#1
Hmmm. The Neo-con vision of triumph over Islam. You think that all of this might have something to do with the Islamist vision of victory over the West?
#3
I usually quit reading when I see the word "neo-con". When the author is a foreigner, the presence of this word is a reliable indicator of garbage. It's usually the same when the author is an American, but in those cases I read on a little bit, just to make sure.
#6
I think Newt's assessment that we are in WWIII is spot on when you look at a map of the world and highlight every place where a muslim "insurgency" is creating havoc.
Its time we sent all of the press home from Iraq and Afghanistan and did the Mogul thing with 'em. You know build pyramids with heads and bury their dead in hog hides and pour boiling hot hog fat on their heads....how about napalm made with hog fat??? That would be fun.
We are fighting an ethical moral war with an opponent with neither ethics, morals or a sense of decency.
We are all Apostates and Infidels to them and therefore should be killed on sight.
#7
The author uses the pseudonym "Chan Akya"
To be "chanakyan" is to be cunning, to deceive.
He probably thinks he is quite clever, the sign of an idiot.
Chan Akya = "Chanakya" , the prime minister of India's first great emperor, Chandragupta Maurya, whose 4th century BC treatise on statecraft (the Arthashastra) makes Machiavelli's The Prince look like a bedtime story.
Book IV The Removal Thorns
CHAPTER IV. SUPPRESSION OF THE WICKED LIVING BY FOUL MEANS.
MEASURES necessary for the protection of countries have been briefly dealt with in connection with the description of the duties of the Collector-general.
We are now going to treat of in detail such measures as can remove the disturbing elements of peace.
The Collector-general shall employ spies disguised as persons endowed with supernatural power, persons engaged in penance, ascetics, world trotters (chakra-chara), bards, buffoons, mystics (prachchhandaka), astrologers, prophets foretelling the future, persons capable of reading good or bad time, physicians, lunatics, the dumb, the deaf, idiots, the blind, traders, painters, carpenters, musicians, dancers, vintners, and manufacturers of cakes, flesh and cooked rice, and send them abroad into the country for espionage.
The spies shall ascertain the fair or foul dealings of villagers, or of the Superintendents of villages and report the same.
If any person is found to be of foul life (gúdhajívi), a spy who is acquainted with similar avocation shall be let loose upon him.
On acquiring friendship with the suspected person who may be either a judge or a commissioner, the spy may request him that the misfortune in which a friend of the spy is involved may be warded off and that a certain amount of money may be accepted. If the judge accedes to the request, he shall be proclaimed as the receiver of bribes and banished. The same rule shall also apply to commissioners.
A spy may tell the congregation of villages (grámakútam) or its superintendent that a wealthy man of wicked character is involved in some trouble and that this opportunity may be availed of to squeeze money from him. If either the one or the other complies with the spy, banishment shall be ordered under the proclamation of extortion.
Under the pretence of having been charged with criminal offence, a spy may, with promise of large sums money, begin to deal with false witnesses. If they agree with him, they shall be proclaimed as false witnesses and banished.
Manufacturers of counterfeit coins shall also be treated similarly.
Whoever is believed to secure for others the love of women by means of magical charms, drugs or ceremonials performed on cremation grounds may be approached by a spy with the request that the wife, daughter, or daughter- in-law of some one, whom the spy pretends to love may be made to return the love and that a certain amount of money may be accepted. If he consents to it, he shall be proclaimed as one engaged in witchcraft (samvadanakáraka) and banished.
Similar steps may be taken against persons engaged in such witchcraft as is hurtful to others.
Whoever is suspected of administering poison (rasa = mercury) to others by reason of his talking of it or selling or purchasing mercury, or using it in preparing medicines, may be approached with the tale that a certain enemy of the spy may be killed and that a certain amount of money may be received as reward. If he does so, he shall be proclaimed as a poisoner (rasada), and banished.
Similar steps may be taken against those who deal with medicines prepared from madana plant.
Whoever is suspected of manufacturing counterfeit coins in that he often purchases various kinds of metals, alkalis, charcoal, bellows, pincers, crucibles, stove, and hammers, has his hands and cloths dirty with ashes and smoke, or possesses such other accessory instruments as are necessary for this illegal manufacture, may be requested by a spy to take the latter as an apprentice, and being gradually betrayed by the spy, such person, on proclamation of his guilt as the manufacturer of false coins, shall be banished.
Similar steps may be taken against those who lower the quality of gold by mixing it with an alloy, or deal with counterfeit gold (suvarna = coin ?)
There are thirteen kinds of criminals who, secretly attempting to live by foul means, destroy the peace of the country. They shall either be banished or made to pay an adequate compensation according as their guilt is light or serious.
Posted by: john ||
07/25/2006 15:31 Comments ||
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#2
Or as clever person whose name I can't recall said, "A fanatic is someone who can't change his mind, and won't change the subject". Or something like that...
#5
As an experiment, apply these characteristics to what is considerd credible investigative journalism or even Grand Jury investigations. You may be surprised its not just the loonspuds.
#6
He complicated this and missed the point. There are only two rules.
1. Don't let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy.
2. It's all Bush's fault.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/25/2006 11:58 Comments ||
Top||
#7
They forgot #11 -
It's always the fault of the Jooooooos!/American government (of course, since they think the Jews run the US Government, it's kind of the same thing in their minds).
and maybe #12 -
Regular postings on Kos/Pat Buchanan's favorite sites.
(2006-07-25) Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, the presumptive 2008 Democrat presidential nominee, yesterday retooled her husbands successful campaign slogan Its the economy, stupid. as she released the Democrat Leadership Council (DLC) strategy to win the next two national elections.
Its the American Dream, stupid, said Sen. Clinton to a gathering of DLC members, who did not seem offended by her assessment of their intelligence.
The new American Dream Initiative, she said, taps into the pioneering, entrepreneurial zeal that made America great, through increasing government spending by an extra $500 billion over 10 years, boosting taxes on businesses, and doing for higher education what the former First Lady once wanted to do for health care.
The junior senator from New York said the American Dream Initiative recaptures the spirit of our forefathers.
When they journeyed across the mountains and rivers, she said, they faced hardship, disease , back-breaking labor and death in hopes that some day they could become middle class, and turn over the reins of their destiny to a large, centralized federal government. The Democrat party represents the best hope for fulfilling that American dream.
The list of those who have accused Israel of not being in harmony with its enemies is long and, alas, distinguished. It includes, of course, the United Nations and its secretary general, Kofi Annan. It also includes a whole bunch of European newspapers whose editorial pages call for Israel to respond, it seems, with only one missile for every one tossed its way. Such neat proportion is a recipe for doom.
The dire consequences of proportionality are so clear that it makes you wonder if it is a fig leaf for anti-Israel sentiment in general. Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness. For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy's back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to re-establish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.
These calls for proportionality rankle. They fall on my ears not as genteel expressions of fairness, some ditsy Marquess of Queensberry idea of war, but as ugly sentiments pregnant with antipathy toward the only state in the Middle East that is a democracy. After the Holocaust, after 1,000 years of mayhem and murder, the only proportionality that counts is zero for zero. If Israel's enemies want that, they can have it in a moment.
#1
But the world is full of dislocated peoples and we ourselves live in a country where the Indians were pushed out of the way so that -- oh, what irony! -- the owners of slaves could spread liberty and democracy from sea to shining sea.
