You can take out one of these — with one of these!
As the U.S. president and defense secretary try to shore up support for the Iraq war with a series of tough speeches, a professor at a U.S. military graduate school argues the United States is politically, militarily and culturally ill suited to fight and win insurgent wars, beginning with Iraq, but extending to much of what America will face in the long war on terrorism.
“Counter-insurgency and imperial policing operations demand forbearance, personnel continuity, foreign language skills, cultural understanding, historical knowledge, minimal employment of force, and robust interagency involvement and cooperation,” he writes. “None of these are virtues of American statecraft and warmaking. Americans view war as a suspension of politics; they want to believe that the politics of war will somehow sort themselves out once military victory is achieved.”
Post-war Iraq is an example of those very weaknesses, he said.
“The very attributes that have contributed to the establishment of unchallenged and unchallengeable American conventional military supremacy — impatience, an engineering approach to war, confidence in tech solutions to non-technological problems, preference for decisive conventional military operations, sensitivity to casualties, and above all the habit of divorcing war from politics — are liabilities in approaching war against motivated and resourceful irregular armies, he said.”
Record told UPI Thursday the situation in Iraq may have been unavoidable, given the nature of the U.S. military and U.S. politics, which he considers fundamentally incapable of fighting a protracted small war.
“I’m not sure we are in the mess we are in because faulty execution,” he said. “It was doomed from the beginning, one can argue.
“Barring profound changes in America’s political and military cultures, the United States runs a significant risk of failure in entering small wars of choice, and great power intervention in small wars is almost always a matter of choice,” he writes…
Americans are no less gullible than other nations. We presume insight from politicians whose predominant characteristic is “electability”. We presume standards of truth and wisdom — from dogmatists and ideologues who haven’t yet mastered hindsight.
Insurgents are not tied to international conventions, whereas nations are. If the coalition forces could be as brutal as the insurgents, then a lot more of insurgents (as well as civilians) would be wiped out.
Side note…
I’m curious to why Coming Soon to a theatre near you [maybe]: a “documentary” on the assassination of George W. Bush was yanked this morning. Was it due to censorship? Perhaps the site should be renamed Dvorak Partially Censored?
They have more determination to continue the fight. The disenfranchised has little to lose.
If we could have placed 2-3 million soilders ON the ground, and Covered EVERY inch of the borders, and STOPPED all incoming and Outgoing traffic, and then Shut down all Phone traffic, Cell and other wise…WE MIGHT of had a chance to RECONDITION, this country…
BUT, we didnt close the borders and clean up the country. We left it open to ANYONE from anyplace to come into the country, including OTHER groups that are AGAISNT the US. We REALLY dont know WHOM we are shooting at most times. We just group them with the ones we know.
We NOw have setup this nation to a civil war, because on intolerances of Centuries old disputes. After that, other groups will besiege this nation…NO MATTER what we do…5,10,20 other groups would LOVE to have their OWN nation with THEIR own ALTERNATIVE beliefs…
This is going to be a nation of WAR, for many years…Probably Worse then Isreal/pakistan.. It will become the blackhole of the middle east. Everyone wants MORE ROOM, and this will be the chance to expand. I dont think the UN, will be able to control much of what will happen.
IF you stop others from taking over the country, they will FIGHT amondst themselves…and Others will sneak INTO the country to TRY and start THEIR own groups, also..
Unless its Borders are BLOCKED OFF, and no one IN..Let them out if they wish… Let them FIGHT to discover WHAT they want to do… but also give them a TIME LINE…In 2 years ALL protection is OFF. And they must be able to defend THEIR OWN BORDERS…
It still wont work…but its their ONLY chance.
Hey, ECA — remember you’re commenting while ruled by a government that doesn’t think it’s necessary to manage it’s own borders.
Of course, I expect most Americans will continue believing in hardware-only solutions. It’s easier than thinking and John Wayne would approve.
I would REALLY…
STATE to them, to GET THERE ACT TOGETHER….AS after we depart….
the SPIT is going to hit the fan, IF they aint ready for it…They WONt have a place to live..
With the other Factions, going to Fight over this land, WHOM ever becomes Ruler, MAY not like YOU OR your religion, beliefs, or Politics..
Komaini(sp) comes to mind,,,
We need to STICK this in there faces…and say…Bye bye…
The root cause of our problem is that the “coalition of the willing” was only willing to help if we forced Iraq to stay in one piece…
And even when we tried to have it both ways – with “autonomous regions” [nudge, nudge – wink, wink] – the people we are trying to force to stay together didn’t buy it.
