The Army is getting it right, finally!

[Vern Humphrey]

You may be right, but mark my words. GWB is going to join LBJ as another Texas president who's legacy was destroyed by an ill-advised war.

Who cares about a legacy? I care about the American soldiers who are put at risk by people encouraging the enemy to believe he can win on the streets of America what he cannot win on the battlefield in the Middle East.

How much combat time have you had in Iraq, Vern?

I was retired before this war started, but I do work "training and training related" projects that take me into such places.

 

[Titan6]

We call that the "Military Decision Making Process", and what a process that is....

 

[GTSteve03]

I was retired before this war started, but I do work "training and training related" projects that take me into such places.

So you have more experience than GWB in military matters and yet you feel perfectly comfortable having him as Commander in Chief of this little Mideast expedition?

What about that whole "lack of common sense" thing?

 

[Boats]

Where does all of this defeatism come from?

We lost more Marines in a few days on Tarawa than have been killed amongst all branches of service in the entire second Iraqi effort.

I don't cite those metrics to belittle the loss of life in either case, but to wonder at what all of the worryworts are doing sticking knives into the back of the current effort.

The "Iraq War" has been over for a long time. So too the one in Afghanistan. Enemy forces in the field, whoever they were, got themselves thoroughly routed playing to our strengths.

So, in both campaigns, the OPFOR has changed in nature, tactics, and strategy. In addition, there is probably a proxy war with Iran going on in both countries.

Hell, I was a participant in a quiet proxy war with Iran in 1987-88.

We've been keeping the lid on the entire Middle East for generations. Now we've taken the lid off.

Someone said that there are no "peace loving Muslims."

That's Grade A hogwash. Most people, everywhere, are fundamentally decent folks just trying to make their way through life. Like Derek said, it sucks to be in the middle.

Even as "invaders," if we manage to show glimpses of a better future to most of the Iraqi people, we can get them to "buy into" their own visions of shaping a future that doesn't include dumping the bodies of their neighbors into the streets.

There are peaceful Muslims all over the world. I have even met a few of them.

The common battle now is against Islamic extremism. For those poor students of history, even Judiaism and Christianity had their very bloody past problems with similar phenomena. It wasn't called "terrorism" back in the day. The sectarian slaughter of neighboring tribes or communities had more colorful adjectives such as butchery, decimation, massacre, punishing heretics, and others.

If only one could go back and ask what the Orthodox denizens of Constantinople thought about the Christian co-religionists who sacked their city in 1204 I'm certain "peace loving" would not make the list.

The larger problem that Western Civilization is trying to sort out through the efforts of its more vigorous defenders today is one of trying to establish a different relationship with Islam, much like the one we forged amongst ourselves over centuries of sectarian strife that ended with the Enlightenment.

It's an old problem long wrestled with here in America. ". . .to the shores of Tripoli. . ." and all that. Tripoli was in 1804. The Tripolitans then were "justified" through their reading of the Quran, much like today's opponents claim.

But, it is just a claim, trotted out when convenient. From the Renaissance well into the 20th Century, the West and Islam only had mostly minor frictions to deal with.

Oil and modern communications and travel have brought old tensions to the surface and put a new twist on the ones of more recent vintage. We could see the apparent dream of Pelosi and Murtha that we turn tail, experience another decade of malaise, and wallow in doubt about our capabilities and role in the world--and remove none of the perceived grievances of the Muslim extreme.

We could bugger off from Iraq and Afghanistan and "we" would still be corrupting their societies with our cultural imperialism.

We would still be predicating our economies on a stable supply of oil from a non-volatile world market, niceties be damned.

We would still be an alien place, where women have rights, where one doesn't have to be what they were brought up to be by overbearing familial authority, and where, by our very existence in the world, place "undue" pressure upon extreme conservative Muslims. Witness some of the shennanigans pulled both here and in Europe by where Islamic extremists demand special accomodation in society and riot when "offended."

The conflict will continue. Whether it will be in Iraq or Afghanistan is almost beside the point, it will be somewhere. The world practically bleeds daily where the extreme expressions of Islam come in contact with the "other." Our wars with these forces have precious little or nothing to do with more prosaic, but still entirely lethal clashes in India, Thailand, The Phillipines, Africa, or the streets of Amsterdam.

