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Originally posted by kaneman:
The whole premise of that article is Hogwash. A war we can't win? Says who? The sun has set, military embarrassments, end of western dominance, Wow!! that is news to me. First, the war is not over and it may be quite a bit longer before it is, that being said, I wouldn't wager on the out come just yet. Secondly, The war has been a success in two important areas. Saddam is gone and Iraq is taking steps towards a much better future. The terrorists have been boxed into their corner and are not free to run around the US. Seems to be working to me.

This article reeks of "progressive" agenda, bias, and anti-military rhetoric. Shame on the author, he could have at least tried to hide his pro IslamoFascist slant. Well it's true.

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Originally posted by oldenglanddry:

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Originally posted by kaneman:
The whole premise of that article is Hogwash. A war we can't win? Says who? The sun has set, military embarrassments, end of western dominance, Wow!! that is news to me. First, the war is not over and it may be quite a bit longer before it is, that being said, I wouldn't wager on the out come just yet. Secondly, The war has been a success in two important areas. Saddam is gone and Iraq is taking steps towards a much better future. The terrorists have been boxed into their corner and are not free to run around the US. Seems to be working to me.

This article reeks of "progressive" agenda, bias, and anti-military rhetoric. Shame on the author, he could have at least tried to hide his pro IslamoFascist slant. Well it's true.

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BWAAAHAAAAHAAAAAAHAAAAHAA

HAAHAAAAHAAAHAAA

HAAAHAAA

HAAA

HA.

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Originally posted by kaneman:
First, the war is not over and it may be quite a bit longer before it is, that being said, I wouldn't wager on the out come just yet.

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Secondly, The war has been a success in two important areas. Saddam is gone and Iraq is taking steps towards a much better future.

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The terrorists have been boxed into their corner and are not free to run around the US. Seems to be working to me.

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This article reeks of "progressive" agenda, bias, and anti-military rhetoric. Shame on the author, he could have at least tried to hide his pro IslamoFascist slant. Well it's true.

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Originally posted by fredgiblet:

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Originally posted by kaneman:
First, the war is not over and it may be quite a bit longer before it is, that being said, I wouldn't wager on the out come just yet.

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That was part of the point of the article, we can't just waltz in and bitchslap the Arabs anymore, they've learned how to fight a guerilla war that will probably take decades to finish. In the meantime we are spending billions (trillions?), and losing thousands of troops (with tens of thousands of physical and emotional cripples to boot). We will probably eventually finish off the insurgency, but that doesn't mean we will have won anything.

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Secondly, The war has been a success in two important areas. Saddam is gone and Iraq is taking steps towards a much better future.

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Saddam had no WMD's, we went to war on false premises and pissed of the whole world. Now that North Korea has, and Iran is working on nuclear weapons we can't do shit about it. Why? because our troops are tied up in Iraq and few if any nations are going to support us in another invasion.

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The terrorists have been boxed into their corner and are not free to run around the US. Seems to be working to me.

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Bullshit, the terrorists are no more boxed in now then they were before. We have killed a huge number of terrorists true, but every one we kill spawns at least one more. Additonally we have not protected our actual country. Our borders still resemble sieves, and our NBC protection is still a joke. Instead of protecting our country the war in Iraq has drained money away and created ill-will across the world.

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This article reeks of "progressive" agenda, bias, and anti-military rhetoric. Shame on the author, he could have at least tried to hide his pro IslamoFascist slant. Well it's true.

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Go back to the article and click on the about us at the top. The magazine was co-founded by Pat Buchanan, hardly an Islamo-Facist (maybe Judeo-Christian Facist, but not Islamo).

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Originally posted by kaneman:
The author is clearly anti-American military, surely you can see that.

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What does Pat Buchanan have to do with it?

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The Arab governments and their armies can be "bitch slapped".

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The insurgents are harder to get our paws on. It will take time,

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Originally posted by fredgiblet:

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Originally posted by kaneman:
First, the war is not over and it may be quite a bit longer before it is, that being said, I wouldn't wager on the out come just yet.

