Military has war all wrong, author says (Col Hackworth speaks out )

New Orleans Times-Picayune ^ | 11/24/02 | Sarah Brown Staff writer/The Times-Picayune

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

More than a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the nation's military leaders have failed to understand the enemy and the kind of war needed to unearth the terrorists, retired Army colonel and author David H. Hackworth said Saturday.

[meenie]

A problem that most Americans have that clouds any judgement about terrorism or warfare is the lack of any experience on our home territory. The sniper attacks show that the population is unready for the horrors of violence that terrorism would bring. Many veterans have seen it and the destruction that it brings. They, as a rule, are far more serious and deliberative in reaching a decision to justify warfare.

Any serious person realizes our unpreparedness to defend our own country is a serious problem that is being ignored. Other threads have shown criticism of ranchers on our southern borders for protecting their property because our government is not doing it. We will defend our borders before this all plays out. The real question is how many attacks will it require before we get enough violence to wake up as a nation? If you want to go to war with Iraq, you should take care of the unfinished business with Al Qaeda and defend yourself.

[Snake65]

Going after al-Qaida exclusively is like going after the Viet Cong and NVA military units and ignoring their sources of supply in Hanoi, Haiphong, China and the USSR and their American anti-war front sympathizers.

Bump for Gritty's great analysis.

[TheEngineer]

The Bush family seems to have a pattern of making war on Iraq, then acting like the weakling kid who comes home with his chest puffed out to tell his father he made the high school football team.

C'mon, RLK, so far it's only a "pattern of one". :-)

[InvisibleChurch]

hackworth predicted 20,000 US dead in persian war I

[ApesForEvolution]

Hack has proven to be a quality military mind over the years, but if he's so brilliant, then why didn't he play the political games to actually be in a difference making position today?

I believe and fervently pray that by dismantling Iraq, it will provide a M.E. base of operations to smash and eradicate all terrorists within the region, particularly Syria and Iran, for starters.

This, IMHO, should be the course to neutralize those core, militant islamotrash murderers, particularly those that meet in the 'Jerusalem Conferences' sponsored by Iran and Syria and held most recently in Beirut and Tehran.

On another related note, this would be a rather long term mission, and without at least a 2 term Bush Presidency, it would be dramatically serious nightmare for a communist, islamotrash-appeasing-pacifist-democr@p to be elected in '04.

I hope Bush realizes what he's doing to his re-election efforts by appeasing the messicans and not seriously dealing with illegal immigration and America's porous borders, along with his goofy 'liberal-light' fiscal policies as evidenced by his signing *BAD* legislation such as CFR, the Ed Bill, the Ag Bill, etc.

[Thumper1960]

There is a time for war and a time for total war.

We'll see how long it takes and what actions push the consensus towards total war.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Gritty has it right!

Be sure to see the thread linked at post #32!

[RLK]

He's on Fox a lot as a consultant, and he almost always argues with the other, younger military consultants.

----------------------

The problem with the younger military consultants is that they have never had grit combat or even military experience.

[mikenola]

Fight like we fought in Vietnam and we'll get what we got in Vietnam--condemnation and abuse from abroad, a debilitating turncoat peace movement at home, and regime change

Well said.

Something that doesn't get said enough is that Iraq, Alqueda, PLA, Hezbollah, etc, are all the same entity, in that their goals are virtually indistinguishable. They both seek the destruction of Israel and restoration of the original (medieval) Islamic caliphate. BinLaden and Saddam may have different motivations though.

The media and the liberals like to present the battles against Al Queda and Iraq as mutually exclusive and unrelated. Not true!

I can't prove it, but I know in my gut Saddam played a part in 9/11, the Cole, and the embassy bombings.

In fact Saddam, has even a more immediate axe to grind than BinLaden, whose goals are more ideological.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

One question; was either America or Iran better off after the Shah was removed?

[Fury]

You're right on the money. Thanks!