Apparently, the only thing worse than Iraq turing into a Shia-majority theocracy, is for Iraq to break-up onto 3 new countries…
It will never be over. The government doest want to accept this is a religious war. They’ll fight to the last man. Its dumb to be there at all.
That picture reminds me of the Apache Helicopters gunned down during the invasion into Irak.
They were so advanced, so well armed, so overpriced and so Overhyped that it only took a grenade on a stick to take them down and burning some tires to blind their “advanced” sensors.
Record told UPI Thursday the situation in Iraq may have been unavoidable, given the nature of the U.S. military and U.S. politics, which he considers fundamentally incapable of fighting a protracted small war.
The situation was not unavoidable. General Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, said at the outset we needed several times the number of troops that went into Iraq. By going in with too few troops we didn’t secure civil authority, left massive ammunition dumps unprotected, allowed rampant looting and destruction of the civil infrastructure, disbanded the entire bureaucracy, and disbanded the entire military. In other words, there was no civil structure left to pick up the pieces. There was no Police or judicial authority.
We attacked Iraq to cut off its head; Saddam Hussein. Forget the bit about WMDs. Intelligence had misgivings about the validity of their existence. Bush wanted to get the guy who wanted to kill his daddy. That mission blinded the Bush cabal into making many mistakes, not the least of was invading with too few troops.
So the situation isn’t that it MAY have been unavoidable. The top General, a veteran of civil occupation, was unceremoniously drummed out because he was right and the misguided administration was and is still wrong. The Secretary of the Army, Thomas White, was fired because he dared to agree with Shinseki. They wanted a civilian authority to remain in place and augmented by American military.
Mr H. Fusion,
You are exactly right.
My thought is, had Colin Powell ran for President in 2000 (there was a Republican Draft Exploratory Committee trying to get him to run, plus the public wanted him to run) we would not be in this mess, period. You are absolutely right, “Bush wanted to get the guy who wanted to kill his daddy” he even mentioned the assassination attempt as a reason in one of his lame speeches. Hind sight is 20/20.
#11. If Powell had of run, he very well might have won. Especially against Bush. I am not so sure about his ability to be a good President though. If you think of all the former Generals that became President, only two made any impression.
Washington, and that was because he imposed almost martial law on Congress during the turbulent initial years of the nation. And Andrew Jackson who is more notable for his corrupt politics then anything else. All the others were either failures or ineffective. I can’t think of anything Powell has done that would demonstrate his ability to be a good President.
#12. True, however; what has Bush been effective at, hum?
Not doing something bogus is not ineffective, and; doing something bogus isn’t being effective. When it comes to Governance being ineffective can be a good thing, hence Democracy. If being effective is the necessary criteria then what’s needed is a Dictatorship. Typically Dictatorships are considered the more effective governments (can get the trains to run on time). Did I say dictator, King George or Bush in the same thought, oh my bad!
9/11 unfortunately would likely still have occurred, but; some how I think Powell would have invaded IRAQ under the false pretense of 9/11 or advancing the global war against terrorism. That is my only real point, I think.
M1-A2 Tanks cannot be taken out with either a Russian/China designed RPG. Apache Helos weren’t meant to with stand a RPG, at least not a direct hit. So taking such examples and applying them to Iraq only work with uneducated lay persons. .
Off topic here, but anyone else have a hard time reading any of ECAs posts with his very random capitalizing of words? I thought he was trying to emphasize certain words to make them stand out. But if you read the posts, it’s more that they’re just random. It’s also very hard to read.
Just an observation….we now return you to righteous indignation…already in progress.
14,
And the worst culprit of damage to US equipment?
Is SAND. It gets into everything, Even if it Cant..
find a sealed gasket, and look inside and it has a few grains of sand inside, eating up the barings.
have we Really neede our tanks recently?? except for patroling?
All I see in carivans is Hummers…And Those ARNT well protected.
the best subject for ALL this..
is WHERe is all the equipment that was SUPPOSED to be over there.
The Vests, the defencive armour plating for the hummer??
Iot dont matter that we send only a FEW men over there, its IF they can protect themselves.
The first Gulf War (1990-1991) gave the military experts all the information they needed related to how the hardware would react in the desert.
In the first war, our troops were fighting Iraq’s troops. Iraq didn’t have much time to rebuild their military for the second war. Especially, with no-fly zones and trade restrictions. So our troops ended up fighting armed civilians (insergents, terrorist).
It is interesting that the information coming out of the Pentagon is somewhat different than what Bush is saying in his speeches. Who should we believe? The people with the information or the person living in his own dream world?
