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Why the world's biggest military keeps losing wars

• leroy_masochist 12y ago
  Article is much better than I thought it would be. Money quote is last sentence: "The most fundamental reason America’s huge military can’t win wars is that it doesn’t need to." He's exactly right.
• wahsd 12y ago
  The answer is that we have been goaded into seeing our military as a tool rather than an necessary and reluctant engagement for self defense, by an enemy more heinous, pernicious, and destructive than any enemy our country will ever face. The enemy within and in our midst, the military services cabal that does not care whether American wins or looses, as long as we are engaged in or agitating and preparing for war and the money flows. If anyone had any interest in preventing our warmongering, they would look at changing the incentive structure that surges towards war and death and killing and supporting despotic foreign dictators and shelters horrible people who do horrible things in our own country. As long as we want to condemn foreigners while giving immunity to degenerate f!@#-ups like Rumsfeld and the whole Bush administration, there is nothing more that can be done. They should have all been thrown alive in a grinder and turned into pig feed for the high treason of deliberately and knowingly lying to America and the world and starting wars that killed Americans for no reason. We are a hollow farce if we can't apply the same Nuremberg Trial precedent to our own leaders.
  • maxxxxx 12y ago
    I think this is the problem with a professional army. I bet Vietnam would have gone on for much longer if there had been only volunteers there. And the Iraq invasion would not have happened of there had been a draft.
• diydsp 12y ago
  > implying the goal of fighting the war is to "win" it. The purpose of fighting the war is to motivate the mining and weapons development industries. If a constituency receives $50 million dollars to produce a type of ammunition or equipment and research the next generation, its large business owners, skilled workers and labor have "won," at least in the short term.
  • pluma 12y ago
    The article pretty makes your point.
  • Amorymeltzer 12y ago
    >The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living... >The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
    • jafaku 12y ago
      Where is that from?
      • diydsp 12y ago
        George Orwell, 1984 (1) (1) http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/540674-the-problem-was-how-to-keep-the-wheels-of-industry http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/540674-the-problem-was-how-t...
    • ctdonath 12y ago
      For some reason China's "ghost cities" come to mind: enormous efforts expending tremendous resources, only to leave entire urban regions to decay unused.
      • jafaku 12y ago
        That happens everywhere to some degree. In corrupt countries it's very common that politicians announce the building of big schools and hospitals, but the projects are never finished. The construction companies bribe the politicians to get the contracts, and then it doesn't even matter whether they ever complete the job, no one will control that.
• carsongross 12y ago
  This is a pretty shallow analysis. Bill Lind has done some deep thinking on why the US military can't win modern wars (tldr: the armed forces are a graft system, not a war system; no one has figured out how to fight non-state and semi-state wars without going full roman burn-and-crucify.) I highly recommend his articles and books, particularly to people on the left who might be initially put off by his social conservatism.
  • Kalium 12y ago
    > without going full roman burn-and-crucify This is the key factor, right here. We do know how to win these wars. It just requires things we are not willing to accept.
• at-fates-hands 12y ago
  "how can America spend more on its military than all the other great powers combined and still be unable to impose its will on even moderately sized enemies?" Aside from the the reasons he cited, you can put up there fighting with both hands ties behind our backs. The politicians want the military to win the hearts and minds, have surgical strikes to reduce civilian casualties, and spend more time keeping up diplomatic relations then killing our adversaries. The media have never been pro-war, never been able to stomach seeing and reporting the brutality of what war really entails. Patton once said, "Attack rapidly, ruthlessly, viciously, without rest, however tired and hungry you may be, the enemy will be more tired, more hungry. Keep punching." We haven't done this since Vietnam. You want to win the wars in the middle east? You throw away the Geneva Conventions, you take off the handcuffs and employ the full force of the military. Like Patton said, you attack rapidly, ruthlessly and viciously. If the US even used a fraction of its full firepower, and instead hunted down and killed the terrorists and then made examples of them, their enemies would shrivel up and put down their weapons. You wanna know why the Mexican drug cartels are feared? You wanna know why people are scared of ISIS and terrorism here in the states and what they've done in Europe already? Because they don't have rules, they instill fear with violence, something the US Military has been unable to do - because of politicians and the media. Take off the handcuffs and let the full force of the military come down on these people and you'll see them broken, tired and without refuge.
  • pluma 12y ago
    For the record, the US didn't win in Vietnam either. Despite not pulling any punches. But yes, if the US gave a 100%, it may have a chance of actually winning those wars. Considering the collateral damage from decades of "surgical" strikes and drone attacks, I'm not even sure an all-out war would be any worse for the civilians on the receiving end. It would absolutely ruin any pretence of moral superiority and "clean" warfare, however. And that would make it even more difficult to explain to allies why the US is better than Russia, China or Saudi Arabia.
    • rstupek 12y ago
      I'm not sure you can classify Vietnam as a place where the military didn't pull its punches. We didn't invade North Korea, for example.
• pluma 12y ago
  The problem is that most "wars" the US has been involved in across the recent decades weren't conventional wars, even when the US was treating them as if they were. The ongoing "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan (which miraculously have been "ended" unilaterally by the US many times over) aren't wars. They're garrisons. Even ISIS (ISIL?) isn't a conventional enemy, despite having tanks. These aren't nation states and those aren't, for the most part, soldiers. The reason the "War on Terror" is still treated as a war is that there is no reason not to. The article explains that quite nicely.
  • adam77 12y ago
    [The reason the "War on Terror" is still treated as a war...] ...is for its legal status (empowering the US executive to carry out certain actions it otherwise couldn't). A number of laws were changed/reinterpreted following 9/11 with respect to what constitutes war and how it may be implemented.
    • LordKano 12y ago
      None of the legal mechanisms of war apply to what the US is doing in the middle-east. Congress has authorized certain actions but there has been no declaration of war.
      • adam77 12y ago
        I think technically the US is 'at war' with certain terrorist groups, allowing certain tools of war to be employed (esp. in the middle east). Something along the lines of: "In times of war... * the battlefield is wherever the enemy is (just about anywhere you can draw a link to terrorist activity); * the battlefield may be 'prepared' (drone strikes, assassinations, covert ops, etc).
        • hueving 12y ago
          What do you mean by 'technically'? If you mean by the definition that the Constitution follows, the US is not at war. If it was, Congress would be required to declare it.
• smacktoward 12y ago
  The "don’t invade a country if you are too lazy to learn the language" point is particularly telling. When the post-9/11 wars started, I thought one of the highest priorities would be to get combat units to a point where they didn't need external interpreters for the regions they were going to be operating in. An interpreter is a massively dangerous potential point of failure -- he could be incompetent, as the article suggests, or worse, he could be actively conspiring with the enemy to tip them off about your movements, feed you misleading info and make you look bad to the locals. If you can't speak at least the rudiments of the language yourself, you have no way of knowing. But after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, American combat units appear to be just as dependent on external interpreters as they were going in. I suspect part of the reason for this that the article doesn't touch on is the idea of the rotation. Combat units don't see themselves as being stationed in Iraq "for the duration," but as units that happen to be in Iraq today but could be in Afghanistan tomorrow and Korea the day after that. What's the benefit of learning Pashto today if you're leaving Afghanistan in three months and may never rotate back there again?
  • VLM 12y ago
    "But after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, American combat units appear to be just as dependent on external interpreters as they were going in." Back in '01, had a .mil security clearance in the 90s and was dumb enough to think I could learn Arabic as kind of a moonlighting job, that dotcom bubble wasn't looking so hot anymore, but, why bother, just like the first gulf war we'll be outta there in less than a year so I won't have enough time to learn Arabic. That being 14 years ago... An interesting startup idea would be shaking up existing translation services. It would be difficult and non-trivial. Ideal startup field!
    • pimlottc 12y ago
      > An interesting startup idea would be shaking up existing translation services. It would be difficult and non-trivial. Ideal startup field! I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Many tech-oriented small companies and startups have already come and gone in the translation field. It is indeed difficult and non-trivial.
• joshontheweb 12y ago
  I wonder if the surge in military suicides has anything to do with their perception of the 'righteousness' of our warfare. It seems like it would be much harder for a soldier to feel good about what they were doing now as opposed to WWII for instance.
• dominotw 12y ago
  I saw a frontline documentary on iraq called : losing iraq. http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=80017023&trkid=13752289&tctx=0,0,iraq:e30d03a0-dfdc-479d-bf0b-8bd9c3fec7ca http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=80017023&trkid=13752... I gained a whole new prespective on the war
  • dennisgorelik 12y ago
    That's a great documentary/post-mortem.
• orbifold 12y ago
  Most of those conflicts are a pretense to funnel trillions of dollars into the economy, but almost always also a fight to maintain spheres of influence. This was certainly true for the Vietnam war, where above all a communist Indonesia had to be avoided, but also obviously for any conflict in the Middle east. What I find worrying is that the War on Terror is a poor substitute for the Cold War. The enemy is technologically unsophisticated, so there is no chance of a sputnik shock, no real competition to gain the upper hand technologically and therefore potentially less incentive to use the vast resources of the military to fund high technology research as it was the case during the Cold War. Moreover the technology developed to "hunt terrorists" can be turned against the population much more easily than the rockets, nuclear weapons and computer systems of the past.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • angersock 12y ago
    Moreover the technology developed to "hunt terrorists" can be turned against the population much more easily than the rockets, nuclear weapons and computer systems of the past. You've hit on it in a nutshell, I think. The entire War on Terror is predicated upon the idea that a) we must ferret out and neutralize threats before they manifest and b) we must occupy regions which may generate threats. Those two policies directly manifest in the development of advanced surveillance and techniques of oppression. Even more sickeningly, there is no way of proving it wrong: if something bad happens, the answer is to increase efforts; and if nothing bad happens, the answer is not to cutback the defenses that presumably prevented that nothing. We're doomed.
    • TheCraiggers 12y ago
      Usually, I would say that we just have to wait for some sort of wake up call, something the US government fucks up so incredibly that anything involving surveillance of an innocent populace is a poison pill. But we've already had the Snowden leaks, and if that wasn't a wake up call, I don't know what else could be.
• Htsthbjig 12y ago
  "Genghis Khan, Napoleon, or Patton focusing above all else on not losing soldiers. Historically, officers are happy to use their men as cannon fodder if it will help them achieve their objectives" It is interesting that those three people were famous for being the first one in the battle fighting and risking their lives. I bet it will be different with generals today. "If their primary interest was oil, American diplomats would have told Saddam to grant exclusive contracts to select oil companies and he would have gladly complied in order to avoid invasion." Not really. American diplomats told Saddam to grant exclusive contract to US companies. What happened is that Saddam refused, he even started selling the oil in Euros in order to get European support, but did not. When USA invades a country and spends a trillion dollars on it, it is not Americans the ones who have to pay for it, thanks to the magic of the petrodollar, but the rest of the world. But Americans companies are those that benefit from the reconstruction effort. American oil companies are the ones who extract the oil. And the petrodollar system remains one year more, because if someone dares to go against the petrodollar(like Iran) sanctions are raised or their country is invaded.
  • Amezarak 12y ago
    > American oil companies are the ones who extract the oil. No, they aren't. US companies comprise a fraction of the oil companies extracting oil in Iraq.[1] Moreover, for the American companies operating in Iraq, Iraqi oil supplies < 2% of their worldwide production. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Iraq#Service_Contracts_Licensing_Results http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Iraq#Serv... [2] http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/25/are-these-western-oil-majors-operating-in-iraq-at.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/25/are-these-w...
• adwf 12y ago
  I would say he missed the biggest reason: Because we've changed the definition of "winning". It used to be that you just trounced the enemy army and didn't give a damn about what the country looked like afterwards. Go in, kill them till they surrender. This is true of pretty much every war before 1950. Nowadays we're generally not fighting an established government but instead some form of guerrila force. There is no-one to declare a surrender, therefore the war will never really end.
  • discardorama 12y ago
    > It used to be that you just trounced the enemy army and didn't give a damn about what the country looked like afterwards. You're forgetting the Marshall Plan.
    • adwf 12y ago
      That was a consideration after the war, not during. Nowadays we hold back from razing entire cities like we did with Dresden/Nagasaki/Hiroshima.
      • haberman 12y ago
        Friendly note: I think you mean "razing."
        • adwf 12y ago
          Whoops, edited thanks!
      • laurencerowe 12y ago
        Fallujah was razed. Phosphorous incendiaries were used as in Dresden. Casualties were much lower though as most of the population had fled by that point.
        • rodgerd 12y ago
          And razed to support mercenaries, as well! Not a good look hearts-and-minds wise.
• gnrlbzik 12y ago
  in love with warfare
  • gnrlbzik 12y ago
    why down vote? US is in love with warfare, for past many decades, people make money off these events and as such make a lot of money. It sucks that this is so, but it is so...
• lordnacho 12y ago
  Of course the bigger your military, the more likely you are to think the next engagement will be a walkover. And because you think it will be easy, you are more likely to gamble on that marginal gain. And because the gain is only marginal, you don't want to lose any troops. And since you don't want to really bet those lives, it's harder to win.
• jkot 12y ago
  I often criticize US army, but this article is just b * t. And not single word about what is actually wrong with US army (F35 and similar projects) > More than three-quarters of Americans in Iraq didn’t fight. A ridiculously large number 75% of servants in army (support roles) is pretty stable number since Roman Legions times. > the American military is too big and bulky. Special Forces are lean and mean and Fighting street by street, block by block takes large number of men. > Egyptian interpreter hired by the US military. Knowing that Cairene Arabic is vastly different from that of Southern Iraq, I asked him if he had any trouble understanding the local dialect. He shook his head. “I have no idea what they are saying. > If more American soldiers understood Arabic, their insight and awareness of Iraqi culture could have made a huge difference. Army should not do police work. There should be para-military units (gendarme) composed from locals, but from different regions. US did great job at Philippines with this strategy. > Fear of Casualties > It is impossible to imagine William the Conqueror, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, or Patton focusing above all else on not losing soldiers.... . Historically, officers are happy to use their men as cannon fodder if it will help them achieve their objectives. I will take any US 'war hawk' over this guy anytime. BTW Russians captured Crimea with 2 casualties, so much about 'not enough deaths'. > Only go to war if it is worth sacrificing your children. When Hitler invaded Russia, Stalin’s son went to the front, was captured and eventually died in a POW camp Paragraph about Yakov Dzhugashvili is nice, perhaps just add what happened to his family after he was captured. Also UK prince served in Iraq as far as I know > Fifty thousand Americans died in Vietnam. So did more than 2 million Vietnamese. If war were a numbers game, America would have been victorious. But war is ultimately a matter of will. The North Vietnamese were willing to suffer more than the Americans were, because victory was more important to them. And how many of those Vietnamese were killed by other Vietnamese, French, Koreans...? Americans lost because they could not go near Chinese border. Please read some facts about that conflicts. > War, What is it good For? Absolutely Nothing. ... When William conquered Britain, when Cortez conquered Mexico, their soldiers made fortunes. War traditionally was mostly an excuse for plunder. So nobody, not a single person, made any sort of profit on any war in last two decades?
  • Guvante 12y ago
    > And not single word about what is actually wrong with US army (F35 and similar projects) This is a silly mindset. Your preconceived notion about the worst problem shouldn't stop someone else from talking about a different one. If you looked you will notice that other than quoting complaints at the beginning, the vast majority of the article ignores costs. They speak only of effects. It is easier to question military spending by first pointing out why throwing money at problems isn't working, since you can't easily quantify the benefit of the military you can't just apply cost benefit analysis and have a convincing argument. > 75% of servants in army (support roles) is pretty stable number since Roman Legions times. And that number works great in Roman style conflicts. When you have a force power huge logistic lines make a great target, refocusing your logistics is a way to minimize that weakness. > Fighting street by street, block by block takes large number of men. You assume that is the ideal method of fighting the conflict. > Army should not do police work. There should be para-military units (gendarme) composed from locals, but from different regions. US did great job at Philippines with this strategy. You didn't actually disagree with him here but frame it as if you did. He said they sucked at understanding local needs but acted on what information they had. You said that they shouldn't act on local things. > I will take any US 'war hawk' over this guy anytime. BTW Russians captured Crimea with 2 casualties, so much about 'not enough deaths'. Was the goal of Crimea to minimize casualties? Because it isn't the results he is criticizing but the mind set. "#1 don't let anyone die. #2 win" isn't the best strategy if you want to win. > Americans lost because they could not go near Chinese border. Please read some facts about that conflicts. You aren't actually disputing his point, but simply pointing to a different one. There are lots of things that cause Vietnam to go bad, their ability to sustain casualties certainly helped.
• discardorama 12y ago
  The author makes some very good points. The British were able to control vast swaths of the world with minimal military power. They fought smart. I remember watching Restrepo and other similar documentaries. I come from a tribal culture too; and there were several instances where I could clearly see how the Americans were making a mistake in their dealing with the locals. Those people have been living and dying by their tribal codes for millennia, and "democracy" and "freedom" means nothing to them. Minor nitpick: it was GHW Bush who committed US troops to Somalia, just as he was leaving office, in December 1992; a nice welcoming present for Clinton. Edited: It was pappy Bush, not Dubya. Thanks @theorique :)
  • theorique 12y ago
    Nitpick on the nitpick: George HW Bush (Bush I)
  • smacktoward 12y ago
    The British had their own habit of falling back on technology to cover defects in strategy, though: Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_gun#Use_in_colonial_warfare_.281884.E2.80.931914.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_gun#Use_in_colonial_warfa...)
  • vacri 12y ago
    Well, the difference is that the US military is unstoppable against a military foe - the US can fight armies, but they absolutely suck at occupation. They won the Iraq war ('mission accomplished') but the occupation was an absolute disaster, somehow thinking that you can pacify a country through the use of military outposts rather than political nous. All those pithy quotes about getting a soldier to fight by appealing to his soul rather than his wallet (ideas over the physical), these things apply to civilians too - just because you have a military base, doesn't mean they will believe in your ideology. As the article says, if you're not willing to get out amongst the people, you'll never understand them.
  • rhino369 12y ago
    >The British were able to control vast swaths of the world with minimal military power. They fought smart. The world changed. The British and French couldn't control those colonies anymore. Guerrilla insurgencies are very hard to beat. In order to win you either have to convince the people to support you, which is almost impossible as an outsider. Or you make them fear you worse than the insurgency. That is impossible under international law. But if the US really wanted Afghanistan to bend to it's will and didn't care about international law? Just carpet bomb villages that don't support you against the Taliban. Relocate tribes to reservations and resettle your supporters. Why didn't Japan and Germany have insurgencies? They were afraid of what we'd do.
• germinalphrase 12y ago
  The military strategist Thomas Barnett has an interesting (and entertaining) TED talk where he described two different functions the US military needs to fulfill. It responds well to the criticisms presented in this article. The first: the Leviathan force. This is the military as we know it. Go in an break stuff quickly and thoroughly. Staffed by slightly pissed off, gung-ho young Americans. We're already pretty good at this. The second: the Systems Administrator. Go into a broken country (by us or otherwise) and 'wage peace'. Help build governments, keep peace, develop social services, etc. Staffed by older, more experienced individuals from a variety of fields who are not (primarily) front-line soldiers. We don't know how to do this. Link:www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace
  • lurcio 12y ago
    "We don't know how to do this" In truth, no one does. Through history it seems that rights and representation have typically only manifested after long periods of peaceable post-conquest oppression.
  • refurb 12y ago
    We don't know how to do this. We did a pretty good job in Japan and Germany after WW2, no? And South Korea?
    • wtbob 12y ago
      Yeah, I think the issue is that we're not willing to do this. Japan and Germany remained peaceful for a number of reasons. First of all, they knew that they had lost, and lost hard: their cities were in ruins; many of their leaders were dead; a large portion of their populations were dead; and huge numbers of foreigners were occupying their nations, making decisions on their behalf with little consultation. Psychologically, they were cowed. Secondly, there was still an external existential threat: the Soviet Union (or, for the East Germans, the West). We were considered the lesser of evils, so they were more willing to do our bidding. We won't reproduce these conditions: we're not going to shatter cities and decimate populations (there's also generally no other existential threat). That's morally good, but it makes successful nation-building much more difficult, or impossible. We should carefully consider if, given that we won't do what it takes to succeed at a task, it makes sense to attempt it anyway.
• dreamweapon 12y ago
  One desert night on a Marine base outside Basra, I chatted with an Egyptian interpreter hired by the US military. Knowing that Cairene Arabic is vastly different from that of Southern Iraq, I asked him if he had any trouble understanding the local dialect. He shook his head. “I have no idea what they are saying. I have a much easier time understanding you.” His English was excellent, which is presumably why he got the job, but his comprehension of Basrawi Arabic was almost nonexistent. But Marine officers, who inevitably spoke no Arabic, depended on him to explain what the locals were trying to tell them. Since the interpreter just made up what he thought his bosses wanted to hear, the Marines were operating with negative intelligence. As good a synopsis of the last 60 years of this country's foreign policy, as any.
  • stevenjohns 12y ago
    Both of them - the Egyptians and the Basrawis - are able to communicate without issue using Modern Standard Arabic, and worse comes to worse, the Basrawis wouldn't have much problem to emulate the Egyptian accent (almost all of the TV dramas, films, actors and music is in a Lebanese and Egyptian accent, so pretty much every Iraqi living in Iraq would have no issue with it). It would never reach a point where they can't communicate with each other. The paragraph itself seems slightly misleading or enhanced for dramatic effect. If this situation did actually take place as claimed, it's likely that the locals were intentionally trying to confuse the interpreter.
    • tempestn 12y ago
      More likely the author misunderstood the interpreter, I would think. It sounds to me like he was saying he doesn't understand what the locals are saying when they speak in their native dialect to one another; that doesn't mean he can't understand what they're saying when speaking to him.
    • nayefc 12y ago
      Also to add: any Arab will pick up any other local dialect/accent pretty quickly as well. I highly, highly doubt any Egyptian living in Iraq for a period of time would not be able to pick up the dialect rather quickly.
• SocksCanClose 12y ago
  Very interesting article...a second corollary might be that we have become encumbered to the point where our enemies are running circles around us: http://www.projectwhitehorse.com/pdfs/boyd/patterns%20of%20conflict.pdf http://www.projectwhitehorse.com/pdfs/boyd/patterns%20of%20c...
• markbnj 12y ago
  The answer is at least partly related to the question he asks in the second paragraph: "how can America spend more on its military than all the other great powers combined and still be unable to impose its will on even moderately sized enemies?" What is "will" in a representative democracy? Even when the country is united with a strong plurality for action against some state, it doesn't extend to tolerating much bloodshed or internal discomfort. We may be the first post-modern nation that has simply become unwilling to project its power with the blood of its own citizens. I wonder what that might mean when the drone revolution really arrives?
• matthewowen 12y ago
  "Before Korea, America never lost a war." Really? I feel like there's a decent case for the War of 1812 (the USA attempted to seize Canada and failed).
  • ww520 12y ago
    Even the D.C. capital got captured and White House burned down in the 1812 war.
  • AcerbicZero 12y ago
    Thats a bit pedantic, as well as inaccurate. I wouldn't call any party in the War of 1812 a clear winner, as there were gains and losses of approximately equal value in the end. So depending on how you want to view the Civil War, the US was 6-0-1, or 5-0-2, until Vietnam.
    • matthewowen 12y ago
      I agree: I was being pedantic, but I don't think inaccurate: there is surely some case: the USA declared war and didn't actually achieve their principal objectives. Does awarding "victory" depend upon who declares war? Surely there's some case to be made that for Britain, maintaining the status quo was a victory: unlike the USA they hadn't aimed for a change from the status quo.
  • adventured 12y ago
    The US did not attempt to invade and seize Canada and fail at it. The War of 1812 wasn't much more than a short-duration skirmish between Britain and the US, with both still bitter about the Revolutionary War and the various dealings and arrangements that came out of it.
    • megaman22 12y ago
      Well, there were attempts, but they were extremely half-assed attempts. Often, the militia that made up the bulk of the U.S. army at that time would refuse to cross outside their state lines, which aborted several planned campaigns to attack into upper and lower Canada. The whole affair isn't much more than a weird side-show of the Napoleonic wars, although you'd never know that from the way it is presented in most U.S. history textbooks.
• voidlogic 12y ago
  I think many of the points raise are very valid areas of improvement, for example: "Learn the Language"; Others are products of politician reality: "Fear of Casualties". But I think the premise: "the World’s Biggest Military Keeps Losing Wars", is wrong. 1. Conventional forces have trouble wining asymmetrical conflicts unless they are allowed to wage total war (which is usually precluded by modern political/moral concerns). Nothing new here- the Romans had experience with this. 1.A Note the single "win" on the list of post-Korea conflicts was the first Gulf War, a conventional conflict. 1.B It is arguable that the U.S. is actually better than most other conventional militaries at asymmetrical warfare: http://www.warriorlodge.com/blogs/news/16298760-a-french-soldiers-view-of-us-soldiers-in-afghanistan http://www.warriorlodge.com/blogs/news/16298760-a-french-sol..., however that may just be a product of being better at conventional warfare improving overall fitness. 2. "Winning" define this? Winning means very different things in total war vs. occupation/garrison/nation building actions. While its fair to say the U.S. lost Vietnam, I think its fair to say the U.S. won in Iraq and Afghanistan as they are now governed by friendly democracies... Military action is just a way of attempting to physically impose political will- If a nation's military helps the leaders reach their goals, it won.
  • blisterpeanuts 12y ago
    Yes, the blogger undermines his thesis by describing what a success Afghanistan was. U.S. special forces infiltrated the country, worked with the outnumbered Northern Alliance and coordinated air strikes to devastate the Taliban to the point where they fled into Pakistan. Of course, the Pakistanis continued to fund and arm these guys so they came back. That was a political failure rather than a military one. Had the U.S. military been allowed, they would have followed the Taliban across the border. As it is, U.S. drone attacks regularly harry the Taliban in Waziristan and prevent them from regrouping. Now, Iraq, that was a wrong headed conflict from 1991 on. It would have been preferable to leave Saddam in power, vile though he was. Al Qaeda might still have destabilized his country, but the Sunni tribesmen were loyal to him and would not have turned as they did when the Americans had taken over.
  • dcposch 12y ago
    > While its fair to say the U.S. lost Vietnam, I think its fair to say the U.S. won in Iraq and Afghanistan as their are now governed by friendly democracies... No. Iraq is fractured into halves. The northern half is controlled by ISIS, the southern by a dysfunction democracy where the elections are not about ideas and policies, but rather about Sunnis vs Shiites. Afghanistan is also sectarian. Neither are anything we'd recognize as free and stable democracies. In a lot of ways, ordinary citizens in both places are worse off than before the wars. Our wars there were brutal, protracted, expensive, and ultimately didn't work.
• offshoreguy41 12y ago
  Maybe the goal is not to win. Maybe the goal is simply perpetual war.
• fierycatnet 12y ago
  I can recommend "The Utility of Force" book for further understanding of modern warfare and it's evolution.
• offshoreguy41 12y ago
  Maybe the goal is not to win. Maybe the goal is perpetual war.
• foobarqux 12y ago
  "I don't think that Vietnam was a mistake; I think it was a success. [...] To determine whether it was a failure you have to first look at what the goals were. In the case of Indo-china, the US is a very free country; we have an incomparably rich documentary record of internal planning, much richer than any other country that I know of. So we can discover what the goals were. In fact it is clear by around 1970, certainly by the time the Pentagon Papers came out, the primary concern was the one that shows up in virtually all intervention: Guatemala, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile, just about everywhere you look at. The concern is independent nationalism which is unacceptable in itself because it extricates some part of the world that the US wants to dominate. And it has an extra danger if it is likely to be successful in terms that are likely to be meaningful to others who are suffering from the same conditions. " -- Noam Chomsky
• niels_olson 12y ago
  I remember eating lunch on February 5th, 2005. We were at the Officer's Club at the Naval Academy. All the officers had assembled to hear a lecture by Admiral Crowe, one of our political science professors, better known from his time as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He forwent his prepared remarks to discuss current events, opening with "Perhaps we would all be better served watching CNN right now, to hear Colin Powell address the UN General Assembly. Unfortunately, I am afraid the machinery of war is to far gone for any of it to make a difference." "I am afraid the machinery of war is to far gone for any of it to make a difference." That sentence will ring in my ears for the rest of my life.
  • hackuser 12y ago
    2003?
    • niels_olson 12y ago
      doh, yeah
• anovikov 12y ago
  I completely disagree that any of these conflicts other than Vietnam, were lost. They were just inappropriate use of the military power, akin to the Soviet invasion to Afghanistan. Americans never had a big problem of defeating any enemy, problem was what to do next (and Iraq-91 was a victory for exactly that reason: they quickly withdrew and left defeated Saddam to deal with the mess, with Schwartskopf correctly stating that there is no interest for U.S. to 'run the country'). If you see 'victory' as 'Iraq (or Afghanistan) adopting a stable US-style democracy', which apparently was an intent, than this 'war' is not winnable, and there is nothing to blame military for in this fact.
  • anovikov 12y ago
    In fact, Soviets had similar problems. They could win wars when they really wanted to, but they similarly set unrealistic, or outright lunatic political objectives which predictably failed. Communism works in Afghanistan no better than democracy.
  • adventured 12y ago
    The Vietnam War being lost is similar to proclaiming that Iraq was lost after the invasion (the occupation time frame). There was no victory basis in either case. Vietnam was a holding pattern, as the US chose not to march north with its full might. Not to mention, the Vietnam War was a civil war. Would we declare that France lost the Revolutionary War, had the colonies been defeated by Britain? I'm skeptical. Had the US abandoned South Korea like it did South Vietnam, people would proclaim the Korean War a failure as well. The primary difference between the two, is the US chose to protect South Korea perpetually. Had the US stayed and protected South Vietnam, I think it's very unlikely that war would be regarded as essentially a total failure. It's not very complicated, the US chose to leave because it was exhausted culturally, not because it was defeated militarily.
    • rodgerd 12y ago
      Ah, the old stab in the back; a favourite myth throughout the ages.
