Originally posted by Siaf__csf
You pointed out that as guerilla warfare goes your troops aren't doing bad in Iraq. I don't argue that fact - the casualties aren't big considered the job they have to do down there. However I'm under the impression that the public opinnion in your country is that the loss of life is not acceptable regardless of 'how well' your troops do when put into the mission frame. If things continue like this for a longer time, heads will be asked to platter as the spending and loss of life mounts up gradually but certainly.
The attitude of the American public with regards to war and the cost of war is a weakness that is caused by naivete in such matters and the actions of the majority of the American media outlets who exacerbate the problem by (deliberately?) failing to keep things in perspective.
No matter how good you are or how inept your enemy is you are going to lose guys on the ground. If there's really an 'American Persona' part of that 'persona' likes perfection, 'shutouts', etc. This 'persona trait' has a hard time handling the fact that - to loosely quote Hitler of all people - 'Even a victorious army pays a price', i.e. there's always a few guys that don't get to celebrate the big win when it comes to warfare.
I think the primary factor is that most Nations in Europe and Asia have had a continuos first hand 'institutional memory' of what warfare is really all about for several hundreds of years. America does not have the benefit of such experience. The last war fought by Americans on American soil was the Civil War - There aren't any citizens alive today to recall that war. Most Americans don't know, don't want to know, or cannot fathom how ugly a 'real war' is. The ones who wind up serving in the various combat arms of the U.S. military are educated about 'real war'. The uneducated majority are then all too often 'played' by the media because nothing generates ratings better than causing dismay and shock.
Immediately after the end of hostilities in the '91 Gulf War "We're in real trouble the next time a real war comes around" was not an uncommonly heard statement among the various circles of military personnel that discussed such things. The point of the statement was that since the '91 Gulf War went so well, and ended so cleanly as far as the American public was concerned (funny how the media never covered the butchering of the Iraqis and the Kurds who rose up against Hussein and were 'hung out to dry', but there 'wasn't a dry eye in the media house' when Iraqi vehicles and soldiers were getting hammered trying to flee Kuwait along 'the Highway of Death') that a large % of the citizenry basically became 'spoiled'. They took away the understanding that war could be fought cleanly and almost painlessly as far as Americans were concerned.
I don't know how the lesson is going to be taught - if it's going to take a President losing an election and his successor having the same difficulties (thus showing people that the type of 'win' they want cannot be delivered), or some '4-Star' telling it like it is and then being forced to resign, or a succession of nasty (to Americans, 'par for the course' to the citizens of some other Nations) ground intensive military conflicts but eventually the people who honestly currently don't 'get it' (as opposed to the people who harp on every death not because they give a damn but because it gives them something to harp about) will eventually learn. The sooner the better. When uneducated public opinion adversely affects the freedom of planning and execution of the professional military everyone loses.
The short version - one example is we should have gone in on the ground in Kosovo and ended the war in 1/10 the time it took to end it. American losses would have been higher for sure. Bad guy losses would have been 10 times however (meaning less of them migrating to other conflicts, like the ones who proceeded to go over to Chechnya and become terrorists) and a lot of civilians who were murdered during the execution of the air campaign would be alive today. But the political masters of the U.S. military wanted a 'clean' war, with minimal U.S. bloodshed. The sentiment is nice but it is wrong when war is the last best option.
In the republic that is the U.S.A., the ideal and intended relationship between the government and the military is that the government states the objectives and the military attains them. Senators and Congressmen have no place when it comes to opinions on how to attain them. If you employ a surgeon to remove the tumor you let him do so in the best manner that he knows how. You'd be a fool to spend 2 days on
http://www.webmd.com and then ask for his plan of action so you could 'improve on it'.
Tell the professional(s) what you need done, even assign conditions. But when it's time for them to go to work let them do the job and get the hell out of the way. I cannot stand the horde of retired/former/etc. military guys who show up on Fox or CNN or ABC or NBC explaining 'how it should have been done' when they are about as 'in the loop' as JFKs Wife was when it came to who was sleeping with who (by the way that's not an anti-Democratic barb there - I think JFK was a great person and a good President).
More guys are going to get killed no matter how good the planning, support, etc. There is no way around it. Guys getting killed does not equal a 'quagmire'. Guys getting killed with no progress being made *sometimes* might be called a 'quagmire'.
You'd think that people would have a little faith after the predictions before the Good Guys attacked the Taliban wound up being so far off target.
Mike/wulfie
