West can't fight: doomed to fail every war.

[Zebo]

I was against the Iraqi war for all it's premption, lies and unessesary death, still am, but for another reason at this point and that's we don't have stomach, republicans and democrats alike, to really put the screws down and win.

I was Shocked when I learned we did foot patrols for snipers to hit. Shocked to learn we do drive patrols for IEDs to blow to soldiers to peices. Shocked we did'nt surround a whole town and strave them out until they capitulated. Shocked to learn we did'nt shoot looters, thugs and other malcontents on sight but jailed them instead. Prue idiocy. We need to read up on Clausewitz instead of what passes for military education these days (just war theory). You destroy your enemy as quickly and brutally as possible and avoid a long protracted conflict and even more deaths and instability. We havnt done that since WWII. The last war we won. In this war the Fallujah catastrophe stands out as a perfect example as we warned let the city drain itself of most hardend before action. Fallujah and every living thing in it should have been vaporized the same day they butchered those American contractors. Our invasion of Iraq was too "surgical", too low-casuality with no message other than guerilla warfare is profitable an carried no family responsibity with it. The Mujahideen just laughs at us.

Anyway good article here by Ralph Peters entiled "'P.C.' COWARDICE DOOMS FIGHT AGAINST IRAQ'S KILLERS" talks about how we are going to leave 99% of peace loving Iraqis to thugs and killers because of our nancy boy ways of fighting.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10242006/ne...ets_columnists_ralph_peters.htm?page=1

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: Zebo
You destroy your enemy as quickly and brutally as possible and avoid a long protracted conflict and even more deaths and instability.

You mean like Russia did in Chechnya?

 

[sandorski]

It has nothing to do with "stomach". Guerilla Warfare is just a superior tactic against overwhelming force. The West's Military is simply too built around the concept of Armies clashing with Armies on a battlefield. Guerrila Armies don't work that way.

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: sandorski
It has nothing to do with "stomach". Guerilla Warfare is just a superior tactic against overwhelming force. The West's Military is simply too built around the concept of Armies clashing with Armies on a battlefield. Guerrila Armies don't work that way.

So why do so many lefties think we should simply ban firearms, claiming that there's no way an armed populace could rebel against the government? Then in their next breath they decry the war and claim there's no way for us to beat these insurgents.

Off topic, sorry, but it's something that always bugs me.

 

[International Machine Consortium]

Well, I hate that Right-Wing wacko idiots idolize weapons and killing people for no reason and are basically stupid. That's another topic, sorry, but it just bugs me.

 

[techs]

Does ANYONE here remember our goal is to create a free and workable democracy in Iraq? If we are brutal to the population then that is impossible. All it does is make the U.S. the focus of anger of all Iraqis.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: sandorski
It has nothing to do with "stomach". Guerilla Warfare is just a superior tactic against overwhelming force. The West's Military is simply too built around the concept of Armies clashing with Armies on a battlefield. Guerrila Armies don't work that way.

So why do so many lefties think we should simply ban firearms, claiming that there's no way an armed populace could rebel against the government? Then in their next breath they decry the war and claim there's no way for us to beat these insurgents.

Off topic, sorry, but it's something that always bugs me.

There are better ways of dealing with issues in a Democracy than starting an Armed Revolution. Like Voting in Elections. I doubt you want your country to end up like Somalia or Iraq.

 

[palehorse]

Trust this: it's not the military's fault or decision to half-fight these wars...

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: palehorse74
Trust this: it's not the military's fault or decision to half-fight these wars...

They are bound to Rules and Codes. Good thing too.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: sandorski
It has nothing to do with "stomach". Guerilla Warfare is just a superior tactic against overwhelming force. The West's Military is simply too built around the concept of Armies clashing with Armies on a battlefield. Guerrila Armies don't work that way.

No it's not superior you're just ignorant like our current leadership is. There have been Guerilla warfare since begining of time but it was delt with immediatly and decidingly by exploiting psychology of family responsibility. Read ?Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror" He talks about how insurgencies were delt with from Alexander times to civil war all the up to Philippine and Japanese. Whole villages and towns were layed waste which would clue in the next town who dared harm a single hair on occupiers head. Again it's tha stomach thing getting in the way and why we will never successfully occupy ever again until we learn how to fight coventionally again. Pretty good agrument for not waring in the first place if you ask me.

Incidently the Mujahideen still fights conventionally. Whole families are eliminated if they think one member is cooperating with Americans. Kinda puts the damper on knarks.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: sandorski
It has nothing to do with "stomach". Guerilla Warfare is just a superior tactic against overwhelming force. The West's Military is simply too built around the concept of Armies clashing with Armies on a battlefield. Guerrila Armies don't work that way.