A crock of BS. Thank you Google.
http://www.civilwarhome.com/nativeamericans.htm
Statistics show that just under 3,600 Native Americans served in the Union Army during the war. Perhaps the best known of their number was Colonel Ely Parker, who served as an aide to General U. S. Grant, and was present at Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House. Statistics for the Confederacy are not reliably available, but most scholars of Native American involvement in the actual fighting of the war are very well acquainted with the major Southern figure among them: Brigadier General Chief Stand Watie, a three-quarter blood Cherokee who was born in December 1806 near what would become Rome, Georgia. Stand Watie was one of the signers of a treaty that agreed to the removal of the Cherokee from their home in Georgia to what was then the Oklahoma territory; this split the tribes into two factions, and Stand Watie became the leader of the minority party.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, the minority party gave its allegiance to the Confederacy, while the majority party went for the North. Watie organized a company, then a regiment known as the First Cherokee Mounted Rifles; the regiment fought at Wilson's Creek, Elkhorn, and in numerous smaller fights and skirmishes along the border with what was known as Indian Territory. The warriors found curious the white man's strategy of standing still and allowing people to shoot at them, or lob artillery shells at them; the Cherokee tended to be spectacular at wildly brave mounted charges, but once the artillery began to fire, the warriors wanted nothing to do with it. Stand Watie was unreconstructed to the end; it is believed he never surrendered until June 23, 1865, well after other Confederate commanders had given up. He died in 1871 and is buried in the Old Ridge Cemetery in Delaware County, Oklahoma.
#2
Actually if the Isreali response to Hezbollah and Hamas and Al Qaeda were "proportionate" to what these groups were trying to do, the IDF would have turned South Lebanon into a vast sheet of radioactive glass.
Why can't these "journalists" who are actually "propogandists" realize that all of these Jihadist groups want the complete and utter obliteration of all things western and modern......and most of all all things Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu...etc.,
It is in all reality the confrontation between the forces that brought mankind into civilization and the forces that want us to live in the 7th century in dung heaps.
Let's just say that if these "diplomats" really stopped and thought about it........the last thing they really want is a Proportional response out of Isreal.
I think that most career diplomats in the UN view non-stop negotiation as job security...whether it solves anything or not......."Hey Let's exchange letters on the problem and meet in Davos for a conference"
Armchair diplomats in a 1970s time warp. By Rich Lowry
When Condoleezza Rice is in her well-appointed suite on the seventh floor of the State Department, we now know what she does nothing. At least such was the premise of much of the coverage of the run-up to her trip to the Middle East. It was assumed that if Rice werent shuttling from capital to capital in the region, she must have been sitting idle, watching the coverage of the crisis on cable TV.
Now that Rice has departed Washington, she will be portrayed again as doing nothing, although in a different venue, so long as she doesnt join the calls for an immediate Israeli ceasefire. For much of the media and the foreign-policy establishment, the only U.S. posture that constitutes real action in the Middle East is evenhanded pressure leading to the immediate cessation of whatever hostilities happen to have broken out.
Such commentators are caught in a 1970s time warp where the only template for U.S. Middle East diplomacy is Henry Kissinger shuttling around the region in the wake of the 1973 war, negotiating the disengagement of the Israeli and Arab forces. But what might have made sense more than 30 years ago when it was nation-states clashing, with the dangerous Cold War competition between rival superpowers in the background neednt apply to an Israeli fight with a terror group acting as a proxy of an Iran bent on regional hegemony. Those who criticize the Bush administration for its lack of diplomacy are missing a diplomatic strategy notable both for its boldness and its subtlety.
It is bold because the U.S. doesnt just want to freeze the Lebanese status quo in place again, but see Hezbollah diminished so that the democratic government in Lebanon is strengthened and Irans influence in the Arab world weakened. Allowing Israel more time to pound Hezbollah, therefore, isnt heedless warmongering, but a step toward a well-considered endgame. It is a version of the Clinton administrations Balkan gambit in the summer of 1995 of quietly encouraging the Croats to pursue an offensive against the Serbs, on the (correct) theory that it would create the conditions for a sustainable settlement. War is always politics by other means, and the current Israeli attacks have an ultimate political and diplomatic purpose.
The subtlety of the administrations strategy is its attempt to exploit an Arab split against the Iranian-allied, Hezbollah-enabler Syria. The Saudis and other key Arab states have denounced Hezbollahs initial cross-border attack, and a Saudi cleric has issued an anti-Hezbollah fatwa. The idea is to have the Arabs threaten to isolate Syria, and thus turn it away from its alliance with a Shiite Iran distrusted and feared by the other Sunni-majority Arab states. Whether this play can work is open to doubt, but its status as complex international diplomacy is not: It involves a classic diplomatic tactic of divide and conquer in the service of enforcing a United Nations resolution (1559, calling for the disarming of Hezbollah) and creating a meaningful international force in Southern Lebanon.
All sides can pick at this strategy. Liberals can rue the damage to Lebanon and doubt that the Arab coalition against Syria will hold in light of it. Neoconservatives can denounce the folly of trying to turn a recalcitrant Syria and agitate for the straightforward bombing of Iran instead. The current please-no-one Bush approach is a neorealist synthesis that takes the ambition of changing the Middle East of the neocons and combines it with the appreciation for diplomacy and of small steps toward larger goals of the realists. It is a strategy that makes sense in theory, but as the Iraq War has demonstrated during the past four years, the Middle East is a graveyard for finely wrought theories.
Whether this theory has an unhappy end or gives the Bush administration a major Middle Eastern diplomatic triumph will be known soon enough. But anyone who suggests that the administration is doing nothing is simply blinded by anachronisms.
July 25, 2006: Most Westerners don't understand how important tribal politics is to the war on terror. "Tribal politics" is something most Westerns just can't take seriously, or even get their heads around. Consider that in the main combat zones of the war on terror (including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and many more), tribal politics cannot be ignored.
In all of these areas, the tribal organizations are the ones people trust the most. The national governments are often seen, accurately, as a bunch of larcenous strangers who are only interested in stealing from you, or worse. For most of these countries, the national government (and their lackeys running provincial and country governments) have never done anything positive for most of its citizens. While the introduction of mass media (radio and TV) has created the illusion of nationhood, when you get right down to it, people look to their tribal leaders (usually synonymous with the "tribal elders") for help. This should not be surprising, as the tribes are based on long tradition, and family connections. Given a choice, who are you going to trust? A second cousin you've never seen before, or a government bureaucrat you've never seen before?
Those most dependent on tribal leadership tend to be the less educated, and more religious. Over the last century, there's been a constant migration of educated and ambitious tribal members away from the tribal territories. These folks usually end up in a nearby city, or overseas. They stay in touch, usually maintain a respectful attitude towards the tribal elders, and might even have need to use the tribal elders to settle some family matter.
Religious conservatism goes along with reliance on tribal ties. The tribe is not held together just by necessity, but also by faith, faith in family, and in a Greater Power. However, tribal elders tend to be more conservative, than religious. It's usually younger clerics who get into extremism, and their power will often rival that of the tribal elders. Sometimes this will lead to bloodshed, with tribal elders being killed and terrorized. Tribes can be destroyed, and this is one of the ways it happens. It's why there are some very strong ones, and some weak, dying actually, tribes.
