i was watching a show on the war in Iraq, and the narrator described how new and innovative shock and awe tactics are , i know the general idea to shock and awe, using superior tech, and and rapid deployment, but could someone give me details?
Shock and awe tactics are really nothing more than a new wording for combined arms warfare or blitzkrieg. I suspect Rumsfeld dreamed up the name to give the impression he had developed some new innovative form of tactics. The basic(over-simplified) idea of modern combined arms tactics or blitzkrieg if you like, is to use highly mobile armored forces with equally mobile supporting infantry, closely coordinated with air and artillery support, to strike at the weakest point in the enemy's defences. Concentrating your firepower at this point, you break through the line and rapidly drive to the rear area of the enemy, disrupting or destroying his command, control and communications as well as his logistic support.The idea is to do this with such force and speed that he will be unable to effectively counterattack or reorganize his defence and thus collapse on a broad scale. In a classic battle this would allow for a large scale encirclement of the enemy force whereupon larger, but slower moving follow on forces would complete the encirclement, then effectively destroy the enemy in what the German's called a Kesselschlacht(loosley, annhilation in encirclement). The faster mechanized forces would then continue the pattern as rapidly as possible until the total collapse of the enemy. Modern armies are fully mechanized, with vastly superior command and control and should therefore be able to complete these cycles of encirclement much more rapidly. Follow on forces would still be necessary, however, for the purposes of mopping up and securing the battlespace. In the invasion of Iraq, the Iraqis had no significant forces to encircle and destroy, so the logical step was to drive directly towards the center of government, Baghdad, and topple it. We did this with extraordinry efficiency. Rumsfeld erred, however, in his refusal to heed the advice of the Army General staff and bring large follow on forces. I believe General Shinseki(spelling?),among others, expected a follow on force of 200,000-250,00 to be sufficient. His advice with ignored and here we are today.
Panzerspies: Well said. Long ago, I served under then-Lt. Col. Shenseki (sorry, it has been many years and I do not remember the proper spelling). He was a good officer back then. When wartime leaders ignore the advice of competent military officers we end up with Stalingrad's and Baghdad's. Of course, we shouldn't have been in Iraq to begin with.
>> I was watching a show on the war in Iraq, and the narrator described how new and innovative shock and awe tactics are , i know the general idea to shock and awe, using superior tech, and and rapid deployment, but could someone give me details? >>
First of all it's a complete and total fabrication. Because the U.S. was busy reducing whatever was left of the Iraqi air defenses /long/ before (30-60 days) we began going downtown. Secondly, my understanding of shock and awe was that it was specifically a psiops activity related to the first night of the war in Baghdad. As such, you had TV reporters from everywhere comparing it to Dresden while the /look/ was more that of a Las Vegas 'Pirates' show.
Which is to say great entertainment but mostly fluff. Only idiots bomb buildings emptied of their equipment long before. Only idiots pretend that having the bombs go off 'all at once' for drama's sake makes a difference when the enemy has no intention of defending the targets to begin with (shock being a simultaneous impact effect in military parlance...).
I myself am less 'awed' than sceptical as to the effectiveness of displays which do not invoke a literal fear of death by 'select example' as it tends to reinforce a psychology of _they missed_, whether on purpose or by incompetence, and this in turn tends to revalidate a sense of nationalism as pride in defiance of the As The World Watches Humiliation at not being able to fight back to begin with.
This was not helped in 2003 by the fact that we had been pounding the Iraqis 'as convenient' (for continued funding to be present in the Gulf*) for ten years and thus they already had lost all sense of their militaries ability to defend them and felt no 'shear effect' so much as a fingered chin sense of laughing off the overconfident Americans in a kind of mob psychology hysteria similar to the Londoner's response to the Blitz.
OTOH, Blitzkrieg, at least as classically practiced, has proven different than was shown. While attacks on Krakaw, Warsaw, Brussels, London, Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad were undertaken by German air forces, they occured largely /after/ the enemy maneuver and air forces were either separately engaged and/or bypassed as much as encircled. Tying the tactical airwar much more closely to the support of ground units advance with the exception of OCA and attacks on key bridges to channel the enemy.
When city attacks did occur, in support of Blitzkrieg ground actions it was with the deliberate intent of showing how extreme civilian casualty counts could result from continued political intransigence in prosecuting the military campaign.
Terror for real.
It should also be noted that the depth of intent and duration in their prosecution all greatly varied.
The attacks on Moscow being largely desultory (they couldn't even permanently shut down the single rail line)
The attacks on London occurring only because Fighter Command yielded the field and Bomber Command led the punch.