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That was part of the point of the article, we can't just waltz in and bitchslap the Arabs anymore, they've learned how to fight a guerilla war that will probably take decades to finish. In the meantime we are spending billions (trillions?), and losing thousands of troops (with tens of thousands of physical and emotional cripples to boot). We will probably eventually finish off the insurgency, but that doesn't mean we will have won anything.

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Secondly, The war has been a success in two important areas. Saddam is gone and Iraq is taking steps towards a much better future.

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Saddam had no WMD's, we went to war on false premises and pissed of the whole world. Now that North Korea has, and Iran is working on nuclear weapons we can't do shit about it. Why? because our troops are tied up in Iraq and few if any nations are going to support us in another invasion.

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The terrorists have been boxed into their corner and are not free to run around the US. Seems to be working to me.

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Bullshit, the terrorists are no more boxed in now then they were before. We have killed a huge number of terrorists true, but every one we kill spawns at least one more. Additonally we have not protected our actual country. Our borders still resemble sieves, and our NBC protection is still a joke. Instead of protecting our country the war in Iraq has drained money away and created ill-will across the world.

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This article reeks of "progressive" agenda, bias, and anti-military rhetoric. Shame on the author, he could have at least tried to hide his pro IslamoFascist slant. Well it's true.

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Go back to the article and click on the about us at the top. The magazine was co-founded by Pat Buchanan, hardly an Islamo-Facist (maybe Judeo-Christian Facist, but not Islamo).

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Originally posted by kaneman:
Pat B. is not the author.

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Originally posted by Causal:
Great article, Fred! A couple of minor quibbles:

While we were definitely "sent packing" by the Somalis, it was definitely not in any military sense. The operation actually achieved its objective (the "Delta"/Ranger element got the guys they were after), so they didn't beat us on that point. During 18-hour running gun battle, an estimated 1,000+ Somalis were killed whilst they managed to kill only 19 Americans. By any metric, we won that particular confrontation. It could be the case that had we stayed and fought on, they would have “sent us packing”--but they definitely lost that battle. We were "sent packing" not by via military defeat, but by the loss of political nerve. The administration couldn't stomach flag-covered coffins (and I'm not here to debate the merits of the pull-out, just to defend my Special Operations brethren), and pulled us out, toot-sweet.

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We've got to be more careful with the word “defeat” when talking about the Israelis and Hezballah. The Israeli metric of success for this latest crisis was the utter destruction of Hezballah. The Hezballah metric of success seemed to be not being completely destroyed. Now, Hezballah did meet their metric for success: they weren’t annihilated. But that does not a “victory” make

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The unfortunate fact is that neither side achieved much of anything at all, other than a massive loss of life.

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Militaries are no longer organized in a rigidly hierarchical structure with orders flowing neatly up and down the chain of command.

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I think this is why we are having so much trouble fighting in Iraq. We want the other guy to get his tanks and his infantrymen together into orderly formations and bring them out to some field somewhere (or, failing that, some city somewhere) so we can both duke it out and decide who gets to own this piece of land.

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But that is just not how the Iraqi insurgents are fighting. And because we are slow in adjusting to that, they are going to win. As far as I can see, it's at least possible for the U.S. to adjust its methodologies in such as way that they can defeat these guys--but it will never, ever happen as long as we continue to use "3rd generation" warfare against a "4th generation" foe.

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Originally posted by fredgiblet:

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But that is just not how the Iraqi insurgents are fighting. And because we are slow in adjusting to that, they are going to win. As far as I can see, it's at least possible for the U.S. to adjust its methodologies in such as way that they can defeat these guys--but it will never, ever happen as long as we continue to use "3rd generation" warfare against a "4th generation" foe.

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Exactly, but I do think we have been making progress in this direction lately, I just hope we're making enough progress.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I think the author is probably overstating things. The tactics employed by the insurgency are not unique to Muslims nor are they particularly novel or innovative.

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I think the author is probably overstating things. The tactics employed by the insurgency are not unique to Muslims nor are they particularly novel or innovative

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I can't think of ANY successful modern campaigns against groups with popular support. Finn... you seem to be "up" on military hx... can YOU?