An example of how the tribal dynamics works in the war on terror, consider the situation in Pakistani Baluchistan. The situation is simple. Baluchistan has 36 percent of the countries natural gas, and only four percent of the population (spread thinly over 180,000 square kilometers). Some 80 percent of this natural gas is exported, and the Baluchis only get about twelve percent of what that gas is sold for. On top of that, corrupt officials steal much of what the tribes are supposed to get. Now the government wants to expand drilling and mining, and remove more of Baluchistan's wealth. The tribes are, literally, up in arms over this. Since the Summer of 2004, there have been several dozen violent incidents each week, ranging from tribesmen shooting at government facilities, or employees, or blowing something up (electricity transmission towers, roads, gas pipelines and so on.)
Note that the Baluchi tribes have never really been controlled by anyone. That's mainly because, until the oil and gas was discovered, there was nothing in Baluchistan that any nearby empire could justify going after. Armies are expensive, and Baluchistan was never considered worth the effort. Actually, the Baluchis have long been regarded as excellent mercenaries, and, until quite recently, hired themselves out in large numbers. But that market has changed, and the Baluchis are left with less work, and all this oil and gas getting stolen from their tribal lands.
It gets worse. Over the last 25 years, over a million Pushtun tribesmen have moved across the border to escape Russian invasion, and then civil war. The Pushtuns, like the Baluchis, are a family of Indo-European tribes, They are closely related by language, religion and culture. There are still 700,000 Pushtuns living in Baluchistan, most of them of the very conservatives, pro-Taliban variety. These Pushtuns, out of necessity, have maintained good relations with their Baluchi hosts. While most Baluchis do not share the Taliban's extreme form of Islam, they do share common dislike to outsiders. This includes the Pakistani government.
Now that there is something worth fighting for in Baluchistan, there are more Pakistani police and soldiers in the province than anyone can remember. For centuries, the local power would cut deals with the tribal chiefs, to keep Baluchi raids, piracy, and the like, under control. These deals basically came down to bribes for the tribal elders, and the threat of retaliation (sending troops through the tribal territory, burning and killing). But now the Pakistani government wants to protect its access to the oil and gas. The Pakistanis also want to shut down the tribal support network for the Taliban. But, let's face it, which of these two tasks do you think has the highest priority?
And so it goes, in the tribal territories.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/25/2006 09:39 ||
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#1
The author here brings up a most cogent point which has been to our great detriment in dealing with these peoples. They have no "societies". Societies being a joining of differnet peoples into a common group. They function only as tribes. These tribes are very much like the native indian tribes in america 100 years ago. They quarrel with any outsiders. Tribe protection and the land they control are utmost in their reality. This is why we can't really hope for any kind of peaceful existence in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. We ought to allow the tribes to deal (kill) each other until some accomodation is reached. We should just tell them we came for oil and we're taking it. If they want to combine then to fight us, we then know the targets. All of them. No quibling. We just take them out or pen them up like we had to do here 100 years ago. The lesson is there in history, we just need a review lesson.
#2
Actually, American history teaches one that it is better to find a tribe that one can tolerate and utilize them, than to do all the fighting by oneself. The US Army Scouts were overwhelmingly Crow, and they served well and bravely against a variety of Indian foes over the years. The way we got the Crows to be so involved in the Western Expanision was to first defeat them but not destroy them. Then they were offered the chance to serve as Scouts and raiders against their traditional tribal enemies. After we defeated those tribes, we continued to honor the Crows and encourage their participation in the Scouts against other tribes.
July 25, 2006 -- WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?
What if the universalist idea of liberal democracy - the idea that all people are created equal - has sunk in so deeply that we no longer assign special value to the lives and interests of our own people as opposed to those in other countries?
What if this triumph of universalism is demonstrated by the Left's insistence that American and Israeli military actions marked by an extraordinary concern for preventing civilian casualties are in fact unacceptably brutal? And is also apparent in the Right's claim that a war against a country has nothing to do with the people but only with that country's leaders?
Can any war be won when this is the nature of the discussion in the countries fighting the war? Can any war be won when one of the combatants voluntarily limits itself in this manner?
Could World War II have been won by Britain and the United States if the two countries did not have it in them to firebomb Dresden and nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Didn't the willingness of their leaders to inflict mass casualties on civilians indicate a cold-eyed singleness of purpose that helped break the will and the back of their enemies? Didn't that singleness of purpose extend down to the populations in those countries in those days, who would have and did support almost any action at any time that would lead to the deaths of Germans and Japanese?
What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?
If you can't imagine George W. Bush issuing such an order, is there any American leader you could imagine doing so?
And if America can't do it, can Israel? Could Israel - even hardy, strong, universally conscripted Israel - possibly stomach the bloodshed that would accompany the total destruction of Hezbollah?
If Lebanon's 300-plus civilian casualties are already rocking the world, what if it would take 10,000 civilian casualties to finish off Hezbollah? Could Israel inflict that kind of damage on Lebanon - not because of world opinion, but because of its own modern sensibilities and its understanding of the value of every human life?
Where do these questions lead us?
What if Israel's caution about casualties among its own soldiers and Lebanese civilians has demonstrated to Hezbollah and Hamas that as long as they can duck and cover when the missiles fly and the bombs fall, they can survive and possibly even thrive?
What if Israel has every capability of achieving its aim, but cannot unleash itself against a foe more dangerous, more unscrupulous, more unprincipled and more barbaric than even the monstrous leaders of the Intifada it managed to quell after years of suicide attacks?
And as for the United States, what if we have every tool at our disposal to win a war - every weapons system we could want manned by the most superbly trained military in history - except the ability to match or exceed our antagonists in ruthlessness?
Is this the horrifying paradox of 21st century warfare? If Israel and the United States cannot be defeated militarily in any conventional sense, have our foes discovered a new way to win? Are they seeking victory through demoralization alone - by daring us to match them in barbarity and knowing we will fail?
Are we becoming unwitting participants in their victory and our defeat? Can it be that the moral greatness of our civilization - its astonishing focus on the value of the individual above all - is endangering the future of our civilization as well?
#1
If you win the real war, in real terms, you are certain to lose the PR war. Trying to win the PR war is certain doom if you also need to win the real war.
That was certainly how Saddam saw it after the Gulf War. Things may have turned out differently 15 years later had that Highway of Death campaign been carried out right back to Baghdad.
While General George S. Patton was winning public laurels for fast armored strikes against German forces in WWII, Field Marshall Montgomery ran a parallel British army that made haste slowly. Patton is often considered the most brilliant US Army commander of the time, but Monty had his reasons. Today, the Israelis may be using a Monty strategy, because it makes more sense.
Forget more sophisticated arguments. Doing high-risk armored thrusts made sense for Patton (though Eisenhower kept him on a short leash). It never made any sense for Monty. Nobody at Whitehall was going to thank him for winning a battle and losing his army.
Israel is in a Montgomery position today. For sixty years, they have been fighting ever new ranks of deadly enemies. Israel is not a culture that celebrates death in battle. Yet they have won, time and again, by being smarter and tougher than the opposition, finding weak spots in enemy tactics and strategy, and only then hitting with local superiority until the enemy finally broke and fled. That is why they are now safe from attack from Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon. But they are not safe from Iran, which has never been bloodied in battle with Israel.
