Fire the Generals!

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: Genx87
The Generals have their hands tied by civilian politicians. Let the generals do their jobs like we did in WWII and things may change.

I dont think we as a nation can handle what happens when we unleash our military.

You are wrong on that assesment. There were TONS of political calculations going on during World War 2. The decision of when and where to open a second front (D-day) was all based on the US and England having to take action to please Stalin.
It was widly thought that if we didn't open a second front with Germany that Stalin would grow tired of the war and sign a peace treaty with Hitler.
Also the decision of what cities to hit with the atomic bomb had politcal calculations. Kyoto was one of the orginal targets but:

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson struck Kyoto from the list because of its cultural significance, over the objections of General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project. According to Professor Edwin O. Reischauer, Stimson "had known and admired Kyoto ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier."

I think the big difference, and we owe this to Vietnam, is the reluctance to cause any civilian casulties. And the media play up of anyone civilians being killed. I doubt there to many stories during World War 2 about the number of innocent women and children being killed when we bombed Dresden etc.
A lot of this is caused by the whole 24 hour news cycle, cable news etc etc
Every military action we take is disected a hundred ways before it is even finished. Remember the "quagmire" we were in just a few days into the Iraq invasion?

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: Genx87
The Generals have their hands tied by civilian politicians. Let the generals do their jobs like we did in WWII and things may change.

I dont think we as a nation can handle what happens when we unleash our military.

The world does'nt recognise Islamic Militism as a threat like we did German Nazism or Japanese Kodo, yet. Unfortunatly I think it will take a few nukes detonating in our major cities before that happens... and even then it's questionable considering what passes for the intelligentsia these days continually bleats lies about "religion of peace" and all cultures have equal validity....

You do realize the nukes would come from Pakistan NOT Iraq. Iran is open question. Your general thesis doesn't make sense. Bush started the war in Iraq and the ensuing chaos is a function of those bleating lies about "weapons of mass destruction" and "spreading democracy." The truth is that Iraq had a government Bush didn't like so he attacked . . . unprovoked. Accordingly, it makes no sense whatsoever to conflate the real threat of people using religion (Islam) to justify attacks on civilians with the actions of the Bush administration.

The rest of the world recognizes the difference. Only an ill-informed minority in America think otherwise . . . 99.999% of which have never set foot in a predominantly-Muslim country (say Indonesia, Malaysia) or one with a large Muslim minority

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: BaliBabyDoc

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: Genx87
The Generals have their hands tied by civilian politicians. Let the generals do their jobs like we did in WWII and things may change.

I dont think we as a nation can handle what happens when we unleash our military.

The world does'nt recognise Islamic Militism as a threat like we did German Nazism or Japanese Kodo, yet. Unfortunatly I think it will take a few nukes detonating in our major cities before that happens... and even then it's questionable considering what passes for the intelligentsia these days continually bleats lies about "religion of peace" and all cultures have equal validity....

You do realize the nukes would come from Pakistan NOT Iraq. Iran is open question. Your general thesis doesn't make sense. Bush started the war in Iraq and the ensuing chaos is a function of those bleating lies about "weapons of mass destruction" and "spreading democracy." The truth is that Iraq had a government Bush didn't like so he attacked . . . unprovoked. Accordingly, it makes no sense whatsoever to conflate the real threat of people using religion (Islam) to justify attacks on civilians with the actions of the Bush administration.

The rest of the world recognizes the difference. Only an ill-informed minority in America think otherwise . . . 99.999% of which have never set foot in a predominantly-Muslim country (say Indonesia, Malaysia) or one with a large Muslim minority

Iraq serves no purpose it's another diversion of what we are up against, an ideology that can only be defeated following my 6 step plan found here.

And no, not pakistan or any nation would be foolish enough to launch weapons at us. the nukes will come gram by gram into the united states though air travel, shipping containers, over the porous borders be assembled here and detonated from 1200 ft low flying aircraft above major cities..