Since Islam seems to lack the capacity for internal reformation into a less homicidal model of religious existence, only externally applied pressure seems to hold any promise.

We can either decide where and when to apply that pressure, or we can give the Islamic extremists the initiative.

Either way, we will have to see the larger conflict through. It's only regrettable that in the two biggest societal conflicts of the past fifty or so years, the Cold War, (including Vietnam), and the current struggle with Islamic extremism, that about half of the Boomer generation has proven itself totally gutless.

When someone can explain to me how our armed forces, on the behalf of our larger society, better confronts existential threats, not only to our country, but to our Enlightenment inspired civilization as well in the long run, with a bunch of daggers sticking out from between their shoulder blades, drop me a line.

We will either pay the price now, or we will likely pay even more down the line. Since we've invested nearly a decade of effort, lives, and treasure on a goal that needs to absolutely be accomplished at some point, why piss all of that away because some have all too easily lost their stomach for the task?

 

[Vern Humphrey]

So you have more experience than GWB in military matters and yet you feel perfectly comfortable having him as Commander in Chief of this little Mideast expedition?

What about that whole "lack of common sense" thing?

I gather you think this comment has some meaning, but I can't figure it out.

We're in combat now. Our troops need our unqualified support as they lay their lives on the line. And defeat here will put our nation at great risk.

We need to win this war -- and playing politics with soldiers' lives is not the way to win.

 

[USAFA06STX]

Interesting Reading

For those who like to compare Iraq to Vietnam, here are some of the views of a few helicopter pilots who served in both conflicts:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-06-20-iraq-vietnam-vets_x.htm

And a very good article from a well respected journal in the political science field on the differences between Iraq and Vietnam:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060...en-biddle/seeing-baghdad-thinking-saigon.html

 

[MrDig]

Original link gives me Page not Found error

I would love to comment but do not see the article you refer to.

 

[USAFA06STX]

Which link? They both work for me.

 

[MrDig]

The original on page 1

 

[tube_ee]

Just saying

"We need to win this war" isn't enough. Despite the assumptions of academic theorists like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, wishing don't make it so.

The will to win is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for victory. You can't win without it, but you can certainly lose with it. Many nations have. And if your goals are not achievable, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you'll still fail.

We can't win this war. At least, there's essentially no chance at all of any outcome to it that will be better than having never done it at all. A stable, multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian, pro-American liberal democracy in Iraq? Sorry, but it's not happening now, won't happen in any likely future, and can't be made to happen by anything we do. Nor will it be prevented by anything we're not doing now or don't do in the future.

Now, if you define victory as the establishment of a pro-Iranian Shi'ite "Islamic Republic" under Shari'a law, well, then you might be able to claim that we won. Whether the existence of such a state is worth the blood of a single American, or a dollar of our money, you can decide for yourself. I don't think so, but that's just me.

What you have in Iraq right now is a nasty internal power struggle for control of the country and it's resources. That struggle will continue, and lots and lots of people are going to die, until somebody wins. Given the numbers, that's likely to be the Shi'ites. The Kurds will likely kill or drive out anyone that's not Kurdish, and separate from Iraq. They'll have to fight the Turks, if the Turks are stupid enough to do anything but complain about it, but they'll win.

There is absolutely nothing we can do to prevent any of this. It's happening now, with our presence. It will happen in the future, whether we leave or not. At this point, I really don't care how the Iraqis settle their differences, so long as our people aren't getting killed in the process, and I don't have to pay for them to do it.

They're gonna do what they're gonna do. Which is probably what they're doing now. Them doing it to each other and us is worse than them just doing it to each other.

End it. Now.

--Shannon

 

[carebear]

The CAP platoons in Vietnam did a good job at pacifying and holding ground by "winning hearts and minds" and providing basic infrastructure and medical services.

The Brits in Malaysia dealt with political and economic problems in the hinterland and stopped a Communist uprising. "Hearts and minds" (and infrastructure and political reform)

It works, if the host government is willing to reform as necessary.

But you can't, as was said, patrol out of bases like an alien occupier, you have to get out in the community and live with them, protect them from and help them defend themselves from the enemy, neighborhood by neighborhood.

It takes dispersion and initiative, and is manpower intensive, which is diametrically opposed to force protection as currently practiced.