Continued on Page 49
#2
So many points to argue, but prefer to keep it narrow - first off, iff the IDF is doing a "Monty" its becuz of their concern for genuine civilians, as opposed to terrorists-militants whom are civilians one day and armed bloody anti-Israeli, anti-democracy terrorists the next. Second, IRAN for time being can attack Israel only with terror proxies - it cannot use its full conventional forces agz Israel wid out crossing sovereign Muslim nations whom are also Allies, however imperfect, of USA + West. Third, Israel has been a military nuclear power far longer than Radical Iran andor Syria, so neither Radical Iran or Syria is currently ready or wiling to invite Israeli conventional or nuclear retaliation. LASTLY, THE FIGHTING IN LEBANON IS SYNONYMOUS WID ARGUING BETWEEN ME DEMOCRACY VS. RADICALIST GOD/ISLAMISM-BASED TOTALITARIANISM AND IRAN-/SHIA-CENTRIC REGIONAL EMPIRE. This is Lebanon's and ME's 9-11, as decisive and important as LEPANTO, TOURS, JERUSALEM, and ACRE, etal - why, becuz the "status quo" is no longer acceptable to Israel = USA's enemies. Israel = 9-11 USA > now in a WAR TO THE DEATH. FOR TIME BEING, ISRAEL'S ENEMIES = USA'S ENEMIES > BOTH WISH TO AVOID MUTUALLY DESTRUCTIVE NUCLEAR WARFARE WHILE ATTEMPTING TO DE FACTO USE ANY MEANS NECESSARY TO PC DESTABILIZE AMERICA, ISRAEL AND THEIR ALLIES, more popularly known as Appeasement and Concession, from Israel and USA, and only Israel and USA. The irony for Sunni- and moderate Muslims is that any defeat and destruction of Israel also means the defeat and destruction of Sunni-Moderate and pro-USA-Western Democratic Sovereign Muslim nations looms vv Radical Iran. BOTH LEBANON AND SYRIA HAVE TO DECIDE WHETHER THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL IS WORTH THE FUTURE SUBORNMENT OF SOVEREIGN LEBANON AND SYRIA TO RADICAL IRANIAN CONTROL. Israel goes down, so does Sunni Islam and ME Muslim democracy - POST 9-11 > ARMISTICE = means enemies rebuild and refortify to make war again later on, except this time in Israel's = America's = West's back yards, mainstreets, and Any Towns, AnyCity(s). "POLITICS AS USUAL" FOR EVERYONE ENDED THE DAY GORBACHEV CAME TO POWER IN THE FORMER USSR, NOTSOMUCH TO REFORM OR DESTROY COMMUNISM-STALINISM BUT TO SAVE, RENAME AND RE-LABEL IT.
Doing high-risk armored thrusts made sense for Patton (though Eisenhower kept him on a short leash). It never made any sense for Monty. Nobody at Whitehall was going to thank him for winning a battle and losing his army.
Monty's foot dragging at Falaise allowed 300,000 battle hardened German troops to escape - troops that would later grind up Allied forces in the West Wall, and participate in the Battle of the Bulge.
Monty wasted a LOT of lives with his insistence in plodding when Patton could have closed the gap form the south at Argentan.
So Monty didn't lose his army - he let the Nazis keep theirs by plodding - and arguably extended the war by months and Allied casualties greatly during the fighting in the Western wall.
Secondly, Monty destroyed the British "Red Devils" airborne, the Polish Airbone brigade at Arnhem, tore apart the 82nd and 101 Abn at Nijmegen, and decimated 30th Corps (and with it a lot of British armor) with his futile narrow thrust up a single clogged road in the defective Operation Market Garden.
So he not only lost the battle, he lost his army as well.
So the author of the article is pretty much full of crap - he better learn his history.
Grinding away and committing your forces piecemeal is a recipe for disaster. Go back to to the Alexander, the Spartans, Hannibal, Crechy, Hastings, etc. Look at just about any historical military campaign -- and look especially at the US Union side in the east in the US Civil War prior to Grant (The Army of the Potomac under McClelland comes to mind) as well as the Napoleon at Waterloo (Ney dallied while the opportunity slipped away to use the "force majeure" against the separated English and Prussians, causing Napoleon to commit the Old Guard too late and in too few numbers to have sufficient impact). Look at Verdun. Look at Stalingrad.
All of those illustrate the effects of decisive commitment of a concentrated hard strike by the main force versus failure of piecemeal commitments scattered across time and area.
Military history teaches this lesson time and again.
Would someone please educate the press beyond something they learned from a crappy high school history class?
#7
Old Spook, the press and writers are kind of lazy. History has little regard for them. I heard a press type this a.m. referring to "Teflon" body armor. I'm not certain they are educatable. Maybe they should just stay the hell out of war zones and write the garden column or restaurant review.
#9
The Brit refrain in 1944 was that the Yanks were over here, overpaid, and oversexed. The Yanks replied the Brits were underpaid, undersexed, and under Monty.
Note well. Patton didn't leave the airborne down at Bastonge like Monty did at Arnham. He didn't do months planning or wait for good weather. He just did what needed to be done.
#10
And Monty was getting a unique feed, direct from Churchill's office, of German enigma intel, else he'd have had his ass handed to him long previously in N Africa by Rommel.
#11
There was a great line in the movie Patton after Patton fought his way up Sicily General Bradley tried to guilt him over the dead soldiers caused by his rash move. Pattons response was something like "How many casualities would we have if we were still locked in fighting on that damn road."
It's a lesson more military commanders should learn. The US Marines seem to be one of the few groups that learned the lesson. If you are gonna take casualties one way or the other sometimes taking a lot now can prevent even more later. You just have to have the stomach.
#13
I originally estimated it would take Israel 14-15 days to prepare the battlefield, mobilize and set logistics. Time is up. This is the time for the "Strong sweep" along the Litani up the coastal road then across. They should commit in a big way to interdicting anything that tries to cross the Litani or the Bekka (Syrians), and start isolating and reducing the Hezbollah "hedgehog" strong-points.
Surround all of them, then reduce each one in turn. Give them 24 hours to get out: no weapons, vette the people as they leave, then transport them to the Litani and dump them on the N side never to return. Remind them that it was Hezbollah that started this, that Hezbollah caused the destruction of their homes by militarizing them.
Then flatten the villes with artillery and use D-9's to scrape the remains into rubble heaps, which would then be mined.
Make no pretensions about "saving" the villes or occupying them. Say what you re doing: preventing these areas from being used by Hezbollah as fortresses to attack from, and that they had been so heavily booby-trapped that anything other than destruction is impossible.
After the first 4-5 of these are done, the rest will fall more or less voluntarily.
Its all a matter of staying power - do the Israelis have the guts it takes to hold out and do the tough work they now face - work that is a result of their coasting for 5 years and having a massive intelligence failure in S. Lebanon.
After these have been reduced and Hezbollah terrorists killeed in large numbers and their equipment destroyed, then and only then, hand the area over to the Lebanese and NATO so it stays disarmed.
Anything else requires a diplomatic solution, and the sum of these for Israel has only been more combat and attacks by the Islamists on them.
#14
FYI, by Artillery, I mean a rolling barrage, hub-to-hub concentrations, almost World War I style. A vertical curtain steel rain marched across the towns.
#15
Then flatten the villes with artillery and use D-9's to scrape the remains into rubble heaps, which would then be mined.
