I must see that movie. I watched a BBC documentary that had a really great bunch of info about the Canadian on-site commander who was there whilst the slaughter was ongoing…
Sorry for the hijack…
Apparently there has been a peace treaty in Sudan now. Also, maybe the Europe didn’t want to send lots of soldiers to die in Sudan.
That bears repeating. France and Great Britain are the only European nations with significant power-projection capability. Germany certainly has none to speak of. And the rest of Europe can’t do much more than move light infantry (in very small amounts) to a combat zone and sustain them there without…American logicstic support. That is one of the reasons that the A400M project is so important to Europe, and why its shaky standing has some of the larger players eyeballing the C-17.
I think its not lack of money that stops Europeans from having “expedicionary” capabilities… but political decisions/constraints. Peacekeeping in the past has always been with a very limited number of troops…
They might be rethinking it… but european defense budgets aren’t that measly I think… its the US that overspends and badly. The US is trying to be dominant in way too many places and technologies… and that is a hard thing to do and eventually will be impossible once other countries increase even slightly their budgets.
As for the Stryker vs Bradley... the Bradley doesn't have to be a "tank"... but if he is priced like one... he certainly should be a bit better. I think the Stryker will be great for conventional war... but they seem a bit weak for the current situation in Iraq.I suspect it’s mostly that modern European military forces were designed for NATO operations, which for decades meant preparing to fight World War 3 against a Soviet tank invasion. If the war’s right in your own country, you don’t need long-range strategic airlift capability. The US military during the same period was designed to fight the same war, but that required getting a lot of men and materiel across the Atlantic in a hurry, and its airlift capability was developed accordingly.
Oooh, logic. Scary.
So to stoke the militech debate, in the news today: Bradley detroyed by roadside bomb. CNN article
We lost an Abrams not too long ago to a IED, and Israel lost a Merkava to an IED. Short of not being near an IED when it is detonated, I don’t know of any defense against them. Even the specialized vehicles, like the Buffel and whatnot, don’t do well against IEDs.
And that isn’t to sound like a Bradley apologist or fanboy, but what IFV is better? Which IFV is better armored, faster, better armed, lighter, et cetera, than the Bradley series?
Yes indeed, how much armor and weaponry do you really need to protect you when you’re trying to win the populace’s hearts and minds?
From the CNN cite by CarnalK
I don’t see how this really tells us much of anything about the capabilities of the Bradley. A blast capable of flipping a 50,000+ pound vehicle over is quite a large blast. I doubt an M1-A2 could have survived that, though perhaps the crew would have lived in the more heavily armored MBT. The Bradley is a lighter armored vehicle…its certainly not meant to be invulnerable to something that powerful.
Besides, I think Jake the Plumber has fled the issue due to lack of anything resembling REAL evidence against the Bradley…just his gut feeling that its a over priced piece of shit. I say let it go.
-XT
From the same article:
Bolding mine.
Let me guess your response: “LIELIESLIES! These people are deluding themselves or just lieing!!”. Close?
-XT
“… those are tools of someone who is not popularly supported.”
Like Bush ? He also resorted to violence to fix things. I wonder what this general thinks they would do if they were popularly supported ? Wait for elections while americans sponsor their own candidates ?
Also interesting in the CNN article:
So it seems the insurgents are intent on keeping the US forces “thin”, not exclusively terror actions.
So, you are saying that Bush’s methods are like those used by the ‘insurgents’? Interesting.
As for the rest, if it were popularly supported you’d see a lot more of the population up in arms…a lot more local support. You, as well as many others, seem to think that the current level of this insurgency is bad. Compared to how it would be if it had POPULAR support though its a cake walk. It doesn’t take that many folks to make and plant roadside bombs, or to ambush patrols, or stage car bombings in busy markets…only a dedicated few.
With POPULAR support though they could go after the US bases in earnest, be a hell of a lot more disruptive than they are currently being, completely shut down the interrim government. You know, do all those things the VietCong used to do to us during that war. Stage not only raids but actual uprisings in all the major cities at once for instance, bring in DIVISIONS of troops to stage battles, engage in battalion or even company level engagements on a regular basis…things like that. That they aren’t doing so, that they are resorting to terrorizing the populace instead to try and stall or completely crush the elections is a telling point…don’t you think RM?
