Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2003 18:01:28 -0500
From: danceswithcarp <dcombs-AT-bloomington.in.us>
Subject: Re: rumsfeld and irony



Chuck, be careful.  Your anti-state position is sounding more like 
anti-americanism and pro-iraqi, which makes little sense.  Both sides are 
worng in this.   But this response is mainly about your military analysis.

At 01:20 PM 4/5/2003 -0500, Chuck0 wrote:

>The M1 tank, like most other tanks, is good if you are fighting a 
>conventional war against a convnetional army. It's a powerful weapon if it 
>can move around easy, like on roads, across fields, and over the Iraqi 
>desert. I would expect that it wouldn't do so well in forests, jungles and 
>mountains.

This is true of all tracked armor (tanks and armored fighting vehicles with 
steel tracks).  The M1 isn't helpless in other terrain by any means, but no 
one wants to take any tank into a city or forest where there isn't a lot of 
room.  Not to mention the M1 isn't an anti-personnel weapon.  It doesn't 
even have a non-armor round to fire like High Explosive.  In limiting 
terrain it has to have supporting Bradleys or marine LAVs with it, and they 
burn quite well.

The most recent use of armor in bad terrain would be the Russians in 
Grozny, Chechnya.   They got waxed.

>And that is why the US has a huge air force and huge supplies of those 
>precision "coward" bombs.

This I don't understand.  Are you saying in the interest of a "fair fight" 
one side should give up a technological advantage?  I think you will only 
find one side advocating this.   Technological superiority doesn't make one 
side a "coward," it just makes that side more likely to use the 
technology.   This is not a good thing but I know of no solution as long as 
militaries will exist.

Not to mention if I was in a country that was at war and bombs were being 
dropped I'd much prefer they be these "coward" bombs instead of those 
courageous "dumb but brave bombs."  Compare downtown Baghdad with, say, 
Cologne in WWver2.0.   The US/UK has dropped 15,000 pieces of ordnance in 
this war.   That would be two good UK/US day and night air-raids in 
1944.  The level of infrastructure destruction is less by factors of 100.

Also, as hard as it might be to admit it, the US/UK ground forces have used 
a tremendous amount of fire-discipline.  The videos of both of these have 
almost always shown methodical aimed fire as opposed to just spraying 
rounds everywhere.

Or are you saying military technology should be like Linux and be "open 
source?"   Give the world's best technology to North Korea or China or 
Liberia and see how long a peoples' revolution would last there.    Plus, I 
beleve technology (with the exception of nukes) makes war *more* likely, 
than less.

>We've seen in the past few weeks how vulnerable the US army's logistical 
>lines were when the US had no opposition in the skies and had all kinds of 
>satellite intelligence. The Iraqis were still able to harass the US supply 
>lines, despite the odds being stacked against them.

"Harass" does not equal "vulnerable."   The US may have simply ran out of 
gas for a bit, but I think in the final analysis we'll find that the US 
stopped to let air-power work.  In Desert Storm the airwar went on for 30 
days before the coalition attacked on land.  This time around it went on 
for less than 48 hours before the land war began.  As for any shortages, 
soldiers getting delivered two hot meals in one day instead of three 
doesn't mean much over the short term, especially when the soldiers are 
carrying 5 days of personal rations.   And no one ran out of ammo.

>If I were a US military strategist looking at this right now, I'd be 
>pissed too about Rumsfeld's crazy ideas about winning wars with a 
>downsized army. Look what the Iraqis did with just a lightly organized 
>guerilla force operating in the desert.

The Iraqis didn't and won't do shit in the desert.   The only hope against 
forces like the US is in the cities, and given the tehnological advantage, 
I'm not sure military resistance of any kind is smart.  I don't know what 
the alternative is, but futile resistance is merely futile.

>And what would happen if the *entire* population was resisting the 
>American invasion?

That could happen in the cities or in a mountainous country and be 
effective.  The problem is finding a population that will do it.

>Getting back to the M1 tank for a minute; what's interesting is the big 
>fuss the US put up when it figured out that the Iraqis did have some 
>effective modern equipment like Cornet missiles and night vision goggle. 
>All of a sudden, the US military was crying about how Russia was helping 
>the Iraqis. It was still a lopsided fight, but the Iraqi had some weapons 
>and tactics that were causing problems for the much-vaunted tank forces.

I agree the US cries "wolf" too much.  This was just bullying of Syria and 
Iran.  But don't overestimate the effectiveness of the Kornets (the US 
admits not one pair of night-vision goggles have been found on any 
Iraqi).  There have been maybe 3 or 4 M1s destroyed by Kornets, and those 
were essentially suicide missions.  The Kornet is a big rocket that has to 
be set up on a tripod or a stand, which means the gunner has to be 
exposed.  But these kills are  less than 1% of US tanks in the war.  Two 
M1s were lost due to driving them into mud, 1 was driven off of a bridge, 
and broke down  in Baghdad and was destroyed.  So conditions right now are 
killing tanks at a rate ahead of Iraqis.  (Not to mention Patriots have 
taken out an F18 and a Tornado, so US technology has killed more planes 
than Iraq)

>After all, part of the reason for fighting the Rumsfeld way is to convince 
>Americans that these expensive, high tech weapons work and that we need to 
>keep pumping money into defense contractor pockets.

These weapons _do_ work, and that is what sells them.  Someone needs to 
figure out effective counter-measures.  Mass suicide attacks are very hard 
sells.

>Expensive tanks don't look so hot when word gets out that some dudes in a 
>pick-up truck can take out a tank by firing a missile at its Achilles heel.

Again, don't overestimate the effectiveness of "some dude in a pickup 
truck."   There are 10s of thousands of dudes in pickup trucks in Iraq and 
3-4 dead American tanks.  That aren't good odds.

The US/UK/French/German/Chinese/Russian/Indian/Pakistani militaries won't 
be defeated except by each other.  The only way to defeat their systems is 
though politics, and right now that looks damn glum.

The absolute worst thing about this war in the US is that the more the US 
wins the less of a voice the anti-war/left has in the national 
arena.  People who were borderline are going over to the pro-war bandwagon 
in droves.  The visual media has turned into pro-US cheerleaders and has 
become the dominant force in politics.   Anti-war voices are being 
squelched by reactionary media voices and there isn't anything the 
anti-war/left voices seem capable of doing about it (Witness the burnings 
and bannings of Dixie Chicks cds).

Anyone who thinks the US/UK state apparatus is going to come out of this 
war weaker than they went in isn't paying attention.   Maybe Bush and Blair 
will be gone, but the states are going to be more powerful than 
ever.  Anti-state actions are feeble gestures and are taking on the sheen 
of pathos.  And that saddens me.


carp