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#18
Cruiser, that about fits with the way I see it.
If they have started the big push now, there are 5 key bridges over the Litani and 4 main roads inthe Bekka to be interdicted/secured in order to isolate the battlefield. Looking at the map of Hezbollah "fortresses", there are 5 key ones (in terms of interlocking, logistics, comms) that need to be reduced to isolate all the others. This woudl take a week or so, and then a week after that a large number of the others would begin to collapse under a lack of comms, leadership and supplies.
The modern Arab is bascially a coward - they do well when being the bully, showing off (their gun-porn stuff) etc - and they excel at attacking women and children and civilians. But when faced with hard "Western" military they tend to fold up after they put an initial brave face on things. Collapsing Hezbollah's command and logistic structure will accelerate the basic cowardice of the Arabs - only where the Persians stiffen them wil they stand and fight.
(Remember that Afghanis are NOT included in this group - they are not Arabs, neither are the Kurds nor the Persians. Those groups have shown that they will fight tenaciously).
#19
Geez! Don't the people who write this shit read history books? Monty wasn't worthy to drink Patton's bathwater. Without constant goading, superior numbers, stolen German codes and AMERICAN supervision, Monty would have been one of the worst generals of WWII. Patton understood the intrinsic value of cutting off your opponents head...and to do so quickly.
#21
The comparison is quite apt. Monty and Israel have the same objective: don't lose the Army. Comments here reflect the assumption that Monty had the same objective as Patton, Win the War. He didn't. That's the point. Monty succeeded. He brought an Army home.
Ask those who had to grind their way through 300,000 combat veterans ensconced in fortifications in the central part of the front. Ask the Red Devils about coming home. Ask the dead in the Bulge about coming home.
Monty lost a LOT of the allied army in his command - his wasteful efforts at Market Garden cost a lot of lives, his failure to clear the Schelde (he did Market Garden instead) caused a large extension of the war due to the logistics problems of not having Antwerp and shorter supply lines, and his hesitance aroudn Caen as well as his inability to close the Falaise gap ALL meant a lot more dead that didn't have to be dead due to the excape of 300K german combat troops. In Sicily, had Patton not made an end run, they'd have allowed the entire German garrison there to escape. Enough of the Sicily garrison did, so that they were able to firm up defenses at Anzio and Cassino, etc.
Montgomery's slow tactical grinding is a sure recipe for disaster for the Israelis - after all, they dont have large numbers of US troops to grind up like Monty did (and he tended to be profliggate in his use fo US troops for grinding combat).
IMHO, Monty was a failure - only rescued by "PR" and the large number of US (and significant amount of Candian) forces that took the brunt of the fighting while he dawdled and misstepped.
The Israelis cannot afford a "Monty" approach - slow tactical grinding, failed thrusts, and a general dependance on US logistics and firepower to dig them out from their mistakes, and a reluctance to truly commit in a logical way sufficient force to collapse the enemy on a strategic basis. Thats the Monty solution -and its a loser.
The comparison is not apt - its poor at best - and its based on a false image of FM Montgomery, and a poor analysis (or ignorance) of military actions throughout history.
#24
OS, As they prep for movement in the next few weeks, what is your take on Gaza. We know Iran has moved advisors there. Does Israel have the mass to cover both Gaza and Leb when they become fully enguaged as well as standing by for the threat from Syria and Egypt?
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/25/2006 12:48 Comments ||
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#25
I'm not arguing that Monty was a success in any military sense, quite the contrary. Otherwise, Churchill would not have given Ike permission to sack him. But in the geopolitical sense of bringing an Army back to Britain, Monty accomplished the goal laid out for him.
Israel must follow Monty in this geopolitical respect, but not in his flawed military tactics. It would be unwise for Israel to assemble masses of artillery, hub-to-hub, for a rolling barrage, a curtain of steel rain, preceding a measured advance. Israel should proceed carefully, obtaining the best intelligence and designing operations that keep the enemy from realizing the benefit of their fortified positions. I trust the Israelis to act with audacity when the opportunity presents itself.
#26
Me, badanov. Even when I don't understand it all, I take advantage of an education unavailable anywhere else in the world. ;-)
49 Pan, I thought we knew that Iran sent Republican Guard troops to operate the targetable missile launchers, like that Silkworm that hit the Israeli ship last week? And the 7 (or perhaps 35) bodies of RG troops returned via Syria for burial the other day?
#28
Tw your right on that one. I think I see a Hezbullah attempt at envelopment here. OS had to go to work so I hope the Prof will be back later. I just don't know enough about the IDF's ability to sustain a fight. If they do get in to a fight on three sides and are unable to sustain it then we will have to go help. But I don't think Israel or the US want that so I would suppose that soon as Syria begins to mass troop we will end up with peace talks. I was hoping Prof OS would shoot this down or generate his thought on the next steps.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/25/2006 13:21 Comments ||
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#29
Anyone else auditing here at Rantburg U. this course on military history?
Absolutely. Sounds a lot more impressive than "lurking," too.
#30
I,m auditing too. I feel I can usually hold my own in "civilian" discussions of military tactics. However on this thread, I am spending much more time listening than speaking... a rarity that those that know mw will confirm!
I am a little better prepared in discussing the Italian campaign, where Monty and George played in the same sandbox. It is my understanding that Pattons end runs in Sicily were actually a new understested tactic that suprised the germans. However it is also my understanding that most german assets got off the island before Allies managed to get into Messina. Also, much like the British in the colonies during our revolution, Italian duty was considered sub standard to the germans, who viewed trying to make italian facists into soldiers as not worthy.
Patton and Monty both cut teeth in "fixed position" fighting tactics in WWI. Patton, in my view, embraced the future better than Monty, who had a bit too much British military history and organizational theory behind him.
Circling back to todays conflict, one big difference between what Israel faces and comparisons to Patton or Monty is that the Hizzi's have chosen fixed positions, with no strategic advantage in defensive distance, topography or logistics that I can find. I noticed that Fox interviewed soldiers already coming back from the line. Would it not be possible that the IDF can almost fight this as a "commuter war", where soldiers can not only come back off the line for a rest, but can get hope to mow the lawn and pay the bills! IDF has access to project force, at least on the hezzi's, whenever, whereever and whatever. I'd rather be IDF fighter than a hizzi sitting duck.
#31
Capsu, were I the Israeli Commander, I'd have my forces advancing in shifts. They would become adept at waking up in a bed, suiting up, taking a ride to the front, then rat hole fighting for about 6 hours then back to do supply work and finally home to bed again.
My enemy would have no rest. When he moved above ground, he would be a target, and when he went under, he would drag my attentions with him. His supplies, his food, his command posts, his hospitals would all be targets and objects of constant seeking. I would think of my strategy as Patton by platoon. Contact the enemy and close on him. Since he can draw me into minefields and ambush, I would lead with mortar patterns as often as not.
#32
Forget the author's assessment of Monty and Patton, it doesn't even jibe with what I've read of IDF history. My understanding of the IDF strategy in both the six-day war and Yom Kippur war was to seize the initiative with attack, attack, attack using armor (and the IAF) until a weakness in the enemies position presented itself...and then attack some more until they reached the Suez Canal or secured the Golan heights. In summary, attack even in the face of a superior, entrenched enemy.
