McKiernan OUT ... McChrystal IN

[wlawr005]

As for earlier, I wasn't trying to convey a "kill 'em all" attitude. The main point I was addressing was the lack of unity of our country at a time like this. One of the greatest things about the greatest generation was the unity and support given by EVERY citizen of the USA...these days, we have our own citizens second-guessing everything the military does, especially the media.

We have begun an idealistic war with idealistic people, but we find it hard to define our own ideals here at home. We (the melting pot) are as morally fucked up and upside down as old men in villages that don't allow women to go to school.

People in other countries don't take us seriously because of that fact. We enter a country, struggle to defeat the "homeboys" because we have both legs and one hand tied behind our back with the media, and expect the locals to believe that we are "here to save them".

As for "blood feuds", I think that the Afghani's are pissed at everyone for 1100 years of constantly being fucked with. The fact of the matter is when you go somewhere to do a job, you get the job done. Obviously carpet bombing is ridiculous, but there are changes that can be made in our effort to bring the war to the enemy that would ensure the support of local citizens.

 

[Uncle Fester]

There's a difference between realizing you're fighting COIN and knowing how to do it. One of our biggest mistakes in Vietnam, and one we repeated for most of OEF/OIF, is assuming that our current fight is different from all others and we have nothing to learn from previous successful counter-insurgencies. GEN Westmoreland never learned that - he insisted on fighting an unconventional war conventionally until the day he was relieved (excuse me, promoted). We've spent the last eight years relearning those lessons, but we seem to still be chasing our tails in Afghanistan. We seem to be operating on the philosophy that if we just explain to the tribes how decent we Americans are and how evil the Taliban are, and buy their friendship with money and good works, all will be well. But it doesn't do a damn bit of good to build a village school for girls if ten minutes after you're gone, the Taliban will burn down the school, beat the girls, and behead anyone who so much as nodded approvingly at the Americans.

A revolutionary moves through the people as a fish through water. Right now, we're just standing on the shore chucking rocks into the river.

 

[wlawr005]

KURTZ
" I've seen horrors...horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call
me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that...But
you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is
necessary to those who do not know what horror means.
Horror. Horror has a face...And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and
moral terrorare your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared.
They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces...Seems
a thousand centuries ago...We went into a camp to innoculate the children.
We left the camp after we had innoculated the children for Polio, and this old
man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went
back there and they had come and hacked off every innoculated arm. There
they were in a pile...A pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried...
I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I
wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want
to forget. And then I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a
diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought:
My God...the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect,
genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were
stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not
monsters...These were men...trained cadres...these men who fought with
their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with
love...but they had the strength...the strength...to do that. If I had ten
divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You
have to have men who are moral...and at the same time who are able to
utilize their primordal instincts to kill without feeling...without passion...
without judgement...without judgement. Because it's judgement that
defeats us. "

From Apocalypse Now...

 

[Spekkio]

We have begun an idealistic war with idealistic people, but we find it hard to define our own ideals here at home. We (the melting pot) are as morally fucked up and upside down as old men in villages that don't allow women to go to school.

"We" didn't begin an idealistic war. The Bush administration claimed left and right that Iraq had WMDs AND was planning to use them against us in the very near future. Both claims turned out to be patently false. In order to conduct the war in Iraq, we moved a lot of the forces from Afghanistan, which let the situation degrade to what we have today. In the meantime, the war in Iraq has cost thousands of American lives and billions of dollars, yet you can't understand why the American public is not backing this 100%?

You can't win a war against an idea, no matter how hard you try. I agree with A4s...go over there, kill who you have to, leave until you have to do it again.

 

[eddie]

One of the greatest things about the greatest generation was the unity and support given by EVERY citizen of the USA...these days, we have our own citizens second-guessing everything the military does, especially the media.

Ok, how do we address this in the short term (the long term too I guess)?

We (the melting pot) are as morally fucked up and upside down as old men in villages that don't allow women to go to school.

No, we're not. If we are, then we should leave them be, isolate, and let ourselves decay and die.

The melting pot has what to do with this?

 

[Spekkio]

Ok, how do we address this in the short term (the long term too I guess)?

We don't address it. It's not a good thing when everyone thinks the same way and agrees with whatever the government attempts to do. There is a reason that many historians liken FDR's presidency to the closest thing we've had to a dictatorship. I think people on these boards are looking at the 1940s with rose-colored glasses.

 

[wlawr005]

The point, eddie-san, is that we are too culturally diverse to form the type of national identity that we had in WWII. Furthermore, not only are we culturally diverse, we are also religiously and morally diverse. This mixture makes it hard to present a common and unified front against our enemy. This is a disadvantage that our enemy has taken advantage of...

Children bring weapons to school as a means of "survival"...
Religious leaders sexually assault...
Financial institutions are failing as a result of poor leadership...

And this is the message we bring when we want to build schools, churches and businesses in another country.

 

[exhelodrvr]

You can't win a war against an idea, no matter how hard you try. I agree with A4s...go over there, kill who you have to, leave until you have to do it again.

Hmmm - I wonder if Tojo, Hirohito, Hitler, Mussolini et al would agree with that statement?

 

[A4sForever]

One of the foundations of the Pashtun "honor code" in Afghanistan is blood feuds or the idea of revenge-based killing. .....
With this cultural idea, entrenched and carried out since prehistoric times, things like flattening a village with 1000 pounders because ...All it does is breed more people who would gladly throw away their own lives...

Right ... so we shouldn't 'kill' them 'cause it might make them 'mad' .. ?? We don't want to make more of 'em ... ??? We don't want to violate their 'honor code' .. ???

With that thinking ... you've already lost the battle AND the war before you drop your first "1000 pounders" (sic) ... It's time to declare 'victory' and go home.

