.U.S. strategy in Iraq war is working
War is such a terrible, destructive enterprise that man would be much better off if we did not participate in such adventures. The problem is that there are people out there who, for various reasons, figure they ought to rule the world. What is worse, they get large groups of other people to buy into what they want -- followers who have very little to gain and a lot to lose, including their lives.
So when war is thrust upon you or your country, how do you win that war in the most efficient way possible and with the least cost in both property and lives? In the movie Patton, the general tells the soldiers that you do not win a war by dying for your country but by getting your enemy to die for his.
There is some truth in that statement, but there is more to it than that. It takes "stuff" to win a war -- arms and ammunition and other materiel. It takes "stuff" to kill and injure a lot of people.
Wars are won by taking away the enemy's ability to fight, or the "stuff" they need to wage the war. Grant did exactly that to Lee in the Civil War. When Grant took over the Army of the Potomac, he tried several frontal assaults on Lee with disastrous results. He then slowly began to surround Lee's army, cutting Lee off from his supplies.
Meanwhile, Grant sent Sherman into the South to march from Atlanta to the sea. Sherman's army was to chew up the South, burning crops and destroying factories and railroads and anything the South could use to wage war. When Lee surrendered, he still had 40,000 troops in the field, but they were starving and without supplies.
In World War II, the first target of the Allied bombing campaign was the German-controlled Ploiesti Oil Fields in Romania. You can't run a mechanized army without oil.
Gen. MacArthur was the absolute master of this strategy. He destroyed Japanese outpost after outpost without firing a shot. He simply went around them, cut off their supplies and left them to rot. He was quoted as saying starvation was his ally.
The war on terror has its similarities with past wars. If you are going to take out a large group of Americans, it takes "stuff," and that "stuff" of 9/11/01 was commercial airplanes. That was a sucker punch, and we all know it is not going to happen again. We have better security, hardened cockpit doors, pilots who won't leave the cockpit and carry guns, and, as a last resort, American passengers who will put the plane into the ground as they did with Flight 93.
You then need weapons of mass destruction, for want of a better term. I am sure the U.S. government is watching very closely the legitimate makers of chemical, biological and nuclear materials, making sure those products do not fall into the hands of terrorists.
So where do bin Laden and al-Qaida go for their "stuff"?
It was not too hard to connect the dots to Iraq immediately after 9/11, and it does not matter if Saddam had those weapons at that point in time. Left alone, even with sanctions, he eventually would have had them and we would have been the recipient of some kind of device sooner or later.
The war in Iraq is just a battle in the war on terror. We are in Iraq to cut off the supplies of "stuff" to the terrorists. There may not have been any obvious connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, but do you think these people write inter-office memos to each other?
The U.S. strategy is working. Remember how quickly Col. Gadhafi of Libya gave up his nuclear program when he saw Saddam crawl out of his spider hole?
There also has to be a hesitation factor on the part of some countries in that area that if we find they are supplying terrorists we may put that government in a spider hole next.
The terrorists knocked down two buildings on 9/11, and we took two countries away from the terrorists: Afghanistan and Iraq. Knock down some more buildings and there may be some more countries no longer safe havens for terrorists.
Let us not forget that this mess started with the unprovoked killing of thousands of innocent Americans by a group of Middle East terrorists. Should the United States have done nothing, or should it have taken action to stop this kind of nonsense?
Pressconnrcts
Working?
So when war is thrust upon you or your country, how do you win that war in the most efficient way possible and with the least cost in both property and lives? In the movie Patton, the general tells the soldiers that you do not win a war by dying for your country but by getting your enemy to die for his.
There is some truth in that statement, but there is more to it than that. It takes "stuff" to win a war -- arms and ammunition and other materiel. It takes "stuff" to kill and injure a lot of people.
Wars are won by taking away the enemy's ability to fight, or the "stuff" they need to wage the war. Grant did exactly that to Lee in the Civil War. When Grant took over the Army of the Potomac, he tried several frontal assaults on Lee with disastrous results. He then slowly began to surround Lee's army, cutting Lee off from his supplies.
Meanwhile, Grant sent Sherman into the South to march from Atlanta to the sea. Sherman's army was to chew up the South, burning crops and destroying factories and railroads and anything the South could use to wage war. When Lee surrendered, he still had 40,000 troops in the field, but they were starving and without supplies.
In World War II, the first target of the Allied bombing campaign was the German-controlled Ploiesti Oil Fields in Romania. You can't run a mechanized army without oil.
Gen. MacArthur was the absolute master of this strategy. He destroyed Japanese outpost after outpost without firing a shot. He simply went around them, cut off their supplies and left them to rot. He was quoted as saying starvation was his ally.
The war on terror has its similarities with past wars. If you are going to take out a large group of Americans, it takes "stuff," and that "stuff" of 9/11/01 was commercial airplanes. That was a sucker punch, and we all know it is not going to happen again. We have better security, hardened cockpit doors, pilots who won't leave the cockpit and carry guns, and, as a last resort, American passengers who will put the plane into the ground as they did with Flight 93.
You then need weapons of mass destruction, for want of a better term. I am sure the U.S. government is watching very closely the legitimate makers of chemical, biological and nuclear materials, making sure those products do not fall into the hands of terrorists.
So where do bin Laden and al-Qaida go for their "stuff"?
It was not too hard to connect the dots to Iraq immediately after 9/11, and it does not matter if Saddam had those weapons at that point in time. Left alone, even with sanctions, he eventually would have had them and we would have been the recipient of some kind of device sooner or later.
The war in Iraq is just a battle in the war on terror. We are in Iraq to cut off the supplies of "stuff" to the terrorists. There may not have been any obvious connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, but do you think these people write inter-office memos to each other?
The U.S. strategy is working. Remember how quickly Col. Gadhafi of Libya gave up his nuclear program when he saw Saddam crawl out of his spider hole?
There also has to be a hesitation factor on the part of some countries in that area that if we find they are supplying terrorists we may put that government in a spider hole next.
The terrorists knocked down two buildings on 9/11, and we took two countries away from the terrorists: Afghanistan and Iraq. Knock down some more buildings and there may be some more countries no longer safe havens for terrorists.
Let us not forget that this mess started with the unprovoked killing of thousands of innocent Americans by a group of Middle East terrorists. Should the United States have done nothing, or should it have taken action to stop this kind of nonsense?
Pressconnrcts
Working?
posted by madtom at 10:58 AM
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