The reason being that even if the IDF were to dig in at the border and then survive the waves of Arab armor, most all of Israel would still be in range of Arab artillery. Secondly, with a significant portion of the population called up, a long seige would cripple Israel's economy. Is my understanding incorrect?
I realize that this conflict is different in that Israel's objective is not to control territory, but is rather attrition of the enemy.
However, I still say the author of the article is ignorant at best.
#33
Patton & Rommel both practiced a form of "maneuver warfare". It's basically what we in the Corps do now. Pit your strength against an enemy's weakness or critical vulnerability. Focus on soft targets such as comm sites, log lines, flanks vice against hardpoints or "surfaces". Throwing a massive force at a single weak point at a decisive moment is the most laymen's way to sum it up. The objective being to shock and paralyze the enemy. Heck, even Genghis Khan practiced this in a way. For ref, read USMC FM-1 "Maneuver Warfare." The very first book they give all officer candidates. The Corps figures we will usually be outnumbered on the battlefield so we have to adapt and make the enemy play our game. Hit fast and hard at the site of our choosing. Unfortunately sometimes geography dictates maneuver i.e. the island hopping campaigns.
#34
oldspook is speaking in terms of operational level war, where i lack the expertise to discuss Monty vs Patton.
However for Israel, which is much smaller in scale, the operational issues are also strategic, and even grand strategic.
At that level NS point about "bringing the army home" is more relevant - and the conflict is not Patton vs Monty, but Marshall et al vs Churchill et al - the US high command in WW2 did not want to pursue Op Torch - they wanted to pursue a landing in France in 1943. They saw Torch as nibbling at the edge, rather than concentrating force at the main point. Britain, which, as NS says, COULD NOT AFFORD TO LOSE AN ARMY, fought bitterly against this. FDR finally agreed with Britain, and I would say history proved him right. A '43 invasion of France would likely have been a disaster.
Israel has to A. conserve its ground forces B. Pay attention to the political balance in Lebanon and C. Pay attention to its political relations with the rest of the world.
They will NOT A. Attempt to prevent the inhabitants of South Lebanon from returning. B. Mine the area or C. Destroy buildings that arent more or less directly connected to Hezbollah.
They probably will NOT completely destroy Hezbollah as a military force. Its unlikely they could even if they made a desert South of the Litani. Hezb has bases north of the Litani, and in South Beirut. To take similar actions all the way to Beirut would lose Israel not only the diplo gains theyve made in Europe, it would lose them the support of the United States.
Instead they will hope to do the maximum damage they can to Hezb with more limited tactics, and then attempt, with US help, to change the political situation in Lebanon. There is already a developing consensus among non-Shia in Lebanon that the destruction is Hezbollahs fault (whether that would continue if Israel pursued scorched earth tactics, I doubt) All that is missing is the ability to disarm Hezbollah - but that can be made up for by an international force (preferably NOT blue helmeted) with a mandate to disarm Hezbollah.
I recommend Michael Orens book. The IDF did an awful lot of improvising then - and I mean strategically, not just tactically. I dont think anyone in Israel envisioned the final stop lines - esp in Sinai, they expected to stop short of the canal, but the tactical-operational realities of pursuing the retreating Egyptians led them to the Canal.
Also, throughout, they were abundantly conscious of what was going on at the UNSC, and of the necessity of following any ceasefire resolution. Therefore their plan was based on achieving all key objectives quickly, before a resolution was passed.
#36
"Operational issues" should always mirror clearly defined tactical and strategic goals. Failure to make the appropriate linkages can result in situations like the ones we've faced for over 60 years later in Korea, 11 years in Vietnam, and currently in Iraq. Total victory is the key, ie, thoroughly defeat the enemy, then and only then establish government. I still believe this entire exercise is simply IDF bait to lure much larger regional fish. The next few days and weeks will be very interesting indeed. Just my 2 cents worth.
#37
I still believe this entire exercise is simply IDF bait to lure much larger regional fish.
I certainly wish it were so. But I doubt it. Remember a week ago the Deputy Chief of Staff of the IDF was saying they weren't going to send in ground troops at all. Now they're sending them in a little bit at a time.
My suspicion is that there were, and perhaps still are, divisions about how to respond to the Hezb'Allah provocation within the senior Israeli war councils. That's not surprising given that there has just been a transfer of government, in effect, from Sharon to Olmert. That's one reason why there doesn't yet appear to be the level of agressiveness we've become accustomed to in these conflicts.
Another is that this isn't a state-state conflict, but a state-? conflict. It is not clear how to confront and indirectly threaten the ?. Another is that the ?, Hezb'Allah, is dug into well designed defensive positions that Israel has not confronted in the past and apparently was not as well prepared to confront as it might have been. Just as they surprised Israel with the C-802 missile, they may have surprised the Israeli Army with weapons and tactics at the tunnels.
Israel has also not moved its forces in a manner likely to threaten or invite a response from the larger region fish.
Neither party to this war desired or expected it. To Israel it was a surprise. Nasrallah was clearly surprised the Israeli's would not cut a deal. If it were to spiral into a bigger war, it would probably have done so by now. However, all the parties seem to be under control of their patrons for now.
Israel will probably sanitize south of the Litani and turn it over to some international force that includes some adults as soon as possible. Much as I'd like it, I doubt they'll even go to the Bekaa Vally.
I do think this will take longer than most anticipate. And all bets may be off on August 23.
#39
The Berlin decision is a one place where Patton's aggressiveness may have cost us had Eisenhower reeled him in. But there is an alternate view: had he been allowed the resources that were used for Market-Garden (and Monty had cleared the Schelde instead of bypassing it so Antwerp could be opened for logistics), he very likely would have slammed through the Rhineland quickly and caught the Germans flat-footed. At the time the Germans were stretched very thin trying to hold too long of a line in the east - and were in the process of a coordinated fallback. To hasten that could have caused a route that the Russians would have rolled all the way to Berlin with. So Patton's thrust to Berlin might have had the effect of shortening the war by 6 or 7 months, by destroying their heartland industrial area and threatening the capital, or else causing the collapse of the East front when too many reserves were removed too quickly. Zukhov would have been on them like a hound. Quite a dilemma. But the plodding "broad front" allowed the Germans to retreat in an orderly fashion, shortened their lines to pull units out, horde supplies and rest some divisions in the west - leading the Wacht Am Rhine.
So its arguable either way.
One thing is for sure about the Israelis: they really screwed up intelligence-wise by allows such a buildup in close proximity to their border by an extra-national force controlled by the Iranians.
That's why the Arabs are sitting this one out - its their land, their economy and their military that will get trashed if they fight the Israelis. The Iranians don't care how many Arabs they get killed in their service. But if too many go, their client state (Syria) will have serious problems controlling it society - and any potential coup attempts that would want to "pull a Qaddafi".
Israel's main strategic objective must be to utterly destroy Hezbollah and its fortified areas in south Lebanon. Along with this, they need to continue to interdict Hezbollah's supplies (from Iran by way of Syria), and destroy command elements wherever they find them (And they are striking specific locations in the Lebanese-Syrian border areas from what I hear in the rumor mill - that means the Bekaa).
The best way would be to interdict anything between Tyre on the coast and Baniyas in the Golan - and the Litani provides a very good natural barrier for this. Qiryat Shemona and Alma in Israel become the "horns" from which assaults into the Hezbollah zones are done - places like Bent Jabil and Ramaich.
