War vs Not War

[Seatbeltnazi]

Take two people, Joseph Cop and John Soldier. Call them Joe and Johnny for short. Each of them has their job to do and each of them does it well. And in some circumstances, that job, unfortunately, causes someone to die. Let us look at a case in point.

Joe Cop is walking down a city street when a person begins firing at him from the second floor of a house. Since it's probably only this one madman, he takes cover, calls for backup and waits for the SWAT team to arrive and burn down the house. Or, hopefully, bring the poor deranged gun-nut to trial and eventual commutation far away from his guns.

Johnny Soldier is walking down a city street when a person begins firing at him from the second floor of a house. He first tries to determine if he can engage and destroy the sniper with direct fire. Determining that he cannot, he has a choice of maneuver to close or call for heavy fire. Since there are snipers all over the place, he calls down two battalions of artillery fire, F-16s with five hundred pound bombs, a wall of fuel air explosives and a B-52 arclight strike. That way the sniper dies, or at least quits shooting, and Johnny can go marching home again hurrah, hurrah. Or at least drive on with the mission.

Now, let's take a look at "Operations Other Than War." Bosnia is a great example. I recall, vividly, the image of a British major talking with a CNN crew as the major and the fighting vehicle he was with came under very poor quality sniper fire. The major kept the proverbial English stiff upper lip and noted that there were usually only a few rounds and then the sniper would go away. Pling! Pling! Duck! He also noted that they knew, pretty well, where the sniper was. Pling! Pling! But they preferred to let him continue firing rather than try to drive him off or kill him. Pling! Finally, after this went on for a bit and they took a casualty, the major ordered the gunner of the fighting vehicle to fire a few rounds of cannon fire at the sniper. After that the sniper either died or gave up, they did not send a patrol up to find out which. They might take casualties.

So what we have here is Johnny Soldier being Joseph Cop. And the two are clearly incompatible. As a cop, you want to contain the position and minimize casualties. That is an "operation other than war." As a soldier, you have to advance to take and hold territory by closing with and defeating the enemy. That is war. Unfortunately, if we prosecute the war on terrorism as "Operations Other Than War" we'll be breathing anthrax on a random basis for the next thirty years. Or until they find a way to really annoy us.

So we need to fight it as a war.

War means closing with and destroying the enemy. I can't say that enough. It means destroying his means to fight and his will to fight. It means killing the enemy using any reasonable force. There is nothing clean or surgical or pretty about it; as one Civil War general said: "Mars is not an aesthetic god."

One of the reasons for the high level of restraint in OOTW is the treaties that hem our troops and the care of the surrounding civilians. In a real war, though, you have to think first of your national survival, second of the survival of your forces and a distant third of "laws." That does not mean becoming death-crazed criminals, it would take much to bring Americans to that. But it does mean ignoring the convenient boundary. It will mean civilian casualties among the populace of wherever we are fighting, especially since the enemy will place its positions among civilians for that very purpose. And it does mean using overwhelming force and not "moderate" or "minimal force." William Slim during the Burma campaign preferred to have five or six to one odds. When a senior staffer commented that "That's a bit like crushing a walnut with a steam-press", Slim replied: "There's nothing wrong with that if you have a steam-press to hand and don't care about the condition of the walnut."

Slim, and Grant, and Sherman and Patton, all saw instances in which other officers attempted to use "appropriate" or "minimal" force to achieve an objective. And were soundly trounced for it. From this all of them came to the conclusion that the right way to assault an enemy was with the most force you could bring to bear, as fast as you could get it on target. In other words, "there is nothing wrong with smashing a walnut with a steam-press."

But that, as it should be, is anathema to "Operations Other Than War". And "Operations Other Than War" was what all our officer corps was told would be the future. We decided to study war no more. And what we get is…

Joe Cop. With no backup.

It's time to study war some more. Or at least find some "rough man" who has.

[Elfer]

It's generally pretty hard to directly engage the forces of terrorism.

[AapoJoki]

At 1/5/07 02:08 PM, Elfer wrote: It's generally pretty hard to directly engage the forces of terrorism.

Yes, particularly since "the forces of terrorism" are not any troops or even people, but the bitterness, hatred and frustration of living in the extreme poverty, insecurity and instability that the constant war waging has brought with itself.

[Elfer]

Although, on the other hand, I think we should just invade every country where there's ever been a terrorist and bomb all the infrastructure, because that'll definitely wipe out any terrorists, and as we know, once we get rid of all the terrorists, nobody can ever hate America ever again.

I mean shit, what do you think will happen if the terrorists win this war and take over? I sure as hell don't want to live in a world where it's required by law to be terrifying.

[Electric-Bla]

How can johnny be short form of john :S

Anywho, I'm not up to date with the stuff in the middle east but if it's operating like that, then I'm shocked. Why would you leave a potential threat ignored. If a sniper is merely injured or under cover, he just has to pop up and there's another few casualties. I mean, send a few men at least to check and recover any weapons.

[Arktaran]

What most of the public do not understand right now is that they are basically tying the soldiers' hands behind their backs. The soldiers and commanders are to the point that they want to fucking bust some heads and not get court martialed for it. Which is exactly what happens when soldiers aggressively try to eliminate a threat without being shot at or almost killed:

Court Martialed.

The troops need to be able to do their job without fear of being thrown in jail for twenty years because the terrorist didn't have a gun in his hand when he was killed. Hell, the Iraqis have guns sitting in their houses for protection for kidnappers and such, so soldiers can't tell who is trying to protect themselves and who is going to shoot them during house raids.

[PhysicsMafia]

The only down side to this whole "fight a war" stance is the fact that its not even hindering "terrorism" in the slightest. Infact, since the invasion of afghanistan terrorist attacks hav pretty much doubled each year. Dont get me wrong, im not saying that either sadam or the taliban were beautiful peace loving regimes but i think that improving foreign policy and world wide relations should be made a priority before the west makes any more enemies than it already has.

The way there operations hav been handled has been nothing but a recruiting policy for fundamentalists. And the quite grotesque hanging of sadam will only go to strenghten the resolve of some people and push even more into extremism

[Danny88]

I agree its bush's fault that our troops our dying!

[Peter-II]

omg

[SolInvictus]

At 1/5/07 07:28 PM, Peter-II wrote: omg

there seems to be a strong connection between far-right users and prewritten material.

[The-brothers-III]

At 1/5/07 07:27 PM, danny88 wrote: I agree its bush's fault that our troops our dying!

It's unbased oppinions like that that make debates like this impossible, please give reason for your words.

In other news. We agree with the fact that we need to fight our war, and support the soldiers fighting. We also agree that we are inadvertantly tying their hands and stowing their guns by focusing on the evils of war, and not the reasons it's made. Sure, war is a very bad thing, hundreds die, but that doesn't mean that it's for an evil purpose nesessaraly. Take, for example, The Holy Roman Empire. They built the Empire on war, under then banner of Christianity. Have no doubt that civilians died. bombs or not civilians died. exept back then they were called peasants. But then look at all the great deeds they acomplished: huge advances in philosophy, theology, construction, trade, travel, road building, city planing DEMOCRACY(although we suppose you can cite the greeks for that last one too, but it's not like you can say they were the peace loving types either). Our point is that in order to paint a beautiful picture, you need to use some pretty dark colors somtimes( that line lovingly ripped from Bruce Almighty, Me's favorite movie), and alternatly it's not impossible to be both warlike, and great thinkers at the same time.