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
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[...]
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. "
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