Originally posted by Hangtime
Guns, I don't get it.. when did War become a side job?
Either we're at War or just playing politics with our soldiers lives. IMHO, if it's a serious enough situation to start killin 50+ of our boys a month it's time the rest of the nation started to either do their part to materialy contribute or bring the kids home. This half-assed warfare **** has got to cease.
Full court press or bring 'em home. Either we're ALL in it, sacraficing what's necessary outta our own day to day grind, contributring materialy and morally to the effort or it's just bull**** lipservice.
Commitment.
The whole nine yards now, or bring 'em home.
'
We live in a democracy and no politican is going to go full tilt on this republican or democrat. The right thing to do is not allways the most popular and our leaders who make these decisions have to get relected.....That's not to say I approve of what I just said but that's how I see it.
In addition I don't see this as a limited war were we can't bomb certain people or take out certain "trails" for political reasons, this is what I said earlier a war of attritian.
Here's a lesson:
The main doctrine that our military uses for conducting war is called maneuver warfare. It's brilliant in practice because: The main thing about maneuver warfare is that you try to avoid hitting a bigger army head on. You pick apart his supply lines and support and you exploit his weaknesses with speed and accuracy.
The invasion of Iraq was a brilliant example of this, it went perfectly. We advanced a good size army faster and longer than any in history and took relitivly few casualties. We used our technology to our advantage and exploited our enemies weaknesses at ever aspect.
One of the main advantages of maneuver warfare is because of the speed of your army you can gain advantage with a smaller size force.
Well the good times are over now it's time to switch gears to occupation. This requires a larger standing army and if you rember recent history you will recall that Turkey pulled the plug on the 4th ID from invading Iraq on a second northern front. This caused them to have to go by ship all the way around to the suez and then back up the gulf. These grunts were not on hand for the occupation for at least a month and missed the invasion alltogether.
Now the war fighting switches from maneuver warfare to an occupation of attritian. The enemy is dug into the populus and has reletivly few supply lines and requires very little logistics to cary out his task. He can inflict good amount of casualites (both military and civilian) utilizing very few assets. Again this is a war of attritian. This may not have been the plan from the onset but Mr. Murphy allways says no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
The Key to defeating an enemy like this is to stand fast and get him to fight you on your terms not his. This is easier said than done considering who we are facing and this is their yard not ours. Either way the will of the Iraqi people and more importantly the will of the American people play bigger roles in this type of warfare than most people realize. When the will to fight of either populations is broken victory cannot be achieved and the enemy has won........even if he lost every military battle and suffered great defeat on the battlefield itself he has one the war. This is a war of wills our's vrs. theirs. They have the will (now) to stand fast and fight us on every front they can create for the next 75 years......do we?
anyways this is just a little incite into the way I think.....carry on!
