Here it is, but next time, do your own research. The interesting thing is that the rate of debt accumulation had leveled off, amusingly under the Democrats, and it is the Republicans who are the spendthrifts that have bankrupted us.
Posted on 05/15/2008 6:23:16 PM PDT by Barbarian6
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.
4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
Imagine, 2500 years ago someone predicted our current predicament. Think we could have learned, but no our so-called leadership was much to clever even to cover a few of the basics.
Oh not it isn't. Having plans when you deliberately start a war is a solemn duty of a ruler and his generals. It is absolutely immoral to maintain otherwise. We started Iraq all on our own at the time and place of our choosing. And when you deliberately start a war, and you have overwhelming force as we did, the trajectory is not on its own. You control the points of attack, the time and place of battle. We didn't entirely because we attacked with inadequate ground force, and it turns out that the 4 stars who complained about lack of sufficient ground forces were right.
For all your claims of having stacks of books on military strategy your ignorance on this point is astonishing.
1. The general conduct of the Pacific campaign was worked out by the Navy in war games long before the strike on Pearl Harbor.
2. Are you honestly ignorant of the detailed planning behind the Battle of Midway. Do you really think that Nimitz put the entire carrier force of the pacific at risk without a clear plan?
3. For all the bloodshed in the Battle of the Solomon Islands, it had long been identified as an important strategic target, which justified the cost.
4. Do you actually think MacArthur just sort of blundered into Japan after VJ day discovering he now commanded the place? The success of the occupation of Japan had largely been worked out before McArthur set foot in the place.
5. MacArthur and Patton lived strategy from early days of their lives. Each in his own manner was a genius on the subject. It is not irrelevant that Patton was an expert swordsman, and Olympic contender and author of a book on the subject. MacArther is one of the greatest military geniuses ever to have lived, an absolutely brilliant, subtle and comprehensive mind.
6. Do you really think that the Battle of Britain or the Battle of the Atlantic were fought without clear plans and strategies as to what was to be accomplished and how?
No, we did not just blunder our way into a victory in WWII.
The last time we tried blundering and reacting was Vietnam, which every professional military officer who served in that war or since knows was one of the worst planned and conducted strategic blunders in the history of warfare. There is hardly a "lesson of war" that we did not violate in that war.
But didn't they say that Robert McNamara was not only the brightest, but the bestest...
He was a typical computer weenie. He did not understand that when it became clear that McNamara was winning the game he was capable of playing, they changed the game. McNamara one "his" game, which unfortunately was not enough, and he lost the war, only it took Nixon and Kissinger another 5 years to figure that out.
A cold clear-minded strategic assessment would have shown that we could not win the war fighting the war that the politicians were willing to fight in the manner they were willing to fight it. It is an old old lesson.
Dereliction of Duty, by H.R. McMaster.
A great read. If you can bear it...
Good points. According to a database commisioned by the Pentagon, insurgencies last an average of over ten years. So by historical standards, I’d say we’re doing very well. I guess with all of those previous counter insurgency operations, they didn’t have a ‘professional strategic planner’ like Andy.
;-)
Disparate groups can, and do, work together against a common enemy. The US and USSR were not exactly tight before WWII. Once we got into the war we sent them lots of weapons etc to use against our common enemy.
“and it turns out that the 4 stars who complained”
I’m still waiting on your list of ‘large number of experienced 4 stars have also criticized this government for not having a strategy in Iraq’.
“The impact on our national prestige to this entire action”
-”I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid.”-Gaddafi of Libya
“The impact on our own strategic mobility and responsiveness “
Having a strategically located democratic ally in the heart of the middle east, which willfully hosts our military, is a great disadvantage to our ‘strategic mobility and responsiveness’./s
“The strategic impact of adding $3 Trillion to our national debt”
Where’d you get this number?
“The sacrifice of the entirety of the conservative agenda in order to prosecute a war in Iraq.”
Continued appeasement of a terrorist entity in a post-9/11 world isn’t part of a conservative agenda. It would be part of an appeasement agenda.
“The impact on our own democracy of turning lose Homeland Security on the American public.”
This one is true. In fact, I had several Homeland Security black helicopters hovering over me the other day demanding I hand over my library records.
“The impact of $127 oil on an economy...”
