Gates's warning: Avoid land war in Asia, Middle East, and Africa

http://www.csmonitor.com ^ | 26 February 2011 | Brad Knickerbocker

[Racehorse]

As he winds down a remarkable Pentagon career – overseeing two long and very costly wars, wrestling with a military-industrial complex resistant to his budget moves aimed at questionable weapons, and shaking up the senior officer corps – Defense Secretary Robert Gates has a message for his successor.

“Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General [Douglas] MacArthur so delicately put it.”

[SNIP]

“We can’t know with absolute certainty what the future of warfare will hold, but we do know it will be exceedingly complex, unpredictable, and – as they say in the staff colleges – ‘unstructured’,” he said. “Just think about the range of security challenges we face right now beyond Iraq and Afghanistan: terrorism and terrorists in search of weapons of mass destruction, Iran, North Korea, military modernization programs in Russia and China, failed and failing states, revolution in the Middle East, cyber, piracy, proliferation, natural and man-made disasters, and more.”

“And I must tell you, when it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect,” he quipped. “We have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more – we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged.”

“There has been an overwhelming tendency of our defense bureaucracy to focus on preparing for future high-end conflicts – priorities often based, ironically, on what transpired in the last century – as opposed to the messy fights in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

[TomGuy]

When you don’t fight a war to win it, the outcomes are fairly predictable. We haven’t done that since 1945.

I was just thinking the same. Add in the military being stiffled by PC [re: Fort Hood assassin].

Advanced weaponry doesn't do much good if the military are prohibited from using it to win wars.

[Darteaus94025]

What a strategic thinker he’s turning out to be!

[GonzoGOP]

That leaves just Europe and South America..................

No, it leaves North America. Mexico is about to collapse and the states bordering it will be overrun with refugees and guerrilla fighters. The US will be fighting a full scale Vietnam style insurgency on our own southern border. And since Obama will do nothing, the next president is going to need every single soldier to try and take back lost US territory from the narco gangs.

[Red Badger]

The North American Union is on its way. Coming soon to a state government near you!..........

[Thunder90]

Gates's warning: Avoid land war in Asia, Middle East, and Africa>

That leaves just Europe and South America..................

You forgot that Eastern Europe and Venezuela are also off limits. We can't even take on Russia's/the "Former" Soviet military's conventional threat anymore without resorting to nukes.

[LowTaxesEqualsProsperity]

Bobby Gates has always been bad.

Which explains why the last two loser Presidents have had him as SecDef

[DesertRhino]

Macnamara 2.0

[xzins]

Instead of saying we should avoid a war, he should have said we should avoid PROLONGED POLICE ACTIONS in countries where our presence is not appreciated or wanted.

Bullseye! Right on the money, Zulu.

You go in. Kick their ass for bothering you. Then you leave with a threat to do it again if they bother you again.

What's hard about that?

[Buckeye McFrog]

Which is just a backhanded way of calling his predecessor a lunatic. Such a class act!

[chessplayer]

“MacArthur told Kennedy both times to stay out of a land war on mainland Asia.”

McNamara 3.0

[hosepipe]

Somehow the word; “INCONCEIVABLE”, come to mind...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6wqKb8EUxI

[hosepipe]

Somehow the word; “INCONCEIVABLE”, comes to mind...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6wqKb8EUxI

[Sola Veritas]

“There has been an overwhelming tendency of our defense bureaucracy to focus on preparing for future high-end conflicts – priorities often based, ironically, on what transpired in the last century – as opposed to the messy fights in Iraq and Afghanistan,”

For good reason. The military is best used in a conventional fashion, and the “high-end conflicts” are the ones that actually threaten our existence the most. China, the Russian Federation, et. Al. The enemies have NOT gone away and we have become so focused on “insurgents” we can no longer effectively fight a major conflict.

BTW - Iraq and Afghanistan would still be “messy”, but they would and could go smoother IF we stopped using such anemic Rules of Engagement (ROEs). IF we don’t have good reason to kill people and break things, then we don’t have good reason to send in the military. IMO it is either “total” war or no war.

[Iron Munro]

You can't win a war by letting lawyers write your rules of engagement while your army is occupied building sewerage plants and mosques for your enemy.

[Just A Nobody]

the next president is going to need every single soldier to try and take back lost US territory from the narco gangs.

Then there is only ONE CHOICE to accomplish that mission.

[crosshairs]

That leaves just Europe and South America...

You forgot North America, ie, Obama's war on the United States.

And Antarctica. Don't forget Antarctica.

[TopQuark]

“Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General [Douglas] MacArthur so delicately put it.”

Yep, makes perfect sense. We should send troops only to where the most dangerous enemies are: Grenada and Panama.

That'll keep us perfectly safe.

[TopQuark]

based, ironically, on what transpired in the last century – as opposed to the messy fights in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

How are they less messy than the wars in Korea or Vietnam? If anything, they are easier to fight: there is no Soviet Union to worry about, and Russia even gives us overflight rights.

Why can't this moron just keep silence --- does he not he understand that such remarks embolden the enemy? When the Secretary of Defense tells the world we won't fight, what do you expect the enemies will do --- put down the guns and sip coffee?

[Ben Ficklin]

Was Reagan a loser when he nominated Gates as CIA Director?

How many administrations has he worked for?

Nixon-Ford-Carter-Reagan-Bush-Bush-Obama

[Polybius]

“There has been an overwhelming tendency of our defense bureaucracy to focus on preparing for future high-end conflicts – priorities often based, ironically, on what transpired in the last century – as opposed to the messy fights in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

Dateline: Washington, D.C., February 28, 1932.

The outgoing Secretary of War told the press today:

“There has been an overwhelming tendency of our defense bureaucracy to focus on preparing for future high-end conflicts – priorities often based, ironically, on what transpired 15 years ago in World War One – as opposed to the messy fights in Nicaragua and other Latin American countries that we are involved in right now.”

Dateline: San Francisco, December 8, 1941.

To believe that China will never pose a threat to the U.S. during the rest of the 21st Century because "the Cold War is over" is naive and dangerous to the extreme.

Japan was on the Allied side in World War One. Japanese warships, based out of the British Royal Navy base at Malta, even assisted the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. Yet, when Japan's growing thirst for oil came into conflict with Western interests, Japan turned from "friend" to "enemy" in a very short period of time.

If you are unprepared for insurgent warfare in Iraq or Afghanistan, you lose a few thousand troops.

If you are unprepared for war war against China in the year 2039, you lose hundreds of thousands of troops and the United States of America.