BoarSpear

reading further down the page you will encounter a great quote that seems to sum up exactly what our problem is....

" How do you kill wasps with a sledgehammer?"

It seems we still havent figured out that a much smaller, much more highly paid and trained military is the way to go...We won the revolutionary war because we had men who could hit a squirrel with thier rifled barreled weapons allowing us to use guerilla (indian) tactics to defeat the most powerful military in the world at the time (who did not have rifled barrels and still fought in huge formations). this allowed us to beat them in a war of attrition.... Somehow we still manage to find ourselves the worlds largest military...fighting our second losing battle to a lower tech smaller enemy...we dont read the signs very well...

the isreali pullout of the gaza strip proves that this is no simple problem...and cant/wont be solved anytime soon....in fact pulling out is proof the terrorism worked. now the terrorist can say "see...they gave back our lands, our suicide bombers bought our holy lands back with the blood of thier sacrifice"...no one wants to hear it but its true...The french also didnt fare very well in vietnam (go ahead laugh, say it was the french)...guess what vietnam has NEVER been succesfully invaded/occupied. side note... in studies done after the war it was learned anyone in charge of more than a half dozen men in the NVA could virtually quote the art of war.

we forget to give the other guy and history a look before we send in the calvary...this cost lives unnecessarily. When it is known that there is no solution to a problem we still throw american lives away on it why? we blundered in without an exit strategy (SEE SUN TZU)... now we have no honorable way out...if we leave we also prove terroism works...so i guess americans can keep dying until we either solve terrorism.... or admit we were probably a little quick on the draw and request the U.N. to send troops...so the american aggressor/ occupier theme isnt as easy to "sell" to the newly recruited suicide bombers.

Somehow i suspect this isnt going to sit to well with many of you once again but it is the situation we are in....sorry if you dont like me pointing it out. but if the people who got us into this didnt know how to get out before it became the problem it has become...how can you expect those same people to figure out what has snowballed into a much more complex equation? Every one who dies as a result of our actions leaves many relatives with a less than positive view of the USA.

Two sayings the american military has coined sum up the problem with our views..."Kill em all and let god sort em out"....and when the psyops people pointed out that it was a war for the hearts and minds of the people, the reply was ..."well when you have them by the balls thier hearts and minds follow." Too much bravado and to little common sense from our leaders is costing lives and respect for our country and our military.

BoarSpear

This is a link on the evolving role of IEDs. its worth a look.

http://organicwarfare.blogspot.com/2...ttlefield.html

Mike Brewer

Keep it comin' Boar. Great link. Thank you, as always.

BoarSpear

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/...ketp.html#more

another interesting link...

kerambit

glad you like, gents.

The main thing organicwarfare is about is the erosion of traditional order hierarchies in favor of smaller, more distributed and highly connected networks. These networks mirror organizational systems in nature much more closely than rigid hierarchies do.

Rather than impose our preconceived notions of organizations upon the world, perhaps it's better to allow them to grow naturally, the way roots grow through soil and avoid stones.

Mike Brewer

That's precisely why Iraq was allowed to structure and run its own elections, choose its own candidates, structure the offices and positions within the new government, write its own constitution, appoint its own representatives, select its own models, build its own police and security force, overturn US decisions like the US abolition of the death penalty, direct and mandate its own imports and exports, etc., etc., etc.

People love to think we just walked into Iraq and Afghanistan and told people how it was going to be. The love to believe morons like Michael Moore and think that we have a grand conspiracy of turning the whole world into America. If that was true, we'd have told them how silly it is to have over 200 candidates on the same election ballot for President. But we didn't, because its their country to run in their own way.

All we did was keep the tyrants from killing off the roots before they had time to take hold.

kerambit

Interesting.

Maybe that's why the new Iraqi government is doing so well.

Mike Brewer

You have to expect a rough start when giving birth to a new country. Our own country had one hell of a Revolutionary War to break the ties with our old controllers. The Iraqis will get it worked out. It'll just take some time. Look back at our own history. We spent over 100 years as a collection of British colonies and settlements before fighting a bloody and drawn out revolution and gaining independence. Makes you wonder why everyone expects Iraq to get it done in a matter of months, doesn't it?