Wednesday, November 28, 2007

"NATO Airstrike Kills 14 Afghan Road Workers"

NATO Airstrike
The "Rumsfeld Doctrine" continues to fail.
Reliance on hi-tech weapons systems, at the expense of boots on the ground, now can be assailed by three case-study counterexamples:
U.S. effort in Afghanistan
U.S. effort in Iraq
Israeli effort against Hezbollah/Lebanon (2006)

The purpose of war is to achieve a lasting peace, in most cases by imposing your will upon the enemy. If the enemy be a conventional army, weapons can enforce your will, compelling the enemy army's surrender.

If your enemy be a popular political movement using 'asymmetric warfare' tactics (i.e., guerilla warriors), weapons systems can only blow things up, not achieve a political success.

Air power is a blunt instrument. It cannot hold ground or control territory. It cannot impose our will on our adversaries. It can only blow things up, and that fairly indiscriminately. Every civilian we blow up with air power provides propaganda to recruit yet more guerilla fighters to oppose us.

The Pentagon is addicted to high-tech weapons systems, which, while perhaps appropriate to fight the Soviet Army, are completely inappropriate for the wars we are currently waging.

If Los Angeles or Detroit or St. Louis experienced the civil disorder seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, we'd mobilize the Nat'l Guard to restore order, imposing martial law if needed, with boots on every street corner.

We've not the man-power resources to marshall this response in our current imperial enterprises.

W's wars are failures. Say it loudly and often.

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