"This Is A New Kind of War" is President Bush's Get Out of Jail Free Card

Schwartzkopf told us that 'Snake Eaters' don't win wars. I've brought this up a few times here on the forum for discussion since the world was turned upside down on 9/11. Despite all you great ret. Spec. Ops. guys who have tried to say Schwartzkopf was 'yesterday's army' I respectfully disagree.

Like Ike warning about the Military-Industrial complex .... General S. was telling us the plain truth. Perhaps this new kind of war will prove to be successful once we establish massive forward bases in Afghanistan and from there, strike out ACROSS and THROUGHOUT the Middle East with terrible and sure .... Swift Death.

Perhaps we SHALL see (someday) Gratifying headlines from all points announcing the mysterious cropping up of groups of very dead terr cells even through Europe. Thus signaling the re-emergence of a brighter day, finally, for the Western World.

But it is absolutely imperitive that we take first things first. We are not going to take even a corner of Afgahanistan for establisment of a massive, massive forward base of operations going at this as we now are. A real war on terrorism cannot be fought unless we have total control of some forward base of operations some where near the M.E. If not Afgahanistan then perhaps half the coast of Pakistan. Regardless, in order to insure this we must have a REAL war Against the Taliban and other, new fighters now coming from far and wide. IF not to establish a base then merely because destroying the Taliban is what we said we were going to do. The US must start sticking to it's word as a FIRST step toward defeating Islamist world wide.

Unless we can get Schwartzkopf to come out of retirement or 'miracle of miracles' there's another Schwartzkopf hiding just under the joint chiefs level ...to fight an actual war with hundreds of thousands of infantry and thousands of tanks, Bush will continue to lose this war.

I doubt that there ARE any new Schwartzkopfs. Clintoon decimated the General Staff. Thus the laying of the 'Get Out of Jail Free Card'. The excuse to prosecute a Viet Nam style police action and keep the news cameras completely out of it. Thus never allowing proof of the ineffectiveness of such a losing propositonal excuse for a war.

It won't work. This policy, already plainly evident in this so called war, will strenghthen and embolden the Islamist terrs world wide and we are guaranteed massive Islamist strikes here at home. If the American people are not moral enough to insist on a real war when nothing else will do .... the Islamists will do it for us. And then we'll really be playing 'catch-up'. Same ole same ole.

We DON'T need to be undercutting morale in this country by claiming that the sky has already fallen.

Ah, but we are an impatient people, and some of us are quite egocentric as well. The war has not been won yet (what is it now, 21 days already????), they are not doing things my way, and above all supporting your President is "blind faith."

This Bush-hating mantra continues to be boring, and IMO is very un-American. This is a war which will require patience because it is more complex than wars in the past. But these folks want to believe that the sky has already fallen, because the administration hasn't done what they want them to do, and it seems to me that the fact that their incessant egotistical griping 'undercuts morale' doesn't bother them a bit.

Thank you for your insights, and the facts you stated, Navy Vet. You are right on target.

My take... Rummy's idea that a quick toppling by spec op troops alone is faltering. He sounded very gleeful of this possibility in earlier press conferences. Part of the reason, I suspect, is that his focus on spec ops does not only reflect new realities of war, but it’s cheaper. Before the war he had been talking about shrinking the size of our regular forces to pay for the star wars pork barrel, ok, “SDI.” I saw some articles from military men questioning this shrinkage. They were castigated as being “backward.” The new Chief of Staff was emplaced expressly for his “expertise” and support for the new star wars program. Seems like he’s not the right kind of guy after all, no?

For several years before 2000 Rumsfeld was a lobbyist for the star wars industrial interests. Whether he is a true believer or not, it doesn't matter. To get to the pork, raising taxes was not an option, so the plan was to take it from other areas--regular and armoured troops, maybe some closings come into this calculation. Some here may no like this view, but I suggest you reread what Gen. Eisenhower said on the topic of the interrelationship between defense and industry.

