Posted on 04/13/2003 5:32:30 PM PDT by tyen
There are a lot of government and military leaders around the world right now who are feeling distinctly nervous.
...What emerges is that America is a friend to value, but an enemy to fear.
...we have won a great victory in Iraq, and an even greater one in the world. The next time we say to someone, "Don't make us come over there", they won't. America's already-great diplomatic power has now been massively enhanced, through a clear demonstration that any explicit or implicit threats of military operations we might make are not empty. Paradoxically, that will significantly reduce the likelihood of us having to fight again.
(Excerpt) Read more at denbeste.nu ...
The world will NOT let us make unlimited military incursions into country after country. We can't go from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on. We have to pick our wars very carefully.
I, for one, feel North Korea has pretty much a free shot to pursue whatever program they want - at least for a few years until the Iraqi chatter dies down. There is no way the U.S. could engage in a second war anytime soon - short of retaliating for a first strike upon the U.S. The Congress won't permit it - and the rest of the world won't permit it. The political costs will simply be too high to pay.
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I am of the opinion and belief that Syria will have to be dealt with and while we are already there in position to do so. Besides, Syria wouldnn't be much of a "war" really. Probably just a mop-up action finish the work we started in Iraq.
This comment from the article I agree with. Many things shone in this highly successful campaign, but one big surprise was simply this: That the US forces were able to keep and maintain tactical surprise and show great flexibility and ,mobility throughout the campaign.
You can judge a force in many different ways, in different dimensions: Its power, its reach, its CCCI (comand control comm., intelligence), and its mobility. On all dimensions, this is the best fighting force in the world, and all our strengths were on display: our reach/power (air and M1A1), our mobility (ability to strike fast and win airbases, 200 miles advance in several days), C3I (20 minute decision loops on close air support), etc. The kill ratios in the major engagements were simply astounding. the ability to show surprise to the enemy in a theatre where we at the same time showing off live pictures to media outlets and gave daily briefings is stunning. It seems we had destroyed their C3I up front and now have the best in the world there. This is a whole dimension of capability and strength in our forces beyond the strength in having precision air power, which was shown in Kosovo and perhaps was what saddam expected (1 month of airstrikes etc.).
The US military is not, I repeat, NOT going to begin any new offensives any time soon. North Korea is going to be taken care of dipomatically because the Chinese need our markets. Iran is moving toward a new revolution, or at least reform and reproachment with the West. Bashar Assad is an amateur, a spoiled prince-turned-opthamologist who succeeded his father, would fall faster than Hussein did, and he knows it. Sandwiched between Israel to the west and eight American divisions to the east and given the choice between cooperation with the US and the total destruction of his regime, Assad the Second will choose cooperation.
That leaves the real viper's nest - the Arabian peninsula. Dealing with them might involve revealing hard evidence of the al-Saud family's active and primary involvement in fomenting Islamist terror in the Muslim world, and a diplomatic standoff ending in their sacrificing some of their own in order to save their own a$$es.
We're going to win this war, but it will have to involve thinking in terms that last longer than the average news cycle. Think of it as a 21st Century version of the Cold War in terms of strategy and scope, with the difference being that this enemy, instead of a monolithic totalitarian state with thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at our homes, is a collection of poorly armed, backward theocracies and kleptocracies who hate each other only marginally less than they hate each other.
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