The last month has seen 6 Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, bringing our country’s total to seventeen. Yet even with a federal election looming and 61% of Australians wanting troops brought home our involvement in the war has bipartisan support. In fact, far from raising questions over our mission there, these deaths seem to only strengthen the government’s resolve to remain. The same seems to be true of the U.S. and many other NATO countries. It strengthens their resolve not because it makes the mission there any more necessary, or more strategically important, but because of a principle called “the sacrifice trap.”
This psychological principle works through an escalating commitment to a failing course of action, ironically in order to justify that course of action. The more one sacrifices in pursuit of a particular objective, the more difficult it is to change course from that objective, and the more stridently it will be defended. Often we experience this when they are put on hold by a telephone company. Our dogged commitment to the call seems to grow the longer they make us wait. This is not because we don’t want to hang up, but because we feel the time spent will have been a waste if we do.
The more soldiers who are killed in the course of this war, the more committed some governments seem to be to it. It is partly a matter of saving face – no one likes to admit they have made a mistake, let alone governments or countries. But greater than that is the sense of investment, which must be seen to bear fruit, even in the most fruitless course of action. Furthermore, the greater the “investment,” the more the prize seems to be inflated in importance.
During the Talisman Sabre joint US/Australian military exercises in 2009, my friends and I had many conversations with soldiers from Australia and the U.S., many of whom had spent time in combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. To my surprise, almost without exception, they expressed the futility of the task there. Some had lost good friends. But they were under orders, they said, and their families relied on the income they generated from the army.
It is believed that as many as 25 percent of US soldiers are looking for a way out of the military, yet don’t feel able to leave. Having committed their lives to the military – and in many cases, committed acts they regret – the stakes have been raised to unacceptable levels to admit that they have been wrong.
The only way out of the sacrifice trap is to give those involved – soldiers, the military hierarchy, and government – a way out that enables them retain their dignity and reduces the cognitive dissonance between knowing their actions are wrong or counter-productive and doing it anyway. Ironically, the more stridently the left pillories their actions, the less likely it becomes that it will change course, because it forces them deeper into the jaws of the sacrifice trap.
I wonder then whether the latest Wikileaks scandal might actually backfire on the voices for ending the war. If it leads to demonization and harshness, it almost certainly will.
Of course, toning down the criticism of the war does not mean that people should not be held accountable for immoral actions, but demonizing them will only hinder the process of necessary change.
There seems to be a delicate balance in this between personal pride and personal cost. Several countries have of course already backed out of their involvement in the war, but they have been countries with relatively little invested in terms of personal pride. Nations seem to have seen their way clear to withdraw when the cost outweighed the pride element.
If a rigorous cost-benefit analysis were to be undertaken – including accounting for the reality of property destruction, injury, and loss of life on all sides – I am certain it would reveal that the war in Afghanistan is really in no one’s national interest, and that there are numerous other, less costly options to achieve the stated objectives. But until such advice is heeded, further commitment to this “war without end” will continue to be a disservice to us all – especially to those soldiers putting themselves at risk at the behest of their government.
Thank you for this post. It, together with the Wikileaks revelations, can’t help but bring to mind the famous Vietnam-era Department of Defense memo from the Pentagon Papers which gave the department’s reasons for fighting the war:
* 70% – To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat.
* 20% – To keep [South Vietnam] (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
* 10% – To permit the people [of South Vietnam] to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
* ALSO – To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
* NOT – To ‘help a friend’
That top one seems to be very much what you’re talking about.
I also can’t help but think of the psychological principle of cognitive dissonance, which describes how people deal with contradictory ideas or ideas contradicted by facts. As most of us know from our own experience, people tend to be unwilling to jettison their ideas or decisions if at all possible. Sometimes, as in the classic study When Prophecy Fails, facts that seem to contradict certain ideas sometimes only make people end up asserting the ideas more loudly, more unshakably, and more dangerously.
It seems to me you’re very right that Wikileaks — together with so many other forms of nonviolent action — have as much potential for strengthening the resolve of the pro-war faction even more as for quelling it. That’s why it’s important that we work to build alternative interventions and proposals that those faced with doubts can turn to. It’s one thing to say, as you do, that you’re “certain” there’s a better way (and I have hardly done more than that myself), but I suspect that getting out of the sacrifice trap will mean proposing clear, concrete, and plausible alternatives.
Thanks Simon,
a clear analysis of the sacrifice trap as it relates to our involvement in Afghanistan. I hope it inspires creative engagement by war resisters that lowers all side’s defensiveness and opens space for greater opportunity for changing positions and ending this war and the ideology that war can resolve our international security agendas.
No, this is no “sacrifice trap.”
The reasons additional resources brought to Afghanistan are: A. The Iraqis are much more capable providing for their own security. The US mission is winding down. B. The US is executing the counterinsurgency strategy that succeeded in Iraq. This course of action requires much greater manpower and will incur greater casualties.
Illegally disclosing those documents is the height of stupidity, not to mention these documents have little or no context. Anyone here understand this: “At 1850Z, TF 2-2 using PREDATOR (UAV) PID insurgents emplacing IEDs at 41R PR 9243 0202, 2.7km NW of FOB Hutal, Kandahar. TF 2-2 using PREDATOR engaged with 1x Hellfire missile resulting in 1x INS KIA and 1x INS WIA. ISAF tracking #12-374.”? Is this an immoral thing? What is the context of this engagement? The disclosures that Pakistan and Iran are discretely helping the Taliban are well known. Let’s not forget the 20 y/o private who was stupid enough to pass classified info is over, his life is over.
ISAF civilian leadership make the calculation that a stable Afghanistan is worth the blood and treasure. Your worldview skews your ‘objective’ “cost benefit analysis.” You say there are less costly ways to achieve the stated objectives….well WHAT ARE THEY? Much smarter people armed with more information came up with different results than you do.
D. Killion’s comment come from a neocon brain. That kind of brain is incapable to fathom that, except Americans, there are other peoples who don’t want to have a foreign power invade them, kill their people, maim hundreds oif thousands and destroy their houses and infrastructure, no matter how limited it may be. Let me tell you, D. Killion, Afghanis have every right to attack their invaders. I commend them for their patriotism. That said, Americans and their bootlicker allies have no right to change a cultural status quo even if they hate it; any change has to come from the Afghanis themselves. To the American military: Get out of Afghanistan! Get out of Iraq! Dismantle your 800+ military installations in 130+ countries! Get out of my country, Germany, whose internal affairs America has meddled in for 65 years.
Eurotrash, thank you for your stunningly dull analysis. I’m hardly a neocon, but I am much more sympathetic to that position than your nonsensical one.
Admittedly, what the US has done to help Iraq and what NATO is trying to do in Afghanistan is a far cry from stopping a certain Central European nation from acquiring Lebensraum and committing genocide….
Things would help if all NATO allies contributed to helping the Afghans….thank goodness the Warsaw Pact didn’t flood through the Fulda Gap….
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5277034.ece
I’m sure if your Chancellor asked the US to leave, the US would do so. It’s not rocket science. Thankfully to all involved, national leaders are a bit more intelligent and realistic than you are.
I’m quite sure the US military does care what you think.
War for resources and geopolitical positioning (NATO). It’s what politicians are paid to do. At least enough of them to get the job done. Nothing biblical but ‘these are the last days’ of the current monetary system and the power structure associated with it (Governments). They know they need to get control, by force, of the planet.
All we can do is deny them funds. We could all, in every country, stop giving them money. They’d turn the guns on us, but hasn’t that pretty much happened already?