IMHO what we need in this war that will take “years” is a large army and more spec ops. We need more intelligence investments too. Afghanistan can't be pacified by pinprick attacks from carriers hundreds of miles away and one or two thousand spec op troops in Uzbekistan. I read stories how Soviet Spec Ops basically won their Afghan War until we introduced stingers and other weapons. The implication was that since the Taleban have no such backing, we can win by spec ops. I don’t believe this wholly. Spetznaz (sp?) worked out of heavily militarized in-country areas. Namely, areas controlled by a regular army.

We need land control to win this war. Bite our lip, but I think we some sort of UN credit, in name at least, to pull this off. Create the new King Zahir govt. Have it declared the legitimate govt of Alghanistan by the UN. There are many countries that are up for this. Then we come in as "peacekeepers," like we did in Korea.

I also note that half of the Taliban army is foreign mercenaries. They are the worst fanatics. And they have no place to go. I think they will fight to the end. Some bombs won’t scare them, bombing and death is part of their mentality. They have no Afghan families, no place to live. A great defect in American propaganda is the failure to keep hammering this home: that Afghanistan is essentially under foreign occupation. I hope that some of the less-than-expected defections of the native Taleban has something to do with threats against them by the Afghan-Arabs, Chechens, etc., which I have read reports about earlier. If so, at some point many of them might go neutral, if not “defect.”

My bet is that we try to take Northern Afghanistan first. Want the spec ops to surprise them? How about jump right into the middle of Mazar and fight outward, leaving the T-ban in the countryside. Then jump into the Panshir Valley with the Brits, Maybe also the Turks, for a move on Kabul. This would involve general army forces to control territory. Calling Gen. Schwartzkopf!

As for other wars, I believe our involvement in Phillipines is starting.

My son is a part of this. I've done my homework.

Eloquent beyond words ...

We'll be offering up the best of our best ... whole chunks of our hearts ... in the coming days, weeks, months ...years ...it's been done before in our history ... but not with so many "armchair warriors" armed with a keyboard ... but who have not served ... like me ...listen to this:

"Mollie was the biggest popoff and the biggest screwball and the biggest foul-up I ever saw,and he wasn't afraid of nothing.

Some fellows get brave with experience, I guess Mollie never had any fear to begin with.

One time on the road to Maknassy, the battalion was trying to take some hills and we were getting no place... Mollie stands right up ...'I bet those Italians would surrender if somebody asked them to. What the hell do they want to fight for?', he says.

So he walks across the minefield and up the hill to the Italians, waving his arms and making funny motions, and they shoot at him for a while and then stop, thinking he is crazy ... when he gets to the Italians he finds a soldier who was a barber in Astoria but went home on a visit and got drafted in the Italian Army.

So the barber translates for Mollie and the Italians say ...'Sure!' They want to surrender!

And Mollie comes back to the lines with 565 prisoners.

Of course, CNN was not there to inform us all that we were ill equipped to handle the battle before us ... Tony Snow was not standing over a military sized map, marker in hand, trying to look like Eisenhower ... no witnesses at all, really ... except Sergeant George McGray.

In these times ... we would all be lamenting that we were in Italy at all ...what was up with that? Has Roosevelt lost his mind?

I don't live in England ... who cares what Churchill thinks!

Patience .... patience .....

What a post!!! I like Mollie! I don't think as many Muslims were keen on the terrorists killing so many innocent people as we are shown on television. What they say and what they think and do are completely separated from the other. They are trying to survive in their own countries and hopefully we get the ones we are after before too many more innocents suffer the same fate that has already sparked the fury in us. I want to win and win big time. And I want to let the world know that we aren't a nation to be taken lightly. America is Japanese, Germans, Chinese, Africans, Swiss, mideastern, ad nauseum. We are an olio of everyone and are hated as one. We embrace the world and the Muslims can't even embrace each other.

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