I am a 1966 graduate of North Georgia College and I'll put the officers we commissioned and still commission up against the "Hudson River School for Boys" any day.
The first place we need to use OFFENSIVE is right here in this country. This is where we need to win the war. I say we as Freepers go after the Left now.
PS: Use MOUSE MOSS if you want to remember them.
Maybe one should look at more fundamental level, like the character of war (is it an identity war, aka "Clash of Civilizations", or is it a more traditional war?)? Because many other principles would follow from here.
Thank you for your post...I don't know what military doctrine this fits, but there seems to be one important element missing...There first needs to be a battle of ideas fought here at home. Nothing will destroy our armed forces unless it is the division of the people back home. I hate to say it, but we need to address the home front as well...darned if I know how to do that though, excpet that we see almost no representatives of the government extolling the accomplishments of our forces with the people of Iraq...Give us examples, even if you need to hire government press people and camera men to film the schools and bridges that we have built. Where are the photos of our good work in the public domain?
What of desception or sleight of hand? How does one use that concept here, when Iran and Syria are such likely targets?
We are on the offensive every day but it isn't the crude and ineffective dropping of bombs or shooting up villages. A global effort to unhinge liberty and replace it wiht a caliphate isn't defeated by a traditional show of arms. It is slowly and deliberately dismantled by isolating the radicals from the general populace, and then they are snared in traps of their own making.
Read Boyds writings on the OODA loop and the blog called Global Guerrillas
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2004/11/counterinsurgen.html
You need to keep in mind Clausewitz' distinction between "total war" and "cabinet wars". The former engage the whole nation in a battle for survival. The latter are initiated by politicians and fought for political and economic interests.
The clearest indication that this is not "total war", like WW II, is that there has been no declaration of war. Instead Congress passed some mealy-mouthed resolutions authorizing the enforcement of some UN resolutions.
Actually, the United States has engaged in non-War wars since WW II. Korea was a "United Nations Police Action".
No war was declared in Vietnam.
War was never declared for the first Gulf war, not to mention Panama and Grenada.
So you were sure about this looking like the "War on Drugs" -- it is only a war in the rhetorical sense.
No. Your problem is you want to apply conventional warfare to an unconventional war. You also forget that you must have the backing of the American people. You have no such political consensus on Iran or Syria.
Iraq is an offensive move in the overall strategy against Islamic Terrorism. Iraq is our kill zone where we bring the Terrorists out of hiding into a Battle field of our choosing. We do not have the political will to go after everyone everywhere. Iraq is doable, Iran/Syria are future battles that the bulk of Americans do not have the will to do at this time.
Look up the term Operational Overreach. What you advocate is a policy for that.
For a historical analogy think of Iraq as the 1943 Invasion of Italy. Just like Italy for the Allies, Iraq is a step necessary in the context of a broader war against Islamic Terrorism.
Would a blockade or oil help us or hurt us before hostilities, and if so, would it be effective?
How would the Iranians respond?
It's clear to me that you don't know what war is.
What about Suadia Arabia and the rest of the Gulf States that support and harbor terrorists? Where do you think Al Queda is getting most of its financing not to mention willing volunteers?
Excellent post. I am also a graduate of the Hudson Trade School for Wayward Boys (1972). I also think we need to take on Iran and Syria. For the former, we should provide air strike, recon, armor, specops, and logistics support to the Persian revolutionaries. For Syria, I suggest that we encourage Assad's officer corps to overthrow him or face American air and armor. I think we are achieving economy of force in Iraq by letting the Iraqis clean up the islamofascists themselves. They are 10X more ruthless and thus more effective. I am actually less worried about nukes than bio. There are a lot of morons with poor personal hygiene and substandard labs trying to cook up deadlier pathogens. The only justice is that the bugs will kill them off first.
Well, I would respectfully disagree.
As Sun Tzu wrote, “For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
The ultimate military objective is not to destroy armies or sink navies but, rather, to achieve your strategic objective.
If that can be done with an economy of force without a battle of annihilation between armies or navies, so much the better.
Case in point: Rabaul.
Such a debate was waged within the Royal Navy at the turn of the 20th Century between those who championed the views of Mahan, who advocated the seeking out of decisive sea battles with enemy fleets, and the advocates of British military historian Sir Julian Corbett who argued that the purpose of a navy was to control the sea lanes and an enemy fleet bottled up in port was just as strategically useless to the enemy as one at the bottom of the ocean.
As Sir Corbett wrote:
”An admiral with no wider outlook than to regard the enemy’s fleet as his primary objective will miss the true relation to the other forces which are working for a successful issue of the war.”
Another principle that Sir Corbett learned from history is that no general or admiral ever had a free hand to formulate a “pure” strategy since domestic politics, economic constraint and diplomatic considerations always served to “deflect” military operations.
That principle is especially relevant to the U. S. Armed Forces in the 21st Century.
Why?
Because our nation is presently cursed with a liberal news media and a Democrat Party that serves the function that Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose served in World War II, namely, to do everything in their propaganda power to demoralize the American war effort.
The defeat by America of the armed might of what used to be the fourth largest army in the World in 1990, the Iraqi Army, with less than 2000 KIA is one of the greatest military achievements in military history. Yet, America’s enemies talk about America reaching the “tipping point” of admitting defeat because the American liberal news media portray casualties short of two thousand as a gargantuan sacrifice and make an antisemitic, vitriol-spewing woman-with-issues camped in Crawford, Texas a Nightly News icon.
We may fantasize about going after Iran and Iraq but America has a major Achilles Heel problem in the Democrat Party and the liberal news media that stands in the way of such a “pure” strategy.
So, what is the answer.
IMHO, the answer is to identify and attack the centers of gravity of terrorism which is not really the brain-washed foot soldiers or the armies but the teachers of such an ideology.
Britain may have talked about fighting terrorism but, up until this past month, Britain focused on fighting the terrorist foot soldiers while they freely allowed a radical Muslim cleric living in Britain to freely preach his treason within Britain itself and breed more terrorists just as a fly-covered dead carcass breeds maggots.
The radical mullahs, be they in Iran or Saudi Arabia or in Pakistan or in Britain or in America are the center of gravity in this war and the choice is to do whatever it takes to target them directly or be faced with fighting the millions of maggots they breed with their poisonous ideology.
Because of the Democrat Party and the liberal news media, America is ham-strung in this war and a “less-than-pure” strategy is all we have to work with.
We therefore need to focus our efforts, covert or military, on the center of gravity………..The radical mullahs.
In regards to the armies of the secular thug regimes, the way we treated Mouamar Khadafi is an example of the same doctrine: Target the snakes head. A bomb landing a 100 yards away from his bed did wonders to change his point of view and made fighting his armed forces unnecessary.
ping