Of course the skyrocketing fuel demands of the Chinese and Indian economies, combined with a refusal to allow the building of new refineries, nuclear plants, or drill for oil by congressional democrats, have no impact on the price of oil. Only the war in Iraq can be blamed. You have the DNC talking points down pat.
And because Bush squandered his political capital on invading Iraq, he had nothing left to deal with the real strategic problems we faced, such as this one, which we have seen coming for a long time.
And we are free to move on the moment there is another demand on our resources. HAH!!
Here it is, but next time, do your own research. The interesting thing is that the rate of debt accumulation had leveled off, amusingly under the Democrats, and it is the Republicans who are the spendthrifts that have bankrupted us.
Let's see, for a start: Zinni, Hoare, Powell, Shinseki, Newbold (3 Star), Sanchez (3 star) Van Ripper (3 stars), Riggs (3 Star). I won't bother with Clark, whose credibility is brought into question by his clear political biases.
The criticism had pretty universally been insufficient ground troops to do the job. Turned out they were right.
Who is calling for appeasing terrorists. Post 9-11 we took out the Taliban who were responsible for a direct attack on the US. That was just exactly the right thing to do, and set a fine example. I remain unconvinced that the world is a safer place because we invaded Iraq, however. Remember we had Sadam pretty well cornered already. He couldn't fly airplanes and any time he breathed in a way we didn't like we bombed something important. we could have kept that up for a long long time without bankrupting the US.
But, Petraeus is very very late in the game, however, and we have been through a lot of civilian leaders who had no military experience at all, and a lot of military officers who were just paper pushing bureaucrats rather than strategists. It took a long long time for ideological purity to give way to military necessity in Iraq - 5 years too long.
I don't know why folks are arguing against the point. It is an historic malady of peacetime armies - everywhere - at all times. Lincoln had to run through a lot of McClellands before he got to Grant - but he knew it and he found Grant. The Navy had to run through a lot of submarine commanders in WWII before it got commanders who would shoot torpedoes at Jap ships, and then the Navy had to run through a lot more shore commanders before they got some who were willing to fix design flaws in torpedos so that they would actually blow up Japanese ships when they hit. And a lot of men lost their lives and a lot of missions were wasted fixing peacetime leadership problems. But Roosevelt had an eye for good officers and the top military leadership was pretty good going into the war. I don't think Bush or his advisors have such an eye for military talent.
We are 6 years into this. WWII would have been long over by this point. In Vietnam we simply never fixed the leadership or strategic problems. Good strategic planning probably would have kept us from getting into the war. Kennedy stayed out of Vietnam on the advice of MacArthur. MacArthur's advice turned out to be sound.
One of the possible outcomes of careful strategic thinking is that the cost of the operation far exceeds any likely achievable benefit. Even if Iraq starts to wind down shortly and we manage to reduce out operating costs to reasonable levels within the next 2-3 years, which is everyone's fondest hope maybe involving a bit of wishful thinking, it is going to be many many years of hard work to put the US back together again, take apart a staggeringly expensive so-called security apparatus (checking every blond 6 year old who boards a plane and every bank transaction looking for terrorists), pay off the debt, address our energy security problems in a manner that makes any difference. Will it be worth it for a free and democratic Iraq that may not end up being so free and so democratic? History will have to be judge, but at best it is going to be an awfully close call.
Are folks going to be grateful? The Saudis sure aren't grateful to us right now, and they ought to be.
Baloney. The term "neo-con" has been kicked around so much it has lost most meaning.
But in its original sense it referred to 70's liberals who had been "mugged by reality" and became conservative. There was initially little or no national defense component to the ideology, as it was focused more or less exclusively on such domestic issues as crime, welfare reform, etc.
In its present use, it seems to have two basic, overlapping meanings used by different groups: 1. Bush-bots; 2. Jews who are foreign policy hawks (IOW, secret agents for Israel).
Not only do you have the dnc talking points down to a Tee, like the dems, you also offer no solutions.
That’s a far cry from your original assertion that we had no plan. And I see what you mean now, when you said ‘large number’ of four stars, you were refering to large number of people who stayed at four star hotels.
The chart doesn’t support your original claim. And your replies don’t even make any sense.
‘HAH!’???<— These are rebuttals? I think I’m being fooled into engaging in conversation with a kid.
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