Will researching and reading today, in part to find citations in answer to some questions and clanges to my prior comments I ran across the following, which sort of sums up part of my possition or take on some of the topic here:
My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight [in
Iraq] was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions—or bury the results.[1]
—Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, USMC, 2007
Ignorance of war is killing Americans. The lack of will of the American people and their government to develop a comprehensive understanding of war and the limitation of American military power, and some respect for non-Western peoples and cultures, is killing Americans in foreign lands, wasting enormous national resources, alienating traditional and potential allies, creating new enemy states, growing new terrorists, and causing the decline of the United States.
Consider these basic tenets of war. Before starting war nation-states should: 1. Have well defined, legitimate political objectives. 2. Know its enemies, the types of war they are most likely to fight, and their ability to generate combat power. 3. Have sufficient forces to fight the war, and the right types and mix of forces—force structure. 4. Develop a comprehensive strategy. 5. Use tested operational and tactical doctrines adapted to the specific political, economic, cultural, and geographic environment. 6. Secure the support of legitimate allies to share the costs and sacrifices of war. 7. Make the war a national effort, gain and maintain the support of the people. 8. Listen to the advice of professional military leaders, and know the capabilities and limitations of one’s forces. These are common sense tenets and principles of war, yet the Administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney failed in every instance repeating past behaviors. Consider the words of former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara: “We failed to ask the five most basic questions: Was it true that the fall of South Vietnam would trigger the fall of all Southeast Asia? Would that constitute a grave threat to the West’s security? What kind of war—conventional or guerrilla—might develop? Could we win it with
U.S. troops fighting alongside the South Vietnamese? Should we not know the answers to all these questions before deciding whether to commit troops…?” The questions that needed to be asked were known, and the right answers were available. In reference to the Bush-Cheney War in Iraq,
General Newbold wrote:
I was a Marine Corps lieutenant general and director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After 9/11, I was witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of
Iraq—an unnecessary war…. What we are living with now are the consequences of successive policy failures. Some of the missteps include: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in more robust ways to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department.[2]
The lessons of the Vietnam War were not forgotten, and there was no lack of knowledge or information. This was voluntary ignorance, willful neglect, caused in part by cultural blindness. This is not a problem unique to this administration. Since World War II, it has become a chronic, American problem. These repeated failures in strategic vision and military thinking requires explanations that go beyond reason, logic, and common sense. There were men in the Pentagon who understood war and endeavored to explain the costs and nature of war in
Iraq. There were professional soldiers and marines in the Pentagon who well understood the resources required for war, and the chain of actions that produce the highest probability of success. To be sure, there were disagreements between the services; however, this does not explain the manifold failures of the Bush-Cheney Administration. Hence, the larger questions are not, what were the lessons of the Vietnam War and what questions needed to be asked, but why did American political leadership continuously ignore its most knowledgeable people, and why didn’t they ignore the information and intelligence available?
http://blogs.informa.com/american-culture-of-war/
Does anyone here want to call this guy a yellow bellied pinko communist? I sure as hell dont!
Still think we should have blindly followed the Presidents lead and never stopped along the way to ask why we are still fighting in a war that we were lead to believe would last no more than days, weeks or at most "five months"?
eace:
