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Yes. This is the same military that didn't have the popular support to complete its objectives in the ME, so they phoned it in. That's what happens to countri

Yes. This is the same military that didn't have the popular support to complete its objectives in the ME, so they phoned it in. That's what happens to countries that go to war under false pretense - they get to half-send their militaries for political appeasement. Were you implying that the REAL military was defeated in the ME? Or, that they would somehow be unable to put down a guerrilla war?

ufmace 11y ago
If you think that's what happened in Iraq, then you have a simplistic and woefully inadequate view of how the war actually went. If there's any one big thing we learned in Iraq, it's how Counter-Insurgency works and how important it is. You can't simply roll in and impose your will on a well-armed populace, no matter how many ships and planes and tanks you have. You will be hit over and over again by snipers and small ambushes that fade away before you can bring your resources to bear. There are no big targets to use your big weapons against, and using them arbitrarily against the civilian population will enrage more people into fighting against you than the number of actual combatants it kills. You can't get any good information from anybody on who the insurgents really are and where they are. The force that is closest to the population will basically always win in the end, even if they have less resources. The only way for an outside force to successfully counter an insurgency is to make themselves more close to the population than the insurgents. That's how the US won in Anbar late in the war - the insurgents, despite being the same religion and more culturally similar, were so brutal, arbitrary, and disrespectful of local traditions that they were willing to side with Americans from an ocean away to get them out. The other important part is how the soldiers themselves feel. It makes less of a different when you're an ocean away from home in a very foreign culture, since there's not really any practical way to desert. If they were ever to operate in America against Americans, that could be a very big deal. Soldiers aren't order-following robots; you're going to have to convince them to fire weapons at, and take fire from, their friends and neighbors on the orders of somebody far away to impose something they may not care about or believe in. It's not necessarily impossible, but it makes things a lot harder.
- mozumder 11y ago
  Right. Like I said, the US half-assed it. We don't lose in real wars that we care about, such as ones where rebel states cause an existential threat.
mercurial 11y ago
> Were you implying that the REAL military was defeated in the ME? Or, that they would somehow be unable to put down a guerrilla war? The problem is that despite repeated demonstrations of the contrary, many people (including people who really, really should know better) believe that wars are only decided on the battlefield. The point of going to war is not to engage in set-piece battles and blow up a hapless opponent like Saddam's outclassed military live on CNN. The point is to complete a number of strategic objectives. If you didn't manage to do that, you lost. If on top of that, you managed to engineer a power vacuum in a very volatile area, which subsequently created the conditions necessary for the emergence of the most powerful militant group to date, you pretty much scored an own goal. Bonus if your PR plan included saying "mission accomplished".
- douche 11y ago
  People frown on building mountains of skulls, enslaving all the men of military age, and distributing the conquered lands and peoples to your officers and men these days...

ufmace 11y ago

If you think that's what happened in Iraq, then you have a simplistic and woefully inadequate view of how the war actually went. If there's any one big thing we learned in Iraq, it's how Counter-Insurgency works and how important it is. You can't simply roll in and impose your will on a well-armed populace, no matter how many ships and planes and tanks you have. You will be hit over and over again by snipers and small ambushes that fade away before you can bring your resources to bear. There are no big targets to use your big weapons against, and using them arbitrarily against the civilian population will enrage more people into fighting against you than the number of actual combatants it kills. You can't get any good information from anybody on who the insurgents really are and where they are. The force that is closest to the population will basically always win in the end, even if they have less resources. The only way for an outside force to successfully counter an insurgency is to make themselves more close to the population than the insurgents. That's how the US won in Anbar late in the war - the insurgents, despite being the same religion and more culturally similar, were so brutal, arbitrary, and disrespectful of local traditions that they were willing to side with Americans from an ocean away to get them out. The other important part is how the soldiers themselves feel. It makes less of a different when you're an ocean away from home in a very foreign culture, since there's not really any practical way to desert. If they were ever to operate in America against Americans, that could be a very big deal. Soldiers aren't order-following robots; you're going to have to convince them to fire weapons at, and take fire from, their friends and neighbors on the orders of somebody far away to impose something they may not care about or believe in. It's not necessarily impossible, but it makes things a lot harder.

mozumder 11y ago
Right. Like I said, the US half-assed it. We don't lose in real wars that we care about, such as ones where rebel states cause an existential threat.

mercurial 11y ago

> Were you implying that the REAL military was defeated in the ME? Or, that they would somehow be unable to put down a guerrilla war? The problem is that despite repeated demonstrations of the contrary, many people (including people who really, really should know better) believe that wars are only decided on the battlefield. The point of going to war is not to engage in set-piece battles and blow up a hapless opponent like Saddam's outclassed military live on CNN. The point is to complete a number of strategic objectives. If you didn't manage to do that, you lost. If on top of that, you managed to engineer a power vacuum in a very volatile area, which subsequently created the conditions necessary for the emergence of the most powerful militant group to date, you pretty much scored an own goal. Bonus if your PR plan included saying "mission accomplished".

douche 11y ago
People frown on building mountains of skulls, enslaving all the men of military age, and distributing the conquered lands and peoples to your officers and men these days...