The Warden Collection (merged thread)

[Bill Moore]

Curmudgy,

I think they are more guiding precepts or prime directives based upon his experiences. But from the Link to the article you posted at War On The Rocks you must be a Star Trek fan. so here is an episode on the Prime Directive.......could be about our involvement in Iraq and the long term fight between the Sunni and Shia or anybody else for that matter. As they say Art imitates life.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLHH-mE94Pk

I loved this, not I have a new toy to play with "the prime directive," you'll regret ever sharing this with me.

[Bill Moore]

Slap,

I listened to the interview, read the article, and looked over the brief you provided on Col Warden's proposed strategy for dealing with ISIS. At the end of all that, I'll admit he is a more measured than I thought, but he still offers little that is helpful or new.

He starts out in the radio with a lot of ifs, if we can do this, and if we can do, then we would be put ISIS in the hurt locker. He said ISIS was surrounded and if we could get Iran, Turkey, and Syria to cooperate with us and attack them they would be very vulnerable. That argument is based on the premise we could persuade Iran, Turkey, and Syria to fight with us, and that the President would be willing to pursue this when we're in a proxy war with Iran, and we're certainly no friend of Assad, and I doubt we have any more influence over Turkey now than we did in 2002/3 when we requested their assistance in dealing with Iraq.

He then states that is an easy situation to deal with using air power, which made me wonder if he had a temporary moment of insanity. The insurgents are exposed now because they're not being targeted from the air, so they can afford to be exposed. If we start targeting them, it will be a "see me now, now you don't" as they blend into the civilian population.

In his brief the chart states air power can achieve strategic objectives directly, IF they're strategically conceived. I didn't hear anything that resembled a strategically conceived objective until the end of the interview when the interview pulled it out of him. His view is we want a stable Iraq (think about that objective and his proposal to conduct an air campaign and get Iran, Turkey, and Syria to target ISIS) without a strong Sunni extremist center.

Nothing he proposed would lead to that end state, it would further destabilize the region, and provide a lot of propaganda value to ISIS for recruiting if we side with the Shia against the Sunni (at least doing so openly).

He didn't explain how ISIS was a system and what that meant and how to target it. ISIS isn't a system, it is a network that thrives in an ecosystem.

I gave it an honest read and still don't buy what he is trying to sell.