Quote Originally Posted by LawVol View Post
I am not advocating a focus on conventional war. I do believe that we will continue to face situations that will require COIN skills, including regime change, humanitarian efforts that go awry, etc. However, I do not think we can focus on COIN skills to the exclusion of our conventional advantage.

Maybe this line of thinking is way off-track, but I can't help but notice that most of what I read falls into one camp or another. If I'm not making sense, my apologies.
I don't disagree with you, Xenophon, or anybody else around here, really. I think perhaps people are talking past each other.

I'm just a little shocked that anybody would be making an argument about treating Iraq as an aberration, whereas China is the REAL threat. China is exporting billions of dollars worth of products a year to us. Why they would perpretrate an act of war against their best customer is a question that perhaps deserves its own thread. What interest would that serve?

If I was pulling a paycheck that required me to plan the structure and training with an eye towards likely foes:
1. The vice president threatened / warned / saber rattled in the direction of Tehran from the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf last month,
2. The President of Pakistan has somehow survived serveral assassination attempts. Who the hell knows who would take over there and what their intentions are, should Musharraf's luck run out?

Preparations for the invasion of mainland China would fall somewhere down on the bottom of my list of things to do.

Both Iran and Pakistan have some conventional ability, but I bet that could be overcome. How you cope with Pakistan's nuclear capability is the elephant in the room. Occupy either one, however, and you still face a real threat of guerilla warfare.

If I may invoke a sports analogy, as it stands now, we are like a football team with a high octane passing game that can score points in a hurry. We're dealing with an opponent, however, that is playing ball control with a 3 yards and a cloud of dust offense. We can't get the ball back from these guys, and to make matters worse, we seem to have never thought to practice recovering an onsides kick. They are just running out the clock on us, while our great skill position players can't get in the game. We might have some tough road games ahead of us on this schedule, so this is cause for alarm. Unless they are just a bunch of morons (a dangerous assumption to make about any adversary), they are watching this and can be expected to attack this weakness, if their preferred strategy fails.

So what do you do? Figure out how to shore up your deficiencies? Or work to become still more explosive on offense? Every coach I ever played for wanted to deal with an exposed weakness ASAP because your opponents will want to know right away if you have corrected it, or not.

Every platoon sergeant, company and battalion commander I ever served under wanted to identify and correct any deficiencies pronto, as well. It would be tragic if this inclination can not make its way up the chain of command above the men who have to get it done in the field, for whatever bureaucratic or ideological reason. Our brave fighting men deserve an honest assessment and corrective action for any problems in doctrine, equipment or training which reveal themselves...not for them to be assumed out of the enemy's playbook because it complicates training exercises, or whatever reason was offered up after Viet Nam.

I yield the balance of my time to the next "small war Senator" to take the floor.