And the attacks on Brussels (which were brutal and deliberate) happened as part of a deliberate ploy to /draw off/ the AEF into a false front to the North of the primary penetration. Forcing the low countries to bow out early is what let the Germans secure their flanks and move quickly to cut off the AEF's escape from Dunkerque 'there but for Hitler'.
Only the Polish bombings, which were partly racial in their motivation and partly seen as a function of competitive 'coordination' with the Russians coming in from the East were truly undertaken in support of ground forces and then with the intent of /avoiding/ rather than supporting armored incursion.
Leaving the bombings of Leningrad/Stalingrad as the only direct support of ground force maneuver elements. Even here, they both break with established Kesselschlact doctrine in that both occured _without complete encirclement_ of the fixed objective as much as enemy maneuver force defending it. This made the cities defensive obstacles as much as occupational goals and destroyed the integrity of both campaign efforts to secure the center by controlling the flanks as had happened in the 1940 Blitz. In particular, the air fighting in Stalingrad had more aspects of bridgehead collapse than specific attempt to coordinate specific tactical support with ground forces in the city and this is also not characteristic of classic Blitz doctrine, if only because it is an acknowledgment of a lost-initiative status between what amounts to meeting-forces separated by a reinforced urban and river barrier.
Blitz is thus NOT 'S&A'. The latter fireworks display was functionally for the benefit of Western television as much as a selective decapitation effort.
As for the effectiveness of Blitz tactics in general, I would say that they are /highly/ overrated if the enemy fades and refuses to bleed for dirt.
Indeed one of the preeminent authorities on the subject** has gone so far as to largely dispell the myth of mechanized 'blitz' effectiveness by the Wehrmacht, largely because they didn't have the equipment to execute it nor the doctrinal intent to try.
The big problem tends to be that the forces involved display disproportionate mobility over range and end up venting as much as collapsing killsacks, largely because the followon forces and CS/CSS (infantry, heavy artillery and logistics, all horse drawn and footmobile for much of the Wehrmacht, for much of the war) cannot deploy rapidly enough to keep up with the armor units and so let the enemy escape.
Mind you, history has shown that highly trained armor, working in prolonged contact conditions (where they get to set the pace of the fight by how often they force the enemy to stop and play forlorn hope) frankly doesn't tend to these units until they _slow down_ to let the trains catch up and then you reach stalemate as the lines stabilize behind artillery or across vast portage distances.
Again, you can blaim Hitler and the OKW for most of this, particularly in the East.
Yet the same vulnerabilities were displayed in 2003 in that SPGs were left behind while towed artillery was too slow to be of much effect even as the Marines especially were moving up a highly predictable A/A and the logstics units for both attack axes were strung out along that same highway in such a way that airpower could not support it for the 20-40 minutes that they were available (why we were so 'thoroughly early' in instituting a DEAD campaign btw. tankers were over Iraq from Day 1).
Without effective screening forces to ward them off, leave behind/partisan elements, (reinforced by Soviet PO-2 air in WWII and by simple trucks in Iraq) messed up both German and American schedules rather effectively, forcing the Cav units in 2003 to loop back twice to clean out 'bypassed' threats.
Ultimately, 'we won anyway' but only because the overall operating depths were much shorter while the snake was both too large and too fast for the Fedayin to kill it by cutting off it's tail before Baghdad was swallowed by the head.
Had what is known today been of influence in 2003, it is likely that huge amounts of highly advanced ATGW and mines would have been flowing in from both France, China and Russia and efforts to deny passage would have been much more effective, from range. The Iraqis would have turned the eastern advance up the highway into one long chain of Festung cities and towns and the world would have hung us for 'slaughtering innocents' in continuous reduction of these small holdouts using direct fire with tank rifles as the most effective means of denying them roadoverwatch available.
Comparitively, small forces with more appropriate weapons (medium ATGW and light cannons on wheeled vehicles, supported by mortar carriers) using much smaller force metrics could have readily pushed or even been force-entry inserted to an airhead with similar overall results and far less dependence on long logistics columns. If nothing else, it is very likely that the Fedayin would have been far more willing to go toe to toe with these forces as 'the only targets available' as much as weaker and they still would have lost, because of airpower.
As such, I would say that S&A is less a triumph of might over right (notice that the Arab nations have been far less interested in staging or sheltering terrorism and with Iraq as a trouble magnet to send their rowdies to, kind of an inverse-Crusade effect has occured) than it is a case of pounding the square peg into the round hole regardless of it's efficaciousness to the scenario application.
Mostly this is because of politics.
We have been playing at the small mobile kampfgruppe style attack force since the 1980s and ALB-2000/Army-21 concept but the reality is that against 3rd world forces scattered and weakened by info attack, infiltration (select enemy leadership buyoff by SpecOps as much as hardkill) and continuous overhead air presence, more range and higher mph really is superior to conventional heavy units for covering large areas as an active cavalry/security force to speedbump enemy irregulars long enough to bring in airpower. In particular because similar forces with a larger infantry component can also be staged in through a forced-entry-becomes-APOD conditioned airhead.
