So, Richard Meyers and Donald Rumsfeld support the OP. They ought to know. OTOH nobody likes to be criticized. It’s only natural to strike back at one’s critics.
My opinion is that much of the criticism is uninformed or malicious. How can people who don’t know the plan criticize the Pentagon for changing it? How can the military be criticized for starting the war with too few ground troops when therehasn’t been any sort of defeat or disaster and casualties are low? How can people complain with a straight face that 12 days of rapid progress is too long or we’re in a quagmire?
Whether unfair, inaccurate backbiting actually hurts the war effort is a separate question. Not having served in the military, I would invite others to opine on it.
There’s not knowing the plan, and there is making an educated guess about what the plan would be based on what we do know. Blind trust is for dictatorships.
And of course they have no agenda themselves of the ass-covering variety. Why on earth would you even consider taking their word for something that so directly affects them?
I’d MUCH rather take the opnion of the commanders in the field whose men’s lives are at stake or retired experts with no visible axe to grind over a self-serving politician trying to pretend everything is going like clock-work.
Every day I see interviews with people in the field conceding that the plan was hopelessly optimistic in timetable and assessment of enemy tactics and civilian response. To pretend otherwise is just wilful ignorance.
[flippant]well, gotta fill up that 24/7 coverage somehow, especially since the nets have no intention of showing images of civilian casualties that might mess up our sense of righteousness.[/flippant]
The ‘rolling start’ and the limited number of troops apparently flies in the face of several assumptions underpinning tradtional military strategy (such as 3:1 ratio of attackers to defenders). It seems perfectly natural that retired field commanders might disagree with this strategy. Doesn’t mean they are right, necessarily, but they are certainly entitled to express their opinions. Actually, it’s been kind of fun to watch pundits like that creepy Hackworth on CNN backpedal again and again as their second-guessing on tactics proves to be off the mark.
Besides, the time to crow about how wonderful the plan is would be after we have taken Baghdad and counted up the toll of lives lost (both civilian and military). That time is not quite yet.
We’re seeing this conflict mainly on TV, and most of the stories we see on TV are resolved in an hour or less. Seems simple enough.
I see nothing in the OP that explicitly states what the harm is in second-guessing Rumsfeld’s (oh, sorry, now it’s Tommy Franks’) war plan. I say, let 'em criticise. This war should never have been launched in the first place. Whether or not “casualties are low”, hundreds of civilians are dead, and thousands more injured, at the hands of American weapons. Is there really nothing at all worth criticising in this conflict?
Really? I’ve not seen any interviews with people serving in the field criticizing the war plan. The criticism I’ve seen has come from a few anonymous people now in the military, as well as a few former former military officers, some analysts and some pundits. I wonder why Tagos has the mistaken impression that commanders in the field generally feel that the war is going badly? Does he watch too much BBC?
I agree that Meyers and Rumsfeld have an agenda, but they’re not the only ones. There are people in the Army who don’t like Rumsfeld’s focus on air power and light, high tech weapons. It’s in their interest to undermine Rumsfeld. Media people are looking for a story line. It’s in their interest to focus on controversy.
There’s something to be said for presenting plans in a positive way in order to promote morale among the troops.
You could try this. Shelling and cluster-bombing a village is completely unacceptable behaviour no matter what. It’s even more stupid if you are trying to win hearts and minds.
How many future Bin Ladens did this create?
Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind, which I say with no glee at all. i’m just sickened by this sort of thing and nauseated by people who think its okay to massacre civilians from a distance to attack military targets instead of doing it with troops.
And no - I do not accept that bombing civilians who may or may not have been near a legitimate military target to save allied lives is an acceptable moral argument, particularly when politicians are banging on about minimising civilian casualties and winning hearts and minds.
Well, why am I not surprised you have seen nothing to disturb your smug satisfaction with the pink-skyed world you inhabit.
You play you hear-no-evil, see-no-evil little games while families are being diced by cluster bombs. You stick to Fox or whatever propaganda source you consider news. Have you tried one of these new “la-la-la, i’m not listening hats”? Possibly add in a pair of dissent sensitive sunglasses?
All three major terrestrial channels in the UK routinely carry such items as do the better quality press. British officers around Basra are particularly excoriating about the trigger-happy, brute force approach of the US troops, which is completely unsuitable for winning hearts and minds.
And no - there’s NOTHING to be said for spinning away criticism of plans that jeopardise troops and put the rest of us at risk from the dragons teeth terrorists it sows.
As in your bizarre world, opinion pieces count as hard facts try this with regards to the checkpoint incident.
It may also be “indicative of a bigger problem” within the alliance: one of attitude and assumptions. Both US and British officials have acknowledged that Iraqis have proved a more formidable enemy than anticipated. For all the promises to avoid civilian casualties where possible, some American conduct has been described by British servicemen and officers as needlessly aggressive. One British victim of “friendly fire” spoke of an American pilot behaving like a “cowboy”.
The vocabulary of leading members of the Bush administration has done nothing to temper the impression of undue belligerence. Earlier US remarks to the effect that activities such as peacekeeping were for “wimps” hardly helped. If the campaign in Iraq is to be as humanitarian in intent as we were led to believe, the Americans must take more care with their words, as with their deeds.