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Originally posted by SignyM:
It's the way people on their own soil fight when they don't have much money. Very similar to the Viet Cong, to guerilla groups in S and Central America and the American revolutionaries.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I don’t really disagree with your assessment of the difficulty of the situation, and it is true that the insurgency in Iraq as well as the militias in Lebanon have adapted to the information age. But so have we, and we’ve done so far more then they have. So the advancement of guerrilla tactics to adapt to information technology is not really the problem.

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The problem is, as it has always been, that guerrilla warfare is frequently successful in deferring peace and Western Nation tend to loose their political nerve in long stalemates.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Casual

I'm tempted to agree with FInn that we have adapted more than they have, but they have adapted, and I agree with the articles conclusion that this is not going to be won on the battlefield. The muslims have moved to a strategy of using amorphous units in an acephalous organization. This means that the game will ultimately come down to numbers and in this respect, the authors are right, it's an unwinnable conflict because they clearly outnumber us.

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Taken that the base conservative viewpoint is PWL, preservation of a way of life, the paleocon viewpoint established around the turn of the 20th century was based on an internationalist idea: That in order to get others to respect your right to preserve your way of life, you had to respect theirs.

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We will never win in a clash of cultures against islam, and if we did, what would be the point? Already the definition of freedom has been ripped a new one in this conflict, thus radically, and some say irreparably, altering our society, and threatening or PWL. ...Though the idea is not an isolationist one, the basic tenet that one can not maintain the sanctity of ones own society while agressively defaming and dismantling another holds true, and ultimately, while we cannot win militarily, we can succeed in creating an opponent who will seek to destroy us, which should never be the goal of any US policy.

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In case anyone is going to make the claim that I'm rejoicing in our defeat, I'm not. I was quite hopeful for the govt. that we set up in Iraq, which I think was vastly superior to what came before or what is likely to come after, which I expect to be a theocratic sheikdom. But I'm beginning to see that we've water the seeds of hate sewn in the arab world by the jihad, and when the armies come, the iraqi people will throw *them* a rosepetal parade. The agenda has failed, and the tactic was the cause.

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we're just treating them like errant children in need of correction.

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To be honest, when it comes to a clash of cultures, I'm not even sure what a "win" would look like, for either side.

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What, exactly, are we trying to achieve?

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The spread of freedom? Hard to make that case when you twiddle with civil liberties at home, although to be fair, they're at least trying to set up democratic governments.

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In some sense, we are doing exactly what they want us to: we're reacting to them in fear.

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The people who came to fly buildings into the Pentagon and the WTC were trained, equipped and carrying out a plan laid by men who had cut their jihadi teeth fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

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They were tough, they were brutal, they were efficient, and most of all, they were survivors. They were so deadly good at their craft because they'd had all the training they needed fighting the Soviets. Now you have thousands of angry young men flooding into Iraq and Afghanistan to fight us. They will learn, adapt, and become good at their craft. And 20 years from now, they just might think it's a great idea to train up some young guys to go over to the US and create some havoc. That's why the current conflict scares me. I guess in some sense I don't want us to "lose" the current war. But in a much more real way, I'm concerned because we've created the very terrorist training ground we sought to deny.

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As for guerrilla wars that have been unsuccessful there are actually far more then people realize, I think. The problem is that we only talk about the ones that are successful. We often don’t even give names to the unsuccessful ones. After World War II, guerrilla campaigns were waged throughout the Soviet Block Nations, most of them popular and unsuccessful. In fact the Soviets didn’t really have a problem controlling insurgents in the nations they occupied until the Soviet government began to collapse, then hell broke loose. Another example would be the Irish Civil War and possibly the Spanish and Greek Civil Wars, but I’m not sure about those. So yeah, defeating guerrilla insurgents can certainly be done, though I would rather take an easier path if at all possible.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I think the author is probably overstating things. The tactics employed by the insurgency are not unique to Muslims nor are they particularly novel or innovative.
-- Cicero

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Originally posted by SignyM:
You will notice, Finn, that these were civil wars??? That means VERY SHORT supply lines.

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