carlsonjok
Posts: 3326
Joined: May 2006
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| Quote (Richardthughes @ Jan. 24 2007,15:03) | the TARD LIBERTATION FRONT might be thinking of a coup..
http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/1990#comment-87172
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DaveScot
01/24/2007
3:48 pm
Mike
I knew I should have limited comments to just those who’ve served in my beloved corps. Frankly, if you haven’t served in the military yourself I don’t think you deserve an opinion. Put that in your bunched up panties and sit on them.
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Oh how I'll laugh when BLipey twats him. |
Well, it all has disappeared down the memory hole and comments have been shut off. Here is the comment that got Dave all torqued.
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Mike Dunford
I’ve been trying to cool off since I read this, but I think I’m as cool as I’m going to get:
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In order to have an effective force in fighting guerilla and urban wars in Arab countries we need actual combat veterans seasoned in that type of warfare leading the unseasoned troops. Use your head, Jim. Now we have an effective force led by NCOs who know how to survive urban and guerilla wars in Arab countries. And Bush managed to build that force without losing 58,000 American lives as were sacrificed in Vietnam but rather limited the losses to 3,000. Use your head for something other than a place to put your hat, Jim. We needed a veteran ground combat force for the Middle Eastern theater. Now we have one. Now what happened to Russia in Afghanistan won’t happen to us.
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OK. My wife’s in the box right now, and you’re suggesting that having troops out there is good because it gives us a better combat force? A lot of people have said a lot of really thoughtless and assinine things about the Iraq war, but that one just takes the cake. It’s dumb so many different ways that it’s really, really hard to figure out where to start.
1) Even if I assume, for the sake of argument, that everything else is correct, we were already involved in a guerilla war when the Iraq war started. Believe it or not, but there really are troops in Afghanistan, and they are really - still - involved in regular and frequent combat ops. There just aren’t as many of them and they aren’t getting blown up as frequently. Actually, I’ve heard from quite a few people who have been deployed in both locations (including my wife) that they saw much more combat in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
2) When we started this war, as you point out, there weren’t a lot of combat veterans in the force. Strangely, that didn’t seem to have much of an adverse effect on how they did at the start.
3) A #### of a lot of the troops over there right now are 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th tour vets. Yet there doesn’t seem to have been much of an increase in success, and certainly not much of a decrease in casualties, after the point when combat vets became common in deploying units.
4) The force right now is in a #### of a lot worse shape than it was three years ago. Pretty much everyone in the army who is career combat arms and enlisted prior to 03 has gone out more than once already. Many (particularly in the aviation community) are on 3rd or 4th tours. Divorce rates are up, and a lot of good people who ordinarily would have stayed in for 20+ are getting out with 15 or more years in - sacrificing pensions - because their marriages will be destroyed if they have to go out yet again. That’s why we’ve seen active duty 4-stars out in front of congress recently, begging for more troops and warning about long-term problems.
So try using your own head, would you?
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EDIT: Added attribution.
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It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
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