The big problem is that even the smallest ground maneuver teams still take a LOT of air to replace the conventional ton:mile supplies of grounded logistics (Hummers were replacing as many as 5 tires a day out on the hardpack out west) and the AF is not interested in buying enough C-130J or C-17A to make that happen. Particularly when their drinking buddies in the Army are reaching around they shoulder to pull the knife out of tracked Armor which is to them what manned fighters are to the Air Force.
A meal ticket as much as doctrinal reason for being.
In fact, think it was General Shinseki who threatened to out a video showing a LOSAT going in the front glacis of an Abrahms and coming out the back engine grille, more or less the same shape, as blackmail to the trackheads in forcing a gradual switchover to 'Medium/Objective' brigade (Army On Wheels) concept.
And it was in turn the other Army Chiefs who refused to stand by him and be counted as a majority when the 'lets not wait to transfer in from Turkey' interests in the Administration had ol' 'Rick Was Right!' dismissed.
Being right without the back-scratch consensus of your own team in facing off with 'the real bad guys' on The Hill or White House doesn't mean diddly.
There is too much vested interest in pounding that square peg.
And so S&A became a parade banner behind which we all pretended it was 1940 all over again and we were 'proud to be Berliners'.
It does not make it Blitzkrieg tactics.
It does not make S&A the air campaign (especially First Night) anymore 'sudden' as much as 'linked' to the direct synergizing of the maneuver force advance than it was passing-convenient to ignore the fact that the real air war was already long since done.
It simply means that it was a propoganda label by which the public could be suitably impressed by the fact that the military have the largest discretionary budget chunk of any organization, in or outside of this country, and they tend to spend it on really cool toys.
Thus, in a way, YOU are Shock & Awe's most fortuitously effected victim.
CJ
* By inventing reasons every couple of years to pull stunts like Desert Thunder, Desert Fox and so forth, we ensured that Iraq's excommunication from public sale of petroleum would make the other producers rich in compensation and our own oil cheaper as a function of kickbacks. This was fine with the military as it justified a much larger 'BUR means nothing' standing force than was otherwise justified by the end of the Cold War.
[quote]By inventing reasons every couple of years to pull stunts like Desert Thunder, Desert Fox and so forth, we ensured that Iraq's excommunication from public sale of petroleum would make the other producers rich in compensation and our own oil cheaper as a function of kickbacks[/quote]
LOL ok. So why are we still paying three dollars a gallon?
>> LOL ok. So why are we still paying three dollars a gallon? >>
Three Reasons:
1. History becomes obvious only after it's secrets (or lies) are useless. The aforementioned actions occured in the 1990s when everyone was happy to believe that Saddam Hussein was 'the next Hitler', so long as it made them a buck. After awhile, particularly as no Arab powers were really taking part in the quarantine, our welcome guest presence became overstayed and then onerous and everyone wanted the defacto infidel occupiers off of Muslim holy dirt, not least because we were getting richer doing nothing. UBL (though I doubt if he is truly behind it) was first and foremost among these. September 11th, 2001 changed everything because it forced the U.S. from a regional containment/blockade action to a multinational, multi-theater, war footing which continues to suck money out of our economy faster than you can say illegal immigrant while doing next to nothing useful for the expenditure. Was sub-2 dollar gasoline and the decade of minivans and SUVs worth what we have now? No.
2. America is not a democracy, it is a republic. In a republic the only privilege the voters hold is the right to elect candidates whose voting power has already been paid for as much as nominated in political platforms whose planks are all held by the megarich. 'The land of the free' cannot ever be told by it's government that we are running what amounts to a protection racket against U.S. as much as a (monopolizing) resource profiteering scheme against Iraq. Not because the Arabs would be embarrassed. Nor because our own public is so innocent as to be irretrievably outraged at the nasty image our government projects of us. Certainly not because the ROW 'don't know already' exactly what kind of a defacto imperium the U.S. has become with it's outrageous resource consumption. But rather because the system of making wealth off the distributionist model of capitalism (resources here, manufacturing there, consumption here, you control the 'value' [profit margin] of each, independent of true thermodynamic efficiencies, by arbitrarily setting the _cost_ of powering/transporting them, via oil), would be seen as the monumentally inefficient waste that it is. Particulary in comparison to doing things at home with automation instead of abroad by slavery with shorter transport distances further enabled by a switch to renewables (America has something like 3,800TWH worth of yearly electrical needs, all of which could be supplied by turning North and South Dakota into giant windfarms). made things _more efficient_ without middlemen. It doesn't matter that, when 2% of the globes population hold 87% of it's wealth and the lower 50% of the rest of us hold less than 1%, there is a flaw in any system built on creation of multiple layers of complexity that is distributionist economics. The only thing that matters is pulling more money from the system so you can control more of what it's worth through banks. And for it all to happen, big business and government have to be in on it together. Without acknowledgement or care that the illusion of shared wealth in America is based on a reverse pyramid scheme whereby the working classes build an infrastructure based on resource dependency that the upper classes deliberately overexploit without alternative.
3. Supply and Demand. a. Big Oil gets richer by NOT investing in this nation's ancient oil refinement infrastructure so that they can charge for what demand states as a real need but what they do not want to create excess capacity to build a reserve against price fluctuations. It's the middleman law of starve your customer until you own his hunger as much as harvest (see Stalin in the Ukraine for how this works). That distributionist increases in the base-costs of transport drives the market value of every other good beyond purchaseability and thus shatters the economic system of 'growth' (spending) as a whole means nothing to them because they are about profits, not longevity.
b. Production Shortages. Even today, with no new major reserves being found, there is a 2 million BPD shortage that is generally 'overlapped' on a rotating quota system and China's industrial needs for power and transport grow by 10% every year. By 'rescheduling the schedule', Arabs, who are terrified of the thought of a democracy in the PG actually giving it's people a share of the oil profits as much as political power, can ensure that the wrong grade (winter = heating oil, summer = gas) at the worst possible pricing index hits our shores when we have the least excess capacity to refine it quickly. And in an unregulated American petroleum system, all pricing is based on what is IN the system, not what is coming soon. Of course, if that doesn't work, you can always send in the madman brigade to start blowing up new Iraqi oil production infrastructure as fast as it is installed. If the U.S. leaves Iraq, there is no value in the contracts to update, improve and 'manage' the extraction of her oil.
c. Diplomacy By Politics/Monetary Economics By Brute Force. Which is to say, with a lame duck president who is hated for his wartime leadership about to leave office, all anyone who wants us out of the Gulf has to do is continue to keep up the pressure so that the candidates can fall all over themselves in the rush to promise to be out of the Gulf soonest. And with The Big Lie held tight to the chest as to why we are really there, nobody in Washington sees any reason to stop knifing each other with false promises. Yet Iraq is floating on 18-30 TRILLION dollars worth of oil. Again, he who holds the infrastructure rebuilding and management contracts for that oil, effectively holds the pricing index on that oil and indeed has a chit to the OPEC table on what the rest of it will be sold at. Thus effectively TPTB say: "Go ahead and stop selling oil in USD. We will undercut everything you do sell, solely for our own needs, until the world HATES YOU as much as they do us." The greenback being the petrostandard of currency valuation by which our debt riddled economy is life preservered on a sea of crude (have to buy USD to buy oil means we set what the value of what you sell is by the availability of the money. It's the oldest 'bartering value for cash' confidence scam in the business).
The fundamental truth is that China wants an oil guarantee to sustain her slave production and home consumer markets simultaneously. When she has enough to do both, she intends to cut herself free of U.S. commercial trade and debt interests by revaluing her currency to the point where she can selfsustain. At which point it will be a '3Y' game of Yuan, Yen, Euro traded currency standards as the bar by which global economic growth indicators are set, permanently.
She seeks to gain that petro dominance through Iran with everything from missile and nuclear tech to 'secure her position' (as China's mouthpiece) to assistance in Iraq with the insurgency and exploitation of the North Korean and Taiwanese stalking horses to further bleed our will as much as our pocket book. In this, she is doing to U.S. what we did to the Russians in forcing a 'heroic image' of militant reactionism that mandates a largely useless, vastly oversized, military expeditionary posture without any of the Roman Reality of such a force: namely that it pay for itself with tribute.
Frankly, even if we succeed in holding onto Iraq, I'm not sure any blackmail through the petroleum distribution system will offset the above because our MASSIVE overseas debt (10-15% held by Saudi, as much as 60% by Asia in general) is only as good as there is not someone else better to 'invest in future penury' with and that is all about the independent currency standards of nations with decent investment and savings group fractions of own-controlled monetary value.
Living day to day, we have sold off everything in this country short of Real Property and when that goes, America will be a subsidiary of offshore interests (this is why the 100 billion dollar Eurobank bailout of the real estate/hedge fund fiasco is such a bad idea) and those debts will be called and defaulted in full. Something the Rich will not tolerate because they are too smart to lease debt to someone else' ultimate profit.
