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If you are going to war, kick ass and don't try to win hearts....

Greenman said:
That was the lesson of Vietnam.
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? Most certainly not. 'Clear objective...?' No.

Lesson ought to be -- adeptly choosing or avoiding what wars to fight.

Be just in fighting a just war.

Vietnam, not a war the USA had a ounce of justification to wage.

The primary objective of Vietnamese sovereignty does not appear to be your concern, Greenman. Rather, imperial subservience, from the gun of the French, Japanese, French again, and then the apparent objective of the USA.

Sovereignty was natively attained against the Japanese after they first drove out the French. The US did an about face against the independent Vietnamese in encouraging the return of the French, warfare resumed, and defeated French tagging out for a defeat of the USA. All at a great and avoidable cost, that far too many of you can recognise and learn from.

  • Picking sides in a civil war?
  • Waging a war of imperialism to prop up your puppet and deny native self-determination?
  • Total war? Then what outcome? This entire thread is of military ignorance of the first act outweighing any concerns to any following let along a final act in terms of social and political status.
What it comes down to -- to too many of you Yanks -- is that you are so blindly self indulgent as to believe that if you opt to act then upon that arrogance alone lends determination for credence of the act being justly in the white and any opposition in black deserving to wallow in deference to your know-it-all influencing control if not all out rule.

This thread concerns encouraging the perpetuation of destabilised enemies and of destruction. It is a misdirected promotion of repeated failure.

War ain't easy. Fools and criminals think it as such.
 
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...Then, this failure of a discussion does not even define:

  • Total War
  • whom against:
    • organised state militaries
    • domestic insurgencies
    • multinational yet numerically minor terrorist groups
The last US attempt at total war? How did the escalating battles of Fallujah go for ya? Following acts after the utter devastation of a city?

The Iraqi Sunni population had significant elements of ever lasting distrust and animosity. The US example of overt and merciless force enabled the Shia government of Iraq to further a marginalising campaign against a targeted domestic population..... A simplified route of US arrogant ineptitude to the current act: ISIS.

Total war against such a insurgent group? What do bastards desire to devastate now? What cities? Are you as immoral as the likes of Bashar al-Assad and do worse than barrel bomb or gas civilians to exterminate all opposing terrorists? Are you a Putin?

This discussion is so simple in its ineptitude to fail to discuss the complications and reality.

Rather, just a rah-rah foolishness of total war is cool with objectives.....
 
Braznor said:
It is alright to try win hearts after the conclusion of the war. But it is disastrous to go to battle without a clear objective.

Do you agree or don't agree?
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America shouldn't be going to war all over the place and just because you have fancy weapons doesn't give you the right to use them on other people. America can't really conquer a foreign n country anyway not long term, as Vietnam Afghanistan and Iraq have shown, YOU just end up with terrorism and people who hate you
 
The problem with 'going to war' is that we shouldn't be 'going to war' just to 'go to war'. 'Going to war' is not the end goal, the end goal is the end goal and 'going to war' is the means to achieve that. The end goal when 'going to war' is the means necessary is to impose and enforce your will upon others who otherwise wouldn't accept it. Which is why the means and manner we've been 'going to war' has been so flawed for so long.
 
The political and military aspects are separate. The politicians decide who we need to fight, then orders the military to do the job. There has to be a defined goal for the armed forces, and an exit strategy when those goals are met. The failure in Vietnam was not allowing the military to do their job, the politicians tried to manage the war, and failed.

The job of the military is to kill people and break things. If we don't want them to do that we shouldn't send them to war. You don't go to war to suppress an enemy, you don't fight them to change their beliefs, you don't try to be the nice guys. You go to war to defeat an enemy, the end result should be unconditional surrender.
 
The failure of the Vietnam War was that there was a Vietnam War.

Whiskey is the hero o' this thread. Nae need for further discussion, really.
 
The failure of the Vietnam war it was run by Politicians who made it perfectly clear why Politicians running a war are a very bad thing. Politicians should publically declare the end result desired outcome, and then GTFO of the way of the Mil and let it do what it is setup to do. If that means the Mil needs to call up 750k people, well, so be it.

We could have easily defeated the North Vietnamese, but we fucked around with utter stupidity because Politician. To say nothing of almost as dumb Mil Leadership who didn't bother to retain the knowledge of, much less develop, how to fight jungle warfare (I mean, never would there be an occasion for the US Mil to ever have to fight in the jungle again).
 
Braznor said:
It is alright to try win hearts after the conclusion of the war. But it is disastrous to go to battle without a clear objective.

Do you agree or don't agree?
Click to expand...

OP I disagree, the Germans may had right to sink the Lusitania since it was carrying munitions and warned the allies it would do so. But that caused the hearts of the US public to get upset, thus the US entered the war and the Germans lost.
 
Braznor said:
It is alright to try win hearts after the conclusion of the war. But it is disastrous to go to battle without a clear objective.

Do you agree or don't agree?
Click to expand...

