You're not gonna win a firefight with someone who's shooting from a mosque and not returning fire in the interest of sensitivity, you win it by leveling it and all within. The American way has little or nothing to do with it. You can't send in troops to fight and then burden them with rules the other side has no regard for. That's like being in a fistfight with a guy using a baseball bat. It's insane and the only outcome is a higher body count. To believe otherwise is to be deluded.
If Iraq and Afghanistan was a firefight, you'd be 100% right. But it's not. It's not even a conventional war. And unless you think 'Genocide' is winning - leveling mosque's is rarely the right answer. Vietnam was lost in large part because the west treated it as a simple firefight - we've learned since that suppressing a guerrilla resistance is a lot more complicated than a gunfight at the OK Corral. To believe otherwise is to be ignorant. Or flat out stupid.
No, Vietnam was lost because we tried to win their hearts and minds. Almost every battle fought in Vietnam was won, but the war was being lost because of increasingly stringent rules of engagement as well as the disillusionment of fighting in rules that you can't win. Going back and taking a look at ALL of the wars we have fought, whenever we have used Total War we won. Whenever we did not use Total War, we didn't. No exceptions. If you're not willing to wage total war, if you're not willing to do ANYTHING to win the war, then you shouldn't be willing to wage any war.
Yup. The very tenets of COIN are foolhardy at best. If it wasn't for political bullshit and egoism, we would have left A-stan in early 2002 and called it a victory. Instead, people needed to get their facetime with combat for promotions, glory, and elections.
So, um, am I the only one who remembers that Vietnam was pretty much won by the time the Tet offensive occurred, and that what was otherwise a failed counter-attack by the Viet Cong was largely a propaganda victory? No? Anyways. From Christie Blatchford's 15 Days: From A Man For All Seasons
It's ludicrous to define 'win' in Afghanistan or Iraq as anything that might happen as the outcome of Total War / OK Corral Style shootouts without rules of engagement. Genocide or at the very least the kind of mass slaughter that we'd call genocide if anyone else did it is the only way that the conflict ends with anything like the western agenda met. And in the case of Iraq - I think it's insanity that we ever entered. Afghanistan at least made some sense - but again, unless you're prepared to mass slaughter the population - I don't believe a 'total war' approach would have had even the faintest chance of preventing further terrorist attacks against the US or locating Osama Bin Laden and removing the Taliban's terrorist networks and support channels.
Yep... which is why we won by March 2002. All Al Qaeda was either dead, hurting, or in Pakistan by then. If we had decided to cross the border then and follow them, I would have gone with it. Like I said before, what's going on right now is a function of ego and politics. Treating Afghanistan as a single country, when its population doesn't even do that, is foolish in the extreme. As for total war, the Soviets tried that... without success. And it was on their border, making supply and logistics super easy. They killed millions of Afghans, and were still pushed out.
My good woman, winning is the American way... ^...and THAT'S why you'll never understand it. [/AllTheKing'sMen]
Levity aside, the point I was trying to make was simple and it took another Canadian to bring it up or even acknowledge the Deceleration of Independence in the WikiLeaks argument. If they wanted to level Afghanistan, they could. Hell, if they wanted to level gay San Fransisco they could. They won't though, because it's wrong so why are you guys bringing up the "unfairness" of the rules of warfare? If you're the USA and are fighting for freedom and the US name you're supposed to fight with the rules you helped define - even the damn Nazis had some rules in WWII. Damn it, Godwin's Law.
A better example might be the rules that the Allies had in dealing with Nazis. Nazis might have had rules in some places, but if you think that their atrocities were limited to the Holocaust then you're mistaken. <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Acqui_Division" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_o ... i_Division</a> <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmedy_massacre" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmedy_massacre</a> <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardenne_Abbey" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardenne_Abbey</a> I knew of the Ardenne massacre from watching the history channel; the other two I just stumbled across now while searching for the one at Ardenne; I came across links to dozens of more massacres and executions of enemy soldiers committed by various elements of the German military. But, to the point: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.slate.com/id/2217583/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.slate.com/id/2217583/</a> A prison in which captured Nazi spies were held in the midnight of the century, and yet, not tortured. Let's not degrade our own history by suggesting that we can look to Nazis for moral guidance. In the first place, the only Nazis we can look to for moral guidance are the ones who weren't actually Nazis, and in the second, we can look to our own history and find elements to aspire to.
You are creating a paradox with your argument. What would you suggest we do in any case where an enemy breaks the rules of war to gain tactical advantage? Why even have rules if we cannot fight or win against an enemy that would break the rules? I understand your moral high ground reasoning but you still fail to explain what should be done to the oppressive regimes that don't give a fuck about the moral high ground.
