CPT Holzbach
11-19-2006, 08:42 AM
...throughout history it is what fighters do, rather than how many of them there are, that determines their success or failure.
Even generous estimates of the number of insurgents in Iraq conclude there are about 10,000 active killers — a fraction of just the irregulars in the south of Vietnam alone. Why then, when the numerical disparities are so much more favorable to our cause than during the Vietnam War, are we, rather than our vastly outnumbered enemies, lamenting the paucity of troops? That we have not secured the country may be due to the limitations put on our soldiers rather than their number; and to our preference for conventional rather than counter-insurgency fighting.
Any gain from having more military forces “freed” from Iraq to face crises elsewhere would be vastly overshadowed by the far greater number of new crises that would soon arise — once Iranians, Syrians, Chinese, North Koreans, and the new Latin American Communists sought to emulate the successful Iraqi formula of defeating and humiliating the U. S. military.
The one common denominator? Whatever the United States does is suspect; and journalists without responsibility for governance, either for setting policy or for its implementation, are always brighter than generals, politicians, and policy planners saddled with it.
http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson111706.html
Even generous estimates of the number of insurgents in Iraq conclude there are about 10,000 active killers — a fraction of just the irregulars in the south of Vietnam alone. Why then, when the numerical disparities are so much more favorable to our cause than during the Vietnam War, are we, rather than our vastly outnumbered enemies, lamenting the paucity of troops? That we have not secured the country may be due to the limitations put on our soldiers rather than their number; and to our preference for conventional rather than counter-insurgency fighting.
Any gain from having more military forces “freed” from Iraq to face crises elsewhere would be vastly overshadowed by the far greater number of new crises that would soon arise — once Iranians, Syrians, Chinese, North Koreans, and the new Latin American Communists sought to emulate the successful Iraqi formula of defeating and humiliating the U. S. military.
The one common denominator? Whatever the United States does is suspect; and journalists without responsibility for governance, either for setting policy or for its implementation, are always brighter than generals, politicians, and policy planners saddled with it.
http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson111706.html