Rusted Sky

With the fall of the Soviet Union, a premise was floated in the military that we should be able to fight two wars at one time, if need be. These wouldn't be all-out USSR tank battalions through the Fulda Gap type wars, but instead would be relatively limited, short-duration warfare.

So we geared up for that two-war scenario... or geared down for it, depending on your point of view, and then GW1 came along. It proved the feasability of a lot of the concepts that had been developed - rapid airlift of large quantities of men and material being the primary one, along with a number of other things that had been in the books but not really tested. (Check out Pagonis's "Moving Mountains" for a good civilian overview of the logistics end of things.)

It also proved that when the US military machine was unleashed - there wasn't anything that could stand up to it. At least, not in a stand-up fight. And that's a problem.

It's very easy, and comforting, to believe that any enemy that might go up against the US is both stupid AND will adhere to the Geneva Accords. That they'll 'play by the rules', so to speak, and do what's required in regards to protection of non-combatants, observation of safe areas, and identification of combatants to separate them from non-combatants. And that's pretty much how things were planned out - because that's the way wars had been fought in the past... well, kind of.

Because, frankly, the idea that any country's military might go to war with rules that would seriously limit what they were able to do on the battlefield is a joke, right? Are you laughing yet?

When you go to war, you toss out the rule book. You're going in to WIN the war, not 'play fair'. That's been lost in this conflict, tossed out to fall by the wayside, at least until now.

As I see it, our problems are twofold. First - we've adhered scrupulously to the Geneva Accords, while our enemy hasn't. Second - we've been hamstrung by a civilian media and a political party that's determined to make sure that even the slightest shading of the Geneva Accords is not only investigated but convicted prior to the trial.

Yet our enemy hacks heads, targets civilians whenever possible, and has tossed out the rule book.. It's a trifle hard to fight something like that. Yet the insistance by some is that we HAVE to do it that way, that we MUST adhere to the Geneva Convention even against (perhaps especially against!) an enemy that doesn't see any reason to follow rules that would make them more visible.

We have a political party that's against the way Bush has been handling the war. It wouldn't be terribly extreme to say that they want a loss in Iraq - because it would hurt Bush. And they're doing to do whatever they can to facilitate that loss... all the while going "We'd LIKE to win in Iraq, but we just don't see any way it can be done! So we're going to cut funding, cut troop strength, cut whatever we need to actually FIGHT a war - but we'd really like to win!"

And our enemies eat that sort of shit with a spoon. All they have to do is wait, and they'll get what they want. (But there's that old saying, "Be careful what you wish for!")

We can fight a two-front war. We can't fight a war when one of our two political parties refuses to try to win, declaring quagmires and failures right from the start and aided and abetted by the media. A decade from now, two decades - will they be hailed as heros for pulling back? Or will they be seen as the villains who abandoned a fight that was close to being won?

Your call on that one... personally, I think if they get what they want re Iraq, they'll be out in '08. Of course, that won't help much when we have to do it all again in 10 years.

J.