    • refurb 12y ago
• karmacondon 12y ago
  My problem with this article is that the author doesn't define the criteria for "winning". What does winning look like in Iraq or Afghanistan? I generally don't understand what the point of this article is. The US should learn the language of the countries where its soldiers are operating? I can't think of very many armies that have ever done that. Historically it would be the very rare case. And we should we willing to tolerate more bloodshed? The argument seems to be that if we aren't willing to needlessly sacrifice the lives of our soldiers as cannon fodder, then the conflict isn't worth being involved in. I don't think that makes a lot of sense, either. There are some very flawed premises here. I think the bottom line is that the US military is still the envy of the world. Recent conflicts have been poorly planned in terms of goals and exit strategies, but it's a bit disingenuous to imply that the armed services aren't able to meet military objectives or face threats of all kinds at any point on the globe. There have to be better ways for the author to say "I don't like recent US military actions".
• danielmiessler 12y ago
  We're losing wars because we're not fighting them.
• jdietrich 12y ago
  I believe it all boils down to the facts revealed by the Millennium Challenge 2002, a massive battle exercise conducted by the US military. The exercise simulated a conflict between the US ('blue force') and a hypothetical middle-eastern nation ('red force'). During the exercises, the red leader (Lt. Gen. Paul van Riper) used asymmetric warfare strategies, designed to exploit weaknesses in US military doctrine. Rather than using radio and risking eavesdropping, orders were sent via motorcycle courier and signal lamps. Rather than squaring up along battlelines, the red team used hit-and-run attacks, including suicide bombings. After massive losses for the blue team, the exercise was reset and the red leader was ordered to follow a preordained script to ensure a blue victory. The exercise was deemed a complete success. The US military learned absolutely nothing from this exercise, and continued to make exactly the same mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a doctrinal belief in the 'correct' way to win a war, and the notion that technological and logistical advantages can guarantee victory in any conflict. US military strategy is designed to justify procurement decisions post-hoc, rather than actually win wars. We invest heavily in eavesdropping infrastructure, therefore it is strategically invaluable. We have a fleet of multirole fighters, therefore air supremacy is a vital objective. There is an ideological drive to transform all warfare into the bloodless technological dispute of the cold war, regardless of reality. To quote Lt. Gen. van Riper: "My experience has been that those who focus on the technology, the science, tend towards sloganeering. There's very little intellectual content to what they say, and they use slogans in place of this intellectual content. It does a great disservice to the American military, the American defense establishment. 'Information dominance,' 'network-centric warfare,' 'focused logistics'—you could fill a book with all of these slogans. What I see are slogans masquerading as ideas. In a sense, they make war more antiseptic. They make it more like a machine. They don't understand it's a terrible, uncertain, chaotic, bloody business. So they can lead us the wrong way. They can cause people not to understand this terrible, terrible phenomenon." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/immutable-nature-war.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/immutable-nature-war.h...
  • Agustus 12y ago
    To be fair, the pre-ordained script was put together to utilize the resources that were brought in to run the challenge after General van Riper wiped the floor with them. Yet, even with the victory accomplished by General van Riper, the military had to suffer losses in Iraq before it changed the leadership to handle the asymetric nature in 2005. The issue with militaries is that unless they lose, there is no need for improvements. The Romans troddled along until Hannibal wiped certainty off their face, the Romans retooled, focused around a military society, and learned sailing from captured triremes to beat the better adversary. Prussia lost to France and the professional soldiering class was built up that is still reflected in German society today in their cultural approaches with bureaucracy. Without the political will to go in a different direction, the entrenched forces within a military will avoid the hard choices needed to changes its system.
• aluhut 12y ago
  That brings us to Ukraine, and Russia vs. US (again). What is the global context to that? Where is the point there? I know it started with the Eurasian Economic Union vs. the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement but from what I've heard the EEU is not really worth it and Belarus is not very sure about it anymore. Was that really enough to start the whole show? I mean, Putin can't get out of it now. He's too deep in his own propaganda. While the EU seems to want to get back to calmer times, Obama waits with the fuel tank around the corner reminding the EU and Putin of the fact from time to time. But...what is this supposed to be? A new Cold War show? Really...??
  • olegious 12y ago
    Ukraine is caught in the middle of the competition between Russia and the USA. For the US, it isn't about democracy, it is about bringing NATO to Russia's borders. Russia is terrified of NATO (the 2008 war in Georgia was basically the preview of Ukraine).
    • aluhut 12y ago
      But they are already at Russia's borders. Since 1999!
      • throwaway344 12y ago
        The US isn't at Russia's borders — Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and all the rest are. Their freely elected democratic goverments decided that aliging with the US was a good idea.
        • aluhut 12y ago
          Well, NATO and the US on themselves are at the border at least with Poland. I guess discussions with the rest would be quick with any kind of "movement" there.
    • adventured 12y ago
      More than being terrified of NATO (it's not), Russia wants to retain a very high degree of control over its former satellites if it can. Including specifically Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. Russia influences those countries practically as proxies as though they still belong to the old empire. Russia fears losing that control, it doesn't fear the NATO military alliance. I think it's a lot more afraid of trade ties with Western Europe and culturally changes that drive political changes.
• leroy_masochist 12y ago
  The problem with many of the conspiracy theories presented by other commenters on this thread is that they assume that the government (and by extension the overall military-industrial complex) is much, much more competent than it actually is.
  • nraynaud 12y ago
    Ahah, I had the same remark recently. I think it's the contrary, they are putting rules, and they no real control over the complex effects.
• johnnyfaehell 12y ago
  It won both Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Both governments were overthrown, pretty quickly too which was their original goal. With Afghanistan they had a secondary goal to find Bin Laden they achieved that goal too. hat then happened was what is commonly known as peacekeeping. They then got hammered by what is commonly known as terrorist using guerrilla warfare. Even then, not like they lost. I'm all up for bashing America, but let's not bash them for not carpet bombing a bunch of civilians.
  • EliRivers 12y ago
    they had a secondary goal to find Bin Laden they achieved that goal too. In a different country, a decade later, by completely different means, after he'd been allowed to escape Afghanistan. Hardly a rousing success. In fact, a total failure, necessitating a number of different subsequent attempts. If you fail repeatedly and then succeed once, you don't get to call the first failure a success. What then happened was what is commonly known as peacekeeping. No. What then happened is commonly known as alienating the local population repeatedly, losing all your popular support, becoming the laughable tool of local animosities, and in so many ways just fucking everything right up in an orgy of incompetence, aided so admirably by the British who shared many of the incompetencies, but managed to demonstrate some of that at even greater levels and still, to a large extent, refuse to accept how appallingly badly they did. Face the facts; initial invasion a success, attempt to build a nation total fucking cluster.
