WAR: Shock and awe have their limits, as history has shown. (by Michael Bellesiles)

STLtoday.com ^ | 12-8-03 | MICHAEL BELLESILES

[FairWitness]

Military techno-hype, reflecting a long-standing Anglo-American faith in technological quick fixes, has frequently fed expectations of a "clean" victory. But we have found that the latest technology does not always shorten wars.

As early as 1609, John Smith, a leader of colonial Virginia, told his troops that if they just discharged their muskets at the Indians, "the very smoake will bee sufficient to affright them." Unfortunately, Smith was wrong. Virginia's Indians developed tactics to circumvent the colonists' technological advantages. Smith returned to England, proclaiming his mission accomplished, but the Virginia Indian wars lasted for decades.

[FairWitness]

For anyone who has not paid attention, Bellesiles is the fraud who wrote a book contending that guns were actually quite rare throughout American history, until recently when the "gun culture" invented the myth of the well armed american populace. (e.g., see: Bellesiles resigns as fraud investigation ends; Fall from Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal)

I post this for those who might be wondering what this guy is up to these days - maybe this article outlines the thesis for a new book. He is partially right; victory in war depends as always in putting troops on the ground to occupy territory, but I hope we are always the ones with the biggest and bestest new weapons ("shock and awe") in addition to having the best troops. He may not say it explicitly, but I get the feeling that Bellesiles thinks we should not bother to have the best technology.

[sauropod]

He is a fraud.

[FairWitness]

He is a fraud.

Just so.

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

...As early as 1609, John Smith, a leader of colonial Virginia, told his troops that if they just discharged their muskets at the Indians, "the very smoake will bee sufficient to affright them."...

But Mikey B! You told us the colonists didn't have any guns!

[68skylark]

I guess this guy had to crawl out from under his rock some day.

[Prodigal Son]

The originator of the policy of "shock and awe" was not a Pentagon employee but Giulio Douchet, an Italian advocate of air power in the 1930s.

The author should do his homework. Achieving shock and awe on the battlefield has been around a lot longer than this. Sun Tzu gives examples for achieving it.

Shock and awe isn't about bombing per se nor does it have to involve hi-tech gadgetry. Shock and Awe is about achieving rapid dominance- so much so that the enemy decides it is useless to fight. Some historical methods of achieving this dominance didn't even involve a single shot being fired. Shock and Awe can be achieved purely through psychological means.

It isn't just a system of bombing though.

[Bob]

The author should do his homework.

Why? He never has before.

[coloradan]

Many of his other examples of "shock and awe" were of military attacks against civilian targets, which we didn't do in Iraq. (Fraud!)

American air power did enormous damage to the Iraqi military, destroyed numerous key government structures and killed uncounted numbers of civilians. In the process, the United States alienated millions of people around the world, including, it seems, a great many Iraqis.

He says there were "uncounted numbers" of civilians killed, as if it were uncountably many. But the number of civilians killed vs. enemy government agents + enemy military was lower in Iraq than in almost any other conflict ever in history.

[Live free or die]

bump for later reading of the cubicle bound

[Tijeras_Slim]

As early as 1609, John Smith, a leader of colonial Virginia, told his troops that if they just discharged their muskets at the Indians, "the very smoake will bee sufficient to affright them."

I guess he forgot that nobody in colonial times had guns, or is he distancing himself from himself?

[FairWitness]

The author should do his homework. Achieving shock and awe on the battlefield has been around a lot longer than this. Sun Tzu gives examples for achieving it.

You credit him with trying to make a historical point, when he is more likely trying to make a political point.

[Adder]

I thought that was who this was: the fraud.

He sure has a thing about guns, doesn't he? He sorta misses the point that the troops on the ground didn't carry sticks and rocks but carried better "technology" if you will, than the enemy.
Patrick Ferguson died because he chose the wrong ground and his "new" technology was not sufficiently advanced over that of his opponents.
He COULD have seen that it was the technological superiority of the North that led to the defeat of the South in the Civil War, if he weren't so blinded by his premise.
Better technology led to pin-point bombing in Iraq: so much so that people were able to travel daily as the war progressed, left the infrastructure intact, for the most part, and enabled them to watch the progress of the Allies come right to the gates of Baghdad before their TV's went out.
What more should technology do?
This guy is a loon.

[Kozak]

Ashurbanipal II, King of Assyria (884 – 859 BC), called himself “trampler of nations”. Blood-curdling inscriptions of his achievements include:

I besieged and conquered the city… I captured many troops alive. I cut off of some their arms and hands. I cut off others their noses, ears and extremities. I gouged out the eyes of many troops. I made one pile of the living and one of heads. I hung their heads on trees around the city. I flayed as many nobles as had rebelled against me and draped their skins over the pile of corpses… I flayed many, right through my land and draped their skins over the walls. I cut off the heads of their fighters and built therewith a tower before the city. I burnt their adolescent boys and girls. (Bleibtreu 1991)

Shock and Awe version 1.0

[Maelstrom]

Waitaminute...I know this guy.


He is a fraud.

[FairWitness]

He is a fraud.

And he seems bent on continuously re-proving it.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Yet newspapers still publish his drivel.

[FairWitness]

He sure has a thing about guns, doesn't he? He sorta misses the point that the troops on the ground didn't carry sticks and rocks but carried better "technology" if you will, than the enemy.

Yes - and even if the "guns" carried by both sides don't differ that much, the better "technology" of our side, including communications, backup, tanks, etc. matter a lot.

[Snuffington]

The originator of the policy of "shock and awe" was not a Pentagon employee but Giulio Douchet, an Italian advocate of air power in the 1930s.

You'll have to take his word on this one. He had the evidence to back it up, but his dog ate it. And then the dog was drowned when his office flooded. And if the Italians claim he was never there, maybe he meant France. He can't recall.

[shamusotoole]

On the theme of "fraud" for those who don't know this guy:

http://www.emorywheel.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/10/25/3db9bc0a08df2

Read this!!!

[Billthedrill]

What utter banality. While it is certainly true that many inventors of the next weapons technology (Gatling, Nobel, and Oppenheimer, for example) felt that their invention would make war too terrible to fight, only the latter was actually correct, and only up until now. When the first Islamic bomb gets thrown Oppenheimer will have been proven just as wrong as the others.

Bellesiles has constructed a particularly flimsy straw man here. "Shock and awe" was not a new technology and nobody promised it would stop the fighting all by itself. This is merely an attempt to discredit the planners of the Iraq intervention by putting false words in their mouths.