America’s Faith-Based Military Might: Counting on the Military to Do its Job Without Preparing Adequately, Sensibly

_{Image © Austin Cline
Original Poster: National Archives
Click for full-sized Image}

Military operations are supposed to be ruthlessly pragmatic. It’s true that any number of intangible factors can weigh heavily on the outcome, like soldiers’ morale and belief in their cause, but in the end it often comes down to simple numbers. Do you have enough soldiers? Do the soldiers have easy access to sufficient supplies? Is the terrain favorable? Will the weather hold out? Are your weapons stronger, more accurate, and more reliable than those of your enemies? Can you protect your soldiers, their lines of communication, and their supplies?

No matter how much faith you have in your cause, you aren’t likely to prevail if you don’t have things like numbers, terrain, and weather on your side. Those ruthless numbers require ruthless planning: pick your battles carefully and be prepared to sacrifice, but only if the likely long-term gains are worth the cost. People die in military operations, but those deaths must not be wasted because no life can be replaced. All of this should be obvious, as should the conclusion which must be drawn from it: those in charge of the military have an obligation to put planning, logistics, and preparation before ideology or faith in their cause. Failure to adequately prepare and plan isn’t just a bad idea, it’s positively criminal.

Many of the disasters suffered by the German Wehrmacht during World War II can be traced directly to such a preference for ideology and faith over the reality of logistics. Adolf Hitler had absolute faith in his genius as a military strategist; in reality, he simply benefited from good gambler’s instincts when going up against unprepared or divided enemies. When his enemies got better, he didn’t; but he never admitted this and so consistently failed. Hitler also frequently placed ideology above reality, denying for example General Paulus’ request to retreat from Stalingrad and insisting that battle lines be held in order to prevent enemies from entering German territory, even when that caused the over-extended and weakened lines to collapse.

Stalin was no better — his demand that subordinates remain loyal both to communist ideology and himself personally led him to purge the military of many competent and experienced officers through the 1930s. This, in turn, likely made it easier for German forces to be as successful as they were during the early weeks of their invasion of the Soviet Union. Preference for ideology over reality infected the Soviet Union at every level and throughout its history — Soviet reliance on Lysenkoism instead of Mendelian genetics is one of the more tragic examples.

Reality is ruthless and unforgiving — we ignore it at our peril. Military reality is even more ruthless and unforgiving because in this context we’re dealing not merely with the cold facts of an uncaring universe, but the hot steel wielded by people who care very much about killing us. Poor weather and terrain cannot be overcome by faith. Inadequate preparation and planning cannot be made up for by faith. Insufficient armor, ammunition, and supplies cannot be supplemented by faith. Military operations can only be pursued successfully by dealing with reality as it actually is, not as we wish it would be. When embarking on military operations that are chosen, rather than forced onto us, we should do so with the military needed to get the job done rather than simply whatever we happen to have lying around at the moment.

This image is based upon a World War II poster about taking good care of military equipment so that it doesn’t fail at critical times. It was part of a larger series called “Don’t Be a Dope” and featured the same character (the one sitting on the sand to the left) who kept screwing up and causing trouble.

This week two new images were added to my own gallery of Christian Right Propaganda Posters.