Indeed, probably the key 'barometer species' economic indicator will in fact /be the wealthy elite/. For they will flee like rats off the Titanic, taking their money with them and seeking what they see as being more stable as much as greener currency markets, about six months before any major U.S. Recession turns into rampant anarchy with shortages of everything. Which will, ironically, only speed the collapse as massive infusions of U.S. currency into foreign banks means printing more (the Greenspanian solution) only speeds the overall devaluation.
At that point, gasoline at three dollars a gallon will seem as vaporous a dream as the 1995 memory of $1.35 is now.
[quote]war footing which continues to suck money out of our economy faster than you can say illegal immigrant while[/quote]
Well this war is not pulling move from the economy. Because (little known fact cause the Dems never talk bout it) the U.S. Gov puts a portion of its budget into a kind of savings account just in case we do go to war, just so the war does not hurt our economy. FYI WAR actually helps our economy. Because it brings jobs, forces us to advance. This is a little trick we learned from the Roman Empire some several thousand years ago.
[quote]After awhile, particularly as no Arab powers were really taking part in the quarantine, our welcome guest presence became overstayed and then onerous and everyone wanted the defacto infidel occupiers off of Muslim holy dirt,[/quote]
UMMM, yeah, most of the arab nations were taking part of the quarantine. Why would they not. Iraq is only number 14 in the world for oil. Why p1ss off the world for number 14???
The only nations that did not abide by the quarantine were the ones that shared his beliefs. IE Sira and a few others.
[quote]war footing which continues to suck money out of our economy faster than you can say illegal immigrant while doing next to nothing useful for the expenditure. Was sub-2 dollar gasoline and the decade of minivans and SUVs worth what we have now? No.[/quote]
Read above. But in addition, even without Iraq's oil (which STILL is not being sold on the world market, and will not be sold within the next five years) we are dealing with higher gas prices because of the rest of the world.
[quote]2. America is not a democracy, it is a republic.[/quote] (and below)
I hate to insult someone, but you are an idiot.
The rest of your post is nonsensical. So I will not dignify it with a response.
Get away from the left and open your eyes.
But after all this we see you did not defend your "definition" of shock and awe. So we can now tell why you are here.
[quote]war footing which continues to s.u.c.k money out of our economy faster than you can say illegal immigrant while[/quote]
Well this war is not pulling move from the economy. Because (little known fact cause the Dems never talk bout it) the U.S. Gov puts a portion of its budget into a kind of savings account just in case we do go to war, just so the war does not hurt our economy. FYI WAR actually helps our economy. Because it brings jobs, forces us to advance. This is a little trick we learned from the Roman Empire some several thousand years ago.
[quote]After awhile, particularly as no Arab powers were really taking part in the quarantine, our welcome guest presence became overstayed and then onerous and everyone wanted the defacto infidel occupiers off of Muslim holy dirt,[/quote]
UMMM, yeah, most of the arab nations were taking part of the quarantine. Why would they not. Iraq is only number 14 in the world for oil. Why p1ss off the world for number 14???
The only nations that did not abide by the quarantine were the ones that shared his beliefs. IE Sira and a few others.
[quote]war footing which continues to s.u.c.k money out of our economy faster than you can say illegal immigrant while doing next to nothing useful for the expenditure. Was sub-2 dollar gasoline and the decade of minivans and SUVs worth what we have now? No.[/quote]
Read above. But in addition, even without Iraq's oil (which STILL is not being sold on the world market, and will not be sold within the next five years) we are dealing with higher gas prices because of the rest of the world.
[quote]2. America is not a democracy, it is a republic.[/quote] (and below)
I hate to insult someone, but you are an idiot.
The rest of your post is nonsensical. So I will not dignify it with a response.
Beware of anyone citing John Mosier as a 'preeminent authority'. AFAIK he is a literature professsor (poetry specialization) with no military experience, background or training whatsoever. While this does not disqualify him outright, he is part of the'revisionist' branch of 'historians'(I use the term lightly). His research is shoddy, he uses no primary sources, and is regarded somwhere between pathetic and a laughingstock by most serious historians and certainly by military professionals, where I have seen a number of scathing reviews of his other 'historical' works. BTW what's with all the sentence fragments, run ons and jargon abuse
>> Well this war is not pulling move from the economy. Because (little known fact cause the Dems never talk bout it) the U.S. Gov puts a portion of its budget into a kind of savings account just in case we do go to war, just so the war does not hurt our economy. FYI WAR actually helps our economy. Because it brings jobs, forces us to advance. This is a little trick we learned from the Roman Empire some several thousand years ago. >>
No. The anti deficiency legislation in place since, I dunno, 1898? Removes from 'the government' (as the Pentagon or any agency there of) the right to stockpile funds not duly voted and allocated to a given system or action within a given period. This includes the operations accounts.