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: senseamp
Wouldn't work. USSR would overrun airbases in Europe, and keep them tanks and planes coming from plants in Siberia out of range of US bombers from UK and Asia. If you think USSR would settle for anything less than occupying Germany after what Germans did in USSR, no way in hell.

You are forgetting that Russia had just about depleted its supply of military aged men as early as 1943 and was relying on their ability to out produce Germany when it came to tanks etc (and a lot of their production support came from us via Lend lease)

By the end of the war Russia had lost 10 million soldiers, and another 10 million civilians. The US on the other hand had lost only 382,000 soldiers and only 67,800 civilians.
All told Russia lost 13% of their population, compared to our .32%.
Over 30 million Russians served in the war while only 11 million Americans did.

This does not mean that a war against Russia would not have been long and costly, but there is NO doubt at all that we would have won. Heck we could have started dropping nukes on them in 1945, eventually they would have given up.
There is also a chance that a lot of the Russian military might have just "melted" away, we beat the Germans, lets not fight the Americans or defend our communist dictator.
A quick search of the net leaves me without any plausible studies on what would have happened.

Check out the figures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

 

[brandonbull]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: senseamp
Wouldn't work. USSR would overrun airbases in Europe, and keep them tanks and planes coming from plants in Siberia out of range of US bombers from UK and Asia. If you think USSR would settle for anything less than occupying Germany after what Germans did in USSR, no way in hell.

You are forgetting that Russia had just about depleted its supply of military aged men as early as 1943 and was relying on their ability to out produce Germany when it came to tanks etc (and a lot of their production support came from us via Lend lease)

By the end of the war Russia had lost 10 million soldiers, and another 10 million civilians. The US on the other hand had lost only 382,000 soldiers and only 67,800 civilians.
All told Russia lost 13% of their population, compared to our .32%.
Over 30 million Russians served in the war while only 11 million Americans did.

This does not mean that a war against Russia would not have been long and costly, but there is NO doubt at all that we would have won. Heck we could have started dropping nukes on them in 1945, eventually they would have given up.
There is also a chance that a lot of the Russian military might have just "melted" away, we beat the Germans, lets not fight the Americans or defend our communist dictator.
A quick search of the net leaves me without any plausible studies on what would have happened.

Check out the figures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

Wouldn't have been that hard for the US to have B29s start dropping bombs on Russian oil fields in the ME.

I pretty sure German Soldiers would have been more than happy to start fighting the Russians again.

 

[straightalker]

Lou Dobbs of course is hated by all the America haters, because he has the balls to resist being a 100% total media whore like Hannity, Rush and that fat mouthed whore Bill Oreilly.

Leave Dobbs alone. He's trying to fight among other thing, the North American Union. Something that is now in the process of destroying the USA.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: Genx87
The Generals have their hands tied by civilian politicians. Let the generals do their jobs like we did in WWII and things may change.

I dont think we as a nation can handle what happens when we unleash our military.

The world does'nt recognise Islamic Militism as a threat like we did German Nazism or Japanese Kodo, yet. Unfortunatly I think it will take a few nukes detonating in our major cities before that happens... and even then it's questionable considering what passes for the intelligentsia these days continually bleats lies about "religion of peace" and all cultures have equal validity....

Islamic militancy will never and can never be anything to compare to either of those regimes. Honestly when did you take a dive off the deep end?

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: Genx87
The Generals have their hands tied by civilian politicians. Let the generals do their jobs like we did in WWII and things may change.

I dont think we as a nation can handle what happens when we unleash our military.

Unfortunately I think that way of war-fighting is long over, never to return. Not with the complete media manipulation that goes on nowadays. The same could be said for Vietnam, only now I think it's much worse. There won't be any more Dresden's, or Nagasaki's, we longer fight wars to win. Along the lines of what Zebo was saying, we need to take the gloves off and go all out, that's how wars are won, punish these people until they give up or are annihilated, there is no middle ground and they certainly won't grant us any reprieve, ever. If this truly is a war to preserve our civilization as W says, then we need to fight it that way.