But the one Israel cannot afford to do is get into a plodding and grinding "set piece battle" mode a'la Montgomery. They have to interdict, and hit hard - maximum impact in minimum space and time to shatter the enemy at specific points, and get inside his ability to counter and react. That's why C3I targets are the most important to begin with - once you are inside the IDCA cycle (Intel-Decision-Command-Action) of the enemy, you can keep him so off balance that eventually his command structure and logistics will collapse - and at that point, you've won. Even Terrorists, without support and comms, cannot hope to be effective in holding terrain. Ask the Taliban about that.
"They will NOT A. Attempt to prevent the inhabitants of South Lebanon from returning. B. Mine the area or C. Destroy buildings that aren't more or less directly connected to Hezbollah."
Nice opinion, its a shame its not likely to happen. That's a civilian/scholarly/diplomatic approach. Soldiers look at it differently.
Israel cannot separate the sheep from the goats - so they will NOT allow the return of civilians since that also entails infiltration of Hezbollah. At lest not for quite a while and only after someone else is on the hook for securing the areas. See Kosovo/Bosnia as a big example of that.
As for mines: mining the fortified areas that they were able to reduce, but not clear, is a prudent precaution in preventing anyone from using them, and its saves the manpower that would otherwise be lost or killed or wasted in clearing these areas. Mines prevent access - and that's what Israel would need to do to the areas, and the fastest way to do that is mines - they don't screw up your optempo, they don't take large amounts of troops that are needed elsewhere, and they definitely put a crimp in anyone's plans to reoccupy fortified areas. Only political concerns would prevent it. Minefields need not be permanent either. A fast laid temporary minefield would be quite effective in this role of denying the area to any terrorists who wish to sneak back in.
And Israel has already destroyed a lot of buildings that were not connected with Hezbollah in case you hadn't noticed. Those were buildings that might come in handy for Hezbollah, so they were demolished to prevent their use. Either they were tactical in nature (location, observation etc), or operations (needed to be cleared to give a better corridor), or else strategic - like water plants, electrical power stations and large transmitters.
To think otherwise is naive at best.
BH6 is right in talking about USMC FM-1. The Army Equivalent from FM 100-5 is what I learned. But the elements are the same:
Preemption of the enemies actions, dislocation of his forces, disruption of his command control and logistics. This started with the old "Airland Battle" concept that we learned in the 80's and got the toys to do it with: Abrahms tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, Apache helicopters, and a C3I battle manegement system and organizational structures that could handle the stresses incurred in applying the operational art of manuever - fighting outnumbered and winning. We executed it the first war in the sandbox.
I'm dead tired. See ya tomorrow again after work. Maybe (may work late again)
#1
A very good argument. But a large carrier, carrying an s-load of drones, could launch a massive armada of aircraft to attack a huge area of land, and all at once, rather than endless sorties taking months.
If you had two supercarriers, one with a large number of "smart" drones, and the other with a huge number of GPS-guided, but otherwise "stupid" small buzzbomb-like drones, expendables carrying single 250 to 1000 pound bombs, they could attack a thousand-square mile area in a massive but accurate conflagration.
Your "smart" drones could insure air superiority, detailed reconnaisance, and provide target damage assessment imagery, along with security for the carriers.
#5
I think Turner is right about the carriers, but it almost misses the large point to talk about carriers. Procurement costs are through the roof for new ships, submarines, and airframes. Our fleet is shrinking, our carrier air wings are almost all Super Hornets now - even for electronic warfare and tanker missions. Not much ASW capability on our carrier decks any more, either.
Our Navy needs corvettes, frigates, and minesweepers. We need to look into building diesel subs or these new AIP-subs. We don't need gold-plated pie-in-the-sky DDX and CVX hulls.
#6
Diversify now, see which ones work best, head in that direction after you get some concrete evidence. If it turns out the smaller ships didn't work as well, they'd still be good enough for many jobs, we could put the remaining big carriers in the appropriate roles, and we'd have time to change direction later. Different ships for different missions.
#9
A retired admiral and an obscure but influential congressman have rekindled one of the oldest debates in the U.S. military, questioning the Navy's reliance on a small fleet of large aircraft carriers.
For those who were not around in the 80s the usual suspects, you know the special interest group types who somehow end up before the cameras of MSM, were telling us how the day of the big carriers was over and that smaller less vulnerable platforms were needed. They proclaimed operating ships in the Persian Gulf would be suicide. This was another chigger biter theme the MSM kept alive till Gulf War I. We then enjoyed a period of welcome silence as events demonstrated the fallacy of their position. However, like a cancer thats not killed, like by having the talking heads held accountable for their false prophecies, its back.
Check WWII. Yep, we lost some big carriers. However, the other guy ended up with no effective carriers. When combined with the land based airpower made possible by island/land hopping, the enemy forfeited his control of the air and permitted the allied forces to exert the offensive. No carriers, no offensive.
#11
CV-21 will be the last carrier class built, just as the F-22 will be the last manned fighter built for all the reasons Norm Augustine identified thirty years ago. They should name it the Montana. In defence procurement we always have limited resources and must spend them where they produce the most benefit.
With long range, long loiter UCAVs the carrier becomes a less and less cost effective means of projecting power. For the price of a CBG, how many UCAVs could be built? How much power could they project?
If you're going to build a carrier, a bigger one is more survivable. But it's putting a whole lot of eggs in a basket that is getting more vulnerable even faster than it is getting more expensive. The real question is why build a CBG at all?
#12
All of this debate from the hawks here at Rantburg really show before we spend 8 billion dollars we should really look into the rolls missions and functions of the Navy and define where they will or should be in 75 years. The Navy is a great service but it is hamstrung with its traditions. They resist change to a fault, remember they did not go to carriers willingly. Carrier groups were a WWII and cold war force projection tool and political tool of will. Do we need it or should the roll move more into the missle and UAV projection mode. I don't know the answer but its clear we must look into the Navy future and decide what we want it to look like before we commit the resourses.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/25/2006 9:33 Comments ||
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#13
U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., suggested shifting to smaller and cheaper US Congress carriers
#14
Yeah, carriers are obsolete again, just like every new AT gun means tanks are obsolete, every new tank means we don't need infantry, missles mean that navies are obsolete (again, since that aircraft meant that navies and armies were obsolete in the 20s).
Almost nothing goes out of style in war. We still have the bayonet to turn rifles into a spear.
#16
Tanks aren't exactly obsolete, but I don't hear a lot about the development of a follow on to the M-1. Like the spear, some technologies get to the point where they are mature and remain effective solutions. And sometimes, like the ship of the line, they get to the point where they are superceded by new technologies. And sometimes, like the F-22, they get to the point where they are unaffordable.
#17
Getting rid of carriers assumes that we will have land based anywhere we need them in order to provide air superiority. That almost didn't happen in Iraq, and it didn't happen against the Taliban in 2001.
Leaving us with only land bases would be a great incentive for China to intimidate the Hell out of our Asian allies.