No it's not superior you're just ignorant like our current leadership is. There have been Guerilla warfare since begining of time but it was delt with immediatly and decidingly by exploiting psychology of family responsibility. Read ?Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror" He talks about how insurgencies were delt with from Alexander times to civil war all the up to Philippine and Japanese. Whole villages and towns were layed waste which would clue in the next town who dared harm a single hair on occupiers head.

Ya, genocide is swell. No thanks, there's a reason why those engaged in Genocide have become pariahs.

 

[ayabe]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: sandorski
It has nothing to do with "stomach". Guerilla Warfare is just a superior tactic against overwhelming force. The West's Military is simply too built around the concept of Armies clashing with Armies on a battlefield. Guerrila Armies don't work that way.

No it's not superior you're just ignorant like our current leadership is. There have been Guerilla warfare since begining of time but it was delt with immediatly and decidingly by exploiting psychology of family responsibility. Read ?Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror" He talks about how insurgencies were delt with from Alexander times to civil war all the up to Philippine and Japanese. Whole villages and towns were layed waste which would clue in the next town who dared harm a single hair on occupiers head. Again it's tha stomach thing getting in the way and why we will never successfully occupy ever again until we learn how to fight coventionally again. Pretty good agrument for not waring in the first place if you ask me.

Well there is also something to be considered with regards to the Japanese, we let them keep their emperor and he was the one telling them to lay down their arms. There is no such figure in Iraq or Vietnam that the people would listen to without question. So you can't directly compare what we did with Japan to what is occurring now.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: palehorse74
Trust this: it's not the military's fault or decision to half-fight these wars...

That's what the Author says at the end and I agree 100%.. these guys have more balls than me that's for sure.. I'd never put myself voluntarly in such a vulnerable position. You have superior weapons.. use them... no sitting ducks.

The only blameless participants are our troops. Each new tombstone at Arlington National Cemetery should read: "Killed By Wishful Thinking."

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: sandorski
It has nothing to do with "stomach". Guerilla Warfare is just a superior tactic against overwhelming force. The West's Military is simply too built around the concept of Armies clashing with Armies on a battlefield. Guerrila Armies don't work that way.

No it's not superior you're just ignorant like our current leadership is. There have been Guerilla warfare since begining of time but it was delt with immediatly and decidingly by exploiting psychology of family responsibility. Read ?Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror" He talks about how insurgencies were delt with from Alexander times to civil war all the up to Philippine and Japanese. Whole villages and towns were layed waste which would clue in the next town who dared harm a single hair on occupiers head. Again it's tha stomach thing getting in the way and why we will never successfully occupy ever again until we learn how to fight coventionally again. Pretty good agrument for not waring in the first place if you ask me.

Well there is also something to be considered with regards to the Japanese, we let them keep their emperor and he was the one telling them to lay down their arms. There is no such figure in Iraq or Vietnam that the people would listen to without question. So you can't directly compare what we did with Japan to what is occurring now.

You are fogetting about the million or so civis we had to kill to make them capitulate.. Germany even more. We killed a million after the war.

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: International Machine Consortium
Well, I hate that Right-Wing wacko idiots idolize weapons and killing people for no reason and are basically stupid. That's another topic, sorry, but it just bugs me.

Who said anything about idolizing weapons and killing for no reason? Work on your reading comprehension. Apparently it is you who are "basically stupid."

 

[palehorse]

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: palehorse74
Trust this: it's not the military's fault or decision to half-fight these wars...

They are bound to Rules and Codes. Good thing too.

The politics, politicians themselves (including Rummy), and an overly-sensitive-politically-correct populace are the binds that tie the Generals' hands. It's very hard to kick down doors and kick arse with a CNN camera on every corner making even legitimate tactics appear criminal.

g'day.

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: sandorski
It has nothing to do with "stomach". Guerilla Warfare is just a superior tactic against overwhelming force. The West's Military is simply too built around the concept of Armies clashing with Armies on a battlefield. Guerrila Armies don't work that way.

So why do so many lefties think we should simply ban firearms, claiming that there's no way an armed populace could rebel against the government? Then in their next breath they decry the war and claim there's no way for us to beat these insurgents.

Off topic, sorry, but it's something that always bugs me.

There are better ways of dealing with issues in a Democracy than starting an Armed Revolution. Like Voting in Elections. I doubt you want your country to end up like Somalia or Iraq.

