Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello: Advice to a Generic Candidate ..

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Advice to a Generic Candidate ..

       WHAT GUMMINT DOES


                  Advice to a Generic Candidate
Fred to Change Course of History

Raja,

Fred has a column which appeared yesterday. Pretty interesting, and is a cautionary piece on the issue of Iran … and attacking it. He mentions a friend of mine, David Isby.

Skoonj

“

[...]
To begin, I will ask the following questions of the candidates, and for that matter of Mr. Obama, and of the Secretary of Defense, a generic bureaucrat.

Can you explain: Convergence zones, base bleed, Kursk, range-gate pull-off, artillery at Dien Bien Phu, IR cross-over, Tet and queen sacrifice, Brahmos 2, CIWIS, supercruise, side-lobe penetration, seven-eighty-twice gear, super-cavitating torpedoes, phased arrays, pulse Doppler, the width of Hormuz versus the range of Iranian cruise missiles, DU, discarding sabot, frequency agility, Chobham armor, and pseudo-random PRF?

These, gentlemen, are the small talk of serious students of the military. Here I mean men like David Isby, author of such books as Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army for Jane's, which you likely have never heard of, or William S. Lind, probably the best military mind (though, or because, not a soldier), that I have encountered. If you are unfamiliar with them, and with the things listed above, you are unfamiliar with the military. Yet you campaign for possession of the trigger.

Perhaps a little humility, perish the thought, and a little self-examination might be in order. [continued]

Fred, as is his wont lately, gets a bit carried away at times.

"Note that in the foregoing list of wars [Iraq ... Afghanistan}, all were expected to end quickly. "

No, they were not. True, the media began calling Afghanistan a "quagmire," and waving the surrender flag

about two days into the mission to destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but most people understood that this was a long term commitment; a war to the death with radical Islam. Then came Obama.

By the by, skoonj finishes with this intruction —

"As to me, I think an attack is only OK if we use nukes. They are our Hallmark: When you care enough to send the very best. "

”

Rodger the Real King of France 1/10/2012 11:24:00 AM 6 Comments

"If the number of Islamic terror attacks continues at the current rate, candlelight vigils will soon be the number-one cause of global warming. "
Argus Hamilton

6 comments:

Jess said...: I was thinking the other day on the naive thinking the U.S. has adopted. It's as though there's some logic, or careful thought, in process by the rest of the world, which is foolish. Considering many countries will exterminate their own people to perpetuate power, the extermination of foreigners - aka Americans - means absolutely nothing. There is no logic; only danger.

If our leaders aren't willing to crush our enemies, then we'll be forced to do so when they invade...if we can.; 1/10/12, 12:16 PM
Skoonj said...: By the way, Fred is Fred Reed, who does his own columns on line and is an old friend of mine. Some of his stuff in recent years has seemed somewhat left in nature, but he's still a pretty good one to read. He mentions David Isby, who I like (and is a friend), and William S. Lind, who I don't like.; 1/10/12, 1:55 PM
DougM said...: American warriors win battles and wars, even with amateur-strategist politicians in charge.
Trouble is, the amateur-strategist lawmakers (and politicians as diplomats) hardly ever use those victories to secure a good peace.
(Lincoln, well-read on military affairs, may be the most obvious exception, but Congress nearly undid that, too.)
WWII and the Cold War resulted from inadequate peacemaking; likewise, Iraq II.
Viet Nam is a classic example. The US won the war of North Viet Nam's second invasion of the South by defeating the enemy and forcing them to remove their forces and to sign a peace treaty. After we left, the North was re-armed, and it violated the peace treaty by re-invading the South for the third time, but a Peace-Democrat Congress refused to give the South any support whatsofrikkinever. Congress shamefully lost Viet Nam in this new war that followed years after the peace the US military won at such a high cost and after we left. The million or so deaths in SEA due to the North's third invasion are on the heads of the peaceniks, although I attribute this less to amateurish incompetence than to treason.
So, no, I will not be surprised if it happens again.; 1/10/12, 2:35 PM
Anonymous said...: Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. UNLEASHED!

Need I say more?; 1/10/12, 3:44 PM
Anonymous said...: Perhaps non-germane, but what was Abe's "exit strategy"? What were Ike's and MacArthur's "exit strategy"?
Colin Powell, on the other hand, seemed to want one for everything he had his fingers in...
I would think that Patton had an exit strategy, and that was for the exit of the Axis forces from the battlefield.
As the saying goes, if you are going to take Vienna, then TAKE VIENNA. Jeeze.
tomw; 1/11/12, 7:54 AM
Corsair, The Mostly Harmless said...: Well, as a historian, and running the risk of pissing off the Copperheads and such, Abe's "exit strategy" was well laid out in the "With Malice Towards None" speech. Reunification with the South WAS going to be hard, no matter what, but Lincoln pushed for a gentler, "open hand" approach. Had he lived, it may well have happened. Instead, John Wilkes Booth got his moment of glory, and the Union went collectively insane for a decade, and Reconstruction took a much harder, harsher turn.

Larry in Rochester; 1/11/12, 9:05 AM

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Advice to a Generic Candidate ..

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