Which is why Bush and Congress went to war over the nation's heartstrings with his idea of a 'surge' vs. Congresses notion of repealing operational funds that would have had U.S. forces realing from lack of moneys, sometime around July of last year.
>> UMMM, yeah, most of the arab nations were taking part of the quarantine. Why would they not. Iraq is only number 14 in the world for oil. Why p1ss off the world for number 14??? >>
Name the arab nation which flew missions throughout the ten years we ran ONW/OSW. Name the arab nation which permanently stationed troops in Saudi for that period. You can /allow/ something to happen (if it is an infidel) which is contrary to your religious or political philosophies. But you cannot endorse it. And it is against Islamic law for Muslim to fight Muslim. Why should they? When they can use American forces like self-paid mercenaries.
>> The only nations that did not abide by the quarantine were the ones that shared his beliefs. IE Sira and a few others. >>
I assume you mean 'Syria'. See above. If you are not holding a gun and making it clear that ALL Islam wishes Saddam to yield ALL his secrets, then you are not a part of the coalition enforcing the quarantine of Iraq.
Which is exactly what most Arab countries in particular wanted as an excuse not to be labeled a supporter of U.S. militarism.
>> Read above. But in addition, even without Iraq's oil (which STILL is not being sold on the world market, and will not be sold within the next five years) we are dealing with higher gas prices because of the rest of the world. >>
It's a thirty trillion dollar reserve, _right now_. 20 billion barrels worth of oil, assuming there are no changes in estimates of yieldable reserves after reserves are resurveyed.
The world is in a race with us. If we get Iraq stood up and operating as a nation under U.S. contract labor for production infrastructure and maintenance, we will own a chit on OPECs production price setting committee.
If we lose faith, our ability to control how and in what currency oil is sold will fade and the 'oil standard' which has held up a false (fiat) currency valuation for the USD will collapse, taking our massively debt riddled economy with it.
>> I hate to insult someone, but you are an idiot. >>
Strangely, I have not called you one. Nor have I called you insane. I appeal to the moderators to remove your post under 'using key words' not allowed.
That said, America is not a democracy. The operating definition of which is a government whereby decisions as to the management of daily decisions are undertaken directly by the people of their own acknowledge risk and right to self determination.
America is a republic by which _representative_ rule means that once the votes are in, there is no determinative means to control what our elected leadership does to abuse our trust in a short term period of 4-8 years wherein 'short wars' may be indulged in without thought to longer term consequences.
Those who think in the longer term realize that war profits only imperialism as a means to control peripheral resources and labor without the benefits of centrist social institutions and particularly individual human rights.
>> The rest of your post is nonsensical. So I will not dignify it with a response.
Get away from the left and open your eyes. >>
This is not an argument about left, right or center. It is an argument against the abuse of war as a seasonal sporting event method to ensure an entropic economic system which is in the process of destroying this nation.
The mistake is the assumption that capitalism and democracy are linked when clearly, _in our country_ they are not the same. But rather representative rule is used to leverage economics towards a system of exploitation across the globe in which 2% of the world's population own more than 87% if it's material wealth and the bottome 50% of that population (which continuues to balloon) owns less than 1%.
War is an offensive tool which is meant to amalgamate resources. Distributionist model capitalism is a pan-governmental parasitic system which 'creates jobs' as slave labor by isolating those same resources.
The sadness is that our present form of _non Democratic_ government endorses a politics of power diplomacy approach to resource control as debt leveraging which gives the largest chunk of our discretionary budget EVERY YEAR to the Military system which is used to enforce the very policy which it is optimized against.
Refusal to optimize energy usage when we can thieve what we need as a method of sustaining the wealthy classes is the first sign.
Next it will be water, food, landuse and genetic medicine.
And it all comes down to 'security' as endorsed by the military that intimidates rather than guards us.
>> Beware of anyone citing John Mosier as a 'preeminent authority'. >>
Beware of someone who has not read a book decrying it's contents, without even proffering his own examples as a cited counterpoint.
>> AFAIK he is a literature professsor (poetry specialization) with no military experience, background or training whatsoever. >>
He is in fact a professor at Loyola in New Orleans where he was (at time of publication) chair of English as well as associate dean of the department of Arts and Sciences.
This is not his first book on war. Nor, if I am to take your words literally, is it necessary that he be a soldier to comment authoritatively on it.
As my own counters to why being 'of military persuasion' is meaningless in an era of endless murky subspecialties:
When a fighter pilot cannot identify an Mi-24 from a UH-60 after flying over it's masthead.
When an AH-64 CPG cannot identify an M113 from an MLTB after spending 30+ minutes getting to within 800 meters of it.
When an F-16 pilot, having been told not to go over a certain region because it had noteable SAM activity the day before, in fact /reverses course/ to refly the same route. And is shot down for his troubles.
