Women in Military Service & Combat (not just USA)

[slapout9]

Missed opportunity. If they had used non-lethal weapons and captured them. They could have exploited the fact that the chickensh** men would not come out and fight, but sent their women to do it. Plus they could have used it as an opportunity to turn them to their side by" killing them with kindness."

I say we need to exploit these types of situations as we are going to see more of them if we don't develop and effective counter measure.

[marct]

Missed opportunity. If they had used non-lethal weapons and captured them. They could have exploited the fact that the chickensh** men would not come out and fight, but sent their women to do it. Plus they could have used it as an opportunity to turn them to their side by" killing them with kindness."

I say we need to exploit these types of situations as we are going to see more of them if we don't develop and effective counter measure.

I would totally agree. I think the trick would be to use not only non-lethal weaponry, but weapons that do not "look" bad on a TV screen. For example, tasers can be spun as "dangerous" - maybe tranquilizer dart guns would be better <wry grin>.

On the PR exloitation, at truly "evil" way of exploiting this specific situation would have been to tranquilize the women, capture the men, and mount posters of the men with a caption reading something like "This man lets women fight for him", with poster of the women reading "The TRUE heros of Gaza".

Marc

[slapout9]

Marc, I would agree about the weapons and as much as I like tasers that would have been the wrong way to go. Tranquilizing gas would even be better (no gun at all) and don't call it gas, call it a pharmaceutical agent.

Great idea about the posters and since the men were already in custody it could have been done easily. Break their will not their body.

I don't know where the quote came from but I once heard that a great general can convert any enemy to a friend. That is the transformation we need in the military. A broad array of weapons to subdue not kill, we already have that base covered.

[Ray Levesque]

This is but one example of a tactical evolution that uses what we in the west perceive as a moral strength, trying to avoid harming women and children, against us. Since the "enemy" cannot fight us on our terms, they develop other tactics to achieve their objectives. And they evolve these tactics within the context of "their" value system.

It creates a lose-lose situation for the west; if women and children, civilians in general, or civilian-use buildings are used as shields for "fighters", who themselves are often in civilian clothes, we put our own soldiers at risk of death if they do not respond. On the other hand, if our soldiers open fire and civilians are killed, then the enemy can exploit the situation to achieve their political goals via our open press and society.

Even if the killings of civilians are justified in a given situation, ambiguity is created in the minds of the public, at best, or the images and the event, interpreted in isolation, provides fodder for critics and an enemy's supporters.

In the end the development of non-leathal weapons appears to be the best way ahead. This would allow our own forces to protect themselves and perhaps still be able to capture the civilian-clad fighter without the "hot" medium of television galvanizing public perceptions with an image-of-the-moment that shows violence without context.

[Culpeper]

Missed opportunity. If they had used non-lethal weapons and captured them. They could have exploited the fact that the chickensh** men would not come out and fight, but sent their women to do it. Plus they could have used it as an opportunity to turn them to their side by" killing them with kindness."

I say we need to exploit these types of situations as we are going to see more of them if we don't develop and effective counter measure.

Sounds like a good idea. But you have to use these types of tactics over and over again. The result of which would be constant bad press. Classifying them has hostile combatants and acting accordingly would only give one good incident of bad press and the enemy would have to decide if they are determined enough to keep it up. Is there anything in the Geneva Convention that states these women were anything other than providing support and protection for the enemy on the battlefield. Next, they are going to be wearing Red Crescent arm bands? There is no "powder-puff" solution. These women were hostile and endangering the Israeli troops. You cannot and will not win against combatants by respecting "their" values. The Israelis waited too long to act accordingly and the result was some of these morons in the mosque escaped. We constantly try to over evaluate these extremists and put them and their tactics up on a pedestal. In reality, they're morons and we come up with all sorts of ideas to protect them. That doesn't make any sense. The more martyrs we create the more water-downed the meaning of a martyr becomes for them. How's that for a tactic? It would be like awarding everyone KIA the Medal of Honor.

