West Point Is Divided on a War Doctrine’s Fate

[CaptainHaplo]

Armchair general's wisdom.... gotta love it.

The vast majority of you have never even pounded sand in a conflict area. Yet you want to debate "strategy" as if you have the answers.

If it wasn't so pathetic, it would be funny.

Let me share a dirty little secret with you. We are not at war. Haven't been at war since since September 2, 1945.

Now - are we in various conflicts? Sure we are - but the reason for them continuing as long as they have has not been because of profit motives - its been due to a political lack of will to actually fight them like they were a war.

Afghanistan and Iraq could be totally pacified in less than 60 days. The costs would be less than what we currently pay in the lives of our soldiers. The "collateral damage" however would be intentionally much higher. But no politician has the cahones to say its what we should do. Instead, they continue to tie the hands of those in conflict.

If its a war, you fight it like one. You think we cared how many casualties or "innocent lives" were lost in the firebombing of Dresden? How about Nagasaki or Hiroshima? How about Hamburg?

Our goal was maximum destruction - not only to take out the infrastructure, but to make it clear that we would stop at nothing to succeed. If it took massive civilian casualtes - well - thats unfortunately what war does. Now? We hold a civilian life higher than those of our soldiers who are there - purchasing a small modicum of freedom for them with the blood of our best. Call it whatever you want, but that ain't war.

Insurgencies survive because the civilian population allows, protects and enables them to. You can repress an insurgency through "surge" tactics, but you can't destroy it. The only way to destroy an insurgency is to destroy its civilian support. Win the hearts and minds? You can never win every single one - so its a doomed idea. So how do you undercut civilian support of an insurgency? You demonstrate that the cost of allowing it to exist is higher than the cost of rooting it out.

Insurgents will kill your family if you don't support them. How do you overcome that? Simple - you support them and its not just your family that gets killed - its not your whole block that gets flattened - its the entire neighborhood that goes away in the concussive waves of a carpet bombing campaign that levels 1/4 of a city.

Oh go ahead - spout the claptrap of how this will just create more militants. Guess what - when the civilian population figures out that they don't get clobbered until someone starts supporting the insurgency - they realize that the best security they can have is to keep the insurgency out of their cities, towns, neighborhoods and families.

Costly in human lives? Sure. Not ours though. But hey - thats war.

But don't worry - the idea of a politician supporting anything that would actually be cost effective and would work is anathema to the whole idea of politics - so it won't happen.

[Stealhead]

Well as I said we lack the political will to spend the decades that a counter insurgency requires(assuming that you do in the end "win") so why get involved in this kind of warfare in the first place?


If a nation lacks the will to commit to total warfare then they should not get involved a conflict in the first place.

Before you say anything you should know that I did spend time in Afghanistan and have two brothers that served in Iraq and Afghanistan as combat troops and officers
so I do have a direct opinion from those who fight.

Haplo is spouting the approach the French returned to.
It gives a small quick boost with lots of wider negative consequences then fails in spectacular fashion in very short order.

Its also an approach the Russians have tried repeatadly and failed at.
Saddam tried it...it failed
Turkey tried it ....it failed
Burma tried it...it failed
........the list is endless

Armchair generals eh...you gotta love it, so pathetic its almost funny

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

Let me share a dirty little secret with you. We are not at war. Haven't been at war since since September 2, 1945.

You are/were at war for sure. War is what war does. It's just that these two wars of the recent past have been fought quite incompetently, without the needed determination and long-lasting breath, and without realoistic visions and expectations. They both compare to dreamdancing, which is for the most, the very most, the fault of the political leaders. One thought, especially this unscrupellous idiot Rumsfeld, it would be easy-peasy. Iraq war was launched without the responsible political ranks even knowing what to do there once they were in Bagdhad - they did not even had a plan to care for the time after the field battle was over! High ranking representatives from many governmental offices and services reported that, saying that when they made consideraiton and hoped them to be mailed upwards in the hierarchy, any mentioning of ideas and plans were brought down.

And the troops, like in so many wars, were imagined to be back at home just in time for christmas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_End_in_Sight

this movie was available at youtube, when it was released years ago. Unfortunately it no longer is, so it must be bought. But for anyone interested in the matter, this is a must. And an eye-opener.

