JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
"Eisboch" wrote in message
...
"Harry Krause" wrote in message
. ..
The loss in Vietnam was a harbinger.

I'm sure our military forces can take on and defeat any modern uniformed
military force waging traditional warfare, assuming no great disparity in
the order of battle or availability of troops. That is, we can take on
and defeat uniformed, traditionally organized forces that are smaller
than ours, the same size as ours or perhaps somewhat larger.

What our military cannot do is defeat a large, well-organized,
non-uniformed and non-traditional group or groups of motivated partisans
in areas outside of urban areas. Thus, we flopped in Vietnam and we're
flopping in Iraq, even though we defeated the Iraqi army, and why the
Taliban are re-emerging in Afghanistan, and why the Israelis are having
so much trouble with Hezbollah and Hamas.


So .... assuming for the moment that a well-organized, non-uniformed,
non-traditional group deserves to be defeated (Al Qaeda and Bin Laden
come immediately to mind) ... how do you win? Or do you simply give up?

All sorts of ideas:

1) If you're a competent leader, you notice that the various groups causing
the trouble have been at each other's throats since before you got it in
your head to "help". You learn from the experiences of other countries that
have had their heads handed to them. You also notice that sometimes,
stability is a good thing, even if you don't like the reason for it. This
last FACT was obvious to past presidents (from both political parties) who
dwarfed your intellectual capabilities. Need I say more about this?

Thanks for your insight General.

2) If you're a competent leader, you listen to your best military people,
who, from the beginning, told you that we'd be facing a non-traditional
enemy which, depending on the specific city, time of day, and position of
the moon and stars, might have popular support and be impossible to dig out
of their holes.

Like you buddy Johnson did?

3) If you're a competent leader, you realize that the enemy is driven by the
exact same religious zeal that drives your own decisions, and which also
makes you unfit for the office you hold.

What are you talking about?

4) If you're a competent PARENT, you realize that kids are still very
idealistic at age 19. So, you don't tell your underlings to go digging for
happy tra-la-la stories about kids who think it's delightful that they built
a school for some Iraqi kids, and hope these stories will cause your
employers (aka "voters") to enter a trance state and not notice how badly
you screwed up. You notice that when 19 year old soldiers are interviewed,
they don't sound much different than 16 year olds, in terms of their ability
to put your little war in perspective. Maybe when they're 45, they'll have
some perspective.

You are a pessimistic delusional twit.

5) If you're a competent leader, you realize that ripping the Saudis a new
asshole right after 9/11 would've been the right thing to do. Even if out of
spite, they raised the price of oil, the instability created by your war did
the exact same thing. Even if "the rip" involved nothing but throwing their
sorry asses out of the country and cancelling their country club
memberships, it would've been the right thing to do.

Was that before or after we sacrificed the US troops in Saudi Arabia on
Sept. 12?


Seems to me you have to keep trying ... picking away at the core and at
all the supporting elements, learning as you go, modifying tactics and
slowly diminishing the enemy's ability to conduct warfare or terrorism.

Good idea. You do it. Or, send your kids & grandkids. Do it right now. What
the hell? They're expendable, right? Anything to support the rhetoric.


Diplomacy hasn't worked at all in this environment, despite the best
efforts of world leaders including several US Presidents of both parties.

Remember the stability mentioned in #1, above? About two years after we
"enclosed" Saddam and began flying endless patrols around his borders, I
read an article in which an Air Force general said, in effect, "We couldn't
ask for a better setup for testing every manner of new weapon technology".
That wasn't diplomacy. That was stability, no different than the tense
situation we juggled with the USSR beginning right after WWII.

So, you are in favor of using live humans to test our military weaponry?
How nice of you to think so little of human life.

You'd better have one hell of a good fairy tale ready for your grandkids,
because if we ever leave Iraq, it will be no different than when we got
there, except that we will have converted people who were curious about us
into people who think we're animals.

I thought you and your ilk wanted us out of Iraq last month?