 

[Thin Black Line]

Boats, I would love to sit down with you sometime and discuss religion and
world history. I think there are a lot of points we could agree on. We need
to realize that just as we in the West had our own Renaissance and Protestant
Reformation, that Islam has not really had these kind of events internally.
Sure, they've had their schisms, but not their enlightenment. Even after the
West had it own, we still had La Rochelle, WWI/II, the Troubles, etc. We
were and are far from perfect. My point is a lot of the social progress that
still needs to be made in the Islamic world must still come from within it. We
can't force it on them like some sort of global desegregation and busing. Nor
should we be the cop on the global beat for some kind of NWO.

From a US military perspective we could approach this with containment and
strikes as needed --without occupation-- when there is an actual problem
requiring real pre-emptive defense. All of us would agree that our intervention
in Afghanistan fit this bill. But, we will not have agreement on Iraq.

No matter where we are (those of us in uniform), we require the tools to do
our job: weapons, armor, commo, etc. I could go off for a long time on the
failings in these areas. I could bring up a lot of shortfalls that would make
some of our FOBs sound like forgotten outposts in an old black and white
movie with French Legionnaires. I could continue to ask why our economy
is geared toward plasma HDTVs that cost more than the electronic gear
that I was constantly short of in theater. I could ask why we had the best
medevac in history and then left our wounded back home in places where
the roaches were going back up --and that wasn't addressed by someone in
charge until yesterday and only after it was brought up in the media.

I'm beginning to find out that asking those questions and stating what I saw
and know for facts really doesn't matter to the people who really hold the
power: both the ones who make the decisions and the ones who hold the
purse strings. But, I am a student of history and when there's a disconnect
like what we're seeing happen in our country, we are coming to a crossroads.
We have a choice where people in power listen and make the necessary
changes or they take the "let them eat cake" attitude. Given the personalities
I've seen so far, we're now tilting toward the dessert tray rather than the
desert.

As far as "Iraq is different than Vietnam." Well, sure it is. If we invaded
Micronesia, that we be a different campaign as well. Probably one where
the Navy would see more action than the Army and the Marines would be
just as busy. There would still be some of the big questions such as "Is
it worth being here now?" and "How will this help the USA in the future?"

 

[Master Blaster]

The real reason we are there is the OIL they have it and our economy and way of life depend on it being cheap and availible in large quantity.
Iraq has the second largest proven oil reserves in the Middle east, behind Saudi/Kuwait. Most of it has been untapped.

I say we stop deluding ourselves and the rest of the world and pursue our real interest which is keeping the cheap oil flowing.

The Arabs, Iran, Saudi, even Iraqis want the oil to flow too, their economies also depend on it and its the oil money that will bring their people into the modern world and help precipitate their enlightenment. Their old forces of religious conservatism know that their power is dependent upon controlling the enlightenment that the oil money brings. Unrestrained in a free market they will loose control they now excersize over the populace. So we have the fundamentalist movements who more fear the invasion of our culture, via satellite dishes, consumerism, and western university education, more than they do our laser guided bombs.

We need to fight the fundamentalists with Oil, pump it out and see that the prosperity and enlightenment that comes with the money gets to the masses, and not just to the elite.

That is how we will win the war in the middle east. Guns, Bombs, economic sanctions, and occupying forces just make the poor masses poorer and drive them into the arms of the fundamentalists. They see us as making their lives even more unbearable than they already are. Thats why sanctions havent worked, and its why there has been so little progress in Iraq.

Open trade, free flowing oil, and economic deriven enlightenment are the only way to go that has any possible chance of success.

 

[tube_ee]

Master Blaster...

I agree that it's about oil. It has to be, oil is the ONLY strategic US interest n the middle east. If it wasn't there, we'd be no more involved in that area than we are in Madagascar.

But I'm not sure I can buy the idea that we can change their cultures and governments any easier via trade than we have been able to do via force. It certainly hasn't worked with the Chinese. To the great confusion of our diplomats and academics, the Chinese seem to be just fine with an authoritarian autocracy, so long as they're all getting rich. There has been no correlation at all in China between the abandonment of Communism (as an economic system) and any growth in liberty or representative government. In fact, I would argue that the material growth and increasing wealth and consumption in China has extended the life of the Government, rather than shortening it.