Perhaps the majority of Iraqi’s ARE waiting for the elections to try and see how installing a new government peacefully works out for them. Or did that not occur to you?
-XT
That’s a WAG isn’t it? In the bit I quoted above you’ll see there have been ~70 attacks per day over the last week, what’s your estimate if it was popular?
But maybe that could get hashed out in the Legitimacy of the Iraq invasion/occupation vs. legitimacy of the insurgency thread?
Sorry to be blunt… but you must think insurgents are stupid? “Engaging in Battalion level” for what ? Saddam’s best revolutionary guards did that… and they certainly didn’t get much out of it. Quite the contrary. Americans despite the idiocy of their president still have the best military in world, no ?
Mao talked about Revolutions eventually growing to military units actions… but Iraq has been “revolting” only a year and a half. Plus the fact that there are so many factions and varied interests. Even if 25% of Iraqi men took up arms they wouldn’t manage to get anything large going even if they could muster huge number of men due to lack of coordination and willingness to cooperate. Then they would get slaughtered anyway.
As for the popularity its hard to determine… but the insurgents don’t exist in a vacuum. Someone is sheltering them… covering them… many others aren’t ratting on them. They do seem more “popular” than trigger happy GIs… and that isn’t a good sign by itself. A “determined few” is all it takes apparently.
Engaging in anything but small hit and run is lunacy. You must be assuming that if they want to kick out the US army that they should be doing much more... but I don't think you kick out the US army with military action... but by for example creating an intolerable security situatio. So by your criteria they sure are failing in driving out the US... but I think your criteria are off.It worked for the VietCong. The disparity in force from a technological perspective isn’t that different in the two situation. The difference of course is that there were a hell of a lot more VietCong (and regular NVA formations) than there are Iraqi insurgents. They had a lot more backing from the general population as well. Which was kind of the point I was trying to make. I think that if they COULD stage larger raids (perhaps not at the battalion level but company strength raids on our bases) they would.
The difference, again, is that the insurgency is fragemented. There is no unified ‘Iraq Insurgency™’…there are a lot of little regional insurgents battling it out in their small sector of Iraq. BTW, if 10% of Iraqi men took up arms (there are something like 28 MILLION people in Iraq you know? Even discounting women and children thats a lot of potential soldiers) you’d have over a million men under arms…I’d say thats a pretty huge number. Even at 1% you’d have over a hundred thousand. Even THAT number would be a lot of effective soldiers…nearly as many as we have currently deployed to Iraq in fact.
You have any evidence that they are more popular than ‘trigger happy GI’s’ or are you just guessing there? That seems the popular image on this message board, but I’ve yet to see any real evidence one way or the other…just anecdotes from people over there and blogs, and some polls which go both ways.
As to the shelterning thing, its a point. I think it varies from group to group. Its pretty obvious that in Fallujah the tactic was to terrorize to populace into compliance through torture, execution and hostages. In some of the Sunni areas I have no doubt that the local insurgents or former Saddam loyalist types are being happily housed by a grateful populace. Since we are talking tribal factions you wouldn’t get much ‘ratting’ out of these folks by their own people.
I’ve said before that the only goal these folks have in common is to break America’s will to remain. They can certainly do this with ‘small hit and run’ type raids, but they better be prepared for the long haul. It wasn’t until the VietCong really got active with Tet and other large scale things that the US citizens finally started really thinking the war couldn’t be won. If the Iraqi insurgents are willing to wait for a decade (assuming you are right and the only reason they don’t want to stage larger raids is because they are ‘smart’ and I’m just being stupid), then they also may have to contend with a stable Iraqi government by that time.
As for them driving out the US out…well, I dont see that happening except on this message board. Afaict the US resolve to stick it out hasn’t begun to waver yet with the average citizen. Maybe you are seeing something I’m not though.
At any rate, I’ve listed why I don’t think the fragemented insurgency has the general popular support of the Iraqi people. Maybe you could go into your explaination as to why you DO think it has that support instead?
-XT
Not to speak for him but I don’t think he made that claim(unless you are referring to a post I missed?):
ISTM Rashak Mani is just saying that there has to be some support. The point you might want to contend is whether they “seem” more popular than US patrols. IMHO 