Villainous Company

In any conflict, it's always easy for arm chair experts to look at how it was fought and second guess everything that was done. This isn't anything new:

"Why, it appears that we appointed all of our worst generals to command the armies and we appointed all of our best generals to edit the
newspapers. I mean, I found by reading a newspaper that these editor generals saw all of the defects plainly from the start but didn't tell me until it was too late.

I'm willing to yield my place to these best generals and I'll do my best for the cause by editing a newspaper." --Robert E. Lee

In fact, we made mistakes early in the Iraq conflict that made our mission there much more difficult ... and I'm sure Israel is examining the results of this latest conflict and will be better prepared next time ... and I believe there will be one. Unlike the US or Israel, the UN peacekeeping missions fail time and time again and they never learn from their mistakes.

Great quote, Frodo. And I couldn't agree more with the rest of your comment.

I wonder if there has ever been a war, however, where we didn't make any mistakes?

Wars aren't fought in a vacuum. People always want to look back later and say, "if only we'd done x, y, or z". But then we'd have had a different set of problems to contend with. Maybe better.

And maybe worse. The thing is, we don't know.

"An Army is a team, lives, sleeps, fights, and eats as a team. This individual hero stuff is a lot of horse shit! The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about f***ing!" - General George S. Patton, 1944

The real question is, what does Sandra Bernhardt think of all this?
Master Frodo's quote was better, I just like the blunt vulgarity of Patton's quote with respect to how much all the smart guys know.

My fav squeal from the Lefty Experts is the whole mantra of "We disbanded the Iraqi Army". Heh! Like Da Grunt said, "WE didn't disband diddly squat. They ran away and disbanded themselves!"

More boots on the ground? Yeah, but not many. It would help with the number of rotations and relieve some of the stress of combat instead of these guys doing three and four tours in four years. That would be the only advantage, NOT the number required to train the IA and support patrols and missions. Possibly a stronger presence on the borders and that would require a greater number of boots but no one can close a border. I give you our own as an example.

"Let us go to the tele-prompter so I can tell you what you need to think......." :-o

Seems to me having hundreds of thousands more troops would have increased the risk of having the logistics tail severed. Remember the mad (and successful) rush across the desert? Small armies move faster than large, and require a lot less material. Of course, I was just a sergeant, not a liberal pundit or even a lowly General, so what do I know.

apathetic and hapless Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Syrians and Lebanese. Those armies consisted of the indifferent

Would that be the result of being draftees? I have no clue as to how those armies were formed, but calling for a draft in one breath and lamenting the weakness of an indifferent military in the next seems to display a profound ignorance or extreme disingenuity.

JAD,
At what point does it become a diminshing return on deploying more men 'in theater'? Why pick 300K? Why not a million men? Why not? Wouldn't that scare 'em real bad? A million pairs of American boots on the ground. Wow. Just think of the targeting possibilities, and the logistics of that big a force in Iraq.

I don't know what the "right" sized force really is or should have been, but I have some suspicions from a few things I've read the GWB was lead to believe by some of our 'allies' that they would commit troops to the occupation, once all the 'fighting' (Mission Accomplished!) was done. Heh. I think he was badly mislead by our so-called 'friends' on that one.
The Army and Marines have done a heckuva job under the conditions, but like you said, a few more divisions would have reduced the pressure on the rotations in and out, and maybe helped the manpower thing on the border, until the Iraqi army (Now Baathist free!) was stood up. A young Army Lt. I know told me (after his first tour ended in spring'04) that a big wall between Iraq and Syria and Iraq and Iran would solve a lot of the problems they had with the jihadis.

My two cents, probably worthless at this point.