• lazyant 12y ago
  From my European perspective this article is almost stating the obvious, nothing controversial here. The only point is that conditions for victory ("winning the war") need to be clearly defined and they haven't.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• hotgoldminer 12y ago
  The will to win isn't politically viable. War is heavily scrutinized and almost entirely unpalatable (to say the least). Sure America may have the might, technology, and numbers, but their enemy lacks political constraint. Now they're faced with ISIL. Their decision makers obviously strive to make visible the least palatable aspects of war in the belief it will expand their sphere of influence. America should re-think military strategy. Do they wish to 'win' wars with violence? Can they? Or perhaps cyber war, surveillance, and infrastructure--all soft forms of control--are the strategies of the future.
• amyjess 12y ago
  There's a difference between winning the war and winning the peace. In Iraq, we won the war hands-down. We went in to effect regime change and bring Saddam to justice. We did exactly that. We toppled Saddam's regime, established a new one in its place, and then captured and executed the man himself. However, we lost the peace badly. We failed to anticipate the rebels, the influx of al-Qaeda, the sectarian civil war, the rise of ISIS, etc.
  • refurb 12y ago
    Couldn't you say the same for the Vietnam War? After the Tet Offensive, North Vietnam was reeling from it's failure to achieve its military objectives (it was an absolute success politically). The US got North Vietnam to agree to a peace treaty and then left South Vietnam. Vietnamization failed and once the North Vietnamese realized the US wasn't going to help the South anymore, they just took the whole country.
• coffeemug 12y ago
  We're not losing wars. We're winning them very quickly. We're losing the aftermath -- policing and rebuilding foreign countries after we win the wars. That's a much more challenging problem, and we aren't good at that at all.
• netcan 12y ago
  GWYNNE DYER: 1 April 2008 Suppose an Arab military force was currently bringing peace and freedom to the oil-rich, violence-torn country of Texas. What would they be reading in the Arab newspapers five years after the occupation of Texas? They’d be learning about the minute doctrinal differences and the irreconcilable rivalries between Catholic Hispanics and Protestant anglos, and even between Southern Methodists and Southern Baptists. They’d all know about Texas’s long love affair with guns, explaining why Texans were killing Arab soldiers. They’d constantly be reminded that the dominant minority in east Texas is African-American, while in west Texas it is Hispanic. Everybody in the Arab world would know far more about Texas than any sane non-Texan should ever want to know — without understanding anything at all. If you don't understand, it's dangerous to convince yourself you do.
• classicsnoot 12y ago
  Largest military by nation list on wikipedia is interesting. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_... ) Vietnam is at the top. Lel. I appreciate that the author was in the Theater of Operations. I respect that he has an enormous amount of anecdotal data about military personnel and conflict. That being said, this person appears to have a rather shallow understanding of the nature of conflicts as it pertains to Geo-politics. To say the US has not won a war since Korea is idiotic, as the US did NOT win; there is a de facto state of war between the Koreas and the US is bound to the South by alliance. I get the feeling that the author is European (just a guess). I wonder what the answers would be if you asked a large range of people (age and nation of association) who won WWII. Asking an American who won the Cold War will probably yield a more homogeneous pool of responses. Ask a N.Korean who won the Korean Conflict and the diversity of answers would drop even further. The point is that anyone can say anything that they want; the winners are decided over and over again culturally as well as historically. There has not been a 'real' war since the Second Global Conflict in terms of losses in material and personnel. If the Ukraine Conflict becomes a shooting war between Russia and Ukraine, the losses in one week could total the entire losses of the US in the ten years of brush beating. 5K soldiers is a paltry sum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll . The world has not known war in many years, and it is precisely because of the political efforts of the US, Russia, England & Friends, and more recently China. They do this not out of compassion for their citizens, but out of necessity for their profits. In forums like these, people love to belabor the trope that war brings technological advances and benefits the D-Con companies solely. They use this as some sort of reasoning behind why the US invades the countries it does. This is silly. War turns an economy to shit. It does this to both sides, though obviously it takes longer for the 'victor' to feel it. Peace == Prosperity. Regardless of the 'billions' that are said to be invested in America's wars, they are trickles compared to the naked power of a well cared for middle class. There is so much more money to be made when people are free to save it and spend it. this is the fundamental principle behind US Capitalism: 1)make peace through force 2)inundate with currency 3)?????? 4) Middle class appears. Instead of large wars heralding dramatic shifts in power and means, a background of smaller conflicts in emerging raw material provider countries keeps the weapons sales up and makes the way for more ethnically homogeneous locals when the drilling crews show up. One can say the US loses, and on many counts we do. But the world* wins. We invaded Iraq to stabilize oil supplies, guarantee supremacy, and foment regime change: the European and Chinese oil supply, the supremacy of Saudi Arabia over Iran, and regime change in the Middle Eastern monarchies. Somewhat non sequitur, but if you want to learn about an amazing american geo-political victory that used some of that 'excessive' spending, try to find info about the shadow campaign waged across the -stans to secure power and water as a preemptive strike against nascent extremist populations. Good luck; there is not much documentation ou there. Having a clear definition of terms is important, both in conflict as well as in blogposts. *Europe
• bane 12y ago
  In individual battles, the U.S. almost never loses. The raw military capability the U.S. possesses is staggering. It's so vast that in actual wars, the Army doesn't even do the bulk of actual fighting anymore, and massive garrison forces in Europe and Asia barely see a dip in total manpower. Special Forces and Marines go in to clear the way for big Army to come in and sit and patrol like an overamped police force. The opening invasion of the first Gulf War was over in what, 5 weeks? This was a military power that Iran fought to a virtual standstill for almost a decade. People forget about this part, because the rest of the occupation was such a debacle. But when the U.S. military gets pointed at an objective, it will generally get the job done. The military on military loss exchange ratios are astonishing, like 150:1. In most of history, 4:1 or 5:1 is considered overwhelming. In the Korean war, it was about 4:1 for example. Vietnam was about 1:1 The problem is that the world has changed and the U.S. has changed. Achieving occupation no longer counts as "winning" and the U.S. no longer has the will to simply carpet bomb and shell an enemy to the point of complete annihilation. The U.S. fights wars for precision and to minimize non-combat casualties. Genghis Khan would simply raze a city to the ground and murder every man woman and child if he faced resistance. The U.S. orders Marines to go in for a door-to-door clearing operation and try real hard not to shoot too many innocents. And if that didn't work they'd just go and do it again.[1][2] War is supposed to be terrible, and there are no "winners". Victory has always been the last to give up or run out of people to throw at the enemy's swords. By sanitizing the terribleness out of war, the U.S. has managed to ensure that it never "wins" anything in particular. It's turned war into large-scale police actions, which means it's regularized it. The U.S. hasn't fought a real war in ages. Everything else has been policing. The U.S. doesn't really have many big enemies, it has rabble rousers and riff-raff on the edge of it's sphere of influence it needs to deal with -- rogue and failed states, non-state actors, whatever. Most of the world is America's town and it sends in police/soldiers to deal with the bad parts of town and "keep the peace" In a normal town, nobody cares if the police "win", just so long as things are relatively safe for the good parts of town. Police are part of the infrastructure of successful nations. The U.S. military strives to be the global police infrastructure of a successful world. The commander-in-chief has just been turned into chief-of-police of the biggest baddest police force in the world. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fallujah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fallujah 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah
• jgreen10 12y ago
  They overthrew Milosevic, Taliban, Hussein, Austin, Noriega, Bosch, Gaddafi, ... Fighting guerrilla wars is the problem. Firepower obviously doesn't help in guerrilla wars.
