Cunnivore wrote:
Haven’t you figured out by now that the only way to deal with murderers is to ask them to please stop murdering?
Headhunter wrote:
LOL!! So I take it you’re against negotiating with Iran and Syria? :>
“Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives,” the Iranian president was quoted as saying.
Does that answer your question?
Source:
[/quote]
Isnt that a declaration of war? Why isnt the media screaming this all over the place?
But if we attack them, they’ll get mad at us and not love us anymore, like they have for so long.
[/quote]
Oh crap, that’s right. I keep forgetting that killing terrorists always creates more terrorists. I wish that principle held true in the rest of the world, just think how fast we’d be creating more oil!
Isnt that a declaration of war? Why isnt the media screaming this all over the place?[/quote]
When arabs declare that this or that country or group of people is going to “die” or be “wiped off the face of the earth”, that’s just “rhetoric”.
If it was Bush saying that, THEN it would be a declaration of war.
And also illegal.
And stupid.
And self-righteous.
And evangelical.
And pompous.
And so on.
But if we attack them, they’ll get mad at us and not love us anymore, like they have for so long.
Oh crap, that’s right. I keep forgetting that killing terrorists always creates more terrorists. I wish that principle held true in the rest of the world, just think how fast we’d be creating more oil![/quote]
No one’s saying we shouldn’t be killing terrorists. But ignoring the effects of collateral damage is a great way to lose this war, and the ones like it to follow.
I have no idea who you are, but I’d be more inclined to listen to someone like John Nagl, an Army Lieutenant Colonel who served in Al Anbar province and wrote a recent book on lessons learned in Malaya and Vietnam:
The key to success in a counterinsurgency environment is not to create more insurgents than you capture or kill. A stray tank round that kills a family could create dozens of insurgents for a generation.
Thus, it is essential to use force as carefully and with as much discrimination as is possible. This is especially important at situations like checkpoints when soldiers must be given the non-lethal tools to protect themselves from possible car bombers without relying upon deadly force. Always consider the long-term effects of operations in a counterinsurgency environment.
Killing an insurgent today may be satisfying, but if in doing so you convince all the members of his clan to fight you to the death, you?ve actually taken three steps backwards.
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
…
Thus, it is essential to use force as carefully and with as much discrimination as is possible. This is especially important at situations like checkpoints when soldiers must be given the non-lethal tools to protect themselves from possible car bombers without relying upon deadly force. … [/quote]
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
…
Thus, it is essential to use force as carefully and with as much discrimination as is possible. This is especially important at situations like checkpoints when soldiers must be given the non-lethal tools to protect themselves from possible car bombers without relying upon deadly force. …
Pie in the sky bullshit.[/quote]
Actually, it isn’t. The key argument that Gdollars is making, and has made in several different threads, is that the reliance on airpower and technology is not going to give us an advantage in a counter-insurgency war. The U.S. has learned this lesson once already, and current commanders havn’t paid attention to Vietnam or the historical examples of successful COIN warfare from the past.
Ho Chi Minh taught every future opponent of the United States that guerilla tactics negate the technological advantages of the US military.
[quote]BH6 wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
…
Thus, it is essential to use force as carefully and with as much discrimination as is possible. This is especially important at situations like checkpoints when soldiers must be given the non-lethal tools to protect themselves from possible car bombers without relying upon deadly force. …
Pie in the sky bullshit.
Actually, it isn’t. The key argument that Gdollars is making, and has made in several different threads, is that the reliance on airpower and technology is not going to give us an advantage in a counter-insurgency war. The U.S. has learned this lesson once already, and current commanders havn’t paid attention to Vietnam or the historical examples of successful COIN warfare from the past.
Ho Chi Minh taught every future opponent of the United States that guerilla tactics negate the technological advantages of the US military. [/quote]
The article he quoted claimed that our soldiers should be using non lethal weapons at check points. That is completely idiotic.
I understand that keeping civilian casualties down will help win the hearts and minds and all that other bullshit but I am hard pressed to find real examples of it actually working.
Perhaps if we leveled a few cities like we did in Japan and Germany we could plant the seeds for democracy.
We are currently fighting the war halfway.
Our media and half the electorate is complaining that we are torturing people because we are not giving terrorists air conditioning.
I cannot take that mindset seriously, nor can I take seriously someone that advocates less than lethal weapons at checkpoints when the technolgy is not there and it would likely result in more American casualties.
I agree about the airpower. This will be won or lost on the ground. Airpower can only supplement the work on the ground, not replace it.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
BH6 wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
…
Thus, it is essential to use force as carefully and with as much discrimination as is possible. This is especially important at situations like checkpoints when soldiers must be given the non-lethal tools to protect themselves from possible car bombers without relying upon deadly force. …
Pie in the sky bullshit.
Actually, it isn’t. The key argument that Gdollars is making, and has made in several different threads, is that the reliance on airpower and technology is not going to give us an advantage in a counter-insurgency war. The U.S. has learned this lesson once already, and current commanders havn’t paid attention to Vietnam or the historical examples of successful COIN warfare from the past.
Ho Chi Minh taught every future opponent of the United States that guerilla tactics negate the technological advantages of the US military.
The article he quoted claimed that our soldiers should be using non lethal weapons at check points. That is completely idiotic.
I understand that keeping civilian casualties down will help win the hearts and minds and all that other bullshit but I am hard pressed to find real examples of it actually working.
Perhaps if we leveled a few cities like we did in Japan and Germany we could plant the seeds for democracy.
We are currently fighting the war halfway.
Our media and half the electorate is complaining that we are torturing people because we are not giving terrorists air conditioning.
I cannot take that mindset seriously, nor can I take seriously someone that advocates less than lethal weapons at checkpoints when the technolgy is not there and it would likely result in more American casualties.
I agree about the airpower. This will be won or lost on the ground. Airpower can only supplement the work on the ground, not replace it.[/quote]
Zap,
Agree with you 100%. We’ve seen what happens by fighting halfway.
You’ll be accused of being barbarous by the people who don’t want us to win.
I encourage you to summarily ignore them as their appeasment tendencies are far more dangerous.
You all are not realistic in what you expect the military or the leadership in the United States will be willing to do in this war. Leveling a city? Are you actually serious?
Who would that send a message to? What enemy will that defeat? What goal will that accomplish.
Gents, this isn’t WWII, wars will never be fought that way again. Countries will not set out to destroy each others military and industrial power. That will never happen again. Post-industrial nations will not fight wars anymore, they can effect each other economically and politically more effectively than in WWII. Wars from now on will be fought in the Third World, in developing countries.
War has evolved. Battlefield success doesn’t guarantee a victory, military success doesn’t guarantee a victory.
Wars are fought now to influence the minds of the populations of the combatant countries. We aren’t fighting a uniformed enemy in Iraq. We aren’t fighting one enemy in Iraq.
We are fighting multiple insurgent groups whose goals differ greatly. The best thing we can provide the population in Iraq is security. We need to provide them with a police force rather than a military force. If we can run a check point effectively without using lethal force, then we are giving the Iraqi people a secure environment without a threats coming from our troops and the guys trying to kill our troops. The Iraqi military and police, backed up by our troops, need to stop the Sunnis from attacking the Shities, the Shities from attacking the Sunnis, the Baathists from attacking civilians to weaken the government, the Wahabbists from attacking everyone, and keep the government running so that the Iraqis can hold another round of elections in the next couple years. Or we could flatten Badhdad and suddenly we win.
I do not seriously advocate leveling a city. I merely make the point as we leveled a number of cities in Germany and Japan and yet they are now thriving democracies.
Trying to limit civilian casualties is not the key to victory.
[quote]BH6 wrote:
You all are not realistic in what you expect the military or the leadership in the United States will be willing to do in this war. Leveling a city? Are you actually serious?
Who would that send a message to? What enemy will that defeat? What goal will that accomplish.
Gents, this isn’t WWII, wars will never be fought that way again. Countries will not set out to destroy each others military and industrial power. That will never happen again. Post-industrial nations will not fight wars anymore, they can effect each other economically and politically more effectively than in WWII. Wars from now on will be fought in the Third World, in developing countries.
War has evolved. Battlefield success doesn’t guarantee a victory, military success doesn’t guarantee a victory.
Wars are fought now to influence the minds of the populations of the combatant countries. We aren’t fighting a uniformed enemy in Iraq. We aren’t fighting one enemy in Iraq.