When an F-16 pilot, hyped on amphetamines, drops laser guided bombs on a troop of Canadians holding a small arms exercise and _in no way_ a threat to his jet, 15,000ft overhead.
There is no divine right to comment as the sole expert on a specific or general military topic solely inherent to wearing a uniform.
Because even those who should nominally be within their range of specialist knowledge, in the real world where it first and foremost MUST apply. Make horrific and deliberate mistakes of incompetence
IMO, given their record thus far for getting us into trouble we have had to fight a war out of, the only hope this planet has is giving 'the professionals' some offsetting deconstructive ego deflation.
For asking the pros to tell you what is and is not relevant to the condition of vicious brutality we call the art of war is like the farmer asking a fox what a chicken looks like.
>> While this does not disqualify him outright, he is part of the'revisionist' branch of 'historians'(I use the term lightly). >>
Quote or paraphrase a chapter from the book you specifically disagree with. I promise I will not run to the copyright police in arguing or accepting the point.
>> His research is shoddy, he uses no primary sources, and is regarded somwhere between pathetic and a laughingstock by most serious historians and certainly by military professionals, where I have seen a number of scathing reviews of his other 'historical' works. >>
Which basically an attempt by you to ride the wings of 'other military professionals and historians'. While making a sotto voce admission that 'having seen a number of his _other_ works' you do not feel compelled to comment directly on this one.
Why? Why can you not specifically cite a reference when you in fact have just impugned the author for not doing having done so?
Can it be you have no qualified arguments against the notion that _Blitzkrieg was by and large a Myth_?
Or is it simply that you don't know either way?
Because you have not read the book to know what his opinion is.
>> BTW what's with all the sentence fragments, run ons and jargon abuse. >>
Why not ask which sentences confuse you. Which jargon needs a particular explanation.
I do not abuse jargon. Jargon is it's own existence as an elitist terminologic invention by those who use it, in context, within their day to day professional existence.
If you would stop the jargon, stop the warriors who invent it. I didn't.
[quote]No. The anti deficiency legislation in place since, I dunno, 1898? Removes from 'the government' (as the Pentagon or any agency there of) the right to stockpile funds not duly voted and allocated to a given system or action within a given period. This includes the operations accounts.[/quote]
"Sec. 1341. Limitations on expending and obligating amounts
(a)(1) An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government may not-- (A) make or authorize an expenditure or obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure or obligation; (B) involve either government in a contract or obligation for the payment of money before an appropriation is made unless authorized by law; (C) make or authorize an expenditure or obligation of funds required to be sequestered under section 252 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985; or (D) involve either government in a contract or obligation for the payment of money required to be sequestered under section 252 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.
(2) This subsection does not apply to a corporation getting amounts to make loans (except paid in capital amounts) without legal liability of the United States Government. (b) An article to be used by an executive department in the District of Columbia that could be bought out of an appropriation made to a regular contingent fund of the department may not be bought out of another amount available for obligation."
In short, that is saying, that if during the annual defense budget review, they say, "Ok we need to allocate eighteen million dollars to be put away for future expenditures that are not yet apparent. Do you agree?"
"Yes, we agree."
"Cool."
If it is allocated, it is legal to do so.
While being as nice as I can, and in no way attempting to insult you. The rest of your post reads like the teacher from Peanuts.
This is the second time you've called me an unintelligible idiot. It is the second time you have said 'you hate to do so' yet still indulge in it without recourse to more intelligent debate.
It is also not the first time you took me off ignore to respond to my idiocy.
Your credibility as a judge of my mental faculties fades every time your seeming obsession in complaining about them sir.
As an illustration in my own opinion of you-
>> Well this war is not pulling move from the economy. Because (little known fact cause the Dems never talk bout it) the U.S. Gov puts a portion of its budget into a kind of savings account just in case we do go to war, just so the war does not hurt our economy. FYI WAR actually helps our economy. Because it brings jobs, forces us to advance. This is a little trick we learned from the Roman Empire some several thousand years ago. >>
>> In short, that is saying, that if during the annual defense budget review, they say, "Ok we need to allocate eighteen million dollars to be put away for future expenditures that are not yet apparent. Do you agree?" >>
I see a man who LIED when he said 'put away in a war chest'. And you made the definition of that LIE tangible and apparent when you backed it up with YOUR OWN OPINION of 'annual defense budget review'.
Because we don't work on a five year plan but rather a yearly budgetary conference.
Now, I'm sure that there is all manner of illegal and immoral budgetary shell-game misappropriation done by all branches of the Armed Services in direct wink-and-nod collusion with the U.S. Congress as part of an entirely RICO corrupted system.
