RESEARCH General Terrorism

WAR
Battle in Afghanistan would be new kind of conflict, historian says

Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor
(217) 333-2177; a-lynn@uiuc.edu

10/1/2001

Photo by Bill Wiegand History professor John Lynn: "Our engagement with bin Laden will be a qualitative war. Now it’s who we capture and kill. This new form of war will require intelligence in both senses of the word – being smart and also having good military intelligence, and in addition, showing great prudence, patience and perseverance."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Pearl Harbor has been invoked repeatedly as a parallel to the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center: It was a sneak attack on Americans and eventually will provoke a military response. But one historian sees another connection.

"The parallel with Pearl Harbor is not that we’re going into another World War II, which we’re not, and not that we’re anticipating another ‘Greatest Generation,’ although I certainly hope this generation rises to the challenge. The parallel is that the attack awakened us to a threat to our homeland, and in so doing, stripped away the limits on what we will do to fight terrorism."

So says John Lynn, a professor of military history at the University of Illinois and the chair of the university’s Military Education Council. He also is a contributor to the Marine Corps Gazette and a former Oppenheimer Chair on Warfighting Strategy at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Va.

According to Lynn, the attack has triggered a change in America’s attitudes toward war.

"In the last 10 years, we’ve wanted to engage in wars where the first thing we thought about was our exit strategy. In other words, the attitude seemed to be ‘Let’s get into a war because we’ve got a good way of getting out of it,’ which always struck me as bizarre."

In our current situation, however, "We’re not worried about finding a way out but about conducting an effective campaign, which is the way wars should be fought.

"Secondly, we know we are going to lose some people and that’s a price we are explicitly willing to pay. The losses we have already suffered justify losses in the pursuit of success."

While what we are about to launch into "is an entirely new kind of war," Lynn said, "it isn’t a form of war that we haven’t anticipated. We have talked about this sort of conflict for some time."

What he is referring to is asymmetrical conflicts, "in which the sides are very unequally matched, in which the strength of the terrorist matches the weakness of the far more powerful state."

Over the past few weeks Lynn also has been reminded of what Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto said shortly after his triumph in attacking Pearl Harbor: "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant."

Now that that giant is awake, "The next question," Lynn said, "is how will that giant act? I fear that we could become a blind giant in the sense that we may act out of rage before we know what we’re doing. If you act blindly, you run the risk of becoming your enemy’s best recruiter. In other words, an ill-considered attack on Afghanistan could win over more converts to fanatical terrorism."

Lynn stressed that it is important to recognize the differences between types of war. World War II was a quantitative war – how many bombs did we drop, how many enemy troops did we capture or kill?

"Our engagement with bin Laden will be a qualitative war. Now it’s who we capture and kill. This new form of war will require intelligence in both senses of the word – being smart and also having good military intelligence, and in addition, showing great prudence, patience and perseverance."