#15: Don’t bother trying to figure him out. I’ve suggested to him that his spelling, capitalization and often times undecipherable writing ‘style’ make him look uneducated at best, but he won’t take the hint. He is an adherent to that lazy school of thought that spelling, punctuation and grammar are beneath them and too unimportant to care about as long as you get the idea across. They can’t seem to get it through their heads that they aren’t because of this laziness. Most people here pretty much ignore him now. On the other hand, it can be fun to try to guess why particular words are capitalized since there doesn’t seem to be a coherent pattern.
#15, it’s a test. If you have a problem understanding, then your dyslexia is in remission.
#15
By just reading the uppercase words, it sounds like speech delivered by GWB…
ON EVERY STOPPED WE MIGHT RECONDITION BUT ANYONE OTHER AGAISNT US REALLY WHOM NO MATTER LOVE OWN THEIR ALTERNATIVE WAR MORE ROOM UN IF FIGHT INTO TRY THEIR BLOCKED OFF IN FIGHT WHAT TIME LINE ALL OFF THEIR OWN BORDERS…
Ok,
Its a code…
I send friends here to decipher what is being said.
Its as innocous, as a kitten in your lap, playing with its claws, and you screaming.
ECA, I thinks you are your own best poet.
traax — quit repeating Rummie’s propaganda. Try a for-real military site for info on Abrams’ variations. Or Google “abrams, rpg, ied”.
In fact, the 1st one stopped — was in 2003 in Iraq with an IED. You needn’t destroy any armored vehicle to make it useless — as the Israelis just discovered.
Abrams variants have since been stopped by everything from the RPG7 through RPG29. You may as well just join the Israelis and pick a country to whine about. They’ve blamed everyone from Syria to Russia — though you still can buy RPG7 rounds in just about any hardware souk in the Middle East.
22,
and a Great BS’er..
#12: Ike built the Interstate Highway system, and played a mean game of golf.
The root cause of terrorism is oil, and our pathetic and lazy reliance on it. If we didn’t pay the middle easterners vast sums of money for the smelly stuff then they wouldn’t be able to send their young men to college (and flight school) to learn to think like a terrorist and buy guns and stuff.
I thought it was quoted, in another post, that 60% of our oil comes from Canada..
then from Venizuala, Mexico, gilf of mexico, US concerns…..
Almost ALL of it is from the Americas..
so WHAt do we really Want over there…
Except to protect the Oil companies, AND there share holders…
It REALLy has little to DO with us.. Its the Corps, that want the protection and WE arent getting much back for it.
As to Continental oil… We are being Charge International prices, for Oil that was HERE in the first place.
the idea they HAVE, is….we can sell it over seas for more…so if you want it, you gotta PAY what the others would.
I can Like this, or not…
I Dont like paying international pricing, IF, I cant get it on ALL GOODS.
I would Love Japans, and Taiwans Electonics prices.
I would Love metals from india, and Teak also…
BUT they wont sell them to us, unless we PAY.
This is like Corps going to mexico, buying leather goods, for $10, and bring them BACK, and reselling for $100+…
Even today, and maybe more than ever, Sun Tzu’s teachings still apply. It is amazing how leaders in the world ignore those lessons over and over.
Hell, our President hasn’t even learned the lessons of Vietnam. I know Bush never went, but he didn’t listen to those that did nor did he bother to learn anything about our experience there.
IF we wanted to get rid of Sadam we should have just done just that and not occupied the place. Ethics aside, taking the guy out and then informing the next leader to tow the line or else would have been better.
A few officers I spoke with were dismayed when the invasion took place as they knew that without the couterweight of Iraq, Iran would become a major problem. The leaders in that part of the world respond well to credible threats against their lives. Witness Lybia…
27,
the problem comes from generations..
Needing to learn the same lessons the fathers Had to.. OVer and OVER and OVER again.
Kings and rulers THINKING, they know more then the advisers…Consider how many have QUIT, Left, and been fired…
and better to listen to 5 GOOD advisors debate, then to listen to 1 THAT IS WRONG.
why do we have to Relearn that being a SUPER power, isnt the best thing to Be… gorilla warfare ISNT nice, or CLEAN… We learned form the am. Indians, how to fight the Brits, we THEN completely FORGOT.
We faught our civil war, with Little Gorilla warfare and Lost TO MANY fighters, and so did the South.
Then we went to War with Koria and Veitnam, and FORGOT, ALL we had learned of war.. If it moves, KILL IT…