Posted on 12/30/2002 6:59:48 PM PST by paltz
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It isn't over yet. It's barely even started.
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Desert Storm was an ideal war for bush-button gadgets on a terrain ideal for kids trained to operate push-button gadgets on 7-11 computer games. It wasn't military combat.
Right you are! The Reserves and Guard were deployed to the Gulf as support troops (and mostly did a fine job), but not one Guard or reserve combat unit was sent. It was GEN Schwartzkopf who refused to allow them. There simply wasn't enough time to get them properly trained up.
The US has changed it's war fighting tactics and in the last 20 years it has served us well. The future will include unmanned aircraft and robots with anti missle lazers so is this bad? No, but it will never take the place of hard combat experience no matter how much Hack bitches about it !
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I don't believe it.
I bet those "kids", as you call them, were damn glad to have whiz bang gadgets with which to quickly dispatch Iraqi soldiers to their maker. Just because it's one sided doesn't mean it's not military combat. I'm sure there are plenty of Desert Storm combat veterans who would disagree with your assessment that they were not involved in military combat. Would it have been better if 10,000 or so of our soldiers had been killed in heroic bayonet charges?
But...IF I had to go to war again...(albeit a lot older and grayer than last time)...I would PREFER someone like Col. Hackworth in charge.
He has his priorities right....
redrock
I will never demean any of those that served in Desert Storm, whether they were in the Regular Army or part of the NG or Reserve. All performed admiralby. They made America proud!
I was a grunt in Vietnam and the diference between the two wars was unreal to me. 1 yr = 90%+ casualties for my company. Desert Storm = 180 KIA out of 500,000 in 2 months.
Bottom line is... I have complete confidense in our active and reserve military people.
Does that come with an English translation?
RLK was saying that fighting with modern weaponry designed to minimize our casualties isn't real combat. Did you not understand my point? Warfare is warfare no matter the weaponry because you can be killed in either case. Just because you aren't sticking a bayonet in his ribs and looking into his eyes as he slowly dies doesn't mean it isn't combat.
And no, I am not in the military, nor have I ever been. Does that mean what I say is not the truth?
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That isn't what I said, but it's close enough.
During the Gulf War nearly our entire list of casualties was the result of a misaimed missile hitting a barracks full of sleeping men many miles away from the front. The fact is, you were in more danger crossing a street in New York than you were on the front lines during that war. It was not what I call combat or even close to it.
During the crisis with Serbia I heard retired General Schwartzkopf asked what he thought of a ground war in Serbia. With characteristic understatement he said, "Well, the terrain is different there."
In that terrain tanks would have been useless. Helicopters would have been wiped out by crossfire between opposite high mountains. Air attack effectiveness would have been about 2% as effective as it was in the Gulf. The Serbs were dug in and nearly every one was a well-trained sniper with any kind of weapon. When they shoot, they don't miss, from hundred of yards. The Serbs had supplies stored to last months or years. There was heavy cover and concealment. Had we gone in there with ground forces we would have lost 20,000 men very easily. THAT is combat. Forget about pushbuttons. The U. S. military currently does not have significant numbers of people to fight that kind of engagement. We aren't even equipped with the correct type of rifles and other equipment for that kind of action.
If we get into engagements in certain areas of the world, we don't have the equipment, numbers, or training to survive it.
Yes, I can see that, as you stated elsewhere on this thread, you have no military experience. Unfortunately, neither have most of the members of our unisex armed forces. Most of our senior officers are too young to remember Viet Nam.
When I was in the army, which was probably before you were born, most of the NCOs and officers had experience in WW II and Korea. My platoon sergeant wound up wounded and hanging by his parachute of the end of a Japanese barracks with the nips running around 12 feet below him looking for people to shoot. There is almost no combat experience in today's military. We are likely to find that out the hard way.
Marcinko is a FNG when it comes to comparing military records with Hack. He isn't even close ... Hackworth is the most decorated military veteran alive today in the United States. Marcinko, on the other hand, and I speak from some inside knowledge on this, is considered a BS artist supreme by many who served with him ...
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