Not least because there have never been any high level antideficiency actions brought against ANY major defense agencies, individuals or corporations, despite a MONUMENTAL evidentiary record of failed, over budget, programs.
And I have known this for many years.
But that doesn't factually change the statement that I made here-
>> ...largest discretionary budget chunk of any organization, in or outside of this country, >>
Because such rollback of appropriated funds into either developmental or ops accounts where long lead funding is NOT a given. Amounts to service-held private slush funds in direct contravention of several Federal laws. And indeed proves beyond all doubt my point of a horrific budgetary vampire feeding on OUR society with the lame excuse of 'preparing to fight' whatever Phantom Menace styled is labeled so in the wake of the last attack.
Now. Given you think I am the teacher from Peanuts, I want to see you Wah-wah your way out of this statement-
[quote]2. America is not a democracy, it is a republic.[/quote] (and below)
>> I hate to insult someone, but you are an idiot. >>
Not the rest of it because you wouldn't deign recognize my opinion with a properly reasoned counterpoint on a topic you invited my response to.
JUST THE QUOTED TEXT.
If you cannot reasonably prove to me that America is not a Democracy but rather a Republic, under the ORIGINAL (Greek and Roman) definitions.
As Power vested directly in the rule of the people by their vote on _everything_.
Vs. Power vested in the body politic until they are replaced by a 'duly elected' followon.
I will expect an apology for calling me an idiot. Or I will put you on 'Ignore'. And it won't go away.
CONCLUSION: There is no governmental responsibility to this Nation's electorate. There hasn't been for decades. Every problem promised a fix by a 'democratically elected' (republically ruled) official is ignored when the realities of a corrupt system grabs hold of every individual entering into Washington politics. Such is the basis of every problem in our government today.
Including the rampant abuse of the military as the largest discretionary budget awardee, year after year.
Such would not be the case if this nation were governed by a true Democracy.
[quote]It is also not the first time you took me off ignore to respond to my idiocy.[/quote]
Actually I believe it is, but I have spoken with a good number of people such as yourself on the Discover.com forums. So I could be mistaken.
[quote]I see a man who LIED when he said 'put away in a war chest'. And you made the definition of that LIE tangible and apparent when you backed it up with YOUR OWN OPINION of 'annual defense budget review'.[/quote]
Where did I lie? I stated something that actually happens, but did so in words everyone can understand. You then responded with. [quote]No. The anti deficiency legislation in place since, I dunno, 1898?[/quote]
I then responded with the letter of the law attached to a link where the information can be found. I then put it into words that everyone can understand. Not my opinion.
[quote] Because we don't work on a five year plan but rather a yearly budgetary conference.[/quote]
Please explain to me how it matters how often we rework the budget? Also, why are you talking about a five year plan? I never said anything about how often this is done.
Simple terms here ok.
The numbers will be off, but the layout is similar.
Say we have a $2000 budget. We put $500 into this, $400 into that, $200 into requirement whatever, $600 into this, $250 into that, and $50 into (again simple words here) a savings account.
Then next year they rework the budget and see how much goes where. Over time that $50 adds up, and when something bad happens, and we need it, we use it. All the while, adding more money in with every new budget hearing.
[quote]Not the rest of it because you wouldn't deign recognize my opinion with a properly reasoned counterpoint on a topic you invited my response to.[/quote]
Well frankly I was tired of going off topic with you. And that one sentence pretty much summed up everything I was going to cover.
This topic covers a specific topic, and just like every other topic you post in, you hijack it. That is what my statement was in reference to.
>> Where did I lie? I stated something that actually happens, but did so in words everyone can understand. You then responded with. [quote]No. The anti deficiency legislation in place since, I dunno, 1898?[/quote] >>
Allocated funds must be specifically allocated to a given agency for use within a given period for a given task. All of which is legislatively specified so that our wonderful Congress people can point and say "I only signed on for that!"
If funds are not used at the end of the budgetary defined period they DO NOT become 'free money', they MUST be reported and refederalized to the authorizing agency.
You use or you lose.
Anything less than this is an abrogation of the antideficiency act because it allows rob-Peter strategists to cover for Pauls shortfalls without _duly notifying Congress_ of the change in expected vs. actual costs.
Even ignoring such things as Nunn-McCurdy, the entire federal government and MOST ESPECIALLY the Defense Department along with all it's subagencies are so deeply commited to a corrupt enterprise system with obvious intent to continue same that they can not only be charged under AntiDeficiency acts but also RICO.
And they should.
Because the first time someone goes to jail for 20-25 years for pretending that it's 'their money' under conditions which label them a gangster not a soldier, the entire attitude of our nation's 'for profit' military system will change.
Or collapse.
Either is good.
You have not responded to my original request. We are done here.