McArthur wanted to nuke the Chinese when they came over the border, we should have.

The change started right after WWII by the Truman administration. Korea was the first test of having our military fight with their hands tied. McArthur was correct in his public lambasting of Truman's interference in the war effort in Korea.

Guys like Patton, McArthur, Bradley ect would probably quit in a ball of flames if they were forced to fight nice. Patton had the idea to drive to Moscow, imagine if we took him up on it? No cold war for 50 years, no oppressed eastern europe. Communism stopped dead in its tracks 60 years ago. Possibly no Korea, no vietnam.

Good intentions with bad consequences.

Patton would have had his ****** push in. Your right about one thing, there would have been no col war since The russians would have effortlessly pushed us right off the continent.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: Zebo
I know many of you on the right dislike Michael Scheuer for his critism of Bush and his tactics but I think the man is a genius ... all should read his book as he's an expert on the ME, it's culture it's religion and warfare... Here's an exchange he has with Bill O.

O'REILLY: I'm bringing it up to be - to show the Islamic world and those Muslims who are watching us right now, the inconsistency of their thought that, if there was a - you know, a God that was actually wanting them to do whatever, how could he possibly want them to...
SCHEUER: No, I don't quite follow it, sir, because I -- as much as I'd like to believe that human life is sacred in all instances, war, whether it's conducted by Americans or by British or by Chinese or by Muslims, war is just war. And it kills innocent people. And that's the way it is.
O'REILLY: But there's a way to wage it. And the way that the al Qaedas are waging it is by killing civilians. They're not waging war in a conventional way, as you know. Now...
SCHEUER: Well, they are waging war in the conventional way that we waged war until 1945, sir, which is the last war we've won. Once we stopped waging war in the American fashion, we haven't won a war since....
O'REILLY: Is there anything we can do to win it?
SCHEUER: Yes, sir. We certainly have to kill more of the enemy. That's the first step.
O'REILLY: Any way we can?
SCHEUER: Anywhere we can, whenever we can, without a great deal of concern for civilian casualties. As I said, war is war. The people who got killed when they were hosting Zawahiri to dinner were not the friends of the United States.
O'REILLY: All right, Mr Scheuer, always a pleasure to talk with you.


You guys remember the street celebrations of Hezbolla and thousands of other examples of "death to america" rallies thoughout the ME? Cluster bombs needed there in real warfare as none are friends of the United States...

You would do UBL proud, exactly the same foul state of mind.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: CPA

Originally posted by: Genx87
The Generals have their hands tied by civilian politicians. Let the generals do their jobs like we did in WWII and things may change.

I dont think we as a nation can handle what happens when we unleash our military.

And those civilian politicians are led by the media. The media controls this war, noone else.

We never have been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically and that's where wars are won and lost. Another mistake of Bush was embedded journalists.

War is political, the two are inseperable.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: senseamp
Wouldn't work. USSR would overrun airbases in Europe, and keep them tanks and planes coming from plants in Siberia out of range of US bombers from UK and Asia. If you think USSR would settle for anything less than occupying Germany after what Germans did in USSR, no way in hell.

You are forgetting that Russia had just about depleted its supply of military aged men as early as 1943 and was relying on their ability to out produce Germany when it came to tanks etc (and a lot of their production support came from us via Lend lease)

By the end of the war Russia had lost 10 million soldiers, and another 10 million civilians. The US on the other hand had lost only 382,000 soldiers and only 67,800 civilians.
All told Russia lost 13% of their population, compared to our .32%.
Over 30 million Russians served in the war while only 11 million Americans did.

This does not mean that a war against Russia would not have been long and costly, but there is NO doubt at all that we would have won. Heck we could have started dropping nukes on them in 1945, eventually they would have given up.
There is also a chance that a lot of the Russian military might have just "melted" away, we beat the Germans, lets not fight the Americans or defend our communist dictator.
A quick search of the net leaves me without any plausible studies on what would have happened.

