It’s a truism that conventional armies cannot win revolutionary wars—that for all their resources and firepower, they will be defeated by guerrilla insurgencies. This lesson of Vietnam is rarely questioned, but it is false. Under Johnson and Westmoreland we lost a war the establishment said we were winning. Under Abrams and Nixon we won one they said we were losing. The Vietnam war tells us a lot more about American government and popular perception than it does the quest for a victory of arms.
Conventional armies can easily defeat revolutionary ones if they adapt to their means and methods. (We did it in Afghanistan in 2001, for instance.) Our armies lose, though, because our governments are incapable of pursuing victory in revolutionary war—which requires the methods that built the great colonial empires and are no longer palatable to the society that our wealth and relativism have created.
-Robert Messenger (2010)
Sounds like fighting words to me. At a minimum, he is faulting government, the modern incarnation. At most, he is condemning all of this country - institutions, culture, and people - for evolving in a direction that does not support colonialism; use of "relativism" strongly suggesting an anti-progressive bias. Somewhere in the middle is an ill-defined argument for nation-building.
McChrystal has a point:
Caution and cynicism are safe, but soldiers don’t want to follow cautious cynics. They follow leaders who believe enough to risk failure or disappointment for a worthy cause.
That kind of brings us back full circle to the hated Powell Doctrine.
It would be the height of absurdity to assume that the various war colleges and war gaming institutions have not studies the required intersections suggested by the DIME acronym. So optimal strategies are abandoned why?
The ME was and is all about money - and oil. I do not believe that the role of religion will become fully apparent until the historical dust settles, but my guess is that the final assessment will include something along the lines of religious conflict as an excuse to further the revolutionary objectives of archaic societies under pressure to self-sustain in a world for which they were not prepared. When all else fails, fight. What more enduring incentive than a god?
All of which is a springboard off of Desert Rat's contention that the Mad Mullahs intentionally attacked with the sole purpose of financially draining the Great Satan by permanently planting their military in the desert sands of the ME. I am not completely convinced, but there is little doubt in my mind that *some entity* wanted USA "over there."
Shorter version is that I agree with Rufus - out tomorrow. I remember Trish used to post too-cryptic-for-me reasons why USA military presence was important but my IQ digits didn't wrap around the argument. Then again, I note, as wretchard recently admitted, there is much about 9/11 that will never be made public during our lifetimes. Major Cypher.
-Robert Messenger (2010)
Sounds like fighting words to me. At a minimum, he is faulting government, the modern incarnation. At most, he is condemning all of this country - institutions, culture, and people - for evolving in a direction that does not support colonialism; use of "relativism" strongly suggesting an anti-progressive bias. Somewhere in the middle is an ill-defined argument for nation-building.
McChrystal has a point:
Caution and cynicism are safe, but soldiers don’t want to follow cautious cynics. They follow leaders who believe enough to risk failure or disappointment for a worthy cause.
That kind of brings us back full circle to the hated Powell Doctrine.
It would be the height of absurdity to assume that the various war colleges and war gaming institutions have not studies the required intersections suggested by the DIME acronym. So optimal strategies are abandoned why?
The ME was and is all about money - and oil. I do not believe that the role of religion will become fully apparent until the historical dust settles, but my guess is that the final assessment will include something along the lines of religious conflict as an excuse to further the revolutionary objectives of archaic societies under pressure to self-sustain in a world for which they were not prepared. When all else fails, fight. What more enduring incentive than a god?
All of which is a springboard off of Desert Rat's contention that the Mad Mullahs intentionally attacked with the sole purpose of financially draining the Great Satan by permanently planting their military in the desert sands of the ME. I am not completely convinced, but there is little doubt in my mind that *some entity* wanted USA "over there."
Shorter version is that I agree with Rufus - out tomorrow. I remember Trish used to post too-cryptic-for-me reasons why USA military presence was important but my IQ digits didn't wrap around the argument. Then again, I note, as wretchard recently admitted, there is much about 9/11 that will never be made public during our lifetimes. Major Cypher.