We don't call him Dubya for nothing Don! :-o

Yes, there were troops promised and then not forthcoming but we pretty much knew going in who would stand at our side. I can't see a "correct" number frankly. In-country the level seems fine unless we intend to close the borders which is like farting in the wind (still hung up on yesterday's thread - heh!) if we don't just cut loose. No, the increase in numbers, to me anyhoo, would be for rotation purposes and relieving multiple deployments. These young men and women come home dinged up a good bit, mostly unreported, and head back into work-up mode within ninety to one-twenty. That's a pretty quick turnaround. It'd be nice to have more boots in the service but Congress would never pay for that which brings us in a full circle. That and the various branches just have to have their new billion dollar toys etc.

The flip-side is the unbelievable experience our entire military has now for the soon to be coming next round of conflict!

That 1LT was correct but we also refuse to do what we need for political reasons. 1st Battle of Fallujah? 22nd MEU pulled back from Sadr and his Madhi Army? Lots of examples of things that would've put us so far ahead of the curve if not neutered by politics. Could we close the borders if we really wanted to? Not by patrols but the death and destruction would be very, very, very heavy doing what we should and probable political suicide. When you unleash a MEU or MEF it is an almost un-friggin'-believable force of nature and once unleashed it should be let alone until the mission is accomplished. That, in and of itself, would have reduced the need of more boots on the ground but that same force of nature scares the ever loving s**t out of politicos.

Oh well, it'll be an unhappy day for someone when we get drilled here at home again and truly, truly unleash the Dogs of War. Diplomacy and police work are working so well you know. ;-)

Why stop at 1 million? Let's have sixty million, so we can watch every Iraqi all the time - 8 hour shifts. That'd stop them.

Who is Richard Cohen anyway? Where did he serve and why am I supposed to believe his military expertise? What is he willing to give up to get the extra boots on the ground?

I believe we held an election, and GWB was re-elected president, not Richard Cohen. This was after the invasion of Iraq. If the public insisted on a change of direction, it could have elected John Kerry. (I'm not sure which John Kerry or what direction we would have gotten, but that's another issue.)

Who knew that journalists were infallible? Next war, let's ask them what to do.

Hey Mark, did you read (or listen to) Yon's latest on the whole "civil war" issue? I really like the guy and love his stuff but I have a hard time agreeing with him on some points. Webb's take is more like my own I guess but at least there are some folks out there that put it all on the line to find stuff out. Versus sitting in an Ivory Tower making s**t up! ;-)

OOPS! Sorry, West's take is more like mine!

I was reading W.E.B. Griffin's new one and got confused. Heh!

Senility: a mind is a terrible thing to have wasted! :-o

I was going to say... WEB??? Huh?

That man is a mental train wreck.

Cohen, if I'm not mistaken, served in the National Guard during VietNam. He is famous for comparing his 6 month stint to Bush's 2 years flying fighter jets.

Yeah. Uh-huh. All National Guard service is alike in the Gospel According to Richard Cohen, whether you dish up chow for 6 months in the cafeteria or risk your life flying sorties for 2 years.

It'd be nice to have more boots in the service but Congress would never pay for that which brings us in a full circle. That and the various branches just have to have their new billion dollar toys etc.

There was a good piece in Foreign Affairs that I was reading on the plane from somewhere...Georgia? I forget. I was going to write about it before the heavens opened up and dumped a load of ... well, you know... on my desk. Maybe I will later this week, JAD. You people need to quit switching monikers - you're driving me to drink.

Have a beer on me Cass

Thanks - don't mind if I do :)

Why shucks M'am, I don't hardly change monikers a tall! :-o

'Sides, JustADad has such a nice ring to it don't cha' think? ;-)

JHD met his demise. Long Live JHD!

And Conch Republic Rum! :-)

Well, except at Matt's place who will not accept the new moniker for some reason. And yes, I went in and tossed my cookies but it still keeps coming back to JHD.

I like the comparison of Hezbollah to the Imperial Japanese Army of WWII. Let's see how that turned out - oh, right, the Imperial Japanese Army no longer exists, because we killed most of them, albeit at cost to ourselves. And here I thought that asymmetrical warfare took away the advantages of firepower and technology. Maybe Hezbollah has a different manual that says that standing their ground is a good idea.