Yes, war is Hell.

Now who started this shitstorm, again ?

I blame the Amazonian Rainforest for starting this thread. Thankfully, it is being punished.


http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=def ... ping&meta=

Thumping = very large as in "a thumping loss"

Is the damage involved in this conflict very large? I'd say so. How many billions have been invested/spent/wasted/lost so far?



Perspective again I suppose. Perhaps he was suggesting the US military takes it's orders from politicans that have been bought and paid for by wealthy individuals and organizations. On the other hand, perhaps it IS an attack against the actions of troops. I'll leave it to him to discuss this particular item. I wouldn't know. Did that statement factor into your reply?

I'm not really interested in arguing any further at this point. Obviously my proposal of simply agreeing to disagree has been denied.

I don't see either side coming around, so any further dialogue will be a waste of time.

I am sorry if you felt the regular troops were being maligned, it was not my intention to defend someone that was putting them down. However, I am not convinced that was his intention.

So we disagree. Many do in this world. No biggie.

jbeckton

You're so quick to anger and throw insults, but such is life.

Now, I'm trying to figure out if you disagree with the Geneva Convention? Do you believe the US military should abide by the Geneva Convention? If not, how would not abiding by the Geneva Convention help the US win the war in Iraq?

It's hard to argue with a person who believes dropping cluster bombs on civilian populations is a brave and noble thing.

However, let me extend what I said regarding the "bloated" nature of the US military. When I talk about the US war machine I think of it as a single entity, a corporation, that needs to be managed. The individuals that work for this entity are not the subject.

The US political elite and the corporations that feed off the military have fashioned a very effective, self-perpetuating ponsi scheme whereby they manufacture reasons to use the US military to sustain an economic engine that benefits them.
Now the problem with this is they have become too successful. The political elite have become addicted to the money generated by this war machine. The US military must continually grow to feed the corrupt needs of individuals who have worked so hard to convince the US public that there is a terrroist murderer under every bed.

Looking at the US military from an objective position, it simply doesn't need to be as big or as expensive as it is. Most of the equipment, devastating as it may be, it completely inappropriate for asymetrical warfare. Now that of course if you look at it from a purely military standpoint.
If you look at it from the viewpoint of the greed filled puss sacks that feed off the murder and chaos that is being perpetuated by the US in Iraq, then this equipment is a gold mine. The equipment is hugely over priced, frail and designed to piss-off the largest number of people possible. A self-perpetuating nightmare, with innocent civilians and fights caught as meat in a grinder.
The corporations that are a benefitting the most from this conflict have every reason to keep this misery going. It's just too good for their bottom line.

million dollar missles targetting billion dollar boats makes sense.

Million dollar missles targetting thousand dollar buildings doesn't make sense.

The US military isn't geared to fight a war like this. I'm not sure any country is geared to fight a war like this.

It's really hard to decide who's winning if it's not at all clear what the objective of the game is

There is, historically, no record of a military action that has defeated a guerilla defense.
How is it, considering America's deep and long experience with forming and supporting guerilla and terrorist organizations, that they could be so stupid in Iraq?

Account of life in Iraq for a grunt, here

(Yo dudes, calm down the interservice rivalry here, not to mention the fisticuffs among allies, near as I can tell we're all on the same side here...)

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A close friend in the (US) Army who is an archetypal warrior tells me that he has worked side-by-side with, and has the highest respect for, the British, the Canadians, and the South Koreans (in alphabetical order). He's said at various times that the soldiers in all of those forces are the equal of ours in terms of training, toughness, and capability to fight on the ground. This list is not to the exclusion of other nations' forces, it is only the list based on his direct experience.

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The goal of aerial bombardment is not to stay out of harm's way whilst raining destruction upon thy foes. According to theory/doctrine, it's to reduce overall casualties including civilian, by circumventing the need to fight one's way in on the ground, and by going directly to the high-value targets that will bring a conflict to a more rapid conclusion. If I'm not mistaken, Zardoz here is former USAF, he can probably comment on that point.

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The first reason we are presently screwed in Iraq is because the war plan was screwed from the beginning. The buck stops with the C-in-C, though realistically this was probably someone else's doing. Rumsfeld comes in for the major share of the poo pie over that one, but his career up to that point appeared to indicate that he was in fact a damn smart guy with a lot of common sense.

As I'm writing this, I'm starting to believe that the actual source of the problem was elsewhere. Perhaps Feith, who Colin Powell said was the stupidest man on earth, or something to that effect. Feith and the neocon empire-builders, most of whom were chickenhawks to the point that they avoided & evaded when their numbers were called. We can add Five Deferment Dick to that list, and perhaps it was ultimately he who was responsible for what former Director of NSA under Reagan, General Odom, said was "the most spectacular strategic failure in all of US history."

I am beginning to suspect that Rumsfeld, like Powell, was playing by the rules by way of keeping a relative silence rather than pointing fingers.

In any case, whoever it was, goes down in history with disgrace.

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The second reason we are presently screwed in Iraq is that we are now facing "open-source warfare" that evolves like viruses (biological or cybernetic, same result). By analogy think of the difference in the rate of evolution between bacteria (enormous numbers, rapid generational turnover, rapid mutation rate, rapid development of drug resistance) compared to the rate of evolution of any higher mammal (smaller numbers, fewer offspring, longer time between generations).

Bacteria are always going to evolve faster than the animals they infect; this is logically necessary as well as empirically true. And so in the age of effectively unlimited communication, guerrillas and insurgencies are necessarily always going to evolve their strategies, operational plans, and tactics, far more rapidly than can the militaries of nation-states.

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In a philosophical sense we could say that the third reason we are screwed in Iraq is because we have failed to learn from history and thus have repeated it. Under this heading come four specifics.

