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| SFReader Forums > The Real World > World Events > It's time to pull out alright . . . | Forum Quick Jump
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Michael Lynch
Stablehand
      
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 34
| Posted 11/14/2006 1:26 AM (GMT -5) |   | I love my Country to death, I believe America is one of the best countries to live in today. I have always stood behind our military (being prior military myself). But I do feel that we need to pull our troops out of there. We are sitting ducks out there while we are policing the streets and comming across explosives. Our troops never see the enemy comming because it's a cowardly war the enemy is fighting.
Well atleast thats how I feel.
Michael Lynch
authormichaellynch.blogspot.com | | Back to Top | | |
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Michael Lynch
Stablehand
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 34
| Posted 11/15/2006 4:13 AM (GMT -5) | | I do believe you are right about this being the begining of a religious war, and that we have bit off more than we can chew in the middle east. I just don't want to loose any more of our troops, but maybe one day we will be able to pull out.
Michael Lynch
authormichaellynch.blogspot.com | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4554
| Posted 11/15/2006 4:12 PM (GMT -5) | | Jeff,
There are also ways to deal, successfully, with insurgants. Unfortunatly, we are unwilling to use the proven methods for doing that, as they are too brutal for popular consumption at home.
I feel, and have always felt, that going to war with Iraq was the right decision. But I, unlike our government, have never approved of our occupation of Iraq. I do not feel we were obliagted to "rebuild" what we had destroyed and felt that doing so would only be seen by the Iraqis and their neighbors as an attempt to establish sovriegnty over their country- and not as the helping hand to the Iraqi people we precieved it as. That is the only kind of occupation they, in their seven thousand year history, had ever experienced.
So I expected the current outcome, though I do not believe defeat is inevitable in absolute terms, I believe our withdrawl is appropriate.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises | | Back to Top | | |
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2176
| Posted 11/16/2006 1:09 AM (GMT -5) | |
Jeff Stehman said...
Michael Lynch said...
Iit's a cowardly war the enemy is fighting. While I can understand the frustration, this line bothers me. Insurgency warfare is a tried and true method of fighting a superior occupying force. I know someone in Finland who was trained in this method of fighting while in the military. In the US, we make movies about these kinds of fighters and call them heroes. When your enemy's strength overwhelms yours, avoiding big standup fights isn't cowardly, it's smart.
Ditto Jeff. In this sense our use of terms has become so mish-mash we (in the generic) often talk at cross purposes. Guerilla tactics are not terrorist ones. That is, the use of irregular tactics to provide for conventional results is one thing -- i.e. no pitched battles but snipers, booby traps, lightening raids, ambushes and to a lesser degree manuever warfare -- but deliberate attacks on soft targets is not the same thing (though in Iraq you do see some of both). Al Quieda are not the French Partisans of WWII or even the Viet Cong or hell, even the muhajeeden of Soviet A-stan.
The use of commando or guerilla tactics are not acts of terror, though they may be terrifying -- their aim is deliberate and military goal-orientated. A hit 'n git raid on a US Army checkpoint is not the same thing as cutting off Nicholas Berg's head on camera or blowing up a bomb in a market. Such acts have no military value though both can be folded into asymetrical warfare terms. One thing is 'fighting' the other thing is simply criminal violence.
Also. It is cowardly to use civilian populations as cover and concealment. Foriegn insurgents have chosen this to being the 'jungle fighters' the viet cong were, for example.
"I don't want to loose so I'm going to retreat to the desert and become a guerilla" is not the same thing as "I don't want to loose so I'm going to hide in this hospital/crowded apartment building/orphanage."
One thing should not be given the moral equivilancy of the other -- even if it 'works.' I mean even the goals the same but the SOPs are different: The viet cong wanted to kill us with the death of a thousand cuts. Al Quida wants to so turn our stomachs with acts of senseless violence we say 'enough.'
Which has little to do with the endless cycles of revenge tortures & killings the Sunni & Shia are perpetuating on each other.
The remenants of the Taliban fighting in Kashmir are brave -- evil by ideology but brave. The Chechen "freedom fighters" who targeted that elementary school full of children instead of a Russian Army barracks are dirty cowards -- even if they were willing to die.
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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Jeff Stehman
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 1224
| Posted 11/16/2006 2:09 AM (GMT -5) | | erazmus said...
There are also ways to deal, successfully, with insurgants. Unfortunatly, we are unwilling to use the proven methods for doing that, as they are too brutal for popular consumption at home.
I wouldn't say unfortunately. There are other effective methods of dealing with insurgents, but we blew those early one.