Edit:
Uploaded again, here it is:

part 1


part 2


part 3
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...17494053797724#

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by Skybird

You are/were at war for sure. War is what war does.

War requires a declaration of such by Congress. No such declaration has occured since 1942. It isn't a war otherwise.

Every single time we have deployed troops into an active combat situation since 1945, they have had their hands tied under ROE's that don't allow them to wage war. When 3 members of the military are courtmartialed because a killer of 4 US civilians gets a bloody lip, the ROE's are not warfighting - they are nannyisms.

War is what war does? By that arguement alone no conflict since WW2 has been a war - since no conflict has been fought with the pure intent to wreak maximum destruction upon the enemy wherever we may find him.

Yeah right

Definition of STATE OF WAR

1
a: a state of actual armed hostilities regardless of a formal declaration of war b: a legal state created and ended by official declaration regardless of actual armed hostilities and usually characterized by operation of the rules of war

2
: the period of time during which a state of war is in effect

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

War requires a declaration of such by Congress. No such declaration has occured since 1942. It isn't a war otherwise.

Every single time we have deployed troops into an active combat situation since 1945, they have had their hands tied under ROE's that don't allow them to wage war. When 3 members of the military are courtmartialed because a killer of 4 US civilians gets a bloody lip, the ROE's are not warfighting - they are nannyisms.

War is what war does? By that arguement alone no conflict since WW2 has been a war - since no conflict has been fought with the pure intent to wreak maximum destruction upon the enemy wherever we may find him.

Your country labelled itself as being at war. Your leaders did. Your troops did. the events equal those in war.

You may have fought with wrong ROE, you may have fought for wroing reasons and without needed determination, you may have fought the war wearing glace gloves, okay okay I haqve coimplained about all that myself many times in the past ten years..

But war is as war does. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands got killed. It may have been smaller wars compared to WWII. But wars it were nevertheless. And the US lost both.

And you counter with an unimportant bean-counting formality, like a bureaucrat? Should I really take that serious? Maybe you want to avoid listing two more lost wars in the US history, by denying that there have been any wars at all? Some kind of a Dolchstoßlegende, maybe?

BTW, both Bush and Rumsfeld told the world and the nation that the US were at war. Both said also that the US got attacked (9/11), and that that equals an act of war. Do you plan to file a lawsuit against them? Obviously they lied to your country and to your people then and needlessly ordered military action although there was no war. That would be a conspiracy that borders high treason, eh? Don'T count beans again, i know there is no High Treason paragraph, at least it was claimed in past debates, but we all have a relatively congruent idea of what we associate with the term, right?

P.S. The wars that are not wars. The torture that is not torture. The defeat that is not a defeat. Well, I see patterns emerging there. Cognitive Dissonance Theory, anyone?

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Your country labelled itself as being at war. Your leaders did. Your troops did. the events equal those in war.

And you counter with an unimportant bean-counting formality, like a bureaucrat? Should I really take that serious?

P.S. The wars that are not wars. The torture that is not torture. The defeat that is not a defeat. Well, I see patterns emerging there. Cognitive Dissonance Theory, anyone?

So the actual rule of law should mean nothing because some bureaucrat, from the president on down, says so? Well - if that is the way you want to look at it - then ok. But then that means all the griping about "torture" need to be dropped because - after all - the "legality" doesn't matter. Either the rule of law holds or it doesn't. You can't claim that it doesn't one moment, then that it does the next - just because the yes or no side promotes or supports your viewpoint.

The Law of the Land says Congress must DECLARE War. It also defines very clearly how that must occur. That has not happened yet. Various laws and treaties state that torture is illegal. The definition of torture is interpreted differently by various people in what it allows and does not allow. Because there is no clearly defined "this is, this isn't" standard, there is debate on the topic.

You accuse me of using a politicians answer - I simply stand on what the Constitution states. You bring up Bush and 9/11 - look at 1941. Roosevelt gave his speech in which he said that a State of War existed between the US and Japan. Then what happened? Congress VOTED to declare war on Japan. Roosevelt saying it didn't make it legal - Congress did. Bush said a lot of things, and not every one of them was accurate. No "high treason" conspiracy theory there.

