needs missiles. Our stock is low b/c Ukraine. Forget hearts and minds. Make missiles!
Genital Betrayus is going on about “hearts and Minds???????” In 2023? Does he know how long ago the Vietnam War ended, and ended in failure?
Somebody bitch slap that punk.
Thanks Jeff, I was going to say, I remember them talking about “hearts and minds” during Vietnam.
On a tangent, it isn’t so easy to change hearts and minds, in many cases, at least. There was a saying that human biology doesn’t change much, so people keep repeating the same mistakes, century after century.
Changing somebody’s mind is very hard to do.
That first quote where Petraeus drone on and on about big ideas, reminds me of the decades I spent doing blue collar labor. We drones would always mock some popinjay with big ideas, whether he were management or Labor.
Winning hearts and minds is for potential allies, not enemies. Petraeus is generally militarily competent, but he’s trying to rehabilitate himself with the left that destroyed him. He’s just licking the boot that kicked him.
Another weakling general chiming in with a recipe for decades more conflict. Screw this “hearts and minds” garbage. The purpose of war is to break things and kill people until the enemy loses the will to fight and surrenders. Nobody should take any advice from US military leaders who haven’t won a war in decades.