What Happens When You Ignore the Moral Dimension of Conflict

Posted on April 22, 2005

From The Cunning Realist: What We’ve Really Lost.

It takes a lot to make me fall off my chair in amazement these days, but this just about did it. And a quick glance at several other pro-war sites — from the usually rational to the confirmed lunatic fringe — shows similar “outrage” at this barbarism and lack of respect for the Geneva Convention.
I’d like to be the first to congratulate the outrage camp. They’ve stumbled — unwittingly I am sure — onto why Iraq is a perfect example of how a battle can be won but a war can be lost.

One of John Boyd’s key insights was that war (and victory in war) has a moral dimension every bit as important as the physical and the mental ones. This is a prime example of what happens when you fail to contest the enemy in that dimension.