Check out the figures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

I would have rather fought the beneign cold war than started dropping nukes. You also have to remember that american equiptment was trash and the reussians put most of it into the reserves.

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: Genx87
The Generals have their hands tied by civilian politicians. Let the generals do their jobs like we did in WWII and things may change.

I dont think we as a nation can handle what happens when we unleash our military.

Unfortunately I think that way of war-fighting is long over, never to return. Not with the complete media manipulation that goes on nowadays. The same could be said for Vietnam, only now I think it's much worse. There won't be any more Dresden's, or Nagasaki's, we longer fight wars to win. Along the lines of what Zebo was saying, we need to take the gloves off and go all out, that's how wars are won, punish these people until they give up or are annihilated, there is no middle ground and they certainly won't grant us any reprieve, ever. If this truly is a war to preserve our civilization as W says, then we need to fight it that way.

McArthur wanted to nuke the Chinese when they came over the border, we should have.

The change started right after WWII by the Truman administration. Korea was the first test of having our military fight with their hands tied. McArthur was correct in his public lambasting of Truman's interference in the war effort in Korea.

Guys like Patton, McArthur, Bradley ect would probably quit in a ball of flames if they were forced to fight nice. Patton had the idea to drive to Moscow, imagine if we took him up on it? No cold war for 50 years, no oppressed eastern europe. Communism stopped dead in its tracks 60 years ago. Possibly no Korea, no vietnam.

Good intentions with bad consequences.

Patton would have had his ****** push in. Your right about one thing, there would have been no col war since The russians would have effortlessly pushed us right off the continent.

Dude, what planet are you from? The Russians lost 81,000 in just the fight for Berlin. Their military was in pretty bad shape in 1945, luckly the German military was in worse shape.

Oh wait... just read your name... nevermind

 

[blackllotus]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: Genx87
The Generals have their hands tied by civilian politicians. Let the generals do their jobs like we did in WWII and things may change.

I dont think we as a nation can handle what happens when we unleash our military.

The world does'nt recognise Islamic Militism as a threat like we did German Nazism or Japanese Kodo, yet. Unfortunatly I think it will take a few nukes detonating in our major cities before that happens... and even then it's questionable considering what passes for the intelligentsia these days continually bleats lies about "religion of peace" and all cultures have equal validity....

Islamic militancy will never and can never be anything to compare to either of those regimes. Honestly when did you take a dive off the deep end?

That has nothing to do with his point. One terrorist with a nuke can kill many more civilians than Iran or any one of those other countries could.

Btw, you do realize that you just spead 8 sentences over five posts in a row.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: Genx87
The Generals have their hands tied by civilian politicians. Let the generals do their jobs like we did in WWII and things may change.

I dont think we as a nation can handle what happens when we unleash our military.

Unfortunately I think that way of war-fighting is long over, never to return. Not with the complete media manipulation that goes on nowadays. The same could be said for Vietnam, only now I think it's much worse. There won't be any more Dresden's, or Nagasaki's, we longer fight wars to win. Along the lines of what Zebo was saying, we need to take the gloves off and go all out, that's how wars are won, punish these people until they give up or are annihilated, there is no middle ground and they certainly won't grant us any reprieve, ever. If this truly is a war to preserve our civilization as W says, then we need to fight it that way.

McArthur wanted to nuke the Chinese when they came over the border, we should have.

The change started right after WWII by the Truman administration. Korea was the first test of having our military fight with their hands tied. McArthur was correct in his public lambasting of Truman's interference in the war effort in Korea.

Guys like Patton, McArthur, Bradley ect would probably quit in a ball of flames if they were forced to fight nice. Patton had the idea to drive to Moscow, imagine if we took him up on it? No cold war for 50 years, no oppressed eastern europe. Communism stopped dead in its tracks 60 years ago. Possibly no Korea, no vietnam.

Good intentions with bad consequences.

Patton would have had his ****** push in. Your right about one thing, there would have been no col war since The russians would have effortlessly pushed us right off the continent.

