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2006-11-28 Iraq

Iraq Intervention: Lessons From Past Wars

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Posted by Sneaze Shaiting3550 2006-11-28 00:06|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Just a kinder gentler version of Kerry-Rangel.

There were more 'past wars' than just WWII. How about the hundred years war from 1790-1880s when we built a nation, constantly dealing with aboriginal population? Let's repeat again from Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian 1866-1891 by Robert M. Utley. -

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. "Shermans 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 nations humanitarian community."

Gee, sounds so familiar. The process took generations. It employed a small overtaxed overextended professional Army. One of the key features that allowed the Army to be successful was to co-opt locals to participate in operations, so you had Crow allied against the Sioux and employed Apache Scouts against those who'd operate on both sides of the Mexican border. So how about dropping the WWII comparisons. It is not Vietnam and its not the Great Crusade in Europe.

Posted by Procopius2k 2006-11-28 08:35|| 2006-11-28 08:35|| Front Page Top

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