I was not in favor of the invasion, preferring for a number of reasons to finish with Afghanistan instead. However, I think Iraq could have been done both with a wider range of international support and with a much more effective occupation. Here's three big reasons I think the occupation turned into the mess it is: Rumsfeld refused to plan for it, saying we couldn't know what would happen; Rumsfeld carried his notion of a leaner military--which I supported--over to the occupation force; and many, many people in the CPA were there not because they were competent, but because of who they had voted for and what their religious affiliation was.
I think toppling the government and then leaving would have been a very bad idea for several reasons, not the least being the likelihood that it would have left us with yet another warlord-based nation, and those tend to work out badly for our national security in the long run.
I'm not for an immediate pullout, as I tend to agree with the "you broke it, you bought it" philosophy. The current approach is obviously not working, as it's creating well-trained terrorists, and things may be so far gone that leaving is the best we can hope for. However, having a new SecDef--especially one that isn't opposed to listening to other ideas--allows the administration to completely change its approach while believing it's saving face. (And if things hork up, they'll blame the Democrats.) I want to see if Gates can accomplish anything there.
--Jeff Stehman | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4554
| Posted 11/16/2006 4:19 AM (GMT -5) | | The tactics that historically work against an intrenched insurgancy are far beyond the pale for us today. They are the tactics of Gengis and Tamerlane.
Gengis's general, Subadai, slaughtered the population of Samarkand- men, women, children, dogs, goats, pigs and chickens. He tore up their irrigation networks, broke thier damns and sewed their fields with salt. 90 percent of the people of the province died (100% of the inhabitants of the city) and the area has never recovered- it supported a population in the millions before, never so many as a million up to today since. And they never recieved a bit of resistance again, not only from the area around Samarkand, but from any of their neighbors.
I'm not advocating doing the same to Tikrit or Basra, but doing so at the very first signs of resistance is remarkably effective-- would be resisters end up stoned in the streets by their own people. And it makes being a soldier (for _your_ army) remarkably safe. It is also a tactic only suitable for the building of empires- an occupation we are not in, even if the neo-barbs of south west asia and the middle east can't or won't see that.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises | | Back to Top | | |
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2176
| Posted 11/16/2006 1:18 PM (GMT -5) | |
Jeff Stehman said...Nathan, remember that there are multiple insurgency groups in Iraq as well as terrorist groups. At times we've even had meetings with some of the insurgents to talk things over. As far as I can remember, the only terrorists there we've had talks with are the anti-Iranian ones. It can be tough to tell them apart, however. When a member of a Palestinian group known for picking military targets pulls his car along side a civilian bus, knowing most of the passangers are Israeli soldiers, and detonates his bomb, is he a terrorist or at war?
I think we are agreeing. Attacking military units in transit is legitimate -- even if the method in your example (suicide VBIED) is more usually associated with terrorists. Killing enemy soldiers is was war is all about.
That same guy, that same VBIED only with a school bus instead of a troop bus changes the face of the action dramatically. One has a military goal gained unconventionally-- the other is a crime against humanity. The Pentagon on 9/11 was a legtimate target -- the civilians and civilian aircraft were illigitmate weapons and not insurgency actions -for example.
Also consider this. Just because something makes sense (i.e. it works or is logical) that doesn't automatically make it 'legitimate.' It makes sense for a child predator to cruise My Space; it gives him access to his prey. The Bank of America robbers wore body armor, carried Kalashnikovs and injected barbitues to lessen fear and pain -- all so they could shoot there way clear of the police. [shameless plug]please see my upcoming novella from Pitchblack books if you'd like to see a fine example of the citizen insurgent in action[/shameless plug] 
Those things make sense but are not 'legitimate.' Therefor your comparison of in the example has a flaw in the orientation for our conversation (IMO, in a legal sense, and in the context of us discussion potentially inflamitory subjects as friends). Comparing Palestinian activists to Israeli soldiers is like comparing MS-13 or the Mexican Mafia to the LAPD. The moral equivilancy doesn't exist. Ditto Al-Quida in Iraq. Ditto former Sunni Baathists fighting to bring back the Saddam salad days. Ditto Shia extermists being paid by Iran. Moral equivlancy arguments are best left to academic or theoretical circles (or BS sessions on the internet  )
Geneva convention and articles of war don't just speak to tactics they speak to legitimate bodies as well. A war of agression to spread Sharia from India to Spain is no more legitimate than Hitler taking Poland -- even if Blitzkrieg tactics made sense and worked.
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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