• uptownhr 12y ago
  We're playing the wrong game with the wrong rules and using wrong tools for the job.
• DanielBMarkham 12y ago
  Here are a couple of clarifying notes to the essay: 1) the United States has not declared any wars. The last war we were in was in the 1940s, over 70 years ago. Since then we've done "police actions" "limited military engagements", and all sorts of other nonsense, but no wars. 2) Yes, there's too much emphasis on the wrong things. But there's a huge problem here that the military is working through: what do you want your military to do, anyway? The general consensus is that we want these highly-sophisticated fighting units able to take a fight to other highly-sophisticated militaries, like the Russians or the Chinese. But guess what? That's not the fight we've had. So we keep spending trillions of dollars for a military built to do one thing, and then we keep asking it to do something else. You might think the answer would be "Just re-factor!", but it's not. As it turns out, if you want B2 stealth bombers, you gotta have this huge industrial complex churning away for decades to get them. You can't just turn it off and on. If there's ever a fight requiring high-tech military versus high-tech military, all of that prep will pay off. If there isn't? It still might have been worth it -- having it in place could have prevented the fight. You don't know. The real problem is that the Pentagon and various administrations are unable to have an honest discussion about the issues. There are too many lucrative contracts and jobs on the table. The risks are too great to boil down into slogans. For now, my recommendation is to form a new branch of service dedicate solely to large numbers of low-tech groud-pounders who specialize in nation-building and international rescue/response. Whether we like it or not, that's what we keep ending up doing, and the existing services do not seem to be able to mentally make the trade between one bomber and, say, 100K peacekeepers. Plus the missions are vastly different.
• jacques_foccart 12y ago
  What is conveniently avoided is that Japan, Germany and South Korea are at (relative) peace and prosperous because of immense investment by the US. All three are still, technically, militarily occupied territory. The wars were total wars, won at the cost of millions of lives and financial and industrial commitments that reshaped the culture of both nations, at enormous civilian costs especially on the losing side (Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima...) and the territory kept at peace via millions of boots on the ground, enormous military effort (how much does Okinawa cost per annum?) and enormous financial spending, justified by Pax Americana being presumably worth more than its bill. In the case of WWI, not invading the losing power after breaking its will to fight resulted in a worse war a couple decades later. Another unpalatable and often glossed over fact is that in both Germany and Japan, middle management was kept in power because the invading authority (such as MacArthur) realised that chaos would follow otherwise, and that in a statist, single-party state, all the talent would converge to the ruling party anyway. Today's taxpayer does not want to pay for another Japan or Germany, and some people in Washington have sold him the unicorn of "instant happiness once the bad guy is removed with a few skilled operators and cool tech" (aka COIN), ignoring decades of history. Either the American taxpayer needs to push for colonialism (call a spade a spade), or it needs to accept that furthering US interests will create side effects for locals. The latter is obviously a lot easier to stomach, especially with free speech allowing comfortable, safe civilians to complain loudly about how unfair it all is, so it has been the default position of successive administrations since Johnson. Option 3 is to accept the occasional bombing and attack on your civilians, in exchange for isolationism. The risk of that option is well described by the example of Chamberlain in the 1930s.
• known 12y ago
  Any type of hegemony will have awkward repercussions and collateral damage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nye http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nye
• tomohawk 12y ago
  "War traditionally was mostly an excuse for plunder. In the modern world, Angell argued, armies slaughtered not prospective slaves but potential customers." It would appear that many are joining ISIS precisely because they do like obtaining plunder and (sex) slaves.
  • kbart 12y ago
    It's one of the false westerners' believes that keep from fighting ISIS effectively. Just yesterday here was a good article on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9061725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9061725
• StudyAnimal 12y ago
  I wonder what sort of correlation there really is between learning the enemies language and winning a war against them. This big army doesn't win wars because it holds itself back for political reasons. It is not that hard. You have to be 100% focused on total destruction. That is what created the modern Germany and Japan. This half-assed modern style of warfare is good for the arms industry I guess. For them a long war is better than a won war.
• lexcorvus 12y ago
  The answer can be summarized in two words: asymmetric warfare. More accurately called symmetrized warfare, USG's policy of binding itself to different rules of engagement than its enemies, in such a way as to ensure that the two sides are closely matched, is a recipe for unending conflict. The political reasons for this policy are complicated, but the military reasons for the effects of the policy are straightforward.
• yellowapple 12y ago
  I wouldn't really say that the second Iraq War was "lost", per se; it did meet its objective of eliminating the regime of a dictator, after all. It's the swarm of smaller-scale conflicts following it that the United States struggled with. I agree with all the points presented, though. Very well put.