Personally, I'd prefer using a Mk84 ... as it provides much more 'bang' for the buck ... or pound for 'pounder', if you prefer ...

 

[Brett327]

We don't address it. It's not a good thing when everyone thinks the same way and agrees with whatever the government attempts to do. There is a reason that many historians liken FDR's presidency to the closest thing we've had to a dictatorship. I think people on these boards are looking at the 1940s with rose-colored glasses.

Amen to that. It's easy for people to romanticize about WWII and how "unified" we all were, but if you do any serious reading from the period, that notion fall apart. The decision to even enter the war was wildly controversial and unpopular - hence (as our European brethren put it) our late arrival, and there was an active and vocal (albeit minority) movement against our involvement from the start. The extreme measures taken by FDR would never have been accepted by most of the right-wing crowd today and pale in comparison with the "liberties" that Bush took after 9/11

@wlawr005: What is this cultural diversity you speak of? We were no less culturally diverse in the 40s than today - the ethnic groups were just different (Italians, Irish, Scandinavian and Chinese). You can decry a lack of unity today, but I don't think it has ever been very different. The threat we face today is not an existential threat, even though it is sometimes billed that way, and people realize this. You can make a pretty good argument that after all was said and done in WWII, the US would probably not have been invaded by the Japanese or the Germans, but I digress.

As an American, I want (and we all need) a system that allows for and fosters a healthy and vocal dissent. While it may not be the most expedient way to carry out warfare, that's the cost of doing business for living in a free society. The alternative is dictatorship and rounding people up and putting them in concentration camps like we did in WWII, and that kind of thing is unacceptable.

Brett

 

[A4sForever]

P.S. ... for those in the area and able to attend or access the material online ... there's a seminar going on now @ Virginia Beach re: these and related subjects:



Gen James N. Mattis, USMC and Gen Martin E. Dempsey, USA


Joint Warfighting Conference (JWC) 2009 in Virginia Beach is co-sponsored by the U. S. Naval Institute and AFCEA International. Some excerpts:

"I come at this with a certain amount of urgency," U. S. Marine Corps Gen. James N. Mattis, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation and Commander of the U.S Joint Forces Command, told more than a thousand attendees yesterday (MAY 12). "The enemy is meeting like this now, maybe not in nice surroundings like Virginia Beach. We are at war, though some may need to be reminded of that."

"It's going to require the greatest rethinking of our military in recorded history," Mattis said. "That rethinking will mean developing a national grand strategy," which Mattis noted the Nation had lacked since the end of the Cold War.

"Our predicaments today are complex," he said. "Through history we can learn lessons. We can't subordinate our military strategy to a non-existent political strategy."

U. S. Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commanding general of the U. S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, said American military planners "... should become comfortable with discomfort". If anything is to be learned from conflicts in Lebanon, Georgia and Gaza, he said, it is that: "operating environments are becoming increasingly decentralized. The solution: become more comfortable with that fact and develop a less centralized, 'networked' units and processes to counter decentralized opponents".

"There are no silver bullet solutions to the uncertain challenges we face," Dempsey said.

Apparently, none of the discussions will put forth finite solutions or potential answers that will please everyone ... but it's still food for thought.

 

[Uncle Fester]

Agreed. The hagiography of FDR and the "greatest generation" has allowed us to forget that there was a huge amount of dissent in the 1940's, over the New Deal, over FDR's undeclared war in the North Atlantic (from 1940 on, we were neutral in name only), over the decision to go to war at all. I don't agree at all with the idea that we've lost something in the last 60 years, that somehow we've become weaker.

In fact I'd argue that in many ways we're more homogenous now, perhaps not in skin tone or last names, but certainly in many ways that matter. There's no country in the world better at accepting and assimilating immigrants than the US. We don't have seething, impoverished immigrant ghettos like France or Germany do today. The new first-generation Americans speak fluent English and are bopping along plugged into their iPods and watching reality TV just like everyone else. Hell, the President is the son of an immigrant. Whatever you think of his politics, that's damn inspiring and it could happen almost nowhere else.

 

[LazersGoPEWPEW]

It might just be me not keeping up with current events but what is the mission objective in Afghanistan? It was my understanding that entry into Afghanistan was in order to pursue and destroy Al-Qaeda. Are we trying to help establish a pro-American government there?

And if so why?

Maybe I'm a simple-minded man but the only logical reasoning I can come up with for being in Afghanistan is strategic geographical positioning in relation to other hostile nations and potentially hostile nations in the region.

Someone clue me in because I'm feeling clueless right now.

 

[Uncle Fester]

It might just be me not keeping up with current events but what is the mission objective in Afghanistan? It was my understanding that entry into Afghanistan was in order to pursue and destroy Al-Qaeda. Are we trying to help establish a pro-American government there?

And if so why?

Problem is, they ain't destroyed yet. The remnants of AQ and the Taliban just retreated across the border and have since regrouped and reoccupied a lot of area. The problem now is how to find, fix and destroy them without pissing off the tribes. Piss off the tribes, absolutely nothing gets done.

If we leave, the thinking is the current government will fall and we'll be right back where we started. I think in both Afghanistan and Iraq, we've given up on the "pro-American" gov't and we'll just settle for a stable one that doesn't actively hate us.

 

[Cron]

You can't win a war against an idea, no matter how hard you try. I agree with A4s...go over there, kill who you have to, leave until you have to do it again.

Hmmm - I wonder if Tojo, Hirohito, Hitler, Mussolini et al would agree with that statement?

I think his point is that with terrorism there is no one leader, no one army, and no one country we can simply carpet bomb into submission (unlike WW2 or the Cold War for instance).