One, the cause was not just. It was based on a lie, and lying is addictive: tell one and you must tell another to cover for it, and then another, and then another. We sent our finest young men and women off to kill and be killed in the name of a lie. That is a tragedy of epic proportions, numbered in the daily count of casualties.

Two, the truth was that this was a war of aggression, which puts us in the same league morally as the Third Reich invading Poland, or the USSR invading Czechoslovakia in the 60s.

Three, the aggression was for the sake of regional hegemony, which in turn was for the sake of feeding an addiction to a resource that we could, if we so chose and had the discipline to follow though, do entirely without. Rather than proving our resolve in the face of terror (e.g. by cutting off Middle Eastern oil imports after 9/11/2001 and building substitute energy sources), we proved ourselves both craving (addicted) and craven (cowardly in our lack of resolve), and thus ultimately without moral standing as a nation. And the sickest irony of this is that by sending our warriors to fight for our consumers, we sacrificed our best and most courageous for the sake of those who are neither and in fact far from either.

This is how we will be judged by history for this period of complete lapse of our national character. If we are fortunate it will be seen as a temporary lapse, rather than as prelude to a deserved come-uppance. We have already shown, in the 2006 election, a willingness to repudiate our failings, and we will have another chance in 2008 to rectify the situation further.

The fourth specific is the cultural condition of the entire region.

When Tito died by natural causes, Yugoslavia exploded into genocide, euphemized as "ethnic cleansing," the latter term stolen from "public cleansing" which is European usage for "refuse collection & disposal and street cleaning."

Were Saddam Hussein to have died by natural causes without a single American setting foot on Iraqi soil, or were he to die of a well-placed bullet from one of his domestic opponents, the result would be the same as we see today. Either way, Iraqis would be slaughtering each other with gusto, using whatever excuse was ready to hand. Perhaps instead of Americans, it would be witches, or the phase of the moon, or last night's bad case of heartburn.

The lesson we failed to learn here was that the bizarre animosities of race, ethnicity, denomination, and clan, are not exceptions as is sometimes said of the Nazi Holocaust, but are seductive evils perpetrated by evil men who lurk in every culture waiting for the first opportunity to wreak upon others.

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We are left then, with the world's arguably most ferocious fighting machine, stretched nearly to its breaking point. To quote General Schoomaker, Army Chief of Staff, "we are at risk of breaking the active component," which, translated from the careful understatement of traditional military language, means, "Dammit, you fools are destroying America's armed forces!"

Perhaps, as happened with European industry that was destroyed in WW2 and then rebuilt stronger than before, this (largely self-inflicted) damage to our own forces will give us a basis on which to clear the ground and rebuild our defenses stronger than before. In doing so we could create a force structure capable of adopting the decentralized tactics and evolutionary fecundity of guerrillas and insurgencies. At the same time it would need to retain the ability to fight the highly centralized forces that characterize potential nation state foes.

The ability to switch modes and adapt will be one of its greatest strengths. And so has it been for our entire species, from the day one.

Yes, but not just the US.



While I don't support torturing prisoners even though our combatants are clearly taking no prisoners (except for an Aljezera prime time special beheading), there can be no question that more useful information woud be gathered by force than by following rules.

Public opinion in Iraq is not up for grabs, its lost. So the geneva convention handicaps us since our enemy is not playing by the same rules, that being said I do not think its ok to use that as an excuse but its certainly not correct that the convention is not helping set moral boundaries and leads to less war crimes. That, and making it possible to hold enemies accountable for their crimes is the purpose of the convention.

Thanks to everyone contributing to this thread.

Regarding jbeckton's comment



In a word, no.

It's much safer for American soldiers to request an air strike to take out a sniper, rather than risking booby traps and taking casualties to get one guy.

IMO, soldiers will always choose, if they can, to take the safest route to the enemy's destruction. Wouldn't you agree?

By the same token, aren't the Iraqis doing the same thing by remotely detonating IEDs?

Or, to reframe your question:

Would you want to face down an M1A2 Abrams with an AK 47 and an RPG?

The obvious answer for most people, barring the suicidal, is no. Likewise, the most probable outcome from the above confrontation is obvious.

The way I see it, there is little difference between the 500 lb bomb on a sniper scenario and the IED destroying US vehicle scenario. Lateralus compared the IED to a landmine, which I also think is a valid comparison.

They all accomplish the same thing: dead/maimed enemies with minimized risk to friendlies.

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.
He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
- Attributed to General George Patton Jr

"Alls fair in love and war!"

I never meant to imply that there was anything (relatively) wrong with an IED. However you must then look at the long term effects. Look at Cambodia and Vietnam, they are still having problems with left over mines from 40 years ago. When I was discharged, when the US lays a mine it must be recorded and marked. It is used to stop, funnel, delay the enemy, not to kill if you can believe that. The insurgents have no intention of removing an IED after it has served its purpose, thats the difference to me. We also now use "smart mines" that will detonate at a preselected time so as to not be left dangerously astray for decades.

My comment of cowardly attacks was directed at actions such as pretending to surrender only to lure troops into an ambush. Then wondering why they shoot first and ask questions later the next time. Wiring a man with a bomb and sending him onto a crowded bus or market. Killing a mans family if he talks to interogators. War is hell w/o all of those things, they only make it worse. Those are cowardly attacks.

No. Prefer gardening. But given no choice, I would prefer holding an RPG 29 over sitting in the Abrams

Tell that to the indians.

Man is a teritorial predator, get used to it. There has never been, and there will never be a successful civilization without a powerful army. Its a dog eat dog world and we are getting to the point where the waepons are so dangerous that waiting for an attack is more dangerous than trying to prevent it, however futile.

I don't like it but I its true.

Well we killed the indians off with biological weapons. Namely smallpox