After the liberation of the Iraqi people, al Qaida and their affiliates have made Iraq the central front on the war on terror. By helping the Iraqi people build a free and representative government, we will deny the terrorists a safe haven to plan attacks against America.
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...so why so few troops when it's clear things are not going well?
Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
The American Military isn't what it used to be not even 10 years ago. All these new weapons, smart bombs, JDAM, Stealth bombers. The new sophisticated weapons the US Military employs has reduced the need for a large standing army. The dissolving of the Soviet Union further reduced the need for a large standing army.
The army has changed from a conquering army to a special forces army. Small numbers of highly trained troops has replaced the need for huge battalions.
The United States didn't have the need for a large occupying army before the War on Terror. Now they do, obviously, and they need to play catch-up.
In my opinion it was a mistake going after Iraq so close after the operation in Afghanistan. Now they're pulling troops from Afghanistan to fight in Iraq and leaving the country to be protected by other nationalities.
On a related note I am quite pissed at the friendly fire incident last week. (An A-10 Thunderbolt strafed a Canadian infantry platoon) For all thier high tech weapons those idiots can't tell the difference between a turban-headed Taliban and a Canadian soldier?
Posted by Styrofoaman (Member # 706) on :
quote:Originally posted by Da_bang80: On a related note I am quite pissed at the friendly fire incident last week. (An A-10 Thunderbolt strafed a Canadian infantry platoon) For all thier high tech weapons those idiots can't tell the difference between a turban-headed Taliban and a Canadian soldier?
Apparently not, gunsight video that I've seen is often quite (in techincal terms) crappy.
And when you are in the sky moving rather fast it's hard to make out the little tags marked "GOOD GUY DON'T SHOOT!" and the ones that say "EVIL, SHOOT HARD SHOOT OFTEN."
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
From time to time the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of our few remaining friends.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
Um, a Warthog really doesn't go THAT fast.
Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
A P-51 Mustang can fly faster than a warthog. The warthog is designed to fly "low and slow" over the battlefield. The pilot would have plenty of time to recognize the difference between a Toyota truck and a Canadian APC. Besides, he should have known there were friendly forces in the area. And if he didn't, then he should have reported the contacts to his superior and gotten confirmation before going for a kill.
By the way, how many American troops have died by Canadian bombs in Afghanistan?
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Oh.
When I was getting out they were talking of the IVIS that would allow a single battalion to do the work of three. They were always trying to trim the military budget to fund the pork. Reagan had the right idea, good technology in a large military.
Almost every combat unit that I have ever been in has either been deactivated or revamped in to a support unit.
Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
It's a new world, with new threats. The need for a large standing army should have been in the past. The leaders of the US army figured that the days of huge numbers of soldiers and equipment marching off to invade another country has been suplanted in favor of a small, highly trained force of specialists. Obviously that force is inadequate to deal with the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Somewhere along the line someone forgot that as the US forces got smarter and more efficient, so did the adversary. History is going to look back on this as a tremendious waste of personel and resources for little to no real effect. There will always be terrorism in many forms, and there will always be evil people who weasel thier way into a position of power. (There's one sitting behind the "Big Desk" in the Oval Office right now.) While they may not be the traditional definition of evil (mass murder, ethnic cleansing, etc) They are evil because they use the resources of a sovereign country for thier own personal whims and vendettas.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
They should never have gone into Iraq at all,but if they had, they should have waited until Afghanistan was totally pacified (if that's possible - but anything's better than the half-assed job they've left and are now expecting fucking NATO to clear up). But hey, why turn one country into a firefight quagmire of heaving religious extremism when you can have two for more than twice the price?
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
The main problem with Iraq was the desire of American politicians to avoid the impression that it was going to be a long/expensive task and the resultant deployment of too few troops. Yes, the Iraqi army was easily knocked out by what the Coalition had, but that was never going to be the hard part. The hard part was always going to be asserting control over the country and being seen to exert control. And for that you need troops on the ground.
Add that to the emphasis on force protection in the US forces (which has all too often equated to shoot first, ask questions later), and the immediate and foolish disbandment of the Iraqi army, it's no wonder that large sections of the population were apathetic at best to Coalition troops.
And given the inability and unwillingness of US troops to assert control after the invasion, the growth of gangs, based on tribal or religious loyalties was effectively inevitable. From then on they grew, evolved and splintered until we have the current situation.
Lee is entirely right about Afghanistan. It should not have been abandoned in order to persue Bush's personal vendetta against Hussain.
So, the basic answer to the question is that a combination of a desire to put US domestic political concerns first (by appearing to be fighting a quick, modern war, with troops home soon) and the ideological blinkers of the Bush administration (the Iraqis will love us and welcome us with open arms because everyone known America is the one true home of freedom!) resulted in poor operational planning and too few troops being deployed.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
quote:Originally posted by Wraith: The main problem with Iraq was the desire of American politicians to avoid the impression that it was going to be a long/expensive task and the resultant deployment of too few troops.
I think we need to be more specific than just American politicians. Georeg W. Bush, Dich Chenney and Donald Rumsfeld and other members of the current administration wanted to avoid the impression that it was going to be a long and drawn out conflict.
