Here’s something you probably didn’t see or hear on the ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN newscasts this week:
“Ambush: 28 Aug, Kandahar Province, Shah Wali Kot District – A joint forces convoy was ambushed. Air support was called in. Report states that more than a hundred insurgents were killed.”
But you’ll find this, and a whole more, in the latest dispatch from the front by LTC Allen West in The West Report…found HERE on Citizen Outreach: The Blog.
Take particular note of this passage in LTC West’s 30 August report: “We are doing a great job here considering the constraints under which we operate, ROE…”
ROE stands for “Rules of Engagement.” What exactly are said “rules” that are constraining our side…rules which the enemy ignores? And why is our side being forced to fight this guerilla war with one, sometimes two, hands tied behind our backs? If we’re not fighting to win, why are we fighting at all?
President Bush recently compared the current war on terror to the war in Vietnam many years ago. And yes, the comparison of the Democrats and the anti-war crowd back then undermining support for the effort at home, while emboldening our enemies abroad, to Democrats and the anti-war crowd today is spot on.
However, there appears to be another similarity at play here today: The Bush administration is trying to fight a politically correct “humane” war in which not getting bad press is more important than defeating the enemy.
If we’re not going to untie the military’s hands and let them do what they’ve been trained to do and what needs to be done…then maybe it IS time to bring the troops home.
Posted on August 30th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: National
In Nam, at the end, we couldn’t even carry weapons if we were in a “controlled” area. It was a court marshall offense. (It didn’t apply to field grade, or general officers, just the expendable ones in the ranks.)
I am sure that the current political generals running the current wars are just as concerned with “force protection”. We need to turn this mess over to fighters, or we need to get out. The comparisons to Nam are more applicable than the cuurent “we had more important things to do”
republicans understand. More is the pity.
Clauswitz described war as an extension of politics. One of the justifications for invading Iraq was that terrorists hate the US because of our values and our freedom. The rationale was that if the American values of freedom and democracy were brought to Iraq, they would eventually spread throughout the rest of the region and eliminate the terrorist threat. Part of instilling American values in the Iraqi population entails winning the hearts and minds, being nice humanitarians, etc.
So now we have a political objective that’s difficult to achieve thru military action. If we kill a bunch of insurgents, we might kill some innocent civilians too, which is counterproductive to achieving the political goal of having a pro-US democratic government in Iraq. If we exercise caution to achieve the political goal, we allow insurgents to survive to fight another day, which undermines the military effort and ultimately causes the war to be deemed unwinnable.
There’s an essential triad when we go to war. The people, the government, the army. Unfortunately, due to external constraints and apathy, none of the three elements is fully committed to this war. No wonder it isn’t going well.
Politicians start wars, define wars and lose wars. If the politicians are going to continue to define the parameters under which the war is fought, maybe they need to be on the battlefield to implement them. Nah, that would be too simple . Take the gloves off and let those who are laying their lives on the line define the guidelines for winning, not whining over political correctness.
Politicians start wars, define wars and lose wars. If the politicians are going to continue to define the parameters under which the war is fought, maybe they need to be on the battlefield to implement them. Nah, that would be too simple . Take the gloves off and let those who are laying their lives on the line define the guidelines for winning and let them do it, and then come home alive.
The politicians may start the wars, but our military leaders have an obligation to lay things out before the politicians make their decisions. Civilian control over the military is part of our national culture, so when generals and admirals disagree with their civilian superiors on national security policy, they usually disagree privately. Therefore, it’s difficult to ascertain how many military leaders raised objections to the invasion of Iraq beforehand. My guess is that very few did. The only exception I can think of was the Army chief of staff, General Shinseki. General Shinseki testified to Congress before the invasion that he thought that the troop levels were too low, and that he estimated that it would require several hundred thousand troops to conquer and occupy Iraq. For that, he was publicly castigated by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
Chuck gave an awful fable on what went wrong with Vietnam; that “pot smoking hippy Democratic Party members made America lose the war is pure Bullsh(*&!. From Johnson and the bullsh*&^ Gulf of Tonkin lie to Nixon’s refusal to deal with reality, this conflict was a fight that was lost by politicans. Eisinhower strarted the idiocy when he went in with US troops to help his WWII buddy DeGaul. Objective readers of history understand Ho Chi Minh as an advocate for a historical unification of his country from the imperialist West (France), that wanted the rubber from the region..rubber war/oil war in Iraq…we had no horse in the race in Vietnam nor in Iraq. Bush wanted to be a war president so he could have his “political capital” to feed the hard Right base and BIG business.
Bombastic history fables we don’t need Chuck; but I its Red Meat to the uninformed mass. Pablum, really.
The Army went thru a period of “backlash” in the aftermath of Vietnam. “Jane Fonda caused us lose the war, the media caused us to lose the war, the politicians didn’t let us win, etc.” In summary, “Everyone else caused us to lose the war. We (the Army) didn’t have any responsibility for losing the war.”
It wasn’t really until the late 1970s and early 1980s that the Army became introspective and started analyzing its actions and inactions during the war and how they contributed to our defeat. Why didn’t we demand authorization to attack VC and NVA sanctuaries in Cambodia before 1970? Why didn’t we demand authorization to send ground forces into the Laotian panhandle to interdict the Ho Chi Minh trail prior to 1971? Why didn’t we demand that Haiphong harbor be mined in 1965? What military intelligence failures contributed to us being caught flatfooted when the NVA and VC launched the Tet Offensive in 1968? Was our tactical defeat caused by us fighting too much of a conventional war against a guerrilla force (as Colonel David Hackworth has claimed), or was it a result of becoming too focused on counterinsurgency when should have been fighting more conventionally (as Colonel Harry Summers has claimed)? Above all, why did our Army’s leadership have such an unreasonable “can do” spirit that they thought they could still win despite all the constraints imposed upon them, and why didn’t they tell their civilian superiors that the war couldn’t be won without removal of these constraints? None of this is an indictment against any soldier who fought in Vietnam. It’s an indictment of our Army’s leadership at the time.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to blame everyone else for our defeats. That takes the burden off of us to analyze how our actions and inactions contributed to the defeat so we can set in motion the reforms necessary to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Fortunately, the Army leadership came to a grudging realization many years after Saigon fell that their predecessors bore considerable responsibility for what happened in Vietnam.
We can blame the politicians all we want for this war. However, let’s not forget that, for the most part, our military leaders rubber stamped this war, so they definitely shouldn’t be allowed to skip out of being held accountable for it.