You over estimate the Soviet military machine in 1945. It is ok, we over estimated them for the next 50 years.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: senseamp
Wouldn't work. USSR would overrun airbases in Europe, and keep them tanks and planes coming from plants in Siberia out of range of US bombers from UK and Asia. If you think USSR would settle for anything less than occupying Germany after what Germans did in USSR, no way in hell.

You are forgetting that Russia had just about depleted its supply of military aged men as early as 1943 and was relying on their ability to out produce Germany when it came to tanks etc (and a lot of their production support came from us via Lend lease)

By the end of the war Russia had lost 10 million soldiers, and another 10 million civilians. The US on the other hand had lost only 382,000 soldiers and only 67,800 civilians.
All told Russia lost 13% of their population, compared to our .32%.
Over 30 million Russians served in the war while only 11 million Americans did.

This does not mean that a war against Russia would not have been long and costly, but there is NO doubt at all that we would have won. Heck we could have started dropping nukes on them in 1945, eventually they would have given up.
There is also a chance that a lot of the Russian military might have just "melted" away, we beat the Germans, lets not fight the Americans or defend our communist dictator.
A quick search of the net leaves me without any plausible studies on what would have happened.

Check out the figures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

I would have rather fought the beneign cold war than started dropping nukes. You also have to remember that american equiptment was trash and the reussians put most of it into the reserves.

Trash in what ways? The Sherman performed fine against T55s in the war of 67. Our equipment wasnt as good as the Germans either but we managed to knock their armor formations out pretty good.

If you are that worried, the M26 was getting its kinks knocked out by the end of the war as well.

 

[1prophet]

Originally posted by: Zebo
Everyone knows how to defeat this enemy that loves death more than we love life we are just unwilling to speak it.

When the costs are too high do what we do best outsource the war on terror to China NSFW

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: Genx87
The Generals have their hands tied by civilian politicians. Let the generals do their jobs like we did in WWII and things may change.

I dont think we as a nation can handle what happens when we unleash our military.

Unfortunately I think that way of war-fighting is long over, never to return. Not with the complete media manipulation that goes on nowadays. The same could be said for Vietnam, only now I think it's much worse. There won't be any more Dresden's, or Nagasaki's, we longer fight wars to win. Along the lines of what Zebo was saying, we need to take the gloves off and go all out, that's how wars are won, punish these people until they give up or are annihilated, there is no middle ground and they certainly won't grant us any reprieve, ever. If this truly is a war to preserve our civilization as W says, then we need to fight it that way.

McArthur wanted to nuke the Chinese when they came over the border, we should have.

The change started right after WWII by the Truman administration. Korea was the first test of having our military fight with their hands tied. McArthur was correct in his public lambasting of Truman's interference in the war effort in Korea.

Guys like Patton, McArthur, Bradley ect would probably quit in a ball of flames if they were forced to fight nice. Patton had the idea to drive to Moscow, imagine if we took him up on it? No cold war for 50 years, no oppressed eastern europe. Communism stopped dead in its tracks 60 years ago. Possibly no Korea, no vietnam.

Good intentions with bad consequences.

Patton would have had his ****** push in. Your right about one thing, there would have been no col war since The russians would have effortlessly pushed us right off the continent.

Dude, what planet are you from? The Russians lost 81,000 in just the fight for Berlin. Their military was in pretty bad shape in 1945, luckly the German military was in worse shape.

Oh wait... just read your name... nevermind

Heh, there were Soviet units that saw 80-90% casualty rates east of Berlin to depleted SS and Volkstrum units that had little to no armor or paks and just rifles and panzershreks or fausts.

This idea the Soviets would have effortlessly driven us and the British off the continent is interesting considering the difficulty the mighty Soviet war machine had with old men and the Hitler youth.

 

[f95toli]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Heh, there were Soviet units that saw 80-90% casualty rates east of Berlin to depleted SS and Volkstrum units that had little to no armor or paks and just rifles and panzershreks or fausts.

This idea the Soviets would have effortlessly driven us and the British off the continent is interesting considering the difficulty the mighty Soviet war machine had with old men and the Hitler youth.

