I wanted to say that what the British did during GW II was ALSO damned impressive. I seriously doubt that any other European nation could have shown as much capability as our Brit cousins did…including France and Germany.
Its a shame that all that impressive military capability on both the US and the Brits part was in such a wasted cause ultimately (at least in Iraq). I especially feel for our Brit cousins wrt our Iraqi adventure. A wasted cause IMHO…but, FWIW it was still impressive.
Anyway, I’ll bow out at this point unless something more needs to be discussed. It was an interesting discussion.
It depends on whether you’re asking about valor or efficacy. It’s a time-worn principle of combat to concentrate superior forces at the engagement, or to quote Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, “get there the firstest with the mostest”. It’s less expensive in terms of men and materials, so for me that counts as more impressive than the guy who keeps having to fight himself out of a 1:3 hole because of crappy planning.
Which is precisely the reason you flat-out won that conflict. Conversely, it is also the exact reason you will, sooner or later, tuck tail and lose this one. I refer you back to what happened to Napoleon in Spain – which you yourself brought up in the narrow confines of an initial impressive victory. Not hardly. You win wars, not opening fireworks displays. For many of the same reasons the US overpowered the conventional Iraqi forces it was only the opening salvo. You certainly wouldn’t want to be a Frenchman is Spain shortly after that as Goya brutally, honestly and geniouslly portrayed in his Disasters of War* sketches. Incidentally, I’m sure you’re aware that conflict is the source of the word “guerrilla warfare.” Simply put, same as will happen to you yet again after you’ve shot your load.
Lesson: Historically, people fighting for their homeland end-up winning. It is only a matter of time. And time is always on the side of the rightful inhabitants of any invaded nation. Should be obvious to someone like you who, to this day, holds such a grudge towards our own Age Of Empire.
Of course, GW pére was actually an educated man with a keen sense of history. IOW, the antithesis of his uncultured son.
– highlights mine.
If only his son could read…or had gotten advice from Kreskin or my sorta, kinda, humble self.
*Warning: crude depiction of war. Done by one one of the most gifted painters on history mind you – thus their incalculable value. Guernica, IMO, pales in comparison. Not a Picasso fan anyway, give me Dalí any day of the week and twice on Sundays…but that’s for another thread.
I guess it all depends on what you consider impressive. To use an analogy with something I know about, making chips with feature sizes of .9 microns is impressive - unless compared to making chips with feature sizes of 65 nanometers, like we’re doing today. Better methodologies, better support, and more experience makes the impressive feat of yesterday ho-hum today. I think getting the job done is more important than being impressive.
IMO, the special forces riding horses to provide support in fighting the Taliban was damn impressive. I’m impressed by people who break the rules and do what it takes to get the job done.
The OP quoted ‘victories’. If you don’t understand the connection between having an victory objective and sending in troops, then you share the characteristics of the US leaders in Vietnam.As has already been posted, the US were never defeated in battle in Vietnam. Do you think they had an endless series of ‘victories’?!
And if the US didn’t invade Afghanistan to capture Bin Laden and smash his supporters, why did they invade?!
The Roman Empire lasted a hundreds of years. Roman citizens could travel all over their Empire, glorying in their achievements, seeing how they brought roads, viaducts, underfloor heating etc to the natives.
‘At this territorial peak, the Roman Empire controlled approximately 5 900 000 km² (2,300,000 sq.mi.) of land surface. Rome’s influence upon the culture, law, technology, arts, language, religion, government, military, and architecture of civilizations that followed continues to this day.’
Apparently the US don’t have quite the control in Iraq after their ‘crushing victory’:
Senator McCain Takes That Walk In Baghdad…With 100 troops, 3 Black Hawks and 2 Apache Helicopters For Protection
The report states: “The Taliban is back and has strong psychological and de facto military control over half of Afghanistan. The international community has failed to achieve stability and security in Afghanistan.”
You seem to lack a knowledge of history! :eek: The British did indeed have a huge budget, due to our successful conquering of about a quarter of the World. However you fail to mention France, Spain and Holland supporting the US.
Are you really comparing the US simply flying in troops and equipment with the British running America, India, Australia, South Africa etc by ship?!
As usual with successful victors, we held onto the territory for hundreds of years, trading and visiting our Empire. Even after it broke up, we kept good relations with the Commonwealth.
What conventional forces did the Afghans actually have? What backing? The Vietnamese were backed by China, the US backed the Afghans against the Soviets, the Russians were an enormous Empire and had a huge army to face Napoleon.
The main reason I mentioned it was to compare Bush to King George III. Which do you think is the most incompetent military leader?