The British army prides itself, with justification, on the precision, guile and forbearance that it acquired in Northern Ireland. The signs are that these skills are proving valuable in Iraq, and will become more so as the war proceeds. But we should not forget that these techniques were hard-won and that there were many deaths, injuries and just plain errors along the way.
The price of excessive or indiscriminate belligerence is high. And in Iraq, where the professed aim is to liberate, the price of failing to observe our self-imposed rules of restraint will be even higher. US and British forces must do their utmost to ensure that these first checkpoint deaths are also the last.
Just as you play hear-no-evil, see-no-evil little games while families are being diced in plastic shredders.
That’s interesting. We don’t seen much of that here in the US.
I can’t get this link to open.
No doubt some official have found that to be the case. Others have said that there was a range of possibilities, and the level of ferocity was worse than the optimistic end of it. The important thing, according to this group, is that the plan will deal with the actual level of Iraqi ferocity.
I don’t blame him. ISTM that there have been an unreasonable number of incidents where Americans have fired on Brits.
Can I just take this opportunity to object, again, to the idea that those against the war were completely ignorance of Saddam’s regime and the atrocities committed therin? Just like Milosovic, just like the Taliban, and just like Mugabe, a lot of us have been trying to bring these situations to public attention for years before various people decided it suited their political goals to pay attention to us.
You might have heard of Amnesty International. They aren’t the only one. They rarely play See no evil, Hear no evil games. They’ve got a file bigger than you on Iraq.
The war effort seems to be going just fine. The coalition is a leisurely one hour tank drive from downtown Baghdad. It would be nice to see this wrapped up so terrorist recruiters have to go back to the old sales pitches. I should note, I’m not sure that the fall of Baghdad will end the hostilities.
I don’t think the Third Infantry Division really cares what a retired Air Force officer has to say while filling dead air on a 24 hour news channel. Right now they’ve got the Medina Divison to worry about.
OTOH, bypassing all the cities with insufficient forces to wall them off has cost us some rear echelon casualties. Another heavy maneuver division would have brought more pressure to bear on the regime quicker.
What evidence is there that using ground troops–without air support–to attack an area filled with hostiles using human shields is going to limit civilian casualties? I don’t think prolonged gun battles involving RPGs, mortars, heavy weapons, grenades, and artillery are the best way to limit civilian casualties, IMO. In fact, the only way I can think to limit the casualties would be to use a knockout gas, or some other kind of weapon of mass unconsciousness.
Absolutely. I was protesting the UK arming of Saddam in the eighties when the US and UK govts were claiming him as “our son of a bitch” and pointing him at Iran for their termerity at throwing out our appointed dictator.
I want Saddam dead but I’m damned if i’m going to support the right of the US to attack whomsoever it wants on whatever specious grounds it can get room temperature IQ types to cheer along to, particularly when it is going to create more terror and inflame the ME.
I guarantee you that December and the rest of the ra-ra savages here were cheering Saddam on when Iran was the enemy-de-jour, turning a blind eye to his malignancy.
I guarantee you they weren’t out on the streets when the CIA engineered the coup (“my favorite coup as the organiser has said”) that put the Baathists in power.
Quote]There’s something to be said for presenting plans in a positive way in order to promote morale among the troops.
[/Quote]
Well, firstly the military has no doubt presented its plans to the troops “in a positive way” (surely the word you were thinking of was ‘propaganda’). Secondly, ex-military personnel have the right, as we all do, to express their opinions on the success, or otherwise, of military operations. Thirdly, I’m sure those actually executing those plans have their own opinions of how well the plan is working, based on their own experiences; most of them no doubt being good soldiers, I am equally sure we will not hear their opinions until long after the conflict is over.
Finally, I believe the point some of us are making here is that at this moment, we are considerably more concerned about the mounting civilian casualties than on nuances of military morale.
And what damn evidence is there that it does? None.
What evidence is there that cluster bombing villages slices and dices kids and creates bitter hatred? Hospitals and graves full.
The Brits seem to be managing in Basra without flattening the city with artillery or air-strikes.
But I forgot the SDMB war-monger motto.
“Better a thousand rag-heads die than one US soldier put in peril.”
Yea, bomb the fuckers back to the stone-age. Let God sort them out once he’s put the pieces back together.
If the US doesn’t lead the overthrow of Saddam’s regime, who do you think will? Tinker Bell?
I believe the only realistic way for the Ba’ath Party regime to be replaced is by US military power. The war is causing terrible hardship, but that ought to be weighed against the ongoing hardship caused by not having a war.
Whatever. Large endeavors are typically presented optimistically. E.g., LBJ said the Great Society would “eliminate poverty.”
I agree.
I agree.
Fair enough, but this thread is about nuances of military morale. BTW one can make a case that since the war will only end when the Coalition has total victory, a rapid Coalition victory will be better for Iraqi civilians. (OTOH this wouldn’t be true if the rapid victory were achieved by carpet-bombing Baghdad!)
Speak for yourself. I don’t know why I bother making a rational argument to someone who then resorts to name-calling and racist epithets. Collounsbury used to do stuff like this to decmeber. Perhaps you are reminiscing?