We are fighting multiple insurgent groups whose goals differ greatly. The best thing we can provide the population in Iraq is security. We need to provide them with a police force rather than a military force. If we can run a check point effectively without using lethal force, then we are giving the Iraqi people a secure environment without a threats coming from our troops and the guys trying to kill our troops. The Iraqi military and police, backed up by our troops, need to stop the Sunnis from attacking the Shities, the Shities from attacking the Sunnis, the Baathists from attacking civilians to weaken the government, the Wahabbists from attacking everyone, and keep the government running so that the Iraqis can hold another round of elections in the next couple years. Or we could flatten Badhdad and suddenly we win. [/quote]
Great, great post. I don’t understand why so many people, some of them even current or former military, can’t seem to get their head around the fact that a low-intensity/unconventional conflict is nothing like World War II.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
I’m not suggesting to fight with airpower alone.[/quote]
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that. What I’m suggesting is that using airstrikes is counter-productive the vast majority of the time.
You don’t win wars like this with firepower. You need what John Paul Vann (see A Bright Shining Lie on Vietnam) called “selective killing.” Guys with guns. Why don’t we have enough of those? Largely because we waste our money on expensive technological weapons systems built to fight an opponent that doesn’t exist.
It’s an interesting read and proposal. In it he argues for an Attack Force and an Administrative Force to deal with future conflicts. He goes into the problems in great depth.
The conquered will never love the conquering force. You will not have peace until the population fears the result of bad behavior. I don’t think the rules of engagement allow that presently.
We didn’t conquer anyone in Iraq. The Bush administration made that clear from the beginning, we were out to change the regime, not make war on the Iraqi people. Since the Iraqi people were never the target, we have to fight this thing as a low-intensity conflict. Manuever warfare doesn’t account for the civilian population, what do you do with the city after you capture it in a brilliant strike against the enemy’s center of gravity?
The U.S. government wasn’t prepared to rebuild Iraq after the U.S. military went in and defeated Saddam’s military and removed his government.
We need more experts from the Dept of State, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, Justice, Labor, Transportation, Education, and so on to actually put the Iraqi government together and make it work. This current plan in Iraq would work if it was a true inter-agency effort rather than an all military effort.
Don’t know. I am torn over this. I don’t think we can continue to pour money into Iraq in an effort to rebuild.
My point about conquering a population was in reference to the Barrett book. I don’t think we conquered Iraq either. We defeated the military but stopped short of defeating the opposition.
[quote]hedo wrote:
Don’t know. I am torn over this. I don’t think we can continue to pour money into Iraq in an effort to rebuild.
My point about conquering a population was in reference to the Barrett book. I don’t think we conquered Iraq either. We defeated the military but stopped short of defeating the opposition.[/quote]
Exactly. It is up to the Iraqi governmenet to deal with its people.
We have turned over most of the country already. If this surge works we will break up the most dangerous militias and then get out and let the Iraqi government deal with it.
It is a shame there has been so much opposition to the war because I think it certainly has slowed down our efforts. Politics suck.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
hedo wrote:
Don’t know. I am torn over this. I don’t think we can continue to pour money into Iraq in an effort to rebuild.
My point about conquering a population was in reference to the Barrett book. I don’t think we conquered Iraq either. We defeated the military but stopped short of defeating the opposition.
Exactly. It is up to the Iraqi governmenet to deal with its people.
We have turned over most of the country already. If this surge works we will break up the most dangerous militias and then get out and let the Iraqi government deal with it.
It is a shame there has been so much opposition to the war because I think it certainly has slowed down our efforts. Politics suck.[/quote]
A good deal of opposition to the war effort, especially from people on the right like Tom Hagel, has been in reaction to the Bush team’s manifest incompetence, not to our aims in Iraq.
It’s an interesting read and proposal. In it he argues for an Attack Force and an Administrative Force to deal with future conflicts. He goes into the problems in great depth.
[/quote]
I haven’t had the chance to read Barnett’s books yet, will at some point. Bill Lind offers an interesting conservative critique of him though:
I also think a lot of what Barnett is proposing is manifestly unrealistic, given international realities and the trouble we are having just in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[quote]
The conquered will never love the conquering force. You will not have peace until the population fears the result of bad behavior. I don’t think the rules of engagement allow that presently.[/quote]
I definitely agree with you that the Iraqis will never love us. If you were a young Iraqi man would you love the people who liberated you, therefore pointing out that you couldn’t do it yourself? Makes the ingratitude a lot more understandable.
The trick is to gain their tolerance, not their love, basically the grudging recognition that we’re there to help and won’t be there long. We definitely don’t have that. I don’t really see how we can rule by fear, due to both our policy aims in the region and the fact that the American people are already divided on the war (not to mention the morality of it).