This post is getting long, but I’ll pick a few more points:
You claim the Roman Empire were ‘Defeated by the Germans (who I might point out had a smaller military budget ) at the Teutoburg Forest. Also, I’m wondering who you feel they faced that were even in their league militarily.’
You sum up the Roman Empire achievements with one defeat? And of course both Afghanistan and Iraq were not ‘in the same league’ as the US.
You say about the Mongol hordes that ‘I’ll concede that their military exploits topped those of the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, though not for their invasion of Asia. More impressive (to me) was their conquest of Russia.’
‘Mongol Empire included large parts of Asia and parts of Europe as far west as Moscow and Kiev. Mongols killed millions and subjugated hundreds of millions even though their army probably never exceeded 250,000.’
And the Mongols didn’t have aircraft, warships, tanks, armoured vehicles, missiles, artillery, radar, satellites etc. Plus they held it for a couple of hundred years.
Finally you say ‘They WERE impressive from a purely military perspective. No other nation on earth today could wage such a war, so rapidly, with such support. None. THAT is impressive. The fact that our follow through in Afghanistan sucked donkey dick is beside the point that the INITIAL operation was solid…even brilliant. The fact that we should never have gone into Iraq at all is beside the point that the invasion was flawless and damned impressive…IMHO.’
And I repeat that you limit yourself to saying the US can move lots of military equipment faster than anyone else. Yes it can. And what has it achieved with all this expenditure?
Afghanistan has cost over 500 Coalition lives. No sign of Bin Laden, no removal of the Taliban nor reduction in drug production, nor any sign of lasting peace.
Iraq has cost over 3,500 US lives, plus hundreds of thousands of other deaths. No WMDs have ever been found and the US is stuck hoping there won’t be a civil war.
Finally please remember the genuine world-wide sympathy for the US after 9/11. Since then Bush has blown all that away in crap military ventures.
For example, Tony Blair has never come to the US to pick up his Congressional Gold Medal – the highest civilian award. Because he’s embarrassed to do so.
This from your closest allies!
This is why I challenge this thread and quote so many successful military examples.
re the OP I am not sure I think of the Military activity that began in October 2001 and ended with Tora Bora in December 2001 & removed the Taliban and put the Afghan government eventually led by Hamid Karzai in power as entirely a U.S. operation.
Many other nations (most notably the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara Afghans in the United Islamic Front themselves, and to a lesser extent the British and Canadians) played major roles - and the military victory such as it was not the U.S.'s alone. The quick disintegration of the Taliban power structure in the ~75%ish of the Country it controlled in October 2001 was brought on by a combo of air power, and ground troops – and these were overwhelmingly Afghan ground troops led by their own commanders with American coordinators.
I think conceptually it is more like the U.S. intervened in the Afghan Civil War and made sure their side won and established a government - than that the U.S. invaded and toppled and installed a new government via military action ala Japan or Nazi Germany or Iraq.
With all that said - yes I believe that when military scholars study the things that went right and what went wrong in the operation they will probably be “impressed” at the concept, casualties and speed of the operation
I don’t think that what the US achieved was nearly as impressive as others have made it out to be. The analogy of a marine kicking the crap out of a teenage bully, whether down the street or around the world is somewhat apt.
The United States is the worlds lone superpower. One of the things that the armed forces is designed and trained to do is take the battle somewhere, anywhere, else. That includes supplying support &c. To have done so in either Afghanistan or Iraq is not awe inducing.
Now, if another player on the world stage had done what the US military did, that would be impressive. The French, for instance. Or the Germans. But what we did was what our armed forces were supposed to do. Expected, but not a truly impressive feat. What would have gotten everyone’s attention would be if we had gotten our asses handed to us by two nations, neither of which had an army of any size or matter.
As to “victory”, the OP pretty succinctly lays out that the question being asked refers specifically to the initial invasion and toppling of governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. I personally don’t think that the US is going to come out of either of these ahead of the game. But actually being “victorious” initially and being “victorious” eventually are two entirely different things.
What a surprise, this thread instantly turned into a red V blue pissing contest. Ah well.
IMO, from a purely guns’n’bombs’n’boots perspective, the operations you quote were very impressive. In terms of getting all the necessary war-crap from US territory to within striking distance of the enemy, and then making use of them, it was all very competently executed - and despite what others may think, deploying kilotons of equipment from one side of the planet to the other and making sure that everyone ends up with the right vehicles, guns and ammunition to hand is brain-shatteringly difficult. Given the objectives and constraints they were set, the military did everything pretty well.
Could they have done better if they had a different set of doctrines? Almost certainly.