The first time was funny, the second time is annoying. I wouldn't call it a paradox, it's just how it is. The enemy will cheat, lie, steal and rape. If we/us/you/them cannot win without resorting to morally, constitutionally and legally reprehensible actions, than they should not have invaded in the name of justice, freedom and liberty! That's my point in all this. BrianH is saying that it's unfair, other soldiers or people closer to the action are repeating it. I'm not disagreeing, I'm just saying that it'd be ridiculous to think that the US will just allow the soldiers to just massacre civilians (publicly anyway), because that goes against the very excuse of their reason to invade, to dismantle the oppressive and terrorizing Taliban regime. You have to maintain your order and your honor or else winning that fight won't be worth shitall. We can look back proudly at our soldiers from the Great War or WWII, as ghettoastronaught pointed out - they didn't do this and fought the good fight. Do you want to look back at our vets from Afghanistan or Iraq and wonder if they're civilian killers who just wanted to level the place and return? I have no suggestion, no one does, or else we would've won and brought our boys back home. Their in a mudpit now and it's up to much smarter men to find a way to get out of there with our heads held up high. As for the goatfuckers, look at it from their perspective: Yes sniping from mosques is totally gay but when you're facing the strongest military of all time (alt text: a loaded gun), what's the difference? Do you really expect otherwise from THE FUCKING TERRORISTS? They blowup innocent people all the time, they're cheaters, they're assholes, they'll make sure you hate fighting them. As would anybody in their position; they'd be fried in less than a day in a conventional war.
Ah, quit yer bellyaching. Anyway, this whole argument seems stupid to me. a) There will never be a single war in the history of mankind where any country "lives up" to its own standard, whether that country is fighting for freedom or not. The very idea that a country ought to live up to a standard during warfare is an impossible standard. b) The international community is under no illusion about the true extent of its laws. Whining about unfair rules of engagement is senseless because we already break them on the reg and nobody bats an eyelash. Occasionally there is a well publicized incident with political fallout, but that kind of exposure doesn't legitimize the law in the long term. The US has killed and continues to kill civilians in Iraq every day. It may not be a designed genocide or anything, but they do it because Iraqi lives are cheap. War is synonymous with carte blanche that kind of shit. And that's neither a "good" or a "bad" thing. The United States has (rhetorically) fought for freedom in every conflict within its history, while committing heinous acts. Duh. Name me ANY country that has ever touted fighting for anything but a positive value. Only losers are forced to admit things like that. So you either come to the conclusion that no war is "worth it"...which is to say that physically fighting for anything on a large-enough communal scale isn't worth it...or you accept the circumstances as an incurable malaise and form your own opinion as to what justifies a nation to kill (a hell of a lot, as it turns out). I have a hard time accepting that first postulate. You want to pose the question "What do you expect from the fucking terrorists?" ...well...what do you expect a fucking army? Any fucking arm at any time in any place? c) The only time people truly get sick of human rights violations is in the absence of measurable victory. If Iraq and Afghanistan were to magically stabilize tomorrow, John Blades and Wes Boyd would be tarred and feathered on the white house lawn. That's just one man's opinion. I don't put much stock in laws as moral imperative or anything like that. Not in and of themselves. So yeah. Y'all can get back into it now.
I thought that was exactly how we won WWII. Remember the nuke we dropped on Nagasaki? And that's after fire bombing the rest of their cities back into the stone age. We openly targeted civilian populations in both Germany and Japan with increased intensity throughout the war. The decimation of total war was nothing new for America back then. It wasn't new in the civil war either.
I hate this fucking thread. I wish it hadn't been brought back up. If this shit continues, as I know it will, I'll lock it. You guys can make your points, yet agree to disagree, with intelligent discourse. You realize that right?
Nothing I hate more than moronic 20 yr old hippies armchair quarterbacking military operations and ethics. When it comes to this shit, I feel if you've never been there, done that, then you shouldn't beak of about it. I don't care what you think you should be allowed to do, fuck your entitlement complex. So, unless BrianH feels like adding something, consider it closed.
Indeed, Nettdata, I will respond to this one post. The only war is total war. There is no honor in war... only justice and casualties. You have some misplaced sense of "rightness" when it comes to American warfighting that comes from a lifetime of miseducation. Atrocities were committed by the US during both WWI and WWII, some of which led to winning the war. We forget Dresden because we want to, not because it was justified. We won, right? In the history of battle, the ends have ALWAYS justified the means no matter who won, or for what cause. Public perception is what allows soldiers to return with their heads held high, regardless of what the did on the battlefield, not "honor" or "order." Also, I never said what the combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan is doing is unfair. I stated that the mission set and victory criteria (or lack thereof) is absurd on its face in both theaters, and the doctrine of Counter Insurgency is a fallacy. It's never worked, and will never work. The very definition of "Unconventional Warfare" just recently changed in order to try and eliminate tactics and doctrine from it that have proven to be wholly bullshit. There is no leaving with our heads held high. There is no victory to be found. These are wars driven by politics and hubris, plain and simple. No commander (or commander in chief) wants to admit defeat, so they defer to their successors. Who, in turn, defer to THEIR successors. Lather, rinse, repeat. Remember: we won the war in 2002. It was over and done with, but military ego and money kept us there. Not justice. Not honor. Just glory and greed. I say again: the only war is total war.