The Clausewitz Collection (merged thread)

[MikeF]

I'm working a CvC analogy into my interpretation of "The Surge," and how I viewed events on the ground in 2006. Several of my friends that were there have already concurred, and I wanted to ask some of the practisioners on SWC if they felt the same way before I include it in a published article.

Thanks much in advance, and I apologize for taking up space for my own interest.

When in 1806 the Prussian generals....plunged into the open jaws of disaster by using Frederick the Great's oblique order of battle, it was not just a case of a style that had outlived its usefulness but the most extreme poverty of the imagination to which routine has ever led. The result was that the Prussian army under Hohenlohe was ruined more completely than any army has ever been ruined on the battlefield.

-Carl von Clausewitz, On War

Patrolling Baghdad in May and June of 2003 after we finished the Thunder Runs was surreal. We had defeated Saddam's Army and conducted regime change, but the disruption without full occupation was unsettling. It just did not feel right. I left proud of what we had accomplished, but I was worried on how things would turn out. Going back in 2005 on a Special Forces staff was awkward. We weren't losing, but we weren't winning. It was like watching the last couple of Kevin Costner movies. He's a great actor, but Waterworld just sucked. The Government of Iraq was declared sovereign, they were holding democratic elections, but the violence just continued to escalate. I still cheer for Costner as I continued to cheer for Iraq. Then, everything changed.


Allow me to be absolutely clear, let there be no doubt, in 2006, we were losing the war in Iraq. Stepping off the C-130 in LSA Anaconda, you could smell the fear in the air as we drug our tail between our legs in some Orwellian propaganda of "putting the Iraqis in the lead" as we retreated to the comforts of massive forward operating bases and expanded our intake of salsa nights, Burger King, and flat screen televisions. Outside those massive entrenchments, a civil war was brewing and escalating bordering on genocide as entire villages and neighborhoods were cleansed and displaced. No one knew what to do so we stuck our heads in the sand and tried to forget hoping this nightmare would just end. Even today, I'm not sure if the average American will truly understand how close we came to losing during those days. They just take it in stride that everything worked during the cleanliness of Kimberly Kagan's "the Surge" far more concerned with the value of their homes and stock market investments since the administration failed to ask them to mobilize for war. They were more consumed with American Idol and Survivor. It is far more existential than that.

I felt angry refusing to lose a war that had taken so much of my twenties and resolved not to let those that came before me down. It was time to adjust.

v/r

Mike

[jmm99]

they traced their ancestry to the Buonaparte family of Sarzana, Italy, which is located on the Ligurian-Tuscan border about 10 miles east of La Spezia. That family is known from the 1300-1400s at Sarzana.

Near the end of the 1400s, one of them (a merc) ended up in Corsica and began the Corsican branch, leading down to Carlo, Nap's father - I3 in chart.

Carlo's descent, including Nap, is here.

Cheers

Mike

[Firn]

I felt angry refusing to lose a war that had taken so much of my twenties and resolved not to let those that came before me down. It was time to adjust.

v/r

Mike

This is a burden of many a soldier in war. When comrades get killed and wounded, when friends and relatives suffer and oneself has also spent much it is important and hard to try to no let you and others down.

I sincerly hope that Iraq becomes a less troubled state with the gift of peace.


Firn