Ultimately this is simply a question of are you willing to bypass what the law says to follow the rest of society in blind acceptance of what the politicians tell you? Or are you willing to stand up and say "Hey, that isn't what the Constitution says". Since your not in the US or a US citizen, I can't expect you to have the same dedication to the foundation of our Nation. But don't for a minute think that such dedication is simply "politics as usual" on my part.

I can admit we have had abject failures in the conflicts we have been involved in. It has nothing to do with avoiding admitting "defeat". It has to do with being accurate and holding to the actual principals of this nation and its laws. If our politicians did that, then we wouldn't be having this discussion, because the conflicts would have been drastically different.

[Skybird]

The events and actions, the engagements and investments made, the victims and sacrifices made, the pulbic bleief and opinion, the claims, the ways the nation acted: it all said WAR.

And while the event of war, two wars, unfolded, you engage in a lawyers defintion on whether the war actually was a war or not.

Like the conservatives here tried to avoid admitting that torture is being carried out when claiming that Waterboarding where no torture but robust interrogation or new interrogation.

Sorry, I don'T buy neither the one, nor the other.

And you also are wrong on the last sentence you said. Youi said that if your leaders followed the (formal) rules and principles of your nation, then the "conflicts" would be looking different today. I assume you m ean a formal declaration of a state of war. - No, they wouldn'T. They would have been approached the same way like they were. And mind you, everybody was considering it to be a war already.

It's just labels, where the content of something is what defines it'S essence. Another confusion about labels: war on terror. Not only is this label idiotic becasue terror is no enemy, but a tool of the enemy and you hardly would say that WWII was not a war against the Nazis, but a war against airplanes, or tanks. One needs to look at what makes the enemy the enemy, what motivates the enemy to use terror. You see Islam, and that the enemy beolives inw hat Islam teaches him. The war in terror is mislabeled, because in truth it is a war against Islam. Islam is the enemy here, and terror is only its weapon.

Well, anyhow, Iraq and Afghanistan are lost and come at a high longtermed strategic price. Iran comes out with stronger influence, Pakistan comes out with stronger influence. Now one has to live with the mess. Whether there was a formal declaration of war or not, is unimportant. You Americans tend to be offende dover Pearl Harbour, becasue the attack took place before you got a declaration of war. This I admit always makes me giggle. Not because you suffered losses there, hell, no. But becasue it is so absurd. The point is the Japanese made a decision for war - and you missed it, could not imagine it sufficiently, waited for a aper letter in your mail and were caught off your guard.

When it comes to the ammount of killing and destruction that war causes, formalities and diplomatic proceedings to give it a nice touch are meaningless. The Japanese made a decision (that America could and probbaly has expected), and stroke. That'S what you do in war. A leaf of paper - is meaningless then. Especially if for its delivery you would pay in additional blood of thy own.

It is no duel between noble gentlemen. No dresscode. No toppers and tailcoats. No polite phrases and witty smalltalk. No champagne bwefore and after. I have told you my favourite Musashi story before, haven't I? If not, I tell you again. That's how to fight, duel and war. Everything else is nonsense.

You accuse me of using a politicians answer - I simply stand on what the Constitution states. You bring up Bush and 9/11 - look at 1941. Roosevelt gave his speech in which he said that a State of War existed between the US and Japan. Then what happened? Congress VOTED to declare war on Japan. Roosevelt saying it didn't make it legal - Congress did. Bush said a lot of things, and not every one of them was accurate. No "high treason" conspiracy theory there.

The State of war already existed without Roosevelt making a speech or Congress voting anything.

The Law of the Land says Congress must DECLARE War

CAPS LOCK strikes, a declaration is irrelevant to the existance of a state of war.

Since your not in the US or a US citizen, I can't expect you to have the same dedication to the foundation of our Nation. But don't for a minute think that such dedication is simply "politics as usual" on my part.

Would that dedication be all encompasing as in seperation of church and state, or is it only dedication to the politics you like?

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by Skybird

That's how to fight, duel and war. Everything else is nonsense.

You fight to win a war - I think we agree there.
I also think we agree that the US has not fought to win - thus I take the position that it must not be a war.

You specifically avoided the whole "rule of law" point - either the law is followed or its not. You want to claim that its a war even though we didn't "follow the law" - then don't suddenly expect the US to "follow the law" in other aspects of this "war" - aka geneva convention, no torture, etc. Its a double standard.