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Washington: Iran has frozen nuclear development

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by three_bags_full, Dec 3, 2007.

  1. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    whatever yawn thinks ... i'm with him.
     
  2. spnited

    spnited Active Member

    I hate to tell you this TBF, but if you and the Army believe your own bullshit, we learned absolutely nothing from Vietnam.
     
  3. That's a really good answer, with solid links, except for the last part. "Landing a haymaker" -- define, please -- pretty much guarantees that the hearts-and-minds component of any counterinsurgency strategy is doomed.
     
  4. three_bags_full

    three_bags_full Well-Known Member

    I don't even know how to respond to this.
     
  5. three_bags_full

    three_bags_full Well-Known Member

    The best examples I can give you: March 18 - May 1, 2003 and Operation Al-Fajr.
     
  6. A
    As to the latter, the hearts-and-minds component took something of a beating.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3653223.stm
     
  7. Gold

    Gold Active Member

    Armed forces go into Iraq in 2003, and take care of things in weeks. The US is the most powerful army in world history, and we do it with, in large part, kids who didn't go to college for one reason or another - money, grades, whatever. There aren't many people from well-off communities in our armed services, and there are a slew of college athletes who aren't helping. However, the professional army was successful.

    The armed services have urban techniques and warriors and schemes. My brother-in-law is a career Marine officer and he was involved in this in the 90s.

    Three Bags, what is happening in Iraq isn't a military failure, it's a political failure. Some people are going to say US troops have been in Germany for 60 years and Korea for 50 years, but the difference is that people in those countries generally aren't shooting or blowing them up on a regular basis. To, as you put it, "take the handcuffs off" would require a lot more personnel. Consider this: in the first Gulf War, there were nearly 500,000 troops for a mission where the US didn't occupy a country. Now, if we are to believe the current administration, we can do a bigger job with 40 percent of that total.

    The people who are in charge of the military, who didn't create this mess, aren't going to tell you that this is pretty much impossible. That wouldn't be a good thing for morale or recruitment. But if you think for yourself for a minute, there is one fact which can't be ignored - eventually, whether it is next year, in five years, ten years, whatever, US troops have to come home. The Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds don't like each other any more in 2007 than they did in 2002. No armed force can change that fact.
     
  8. "Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant."

    I think I remember my Tacitus correctly.
     
  9. jgmacg

    jgmacg Guest

    You do.

    And he says he'll see you at the Christmas party.
     
  10. three_bags_full

    three_bags_full Well-Known Member

    Gold, as for your first Graf, I think you're out of touch with army demagraphics.

    I can't make heads or tails of the second.

    Senior army leadership is political. Big army failed little army.
     
  11. three_bags_full

    three_bags_full Well-Known Member

    A counterinsurgency operations have very little, if anything at all, to do with winning hearts and minds. That's not the mission of a counterinsurgency campaign, and it's certainly not our mission. A successful COIN is based mainly on separating the insurgent from his area of comfort and support network, then denying him access to the area from which you just drove him.
     
  12. Point of Order

    Point of Order Active Member

    Where'd they get that much ice?


    :D






    But seriously, folks. My brother just started his second tour in Iraq about a month ago. He says things are mostly quiet so far, but no one knows if that will last very long, and that nothing good will happen until the locals get their act together.
     
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