[MonroeDNA]

Seal the border is dead on.

The rest, I'm not sure of.

[Tribune7]

He said the administration has taken a crucial first step by creating the Department of Homeland Security, but it needs to act quickly to seal national borders and bolster the ranks of the Immigration and Naturalization Service so it can root out the thousands of potential terrorists in the United States.

Makes sense to me.

[GallopingGhost]

Iraq is the "key" to nothing. The key is Bin Laden. Perhaps we should kill him first before we start engaging in utopian wars against "evil" with every Tom, Dick and Harry which will only spread our resources to the breaking point.

Bin Laden is the key to nothing. How does killing Bin Laden stop Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Musab Zarqawi, Saif al-Adel, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Tawfiq Attash Khallad, Assadalah Abdul Rahman and about 50 other top al-Queda leiutenants from continuing their jihad against the west? This war is being fought on many fronts. I find it hard to see why we need to do one thing at a time. I can think of a few places that terrorist groups could obtain some very deadly weapons and Iraq is at the top of the list.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

I can't prove it, but I know in my gut Saddam played a part in 9/11, the Cole, and the embassy bombings.

I also believe that our government has discovered concrete connections between Saddam and all of the major terrorist events, including 9/11. For reasons not revealed, the top leaders of our country do not want to detail this connection. I am suspicious of the motive not to reveal the connection but believe fighting Iraq is indeed part of the war on terrorism.

[rogue yam]

Don't we engineers usually refer to this as "single point trend analysis"? This commonly recurring substitute for thought is always completely unsupported by any general comparison of 41 and 43, or of their differing political contexts. For the last 2+ years I have been basing my expectations of W's future behavior on who he says he is and what he says he will do. So far it has worked great! This is not to say that I have liked and agreed with everything, just that he knows who he is, telegraphs his moves, and plays it remarkably straight. W says we're going to change the Iraqi regime and help the Iraqi people sort out the aftermath. My expectation is that we're going to change the Iraqi regime and help the Iraqi people sort out the aftermath.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Of course, America is worse off since the Shah was removed in 1979. That removal, of course, was merely the unintended consquence of the 1953 CIA sponsored coup. Had the U.S. stayed on the first place, i.e. allowed the elected government of Mossadeq to remain in power, the rise of Khomeini probably wouldn't have happened in the first place.

You seem to be assuming that the U.S. can people on a chess board like a wise social engineer and there are no unintended consequences of such meddling. Do you have the same views on wage and price controls?

History has disproved this theory countless times and that it often makes more sense to let events unfold on their own. A more recent example is the U.S. decision to bail out Saddam when he was the defensive in a war he started with Iran. Had we stayed out of the war, Saddam would now be eating dirt.

[McGavin999]

I understand what's going through Hack's mind. He remembers Vietnam, and that memory does not allow him to trust civilian leadership. But this leader is different. What Hack doesn't see as a result, is that Saddam is the cornerstone. When Iraq fall, Iran will follow immediately after and then right after that North Korea will fall in line, and the terrorist will be handled in a completely different way.

Once the world sees what Saddam has, and could have used, they will keep their mouths shut while we do what must be done to get rid of the terrorist ASAP.

[MHGinTN]

We cannot seal our borders, but we can sure as heck stop the leaking sieve and do a much better job patrolling our coasts and the Mex and Can frontiers ... the 50,000 personnel in Europe come to mind as a good place to source border patrols.

[MHGinTN]

Had we stayed out of the war, Saddam would now be eating dirt. 57 posted on 11/24/2002 8:54 PM EST by Austin Willard Wright Hmmm, and with the Ayatollah controlling such a large supply of the world oil and having the geographic reach from Turkey (out NATO ally) to Pakistan and firmly under fanatical Islamic law with a million plus army of war-hardened vets in command and the ability to mass produce nukes, etc. ... yeah, I'd say you really have a grasp on this thing. NOT!