As far as UAVs are concerned, I suspect their flexibility and price savings have been oversold. Even if they perform as advertized, a CVN can accomodate UAVs. A UAV carrier will not be able to accomodate high performance jets.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
07/25/2006 11:28 Comments ||
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#18
Form follows function. Define the threat and how you need to counter the threat, throw some geopolitical spice into the perloo, and you will begin to see what will be needed to support the mission. You need flexibility and you need redundancy. It really pi$$es me off to see people, especially Congress, talking about carrier this or that and not checking our assumptions and see if they are still valid.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/25/2006 14:28 Comments ||
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#19
"My concern is that we are moving to larger and larger platforms that are more and more expensive," Bartlett said in an interview, "and so we're ending up with fewer and fewer ships."
Bartlett's thinking carries weight on Capitol Hill because he heads the House subcommittee that oversees shipbuilding programs. He said he convened the unusual, closed-to-the-press-and-public hearing in an effort to provoke discussion about the future shape of the Navy.
"I have no idea where this dialogue will end up," Bartlett said.
#20
... we should really look into the rolls missions and functions of the Navy and define where they will or should be in 75 years.
We have no idea what the Navy will need in 2080. The Navy of 1930 had no idea what we need today.
We can look maybe 20 years into the future, tops. Everything after that is a WAG.
Having 10 to 12 heavy carriers for the next 20 years means that whenever, wherever, however we need to project air power, we can do so. Having a few 'light' carriers (call them amphib assault ships, whatever, ~40,000 tons displacement with a flight deck) that can handle UAVs, copters, VTOL aircraft, and special forces (in any mix you wish) provides us with more flexibility.
I'd resist the temptation to gold-plate the light carriers, but then again, I'm not a Congress-critter.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/25/2006 15:26 Comments ||
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#21
OK 75 is a bit much, my bad. I just get really frustrated with the more is better, cause congress is payin, without a plan for the future.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/25/2006 15:53 Comments ||
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#22
What about relativly cheap double hulled supertankers converted to arsenal ships(Just full to the gunnels with cruise missiles) supported by your ageis, and ssn's?
Would this not be cost effective during WOT opperations? Not that I've a real clue about this stuff, though.
#23
I need ships. I need the billions of dollars to keep my 3rd world economy alive with bloated overpaid bureaucratic mega-centers full of minions whose sole purpose in life is to bring me money for ships. Don't care if they float or have the staff to man them, just send me money for ships.
#1
Overstated. But I have been saying that Israel will do whatever it takes to end the missile threat. Taking out Iran will mean ending the Shiite threat. And that takes out the threat to American troops in the Iraq theater, and leaves Syria without a sponsor.
Try to read this without laughing. Santorum for Prez. The WW3 party is getting bigger.
Senator Santorum Repugnant Remarks on Islam, Iran, and Syria By Mohammed Khaku
Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) remarks at the National Press Club on Wednesday July 19th 2006 calling for regime change in Iran and described "Islamic fascism" as the "great test" of this generation, as threatening to the United States as last century's German Nazism and Soviet communism was inappropriate. These prejudicial remarks were derogatory, and highly unbecoming for a member of US senate. The Senator rhetoric in a public forum demeans both himself and the party he represents, particularly at a time when entire Middle East is in turmoil. Muslim of Lehigh Valley strongly condemned Senator remarks outrageous, inflammatory and un-American.
The Senator should know that extremists come in all faiths, and do not reflect the values and beliefs of the vast majority of the members of the religious groups to which they belong. The Senator's inflammatory comments do nothing to advance America's role in the world as the leading voice for tolerance and religious freedom and should be soundly condemned as election rhetoric and appeasing the neo-conservatives and American extremism ("millennial" or end-time Christians and Zionist zealots).
True to form, Senator Santorum has crossed the line and shows his clear hatred of Muslims. It is irresponsible that such comments are coming from someone who self-righteously claims to be holier than thou. Elected officials should be a voice of moderation and peace, not a voice of hatred and violence. America's image is damaged by such inciting and irresponsible rhetoric, at a time when we are trying to demand that other countries challenge their own religious extremists. All religious and political leaders should project true American values of tolerance and pluralism by condemning Senators remarks and his hate speech at National Press club.
Senator Santorum has a long history of derogatory remarks against homosexuals and other minority groups. His speech was irresponsible and ill informed, and he remarks are likely to fan hatred of Americans in parts of the Middle East. Senators goal was to instill fear. Just like Fascism and Zionism achieved their objectives through fear, resulting in the vast societal FEAR syndrome. People who believe in peace with justice must do exactly the opposite of what the fear-mongers want. We must struggle in solidarity to promote more education, mutual knowledge, a "living together" based on universal values, on respect for life and diversity, for democracy, for freedom, and for justice.
By associating the words "Fascism" with the Islam is to instill fear and by not acknowledging that a political agenda is not the same thing as a belief system, Senator Santorum invoked the oldest and the strongest kind of human fear -- fear of the unknown. Zionist and the pro-Israel lobby continue to instill fear in Americans by escalating unsubstantiated threats against them and fabricating a vast web of lies to justify their actions against Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. By instilling fear of orange and red alerts we Americans have witnessed increased government intrusion into our daily lives and the erosion of our basic rights and freedoms.
Dont ask Santorum to apologize, folks. Vote Democratic.
#9
Senator Santorum has a long history of derogatory remarks against homosexuals and other minority groups.
Mohammed must of missed the Friday night sermon. And the one the Friday before. And the Friday before that.
Posted by: john ||
07/25/2006 11:38 Comments ||
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#10
What is really important is that Pennsylvanians pay attention. Santorum expresses his values clearly and needs to be re-elected. That shitface traitor Specter needs to be removed immediately. This is classic Muzzie operation. When their numbers increase, instead of just bleating, they will be demanding. We need to rid ourselves of these Muzzie traitors now.
#11
When I first read the headline, I saw " Sen. Sanitarium..." and tried to figure out why the Looney Bin on the Hill was in the cross hairs of the Mooselimbs. But then again, I thought, isn't everything? And converting the Senate to a Sanitarium wouldn't be tha complicated.....
#12
Why, oh why, do Islam's apologists have the utter inability to distinguish criticism of Islam's ideas, its ethics, law and political underpinnings, from criticism of Muslims personally?
How does Santorum's remarks about "Islamic fascism" amount to a demonstration of "his clear hatred of Muslims?" No doubt many Muslims are nice people. That doesn't make Islam a humane or benign set of ideas or a practical basis for a functioning society.
It's glaringly obvious that extremists come in many varieties, yet beside the point. You cannot defend that charge that Smith is a murderer by pointing out that Jones may be a murderer too. It also overlooks the unique aspects of Islamic thought and practice going back to its founding, deeply ingrained notions of holy war and political supremacy foreign to other world religions. Muhammed did not practice a "turn the other cheek" sort of ethic, and it shows. To say Muhammed justified brutal violence as pleasing to God is merely descriptive.
But even if you think other religions are just as bad. it doesnt make Islam any less what it is.
It says something that the response is not a refutation of Santorum's point but a disparagement of the man himself for daring to make such an argument. Khaku's problem is the difficulty of defending Islam as something other than violent, intolerant and expansionist, so the move is to delegitimate a discussion that he cannot win. That itself is symptomatic of a totalitarian mindset, and regrettably all to common in our era. I tire of the intellectual laziness that allows this sort of twaddle to pass for political discourse these days. I eagerly await the rise of a more serious intellectual environment.
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
07/25/2006 14:41 Comments ||
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#13
With this endorsement, he's got my vote
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/25/2006 18:41 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