Hey, don't look at me. It's the lefties who claim a Republican "stole" two elections. What are you gonna do when they steal another one or two or three elections? Vote them out?

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: sandorski
It has nothing to do with "stomach". Guerilla Warfare is just a superior tactic against overwhelming force. The West's Military is simply too built around the concept of Armies clashing with Armies on a battlefield. Guerrila Armies don't work that way.

No it's not superior you're just ignorant like our current leadership is. There have been Guerilla warfare since begining of time but it was delt with immediatly and decidingly by exploiting psychology of family responsibility. Read ?Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror" He talks about how insurgencies were delt with from Alexander times to civil war all the up to Philippine and Japanese. Whole villages and towns were layed waste which would clue in the next town who dared harm a single hair on occupiers head.

Ya, genocide is swell. No thanks, there's a reason why those engaged in Genocide have become pariahs.

Sherman and MacArthur are not pariahs but American heroes however in todays times they would be up on war crimes.

MacArthur came close before Truman just fired him, then lost Korea of course.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: techs
Does ANYONE here remember our goal is to create a free and workable democracy in Iraq? If we are brutal to the population then that is impossible. All it does is make the U.S. the focus of anger of all Iraqis.

Did anyone read the article? He talked about the dead calm and how we allowed the thugs to intimidate the general population with thier own extreme methods. My only point was to get it back we must be at least as brutal as they were when they "won" the population over. We of course arnt going to be like that so Iraq is lost to the worst of the worst criminals and killers.

 

[pcy]

Originally posted by: Zebo
I was against the Iraqi war for all it's premption, lies and unessesary death, still am...

absolutlely

... but for another reason at this point and that's we don't have stomach, republicans and democrats alike, to really put the screws down and win.

No. I think the problem is a failure of common sense, not of resolve: you cannot force people to love you at the point of a gun.

I was Shocked when I learned we did foot patrols for snipers to hit. Shocked to learn we do drive patrols for IEDs to blow to soldiers to peices. Shocked we did'nt surround a whole town and strave them out until they capitulated. Shocked to learn we did'nt shoot looters, thugs and other malcontents on sight but jailed them instead. Prue idiocy.

That's the way to fight another army. If you treat a civilain population the same way you just create an unlimited number of enemies. You can call them guerrilas, or terrorists; but they will always see themselves as freedom fighters, opposing an unjust oppressor who invaded them illegally.

Just suppose some foreign army invaded and conquored the US. Every citizen would ache to have a go at them, and feel morally justified in defending their homeland. Many would be happy to die (or at least happy to take the risk) in the heroic struggle.

We need to read up on Clausewitz instead of what passes for military education these days (just war theory). You destroy your enemy as quickly and brutally as possible and avoid a long protracted conflict and even more deaths and instability. We havnt done that since WWII. The last war we won.

I beleive McArthur persued those tactics to win the Korean war, but the general point is accepted. That's the right way to fight a conventional war against an identifiable opponent. The last genuine conventional war was WWII/Korea; so of course those were the correct tactics then. The failure to win since then is utimately down to a failure to understand the nature of the more recent conflicts. Vietnam was a strage hybrid between a converntional war and fighting a resistance movement: nothing since then should even be called a "war" as that word is used to obscure the fact that the fundamental nature of the conflict is quite different.

The term "war on terror" in particular is dangeroulsy misleading as it projects the idea that the conflict is winnable at all using conventional military muscle and technology. If you think that way the "war on terror" is definatley un-winnable. No question.

In this war the Fallujah catastrophe stands out as a perfect example as we warned let the city drain itself of most hardend before action. Fallujah and every living thing in it should have been vaporized the same day they butchered those American contractors. Our invasion of Iraq was too "surgical", too low-casuality with no message other than guerilla warfare is profitable an carried no family responsibity with it. The Mujahideen just laughs at us.

It's hard to see any conclusion to this line of thinking short of eliminating every Iraqi. If you treat them with sufficient brutality they are all potential enemies.

Before we invaded there was no terrorist activity or guerilla activity in or coming from Iraq. Once we invaded we did in fact create a war againt Iraq and hence all its population, even though some of them welcomed us. You than have two choices: You can try to win "hearts and minds" accepting significant casualties against a slowly improving security situation with the hope of a sucessful outome. Or you can wage war against an increasingly hostile civilain population.

We call that "Genocide". I am absolutely delighted to hear that neither Rupublicans nor democrats have the stomach for such a course of action.



