How We Lost the High-Tech War of 2007 (re-post from 1996 - scenario is rapidly coming true)

The Weekly Standard ^ | January 29, 1996 | Charles J. Dunlap, Jr. (Col. USAF)

[angkor]

in the end we will be seen to have not lost that particular war.

Our government abandoned the South Vietnamese under pressure from the leftists. The result was several million additional South Vietnamese deaths, post-1975 (no one knows the real number, but many were killed).

And that's not to mention the incarcerations, torture, massive property seizures, and the ongoing cultural and social genocide still being practiced by Hanoi (i.e., in education, business, property ownership, forced relocation, etc.)

It is more low-key than in the past, but Hanoi still operates very much in the Stalinist mold.

Though ARVN and its leadership was often feckless and irresponsible, there is a lingering question from the survivors about why we abandoned them. They don't know what was going on here in the U.S. from 1967 to 1972.

[null and void]

Trust me, we NEVER lose.

Never? "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall..."

[Valin]

The late 20th and early 21st century saw the reemergence of what British historian John Keegan called " warrior" societies. Like us, they are "brought up to fight, think fighting honorable, and think killing in warfare glorious." A warrior in such societies, Keegan wrote, "prefers death to dishonor and kills without pity when he gets the chance." The Americans ignored a warning from one of their own, Maj. Ralph Peters, who wrote in 1994 that the "new warrior class already numbers in the millions." Peters wrote that:

"[America] will often face [warriors] who have acquired a taste for killing, who do not behave rationally according to our definition of rationality, who are capable of atrocities that challenge the descriptive powers of language, and who will sacrifice their own kind in order to survive."

With all due respect for the writer.
He appears to assume that America is no longer has a warrior mentality. In this IMO he is wrong. The same mistake has been made before by others and too late they realized their mistake.

"The true story is, junior officers and noncoms who had been college students two years before and had ROTC commissions pinned down at that sea wall and couldn't retreat, couldn't go back -- it was just chaos back behind them -- couldn't, as the plan called for, go up the draws. They were getting butchered where they were all the sea wall because the Germans had it all zeroed in with their mortars that were coming down on top of them. And, "Over here, Captain," "Over here, Lieutenant, over here." A sergeant looked at this situation and said, "The hell with this. If I'm going to get killed, I'm going to take some Germans with me." And he would call out, "Follow me," and up he would start. Hitler didn't believe this was ever possible. Hitler was certain that the soft, effeminate children of democracy could never become soldiers. Hitler was certain that the Nazi youth would always outfight the Boy Scouts, and Hitler was wrong.

The Boy Scouts took them on D-Day. Joe Dawson led Company G. He started off with 200 men. He got to the top of the bluff with 20 men, but he got to the top"
Stephen Ambrose to Brian Lamb C-Span


"I would not wish to fight the United States — either militarily, politically, or culturally. For every threat, our history teaches us that Americans offer not just a rejoinder, but the specter of a devastating answer of a magnitude almost inconceivable to those now chanting and threatening in the streets of the Middle East. Do they have any idea of what sort of dangerous people we really are? Do they understand the history of the names of those ships now off their coasts, like the USS Peleliu or Enterprise, or the pedigree of the 82nd or 101st Airborne?"
Victor Davis Hanson NRO 11/6/01

[FreedomPoster]

"We cannot change the hearts of those people, but we can make war so terrible...[and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it."

William Tecumseh Sherman

We need to get with the program. It's going to take inflicting substantially more pain, than we have in the last 15 months, to get the point across.

[Valin]

IMO the glass is half full
< /little miss mary sunshine>
There are some good things happening in the mideast. IE Iran,, the squabble yassir and OBL, Purges going on in the ISI. We have to understand the nature of the war we've had thrust upon us. It's really not WWII, it's more like the war against orginzed crime, most of it is being fought waaay below the radar screen. Intel Intel Intel is the key, we find the it's not a problem revoking their breathing privileges. It's a guerilla war on a world wide scale.

[xJones]

The last group that tried to use brutal and savage total war on the American civil population was the American Plains Indians. They were able to take advantage of the US lack of troops on the frontier during the Civil War. Once the war was over, the US concentrated on the Indian problem. Payback was brutal. Islamic fanatics take heed to this part of US history. If Americans are brutualized, they can be very brutal. Ask the American Indians if you do not believe that.

How true. Mark Twain (Samuel Clements) wrote that the only people who cried about the American Indians were the ones that hadn't had to outrun a tomahawk.

[FreedomPoster]

I concur - it's intel, intel, intel. I'm just more than a little impatient, but understand that fighting the war that way takes time.

And we may be able to win the war at that level, in that way. At some point, though, if some of the things posited in this article come to pass, and it's identifiably Middle Eastern in origin, there's no telling where public opinion might drive our leadership. Likely to some mushroom production in strategic spots.