This idea that capitalism = freedom seems, so far at least, to have only worked in Europe. That may be because it's basically a European idea. It may not apply so well to non-Western cultures. I sure wouldn't bet the farm on it.

The middle east will be a place of repressive, authoritarian governments until such time as the people there decide that they don't want to be ruled that way anymore. I don't think that's going to happen any time soon, nor do I think that it's within our power to speed up or slow down that process by very much.

As I see it, the fundamental mistake of the neocons was to assume that there were no limits to what our power could accomplish. They were wrong. Don't make the same mistake in thinking about our money power. It, too, is limited.

--Shannon

 

[Thin Black Line]

MB, I would like to see the economy and the way of life improve for the
common person in the ME. I saw how Saddam used Iraq's oil wealth for
his palaces while many of his people still lived in crumbling huts.

When I read stuff like http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=1&subID=971 ,
I have to wonder on that whole longterm picture for us and how the Army
would be used. I understand how oil works in our economy (my father was in
the business for a short time), but we have to ask ourselves about continuing
to run our own lifestyle based on a dwindling resource that comes mostly
from the world's cr@phole hotspots.

We as a nation need to re-think how we live which will also dictate how we
use our armed forces. There are many good reasons not to engage in long
protracted foreign campaigns that history has already shown us --which we
are now ignoring. Simply from the oil economy perspective we are pissing
away people, money, and other types of resources in a region where we only
get around 12% of our oil to start with. The big question then becomes
who gets most of their oil from the ME? When someone wants to answer
that question here, then we can discuss how it affects our country and our
Army.

The War affects us as a nation and how our goverment is run which in turn
affects the rights of us all here at home. We have a Congress that wrangles
over symbolic resolutions that do nothing on the war, but are crafting bills
at this very moment to really restrict the 2A. When it comes to armies, force
and how guns are to be used, doesn't that seem a little strange?

 

[wingman]

We as a nation need to re-think how we live which will also dictate how we use our armed forces. There are many good reasons not to engage in long protracted foreign campaigns that history has already shown us --which weare now ignoring.

Correct, I served in Vietnam and I support our troops in any war however
not sure we can continue to police the world. should our soldiers be social
workers, building schools, roads for other nations when at home we have
a growing population of poor undereducated coming to our country. We
outsource, import cheap labor, we continue to have a tough time meeting
our military needs, yes we need to re-think our direction and quick.
A "win" in Iraq would have required more force at the beginning, disarm
and remove all weapons and total military control for a number of years
and in the end in the name of religion they would have and will slaughter
their own after we are gone. Not a pretty picture but my opinion.

 

[longeyes]

Before "Iraq"--our slice of it anyway--is over we will have pissed away enough U.S. treasure to finance nuclear power generation for this entire nation. As the man said above, we, meaning Mr and Mrs America, only get 12 per cent of our oil from the ME, who exactly gets a LOT of oil from the ME?

The real war is between the American people who still understand and believe in the core predicates of Liberty and the forces, both within and without the United States, including elements of our own Government and business class, that are willing to subvert them for their own selfish and pernicious ends.

 

[Master Blaster]

Simply from the oil economy perspective we are pissing
away people, money, and other types of resources in a region where we only
get around 12% of our oil to start with. The big question then becomes
who gets most of their oil from the ME? When someone wants to answer
that question here, then we can discuss how it affects our country and our
Army.

Unfortunately most folks fail to understand the economics of the oil market.
Picture a big tank and all of the worlds oil in it, it doesnt matter where it comes from!! It all mixes. Now you have an auctioneer selling the oil from that one tank, to all of the worlds oil refineries, represented by their buyers who have a big bag of money and instructions to get Xmillion gallons of oil as cheap as possible. So the auctioneer starts the bidding, the price depends on how many gallons the buyers want and how many gallons are in the tank at any give time.

If oil is $60 a barrel, and the supply goes down 10% the price will hit $90 a barrel or maybe even $120 a barrel because all of the bidders still want the same amount of oil.
Pay attention to the commodity market price of oil every time there is even a threat to a small amount of the supply.

Its how the free market in a commodity works.

Thin Black Line If the Iraqis had our standard of living, or even half of it, how many do you think would join the insurgency?

The real war is between the American people who still understand and believe in the core predicates of Liberty and the forces, both within and without the United States, including elements of our own Government and business class, that are willing to subvert them for their own selfish and pernicious ends.

