Does anyone disagree with our military strategy?

GP,

First a side note, then a response to your point. The asses that are the masses of the American public needed to see some sort of action, purely political means was not going to placate Joe public who sits in his infinite wisdom and condemns the attacks as having no basis ect. (at least everyone on this board acknowledges that the US has in a sense helped to create the problem with our Middle Easten policies).

Now in reply to your post, military and political aspirations seem to go hand in hand for me with this situation. How many of the opposition (to the Taliban) leaders would be willing to get their troops riled up if the US did not show a clear presence and military support of their efforts? In order to achieve that political end (internal Afghan support), the US had to clear the way and show that they did mean business and were willing to help out militarily as well as politically. I.E. That we were not going to just offer vocal support as we did to the Iraqis who now find themselves in prisons or refugee camps because the US withdrew support and left them to Sadamn.

The military effort also, at this point, helps to keep Al Quaida (sp) on the defensive which slows down any attacks that they might have planned. And buys the US time to investigate financial avenues and hopefully cut them off there as well.

In my humble opinion, the military and political goals are like washing your hands. The left and the right have to be doing it to each other in order to get everything clean so that we can go bakc and eat dinner in peace. Not dogmatic, but hopefully a thought.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

And we were overthrown by communists due to these spies? And the blacklisting actually stopped this? That's an interesting world.

The Soviets either chose poorly (due to some warped belief that we are actually moved by TV, movies, and plays), or these "spies" were not connected to the Soviets.

[Aaron Brachowitz]

I seriously doubt that we're altering our military action in any way to bring about a particular political outcome in Afghanistan because there are no good outcomes, only varying degrees of bad. There are no democracies in that part of the world and no reason to believe one can be formed in a country with strong Islamic forces.

Our objectives are only two -- destroy al Qaeda, and depose the Taliban as an example to other governments who would harbor terrorists. The whole country will have to be under UN administration for a long time before any domestic government can be set up.

[independent]

On 2001-10-31 08:21, Griffin wrote:
Independent:
Do you think we were trying to win in Vietnam? What do you mean when you say "every time we untied the hands of the military"? Were their hands ever "fully" untied? Why do you say "every time"? This suggests we untied, then retied, their hands more than once. Doesn't this suggest a "half-assed" strategy?

What I meant by "every time" was that the war was a series of "escalations". First it was advisers only, then the advisers could do a little fighting, then we added air support, then we put regular troops on the ground, then we bombed Thailand, then we bombed North Vietnam.

By the time we were done, we had 500,000 troops on the ground and we were using every weapon we had except the nukes.

I would call that "fully untied", at least if we believed our stated aim of providing a better life for the Vietnamese.

Again, I don't see that we lost because our strategy was "half-assed".

We lost because we decided that 50,000 dead hadn't won the war for us, and we weren't willing to kill another 50,000 on the chance that they might be enough to turn it around.

[Griffin 1]

On 2001-11-01 23:24, independent wrote:
What I meant by "every time" was that the war was a series of "escalations". First it was advisers only, then the advisers could do a little fighting, then we added air support, then we put regular troops on the ground, then we bombed Thailand, then we bombed North Vietnam.

Sounds half-assed to me.

[independent]

Griffin,

You apparantly stopped reading after the first paragraph of the post.

Your claim is that we lost because we didn't try hard enough to win. What weren't we doing that would have made a difference?

[Griffin 1]

Do you think the US did everything it could have done to win that war (besides nukes)?

[independent]

I think that by the end of the war we were using all the weapons we had (except nuclear).

The only additional effort at that point was more soldiers. We had 500,000 there. Maybe an even million, or maybe 2 million, would have been enough? Remember that we had already used up the volunteers, all the additions would be draftees.

Our options seemed to be: invade the north, or kill every male in the south who wasn't in the (south's) military, or build a wall across Laos and Thailand to keep supplies out. Each of these would have required the big troop increases.

My problem is with GP's post in which he naively assumes we have the ability to "wipe them out" quickly. One lesson I see in Vietnam is that it is extremely difficult to fight a war halfway around the world against people who view you as invaders.

Our problem may have seemed that we had a "half assed" strategy, but the root cause was that we grossly underestimated the strength of those "little guys in black pajamas".

The application for Afhanistan is that it would take a much bigger army than we currently have to invade and occupy a land-locked country of 25 million people spread over 250,000 square miles. It gets worse if we have to occupy Pakistan as well. And that wouldn't actually "win", since the terrorists would simply move to another country before we got there.

The solution (another lesson from Vietnam) is to set goals that we can actually accomplish. A big clear "win" in Afghnistan is probably beyond our abilities.

At some point, Bush will need to proclaim that we have punished the Taliban, broken up the big groups of terrorists, and that it is time to settle in for prolonged, small, covert, actions that won't be on TV anymore. Then work real hard on "homeland security".

[Griffin 1]

Giving the enemy a place to roam free is not half-assed?

BTW, what percentage of the military troops do you think was used in combat in Vietnam?

[independent]

On 2001-11-04 22:29, Griffin wrote:
Giving the enemy a place to roam free is not half-assed?

BTW, what percentage of the military troops do you think was used in combat in Vietnam?

I'm not sure if the "roam free" comment refers to Vietnam or Afghanistan.

In the current case, we don't want to repeat the mistake of under-estimating the enemy. I'd suggest that you read EB's link on "Afghan society", then make an estimate of how big a force it would take to occupy Afghanistan.

On the ratio of fighters to support troops, I assume that it will be similar this time around. It takes a lot of people to keep the high tech stuff working and to move supplies half way around the world. We need to include them in the estimate.

(I believe the 500,000 quoted for Vietnam only included the people actually "in country", whether front line or support.)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: independent on 2001-11-05 23:32 ]</font>