[slapout9]

Culpepper, I am not any kind of cultural expert on the middle east by any means, but I think the female population is vulnerable to being converted to a fifth column so to speak because of how Islam treats the female population in general. Using non-lethal weapons was not meant to protect them just to be "nice" but to allow access to a population group in order to influence them and cause a general disruption to the family unit. Problems at home can cause big problems with armed forces, it would give them a constant internal problem (burden) to deal with.

All through history women have been the ultimate "net-workers" and if you get them spreading an idea that the west treats their women(and children) far better then Islam you stand a chance of collapsing or changing the whole movement. I believe in the use of non lethal weapons for this purpose should at least be tried. What do we have to loose?

As for your tactic, it has been done before and has been successful for certain regimes! I don't think the US would support that. At least not until we have another disaster(9-11,nuke,chemical attack,etc.)

anyway time for some more coffee, later.

[Culpeper]

No problem. I happen to be drinking some coffee as I read. This whole thing reminds me of what Col. David Perkins told reporters after the first "Thunder Run" recon by fire into Baghdad when asked about Iraqi soldiers taking off their uniforms and changing into civilian clothes and fighting alongside Saddam Fadayeen, and foreign fighters, all of which were intermingling with civilians along Highway 8.

They [the combatants] are putting their populace at risk by not having a clear delineation between civilians and military. In effect, Saddam has made his civilian populace combatants. If I put my family in a Humvee and drove them into Baghdad, I would be to blame if they got blown away.

As for other "regimes" with success? I don't need to remind you that we burned Germany and Japan cities to the ground for good reason. We used artillery and aerial bombardment to soften targets before we sent our troops on the offensive knowing our enemies were commingling with civilians in all types of areas. WE hold the record. What was the outcome of such outrage? We won our engagements with the enemy and Japan and Germany are our allies today. Italy was the only Axis partner that didn't suffer such a fate because they didn't dare put their civilians in the line of fire as a point of "total war" strategy.

I'm not stating you have a bad idea. It's a good idea. But it is a micromanagement short term solution to an age old problem of bad guys using their women and children as shields and the only thing that has ever worked with success was being forced to the conclusion that the mission is more important than enemy tactics such as these.

[Bill Moore]

No one is admitting check mate, so far we have the following the options:

1. Culpeper's parallel of Lenin's kill one it’s a tragedy, kill 10,000 it’s a statistic.
2. Slapout’s call for beltway bandits to make more non-lethal weapons.
3. Marct’s call for spanking them with non-lethal weapons, but making it look good, no tasers, no gas, or S. Korean police in riot gear.

Option 4. Come on, we’re dealing with women. We simply need to distract them with a 50% off sale in the vicinity. Their husbands would soon realize that their wives are spending the money they need to sustain the fight and go home with their tail between their legs.

O.K., I’ll get serious again. I think this tactic currently puts Israel in check mate (until options 1-3 are refined into something feasible), but Israel has been known to respond in stupid ways before that only makes the problem worse. I do like the ideas on the counter psyop where we exploit that cowering jihadis call for their wives and sisters to bail them out.

[Culpeper]

No one is admitting check mate, so far we have the following the options:

1. Culpeper's parallel of Lenin's kill one it’s a tragedy, kill 10,000 it’s a statistic.
2. Slapout’s call for beltway bandits to make more non-lethal weapons.
3. Marct’s call for spanking them with non-lethal weapons, but making it look good, no tasers, no gas, or S. Korean police in riot gear.

Option 4. Come on, we’re dealing with women. We simply need to distract them with a 50% off sale in the vicinity. Their husbands would soon realize that their wives are spending the money they need to sustain the fight and go home with their tail between their legs.

O.K., I’ll get serious again. I think this tactic currently puts Israel in check mate (until options 1-3 are refined into something feasible), but Israel has been known to respond in stupid ways before that only makes the problem worse. I do like the ideas on the counter psyop where we exploit that cowering jihadis call for their wives and sisters to bail them out.

I would prefer my parallel being compared to Curtis Lemay, thank you very much.

[Bill Moore]

O.K., stratch Lenin and replace with good ole Curtis LeMay.