Sunday, July 12, 2026

WHAT A DIFFERENCE

 As we engage in another 24 hour battle over Iran it is interesting to note how very different our war with the mullahs is from our war with the communists. We made our enemies our targets in this war and we politely ignored our enemies when they were communists in all the wars of the 20th century. It seems that 50 years of reliable, relentless and repeated teaching of military professionals about the idiotic mistakes made in Vietnam are finally paying off in our struggle against the Rest. It worked damned well in First Iraq and even in Second Iraq and it crushed the Taliban in weeks in Afghanistan. WE easily won the wars and lost the rest because it was no longer war. Our politicians suck at that. They need their own school to study how the Romans and the old Raj handled that phase of it in the past.

I'm not sure what the Air War in Vietnam was designed to produce. It did not target and gut the major cities in North Vietnam. It did not destroy the ports and harbors where so much aid and weaponry was brought in from the rest of the communist world. It did not blow apart the dams and flood the valleys to produce massive crop failures and famine. It did not destroy the power generation facilities, air fields, air forces or military units in North Vietnam. In fact, I'll be damned if I know what the B-52s were doing up there.

I'd like to read about what the bombers are attacking these days because while it would offer some insight into how the war is progressing, at least in terms of damage and loss, it would also be a damned good indicator of American Leadership's Sincerity this time about winning the war and killing our enemies. If all we're doing is going after water buffalo and bread factories it would be helpful to know that and realize that this is just another gigantic charade playing out for the rubes.

Let me help you out with the targeting hierarchy as I understand it:

Locate and destroy the enemy air defenses everywhere.
Destroy the Air Fields and all military aviation. 
Destroy all Command, Control, Communication and Computer Information centers. Holes in ground.
 
Destroy the leadership wherever they can be found. Do it again and again and again.
 
Destroy the long range missile launchers, short range launchers, missile storage and launching sites
Destroy all naval units, destroy the navy ports and all magazine including sea mines
Destroy all minelayers and potential minelayers. (that's any ship with rails going over the side or a crane)
 
Destroy 100% of the country's Oil refining capability and storage. 
Destroy the power plants.
Destroy all telecommunications and all network switches, cut off the internet 
 
To be honest, at this point the war is over for Iran but of course we're not actually going to begin to do all that. The question we have to ask our leaders is, why aren't you doing that? Don't you want the war to be over? Why not show that particular neighborhood what it means to return a place and people to the Dark Ages? What is stopping your hand from destroying it and your lips from ordering it to be destroyed?
 
There are, oddly, still people who think that it is possible to negotiate a peace settlement. I have never actually seen one of these but I'm told they exist. Just for the Hell of it I asked google, "how many times did Austria sign a peace treaty with Napoleon?"
 

 Yes I know that some will say we negotiated formal peace treaties with the Japanese and the Germans but we didn't really negotiate, did we? Others might say well, the Vietnam War came to a negotiated end and all I would have to do is ask what happened to the other signatory on that treaty, you know the one, South Vietnam?
 
Clausewitz is famous for declaring war to be the continuation of politics by other means but the fate of Czechoslovakia is still fresh in my mind and those poor bastards never even had a chance because politicians just sold them down the river without even a chance to fight. 
 
It's hard to see where this is going to end but one thing looks likely, it is never going to end. These sorts of things just go on forever. 

2 comments:

Michael said...

America hasn't had a war on its own territory since May 26, 1865 the end of the civil war. 2026-1865=161 years (unless you want to quibble about Jananise troops in Alaska briefly). AND it shows.

Out two great oceans kept us from direct experience.

Technology has made them almost moot. Interdependence in critical supplies like oil, fertilizer, industrial chemicals, rare earths and so on have weakened that defense.

ICBM's were a threat but MAD kept that reasonably sane.

Now Drones makes it easy for any 2 bit drug warlord to destroy multi-million-dollar refineries, cripple power grids and destroy AI complexes.

What goes around comes around.

HMS Defiant said...

You would think that everyone would wake up now and see that. All the old chokeholds held nations in check. Nothing at aa can keep a determined fanatic from wasting a place. Kill Dozer was the Children’s Hour compared to now.