Peter

 

[Zebo]

Peter all your objections have been addressed in this thread already. The part about whole population will rise up is completly wrong. People by in large want safty first, only the most hardened warriors will fight..this has been proven thoughout history with every succesful conquer of one peoples upon another...eliminate them and/or make the body of the population rely on you for it's safty ie we won't kill you if you roll on the militants, and they will succum. Are the native americans still scalping us?

 

[TravisT]

I agree with the original post. Does America have what it takes to win a war? I found ourselves in the position of the British back in the Revolutionary war. We had to stray away from "conventional warfare" to win it.

We need a General Patton to win this thing. And although he did some haneous acts, and was probably crazier than someone I'd like to see in a position of power... his brutality and willingness to take the extra step could win this war for us.

 

[Rainsford]

One more time for the cheap seats, IRAQ IS NOT WWII. Fighting an insurgency is NOT like fighting the full force of a powerful nation state, while a full-out approach might win the latter, it will not win against the former. Now if our goal is to turn every Iraqi into an enemy and beat them into the ground just so we can say we "won", that's a different story. But our objective isn't to beat Iraq until they aren't a threat to anyone, we had ALREADY done that after the first Gulf War. This war's objective was to make sure they didn't have any WMDs, and when that didn't pan out, to bring democracy to their country. If that's what we're trying to do, vaporizing any city the insurgents are in is NOT going to work. The "problem" is that our tactics are dictated by our goals, and our goals are deeply flawed, you can't bomb a country into a democracy.

But for all that, we could have won this fight by using our god damned brains. People LOVE to talk about "taking the gloves off" and other action movie bullshit, but the fact is that brutality for its own sake doesn't win a single war...our "brutality" against the Germans and Japanese in WWII was necessary given the opposition and goals of the war. Brutality directed against the Iraqis would not be similarly effective, it's a different war with different objectives. War is about doing what's necessary to win, and while sometimes the most full-out fighting is necessary to win, that isn't always the case. Had we invaded Iraq with overwhelming force in the first place and prevented the insurgency and other lawless activities from starting in the first place, there would have been no need for brutality and our troops would be enjoying some time stateside, sharpening their swords enough to make Iran and North Korea rethink their current activities. Brutality isn't a good alternative to using your brain, if it's been effective in the past, it was because those in charge knew that it as necessary for the job at hand...that does NOT make it always a good idea.

But if you really want to blame someone for our poorish luck in recent wars (sorry, can't help you with that "tough guy" talk you seem to love), blame the government. Instead of minding our own business until there was a threat of such magnitude that the fight was really black and white, we've decided what our armed forces REALLY are are the big green police machine, bringing freedom and democracy to random dirt-ball countries around the world. Instead of clashes between nation states, we have invasions that quickly turn into occupations of countries that sure as hell didn't ask for gunboat democracy and don't seem to appreciate it too much. And because our leaders keep buying into this idea that the locals will just LOVE our well armed ambassadors of peace and friendship, we half-ass the whole operation. In this context, "half-assing" doesn't mean we don't kill enough random civilians, it means we send in not enough troops with not enough planning and expect peace to magically happen. The post-war occupation of Germany and Japan was VERY well thought out, planned and executed. It wasn't that we were "brutal enough", it was that from day one we did a good job of rebuilding the country and getting the locals involved in getting their country back on its feet. The result? Occupations that were FAR more peaceful and far more successful than our occupation of the much poorer and much smaller Iraq.

I get the feeling that all this "take the gloves off!" talk is a result of people who think using your brain is some kind of sin in a wartime environment. The OP talks about Sherman and MacArthur as poster-boys of the "brutal war" idea, but I think both of them would tell us that brutality isn't the solution, THINKING is the solution. If going all-out is what you think is necessary to win the war, then that's what's necessary, but that's not ALWAYS the case...which is why you need to engage your brains before you go around thinking with your balls.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: TravisT
I agree with the original post. Does America have what it takes to win a war? I found ourselves in the position of the British back in the Revolutionary war. We had to stray away from "conventional warfare" to win it.

We need a General Patton to win this thing. And although he did some haneous acts, and was probably crazier than someone I'd like to see in a position of power... his brutality and willingness to take the extra step could win this war for us.

No, it couldn't...and I'm sure Patton would be the first to tell you that not all problems (even military ones) can be solved through applying more force. Brute force is a useful tool in war, but it's not the ONLY tool.

 

[TravisT]

There are a lot of things that we currently aren't willing to do when it comes to fighting terrorists. Mosque's is the first thing that coems to mind. A religious temple wouldn't stand in the way of killing a few terrorists in Patton's opinion, i can assure you.