Could they have done better if the vast DoD budget didn’t prioritise enlarging the pork-barrel above military efficiency? Certainly.
Could any other nation (or group of nations) have pulled it off within a similar timescale? Absolutely not.
Considering their achievements relative to the resources made available to them and their enemies, are todays US armed forces the best ever? No.
Are the US armed forces the most powerful, the best equipped, and the ones you would want in your corner in a punch up? Yes.
Are they invincible? Hell no.
Moving onto the wider picture, was the wider policy within which operations were conducted an utter catastrophe? Could a smart teenager with a stack of books and a few months have worked out a better policy? Is the situation worse now than it was before? Is all the expenditure of blood, tears and treasure pretty much completely in vain? Yes to all of those.
Because Bin Laden’s presence there made it a political necessity before attacking Iraq. Bush and friends have never cared about capturing Bin Laden or smashing Al Qaeda. Quite the opposite; they need a bogeyman.
By the standards of Bush & friends, or everyone else ? Thanks in part due to the invasion, oil companies’ profits are way up, Saddam is dead, American debt is up, companies like Haliburton got billions funneled to them, we’ve got bases in Iraq, and a lot of Muslims are dead. The war has been a success in many way for Bush and his allies.
Part of the reason we won was many of them did not fight. They were not going to stand and fight against a country that spends so much time and money on war. They were going to get slaughtered. Both the Afghanis and Iraqis knew they would get killed. They did not fight.
No - clearly you did not achieve something impressive. Creating a murderous shit-hole quagmire which is looking like the worst US strategic defeat for a generation is not impressive - it is incompetent stupidity.
‘Impressive’ would have been winning quickly in a manner that set the stage for achieving strategic goals. That is what war is - the use of force to achieve political ends. If the manner in which force was applied defeats the strategic ends then it is a failure. The US has been defeated in Iraq and in the long term will probably be in Afghanistan for reasons directly derived from the manner of the ‘victory’ some here seem determined to scavage from defeat.
I’m not arguing for the sake of arguing, or to be a pedant. It’s important that people don’t just make up their own definitions of ‘victory’. It’s the first step on the road to self-delusion. No matter how much smashing and killing went on the initial campaign was the first step on the road to defeat.
We’re meant to learn from history - not repeat it.
I disagree. It’s perfectly possible to have a brilliant victory at the tactical or operational levels, even if the whole war turns into a crock of crap for strategic reasons. It doesn’t make sense to e.g. write off Case White or Case Yellow as failures just because Germany lost WW2, or to say that the Inchon landings were a failure just because the Chinese pushed the UN back to the 38th Parallel.
By that logic, Chiang Kai-Shek would be a brilliant military leader simply by having enough territory to continue retreating until the Japanese ran out of troops to garrison territory, and enough people to replace his soldiers almost as fast as they got slaughtered.
You are assuming ‘victory’ by definition. I’m saying there was no ‘victory’. It just looked like one to the uninformed and jingoistic. And the OP was clearly talking about ‘victory’ - not a mere winning of a battle in which one side didn’t make much of an effort to fight back.
All the US achieved was getting to Baghdad quickly. It did not defeat any army, it did not get control over a country. It achieved no strategic goals. It even failed to seize and hold arms and explosive dumps that now fuel guerilla warfare.
but if you want to define ‘victory’ as ‘being able to drive really fast while shooting yourself in the foot’, you go ahead. It’s still self-congratulatory delusion though.
We toppled a couple of tomato cans. It was no accomplishment at all, especially since our technology did all the work. Would shooting a rat with a bazooka be an “impressive” victory? That’s about what we did. Despite the self-deluded flag waving going on by some in this thread, any reasonably modern military could have occupied Iraq just as easily as we did. The UK could have done it. Israel could have done it. Russia could have done it. Chna could have done it. Hell, give me a baseball bat and I could do it.
I agree. The likelihood of you defeating the Iraqis with nothing but a baseball bat is about the same the likelihood of the Israelis, Russians or Chinese deploying any kind of noticeably military force to the Gulf and rolling it into Baghdad. The UK armed forces (aka the borrowers almost ruptured themselves just deploying out there and then rolling a hundred miles over the border into an area the US had already pacified.
The IDF struggled to advance a few dozen kilometres into Lebanon when faced with a few thousand Hezbollah guerillas. If they’d drafted the entire military-age population they could conceivably have tackled Iraq, if it wasn’t for the minor fact that their entire military is configured for short-range operations around their immediate borders and Iraq is a long way away.
China? Similarly, no chance. They could fight a war in Iraq better than the US could fight a war on the moon, but not by much.