They really don't realize how bad an idea it is to pee-off America.

[nanny]

Yes you did miss something! Just among the European tribes the Spanish, Portuguese and French beat all those others here. It is arguable that they had attained a higher degree of civilization at that time.

Again, 'Stick with me here'. Did you read all the posts on this subject?

Someone posted - go ahead and send the barbarians because we would just assimilate them. That wasn't the words used but the idea. I asked just which barbarians we had assimilated. The original article was talking about the threat to this country - the present threat. When I asked which ones she was speaking of - meaning just which barbarians had we assimilated and the poster replied, English, Scot, etc. Now I do not and don't think it takes much for them to assimilate.

My premise is in the last 25 or 30 years we have done a terrible job of assimilating anyone into the Ameican way of life. WE (our government) has done a crackerjack job of making sure they do not assimilate. That is the point - if you didn't read or understand the exchange - OK. If you did and you are just throwing out words - shame on you. It doesn't take intelligence to sit and type out all the various nationalities that have come to this country. That is all you are doing -

[lewislynn]

Why they don't just put a bridge and tunnel system in I'll never know.

That would entice growth...growth is bad.

[Stultis]

The late 20th and early 21st century saw the reemergence of what British historian John Keegan called " warrior" societies. Like us, they are "brought up to fight, think fighting honorable, and think killing in warfare glorious." A warrior in such societies, Keegan wrote, "prefers death to dishonor and kills without pity when he gets the chance." The Americans ignored a warning from one of their own, Maj. Ralph Peters, who wrote in 1994 that the "new warrior class already numbers in the millions." Peters wrote that:

"[America] will often face [warriors] who have acquired a taste for killing, who do not behave rationally according to our definition of rationality, who are capable of atrocities that challenge the descriptive powers of language, and who will sacrifice their own kind in order to survive."

Couldn't find the John Keegan article online, but here is the bibliographic information, found in another article by Dunlap that uses the same quotation:

John Keegan, "The Warrior's Code of No Surrender," U.S. News & World Report, 23 January 1995, p. 47.

Here is the article by Peters:

The New Warrior Class (FreeRepublic - locked article)

The New Warrior Class (original at "Parameters" military journal)

[tictoc]

With all due respect for the writer. He appears to assume that America is no longer has a warrior mentality. In this IMO he is wrong. The same mistake has been made before by others and too late they realized their mistake.

Valin, I didn't understand the writer of this extremely prescient article (written in 1996!) as making a prediction of what will inevitably happen (the defeat of America).

Rather, he was providing insight into the mindset of our enemies, what makes them tick, and what savagery they are capable of.

I am sad, not because we will lose. It is they who will lose, but unless we are extremely lucky, countless numbers of Islamics will die, many of them innocent civilians, sacrificed on the altar of their leaders' crazed ambition.

[harpseal]

I for one already think the Carthage option as you call it makes a great deal of sense or as Tacitus stated create a desert and call it peace.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

[Fee]

One of the political benefits of the attack on the WTC was it killed alot of New York City area people (bastion of soccer mom/dad eltist liberalism). They are the people who want more money for children, less for defense, why do we have to be so mean, can't we all get along, remember to be sensitive and not judgemental, no one should own guns, etc, etc and etc. After the attack, you should listen to callers to talk radio. Many were women from Long Island, New Jersey and NYC (female liberal areas), each one screaming to retaliate. The elite will come around when they smell the smell of cordite, and roasted human body parts after an attack. They seem to forget, they are the main target of the terrorists.

[Valin]

Point taken.

I am sad, not because we will lose. It is they who will lose, but unless we are extremely lucky, countless numbers of Islamics will die, many of them innocent civilians, sacrificed on the altar of their leaders' crazed ambition.


I don't know if I could have put it better.

[SauronOfMordor]

One way to rapidly diminish the influence of those leftists wishing to destroy America would be to assassinate reporters, journalists and editors who are giving aid and comfort to the enemy in times of serious threat to the survival of the nation

Take a look at what you just proposed

Now visualize those powers in the hands of a future President Hillery Clinton, and speculate as to the life expectancy of Rush Limbaugh, JimRob, and various FR posters

[Edward Watson]

Not applicable since all the figures you cited are advocating defense, unity and freedom of the nation. What I was specifically referring to are those figures in the media who HATE America so much that they will produce materials aimed at demoralizing Americans and cause them to oppose the nation's integrity WHEN the nation's very existence is hanging by a thread (we're not there yet). If they are successful, the nation disintegrates, anarchy reigns and violence rules. State against state, county against county, town against town. Won't it be much better for everyone as a whole if those trying to destroy the nation are rubbed out?

[Centurion2000]

bump