Causality rates were more or less suppose to be high, that was just the way they fought. Red army officers were rarely close to the front line (again by design, you have to spend resources training officers) meaning that whenever something did not go according to plan causalities where extremely high since there was no plan B and no chance to reorganize; and the men where often not allowed to retreat.
They had more men than equipment and didn't spend much time training their personel, the number of people who died was more or less irrelevant as long as they reached their long term strategic goals. The Red Army could easily cope with very high losses simply because they did not have to take public opinion into account.
So casuslity figures are somewhat missleading in this case.

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: GarfieldtheCat

Guys like Patton, McArthur, Bradley ect would probably quit in a ball of flames if they were forced to fight nice. Patton had the idea to drive to Moscow, imagine if we took him up on it? No cold war for 50 years, no oppressed eastern europe. Communism stopped dead in its tracks 60 years ago. Possibly no Korea, no vietnam.

Are you serious? The US Army at the end of WWII could not have driven to Moscow. By 1945, the Soviet Army was big and powerful, and drove the Germans back from in front of Moscow all the way to Berlin.

Remember, in Europe, 2/3 of the German Army was fighting the USSR, and only 1/3 was fighting us.

Could we have achieved a limited success and maybe taken back Eastern Germany or other countires, who knows? But invading the USSR would never work.

Last I checked the Soviets weren't fighting on two fronts, we were. Their enemy, Germany, was ALSO fighting on two fronts.

And also, I think you forget about our good'ole friend, the atomic bomb, a little friend that the Soviets wouldn't have for another 4 years.........

 

[piasabird]

We have not unleashed our military at any time in this war???

If we had, Baghdad would be a giant pile of rubble, or we would have dropped Napalm and burned everything. There is no such thing as a nice war. War is hell. We should never fight a war with the intent of helping an enemy. If we should have to go to war it should be to utterly destroy our enemy. You can not play nice-nice with terrorists, rapists, mass murderers, and those who torture civilians by boiling them in Oil. We should have made an example out of Iraq that put fear into every country in the region. Instead we proved we are weak women afraid of our own shadow. How can any terrorist respect that?

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: GarfieldtheCat

Guys like Patton, McArthur, Bradley ect would probably quit in a ball of flames if they were forced to fight nice. Patton had the idea to drive to Moscow, imagine if we took him up on it? No cold war for 50 years, no oppressed eastern europe. Communism stopped dead in its tracks 60 years ago. Possibly no Korea, no vietnam.

Are you serious? The US Army at the end of WWII could not have driven to Moscow. By 1945, the Soviet Army was big and powerful, and drove the Germans back from in front of Moscow all the way to Berlin.

Remember, in Europe, 2/3 of the German Army was fighting the USSR, and only 1/3 was fighting us.

Could we have achieved a limited success and maybe taken back Eastern Germany or other countires, who knows? But invading the USSR would never work.

Last I checked the Soviets weren't fighting on two fronts, we were. Their enemy, Germany, was ALSO fighting on two fronts.

And also, I think you forget about our good'ole friend, the atomic bomb, a little friend that the Soviets wouldn't have for another 4 years.........

Actually, the Soviets did fight on two fronts, although only for a little bit at the end of the war, when they declared war on Japan. I know, a bit of a nitpick.

But at the time, troops in the ETO were being told that they would redeploy to the Pacific, so we couldn't count on even the ETO still beign around to attack the soviets.

Also, I don't really think we had all the many atomic bombs ready to go, maybe only 1-2 more because of the time and difficulty in producing the enriched Uranium or Plutonium.

I still don't see how we could have plausibly invaded the USSR. At best, I think we would have gotten some gains in Eastern European countries (East Germany, maybe Poland, Austria, etc.) but would have been facing a war of attrition with the Soviet army. Don't forget the USSR was our ally (expedient ally only to defeat Germany, but most of the coutnry didn't realize that), so attacking a former ally would not have gone over well for the troops or the people back home.