I this found posted a Crooks and Liars and posted in the Iraq thread, indicates that when were talking about lack of planning, were not talking a bipartisan group of politicians.
Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said.
Brig. Gen. Mark E. Scheid told the Newport News Daily Press in an interview published yesterday that Rumsfeld had said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a postwar plan.
Scheid was a colonel with the U.S. Central Command, the unit that oversees military operations in the Middle East, in late 2001 when Rumsfeld "told us to get ready for Iraq."
"The secretary of defense continued to push on us . . . that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."
Planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4" -- plans that covered post-invasion operations such as security, stability and reconstruction, said Scheid, who is retiring in about three weeks, but "I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that."
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
If Mr. Bush is "the decider" as he's claimed to be, then he's decided to let Iraq fester and rot with fresh bloodshed happening daily.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Police found the bodies of 65 men who had been tortured, shot and dumped, most around Baghdad, while car bombs, mortar attacks and shootings killed at least 30 people around Iraq and injured dozens more.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed, one by an attack in restive Anbar province Monday, and the other Tuesday by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, the U.S. military command said.
Police said 60 of the bodies were found overnight around Baghdad, with the majority dumped in predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhoods, police said. Another five were found floating down the Tigris river in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of the capital.
The bodies were bound, bore signs of torture and had been shot, said police 1st Lt. Thayer. Such killings are usually the work of death squads � both Sunni Arab and Shiite � who kidnap people and often torture them with power drills or beat them badly before shooting them.
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Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
quote: I think we need to be more specific than just American politicians. Georeg W. Bush, Dich Chenney and Donald Rumsfeld and other members of the current administration wanted to avoid the impression that it was going to be a long and drawn out conflict.
Absolutely. I've also seen some quite severe criticism of General Tommy Franks for failing to question the 'plans' of the pollies.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jay the Obscure: If Mr. Bush is "the decider" as he's claimed to be, then he's decided to let Iraq fester and rot with fresh bloodshed happening daily.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Police found the bodies of 65 men who had been tortured, shot and dumped, most around Baghdad, while car bombs, mortar attacks and shootings killed at least 30 people around Iraq and injured dozens more.--
The problem there is that some of those police may have been involved with those murders. NPR had a discouraging report on how many times US forces have secured an area, turned it over to Iraq's "police" and then had to go back days later to do it all over again. Over 30 (reported) police officers in Iraq have been killed while firing on US forces. Some "friends".
quote:By the way, how many American troops have died by Canadian bombs in Afghanistan?
Are Canadian forces dropping bombs at all though? I've not seen reports of Canadian airstrikes....er...ever. Could be shoddy reporting though.
Something else to consider is that warfare is now VERY diffrent than what it was in WWII- our enemies have decalred us "weak" and compared with the merciless resolve of our WWII armies (and with no "international community" waiting to condemn our forces), WWII generals would have carpet-bombed everything- immeadeately- and then sent in our ground forces to sift through a city's worth of rubble.
Yes, it's horrific (as war always is), but that would, have probably have ended large-scale hostilities by now- no bordering country would risk that by sending in insurgents.
I really think that (currently) many Americans and American politicians value the lives of Iraqi civillains over those of US troops- a huge shift in thinking from previous wars, if you think of it.
As to solutions to current crisis- the US needs to hit Iraq with everything it's got in a short span- prahaps three months- then have a joint UN/Iraqi force take over completely. We could then concentrate on our declared enemy- te Taliban and re-take Afghanistan. Once Afghanistan is secure, it can serve as a safe base of operations for US aid to UN/Iraqi forces across the border- maybe even send out planes to patrol Iraq's borders -patrolling for incoming foreign insurgents. Our..."pals" in Iraq's new government could declare the border "temporarly closed" during the country's crisis- making any crossing illegal- and justifying any attacks on crossing insurgents.
This notion does not immeadeately bring anyone home, but every family would rather have a loved one serving in safe Afghanistan than ultra-dangerous Afghanistan/Iraq.
Next, SCREW THE OIL- really, no shit. BUY it from the elected Afghanistan/Iraq governments and have them re-build their countries with UN help/ oversight against corruption. A lot of perception is that the US is there to take over the country for oil - this would both disprove it and give locals a reason not to hate us: we'd be their biggest coustomers (and could stop financing supporting that prick Chavez).
Lastly, take a small portion of American crop subsidies and give them to Afghanistan farmers not to grow Opium (farmers in afghanistan get less than $10 U.S. dollars per acre of poppys- a cheaper victory is tough to imagine). That would cut off the Taliban's money supply and make a real contribution to the everlasting "war on drugs".
Of course,, there's a bunch of logistical problems with these obvious arguments (our poor international /UN standing for one), but at least it's something. Currently the Republicans want to "Stay the course" straight into hell and the Democrats want to pretend immigration reform is more important than our armed forces success...it's aesier for them than tackleing the Republicans percieved "strong area".
Of course, if no one in government will listen to the experts saying this, there's zero chance a voter will be heard.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)