Yes, to win a war you need a clear objective. The problem is what that objective is. It seems you think the objective is to kill a lot of people. I disagree. Killing a lot of people is not going to do any good. We simply can't kill enough people to 'win' this sort of fight with out becoming much worse then the problem we are trying to solve.

Let me give you an example. Lets say I get a group of my friends together, some really big mean guys, and we come over to your house. We kick in your door and punch you in the face, and kick you while you are down. Then spend the rest of the night eating your food, breaking your stuff, and generally trashing everything you care about. You can do nothing but weakly protest, and when you do we give you another kick in your gut and laugh at your cries.

Then the next morning I grab your hand and help you up, brush the dirt off your coat and tell you that now that you know your place we should be friends.

How well motivated are you to be my friend?
 
SMOGZINN said:
Yes, to win a war you need a clear objective. The problem is what that objective is. It seems you think the objective is to kill a lot of people. I disagree. Killing a lot of people is not going to do any good. We simply can't kill enough people to 'win' this sort of fight with out becoming much worse then the problem we are trying to solve.

Let me give you an example. Lets say I get a group of my friends together, some really big mean guys, and we come over to your house. We kick in your door and punch you in the face, and kick you while you are down. Then spend the rest of the night eating your food, breaking your stuff, and generally trashing everything you care about. You can do nothing but weakly protest, and when you do we give you another kick in your gut and laugh at your cries.

Then the next morning I grab your hand and help you up, brush the dirt off your coat and tell you that now that you know your place we should be friends.

How well motivated are you to be my friend?
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Are you saying that is what happens to everyone in your theoretical war? I think the OP was talking more broad level and i have yet to see a war that did not affect people in the way you speak no matter who justified the war was.
 
JimKiler said:
Are you saying that is what happens to everyone in your theoretical war? I think the OP was talking more broad level and i have yet to see a war that did not affect people in the way you speak no matter who justified the war was.
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No, what I'm trying to point out is that we have to decide what our goal is and take actions appropriate to that goal. If your goal is to convert them to our philosophical way of thinking, our western values I suppose, then killing them is not going to accomplish that. It is going to set them against us.
 
SMOGZINN said:
Lets say I get a group of my friends together, some really big mean guys, and we come over to your house. We kick in your door and punch you in the face, and kick you while you are down. Then spend the rest of the night eating your food, breaking your stuff, and generally trashing everything you care about. You can do nothing but weakly protest, and when you do we give you another kick in your gut and laugh at your cries.
Click to expand...

You are from Texas, right?
 
MajinCry said:
The failure of the Vietnam War was that there was a Vietnam War.

Whiskey is the hero o' this thread. Nae need for further discussion, really.
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To be fair if you look at Thailand, communism has caused a complete mess over there. Most of Southeast Asia has been communist for decades. Poor as dirt and communist. I suppose its all about trying to turn them into a South Korea instead of a North Korea.

The world is quite a mess really. A country in decline ends up in some type of war one way or the other anyway.

The Domino theory... in hindsight was clearly incorrect. But thats before we saw how spectacularly communism tends to implode on itself. Vietnam is the red scare era.
 
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Caravaggio said:
You are from Texas, right?
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Yes I am. But that paragraph was meant as a metaphor for the United States habit of invading other countries that have no real ability to resist us. Notice how we don't invade China to look for WMDs or bomb the Russian military to stop their aggression against their neighbors. We act like bullies picking on the weak and no one is going to love us for it.
 
SMOGZINN said:
Yes I am. But that paragraph was meant as a metaphor for the United States habit of invading other countries that have no real ability to resist us. Notice how we don't invade China to look for WMDs or bomb the Russian military to stop their aggression against their neighbors. We act like bullies picking on the weak and no one is going to love us for it.
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Good point. I am constantly amazed at the neocon's ability to get us into endless war by fear-mongering. The majority of otherwise intelligent people on this forum actually still want to engage in the Middle East. This speaks volumes about the ability of our government and media to use war propaganda effectively. I jumped off the train years ago.... plenty people are still on board.

Total war against an ideology...... laughing my fucking ass off. Literally has never worked in the history of the world.
 
The proper way is to go in, absolutely and mercilessly crush your enemy and then once the war is over and you've won. Be as kind as possible and help them recover.

All this half assed slow war is far far worse.
 
The best description of the just use of force that I know of is the one that was described to me as belonging to Islam, that the use of force is only justified when injustice is being perpetrated on a people. This must first be real injustice, it must be that the enemy will not yield in any other way, and then it will be resisted with maximum ability, that one is to resist righteously, committing no gross evil, but that the moment the enemy will yield, surrender and contract to mend its ways, all violence must end. A break of that contract will result in an attempted extermination of the law breakers. You must honor your word.
 
If at war, aim to win.

However, history keeps repeating itself. Just like the ancient Romans kept expanding their boarders because a new enemy kept appearing, so do countries today always have something to band against.
 
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