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| America's military faces the most thankless task in the history of warfare. |
| 2004-09-26 |
| I read this in the print version last week and wanted to post it. I hope someone did not previously do so. A couple of other points are that the Indian Wars were fought by an all-volunteer force. The U. S. conducted the wars over a period of decades. There were domestic factions that were against the war from the same regions, but never to the extent they are today. The wars ended at Wounded Knee as a result of media exposure. An overlooked truth about the war on terrorism, and the war in Iraq in particular, is that they both arrived too soon for the American military: before it had adequately transformed itself from a dinosaurian, Industrial Age beast to a light and lethal instrument skilled in guerrilla warfare, attuned to the local environment in the way of the 19th-century Apaches. My mention of the Apaches is deliberate. For in a world where mass infantry invasions are becoming politically and diplomatically prohibitive--even as dirty little struggles proliferate, featuring small clusters of combatants hiding out in Third World slums, deserts and jungles--the American military is back to the days of fighting the Indians. The red Indian metaphor is one with which a liberal policy nomenklatura may be uncomfortable, but Army and Marine field officers have embraced it because it captures perfectly the combat challenge of the early 21st century. But they don't mean it as a slight against the Native North Americans. The fact that radio call signs so often employ Indian names is an indication of the troops' reverence for them. |
| Posted by:Mrs. Davis |
| #9 Battling at close quarters against a hostile, occupied people is tactical insanity. The solution in Iraq is to take no prisoners, and let the Iraqis do the killing for us. I would impose starvation sieges: food for bagged jihadis. Of course, that would be after I nuked Mecca, the head of the Islamic snake. |
| Posted by: Anonymous6334 2004-09-26 3:35:29 PM |
| #8 I knew you were basically good JB. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-09-26 6:54:04 PM |
| #7 A6334, has anyone told you today that you're crazy as an outhouse rat? |
| Posted by: John Birch 2004-09-26 4:01:56 PM |
| #6 Calm down, 6334, we're NOT going to nuke Mecca. That would turn the entire world (including the Brits and Aussies) against us. It would ruin everything we're working for. It isn't going to happen. Likewise, a "starvation seige" might be superficially appealing, espeically if one is frustrated, but it's a really, really bad idea. Far better for us to take the slow, methodical, inexorable approach of intel, target, more intel, better target, over-and-over again. Those who oppose us need to see that we're relentless, and those in the middle need to see that we're careful and humane. That's how you win the small wars. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2004-09-26 4:01:47 PM |
| #5 [Off-topic or abusive comments deleted] |
| Posted by: Anonymous6334 TROLL 2004-09-26 3:35:29 PM |
| #4 [A]s one general officer told me, "you want to whack bad guys quietly and cover your tracks with humanitarian-aid projects." Because of the need for simultaneous military, relief and diplomatic operations, our greatest enemy is the size, rigidity and artificial boundaries of the Washington bureaucracy. Both this article's title and the bolded sentence above synopsize what we are confronted with for many years to come. In the absence of any credible deterrent or incontrovertible incentive for Islam to change its drift into militancy, we will need to start whacking the bad guys wherever they are. If our allies won't help us, then we need to surreptitiously conduct such operations on their soil. The profound hypocrisy of so many other nations declining to assist with fighting terrorism whilst they simultaneously huddle beneath America's military umbrella repudiates much of their sovereignty. They cannot at once delcare themselves to be unaligned in fighting terrorism and continue hoping to benefit from America spilling its blood while protecting them. France and Spain are the most egregious examples, but there are many lesser ones. Such fair-weather-friends somehow ignore that America is the central target of terrorism. Spain's own reaction to 3-11 demonstrated this in spades. If America is obliged to shoulder a vast majority of the burden and risk, then much of the decision making process will be wrenched from the hands of those who refuse to actively engage in the fight. Some of those denied decisions will involve exactly when, where and how we go about disposing of those who present the greatest risk to American security. For European countries to welcome jihadists like Qaradawi means that they forfeit any influence over America's policy of eliminating those same threats. Once the outside world understands the necessity of confining militant Islam to those host countries that sponsor, harbor and finance terrorism, such policy can change. Until then, it's open season on terrorists and terror advocates wherever they are. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-09-26 2:21:21 PM |
| #3 the Army never learned the lesson that small units of foot soldiers were more effective against the Indians than large mounted regiments burdened by the need to carry forage for horses... Hmmmm. Methinks walking to battle out West is a losing proposition. Had it not been for a deluge of settlers aided by the railroad, security never would have been brought to the Old West. Not a bad idea. I think I'll hitch up my covered wagon now. Can anyone point me in the direction of Fallujio? Ben, Hoss and Little Joe, where are you when we need you? |
| Posted by: Zpaz 2004-09-26 1:53:24 PM |
| #2 Thank God for John Ford. Luckily (and I use the word with all due respect) the entire US Army after the War was made up of fighting Calvary. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-09-26 1:04:29 PM |
| #1 For inciteful reading of events which have meaning today may I recommend, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian 1866-1891 by Robert M. Utley. The perspective of a small and overtaxed military establishment conducting operations in a demanding environment, physically and politically, while bringing ‘civilization’ to the vastness of the west can be related to the contemporary operations on the world stage today. Of particular note would be chapters three: The Problem of Doctrine, four: The Army, Congress, and the People, and eighteen: Mexican Border Conflicts 1870-81. Some excerpts: Chapter 3: The Problem of Doctrine. “Three special conditions set this mission apart from more orthodox military assignments. First, it pitted the army against an enemy who usually could not be clearly identified and differentiated from kinsmen not disposed at the moment to be enemies. Indians could change with bewildering rapidity from friend to foe to neutral, and rarely could one be confidently distinguished from another...Second, Indian service placed the army in opposition to a people that aroused conflicting emotions... And third, the Indians mission gave the army a foe unconventional both in the techniques and aims of warfare... He fought on his own terms and, except when cornered or when his family was endangered, declined to fight at all unless he enjoyed overwhelming odds...These special conditions of the Indian mission made the U.S. Army not so much a little army as a big police force...for a century the army tried to perform its unconventional mission with conventional organization and methods. The result was an Indian record that contained more failures than successes and a lack of preparedness for conventional war that became painfully evident in 1812, 1846, 1861, and 1898. Chapter 4. The Army, Congress, and the People. Sherman’s frontier regulars endured not only the physical isolation of service at remote border posts; increasingly in the postwar years they found themselves isolated in attitudes, interests, and spirit from other institutions of government and society and, indeed from the American people themselves...Reconstruction plunged the army into tempestuous partisan politics. The frontier service removed it largely from physical proximity to population and, except for an occasional Indian conflict, from public awareness and interest. Besides public and congressional indifference and even hostility, the army found its Indian attitudes and policies condemned and opposed by the civilian officials concerned with Indian affairs and by the nation’s humanitarian community. |
| Posted by: Don 2004-09-26 10:38:03 AM |