| WHich is a moot point, since active fighting is over. What battle have we lost because we were outnumbered? You claim that numbers are our problem, and yet you offer no reason why more troops would help. How would more troops prevent roadside bombs, unless you used them to overly oppress the Iraqi people which is what the attacks are blamed on in the first place? |
Here's why, Bakerstreet:
Me:
More troops would most certainly help now. But they aren't available. And there is no will among either the politicians, nor the people, to create a force big enough in order to accomplish the goal. It took about 10,000 Marines and Soldiers to succesfully besiege Fallujah, a city of 350,000, and keep it out of the hands of the insurgency for many months. The problem with the siege of Fallujah was that the US Military could only sustain one large scale operation at a time. For Fallujah, American troops from other parts of Iraq had to be pulled in order to provide the manpower. The occupation force is not large enough to run multiple simultaneous operations across several urban centers. |
The problem is the passive approach. We are using our military like policemen, not like soldiers. Sitting around waiting to be attacked, and then firing a few shots at the attackers. The problem is now the insurgents hardly even engage in manned attacks against American forces. They've reverted almost entirely to IED attacks. They don't need anybody forces in the area massed to launch an attack. They've defined the nature of the war. We need to take that option away from them. The siege of Fallujah was a perfect model last year. Take the fight to their strongholds, all of them--at the same time--and clear out the stables. In addition to that, set up checkpoint at all points of entry from Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. We have the technological capability to monitor infiltration from isolated spots in the deserts.
| Once they ARE attacked, we only use a fraction of our forces to address the attackers. Kind of shoots the idea that more would help in the foot, doesn't it? |
The strategy of waiting for them to attack us IS the problem. If more troops are just going to be used in the manner they are now, then it will be a failure. But I'm of the belief that American forces are employed as they are BECAUSE there aren't enough to operate in more effective ways. If I'm mistaken in my belief, then the war planners are seriously incompetent.
| We aren't fighting forces that we can't beat with even a small fraction of our force. The difficulty is knowing where they are and who they are, because they hide as civilians among civilians. Those are issues a million more soldiers wouldn't help, and that would only be helped by further oppressing and abusing the rights of Iraqis. |
Like I've said, the Fallujah (x10) Plan must be implemented. Multiple sieges against insurgent strongholds. You're going to have to decide what you want more, victory in batle, or providing a pretty face to pretty rhetoric. Even the most benign actions by US troops elicits unwarranted criticism from naysayers, both in the "Arab Street" (apparently it's as much Clichy-sous-Bois and Rotterdam as Amman and Cairo) and in the West. If you're going to be branded a devil, then at least get the results of a devil.
| In reality, we could crush any organized offence that attacked us directly in Iraq with HALF the troops we have there. You can claim this isn't constabulary, but it really is. We are weeding hit-and-run insurgents from innocent civilians. More troops would just be standing around waiting to get attacked. |
I claim that it IS constabulary, and that it shouldn't be. It should be military, and it should be offensive.
| By that standard no war the US has ever fought has been a success. Not the civil war, not WW2, none of them. All the nations we invaded were ruined, all were occupied years later, and each war spent us militarily to the point we couldn't as effectively react to other threats. Patton's view of the Soviets, and our unwillingness to address them, is a great example. |
Nonsense. The Civil War and WW2 were total victories for the United States, and she emerged from both more powerful than upon entry. For after the Civil War, what threat did the United States face other than Indians on the Plains? After WW2, the United States was at awesome strength to respond to other threats. Korea was just five years later, and only the political will was lacking to engage in total war. Patton was right aout the Soviets, but our enemy at the time was Germany, and we kicked their asses.
The French emerged on the victorious side, but who in the hell could say the War was a success for France. The phrase "Pyrrhic victory" comes to mind.
| We were so spent by WW2 that we were unwilling to do anything but fight anything but small proxy wars with the Soviet Union and China for decades. |
More nonsense. We lacked not the ability following WW2; we lacked the will. When the Soviets detonated their atomic bomb in 1949, the era of total victory, at least between nuclear powers, became history. America fought proxy wars against the Soviets & Red Chinese because the stakes of nuclear warfare were considered too high.
| Personally, I consider Kennedy's Cuban efforts a failure. Castro is still laughing it off. Yet, for some reason people revere him and consider Bush much worse. Seems like political sour grapes more than real military "failure" on Bush's part to me. |
Kennedy's Cuban efforts WERE a failure, and the resolution of the Missile Crisis was just mopping up some of the failures. I admire his anti-communism, but the reason Kennedy is so lauded today is because he was assassinated.
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