Yeah Longeyes Stalins philosophy and that of Karl Marks has been proven a success, greed and capitalism really dont make for a free prosperous country, I mean just look at America

 

[Thin Black Line]

I think we have to differentiate between the one business class which is
loyal to this country and our people and the other business class which is
multi-national and seem beholden to some other kind of global balance.

Getting back to the Iraqis and our Army, I remember a major who had
wondered out loud what bringing the local Iraqis into our DFAC (that's
army-speak for cafeteria) would do for their support of us and joining
the global community of man. He felt it would have a positive effect on
them.

I mentioned that the Iraqis had snuck someone into a DFAC a few months
before and blew it up: http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/12/23/mosul/index_np.html

The major reflected for a moment that the climate may not be good right
now, but still felt I was negative about future prospects. We had two very
different views on what was going on in Iraq since he never left the wire
and I did. I didn't bring that fact up, of course, because the issue then
becomes a battle of perceptions. The decisive factor in winning that
kind of battle (depending upon the kind of business you're in), is rank, social
status, wealth, position in the beaurocracy. No, I wouldn't bring that up
--makes for awkwardness at the very least in the private sector and is
absolutely forbidden in the military. All I could manage was something to
the effect of:

"In any case, Sir, I think in the meantime we should keep the drawbridge up."

Oh, well, bottoms up back at Fortress America, boys....BTW, did anyone
remember to put down the portcullis before the party? Anyone? (Shrug).
Party on, Wayne. Party on, Garth. Woohoo.

 

[wingman]

Thin Black Line If the Iraqis had our standard of living, or even half of it, how many do you think would join the insurgency?

That would seem to give the idea all we need to do is bring the world up to our standard of living and they will stop fighting America, or I know we could come down to their standard of living. Possible that may happen.

There are those who fight for religion/ideas not money, not defending that but a hard concept for Americans in the past 35 years to understand.

 

[Titan6]

Our buddy Osama had a standard of living that I can only dream of yet is likely living under a rock some where because he hates anything not Islam as he sees it.

It is a big bad confluence of events that has brought us here. To point to one thing and say 'That is the solution' is the height of fantasy and self delusion.

 

[Thin Black Line]

I have a feeling O is living about as well as anyone could who couldn't show
his face in public and has a krink next to him at all times....and a dialysis machine!

He'll either go the way of Zarqawi or he has already died of renal failure and
been buried in an unmarked grave. He deserves the latter.

 

[merpho]

The Perfect Example

of how and why we lost in Nam. Our tactics and support of dictators gave locals no alternative but to fight us. Same in Iraq. Just different leadership, if it can be called that. More commercial corruption from Cheney and Halliburton, but the same "intelligence" errors, lack of cultural understanding.

We must decide if we want more of these stupid wars, making casualties of our young people, and enemies of potential friends. What next? Our former ally Iran? Afghanistan as we pursue AQ we funded? How about Mexico?

Can no political hack in DC look at what is happening and come up with a solution? We just voted out a bunch of crooks and sadists. The new ones cannot even pass a non-binding slap on the wrist.

The only valid solution I've seen involves giving Iraq a December 2 pullout date so they have to get along or blow up and raising the price of gas so we have to lower our dependence on foreign oil.

 

[longeyes]

That would seem to give the idea all we need to do is bring the world up to our standard of living and they will stop fighting America, or I know we could come down to their standard of living. Possible that may happen.

There are those who fight for religion/ideas not money, not defending that but a hard concept for Americans in the past 35 years to understand.

What also bears scrutiny is how money is made. There's a difference between inventors and entrepreneurs and people who live off finder's fees gleaned from connections, those who are handed sweetheart deals by friends, inheritors of dynastic wealth, those who work off the margins of the financial markets, and people who won the lottery by being born atop commodity assets they trade off to smarter people for produced goods.

 

[carebear]

What also bears scrutiny is how money is made. There's a difference between inventors and entrepreneurs and people who live off finder's fees gleaned from connections, those who are handed sweetheart deals by friends, inheritors of dynastic wealth, those who work off the margins of the financial markets, and people who won the lottery by being born atop commodity assets they trade off to smarter people for produced goods.

What does "scrutiny" mean?

Are brokers, middlemen and heirs less-deserving of wealth? They should maybe have it taken away by someone?