Today is Veterans Day

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

A big salute to all our vets!

[s1mplehumar]

Any Iraq War vets? I spent 12 months in the Al Anbar province, 2005-2006. I was a gunner on an M1A1.

WOW!
I would love to hear tales of riding that tank. Amazing how the main gun seems to remain stable as the tank bounces around the hills. The area you were assigned, how were the locals? Were there a general openness or distrust between the soldiers and the people there?

The main gun is incredibly accurate, even over hellish terrain. Accurate armor penetration is very possible in excess of 4,000 meters.

We had daily engagements with hostiles and unsettled civilians alike, it really just depended on the day. For the most part I'd say mistrust was the predominant disposition.

One of my finds for your viewing pleasure...






^ Might sting a little?

[MrPopo]

Is that a claymore mine in the form of a vest?

[YoshiEgg25]

Is that a claymore mine in the form of a vest?

That sounds...explosiontastic. Explosionful. Explosiony.

[s1mplehumar]

Is that a claymore mine in the form of a vest?

Pretty much. They found all kinds of creative ways to blow themselves, and whoever else was in close proximity into oblivion.

[MrPopo]

Is that a claymore mine in the form of a vest?

Pretty much. They found all kinds of creative ways to blow themselves, and whoever else was in close proximity into oblivion.

Except you can't call that creative; they came up with it in Swordfish.

How do you even fight against that? It's not just that their combatants aren't afraid to die; they actually kill themselves to do damage.

[Flake]

How do you even fight against that? It's not just that their combatants aren't afraid to die; they actually kill themselves to do damage.

That's the big problem facing developed nations today. It's called 'Asymmetric Warfare'.

A lot of people criticize the way the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been handled (or that they have even happened) without realizing that the shape of the world has changed a lot as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union back in 1991. With the shift from a bipolar world order into a period of American hegemony and the realization of almost universal nuclear proliferation between developed nations, the concept of two armies dressing up in identifiable uniforms and fighting each other according to any kind of code of conduct is pretty much a thing of the past.

Nuclear weapons make conventional warfare impossible - In a conventional war it is possible for two sides to either overestimate their chances to win or underestimate the cost of either losing or wining as affordable. In the age of nuclear weapons it is much more difficult to make these mistakes in assessing the balance of power. Since the use of even one nuclear weapon is devastating (a cost far too high to be gauged as acceptable) developed nations will not make any overt actions against any other developed nations that maintain their credibility as a nuclear actor.

The proxy wars of the cold war were essentially an expression of American-Russo aggression as military leaders and policy makers foundered about, searching for a way to deal with the post 1949 world. Fast forward half a century- you have an all powerful global economic system that has created a virtual apartheid system for the 3rd world, especially poorer Middle East / African nations and numerous powerful nations, all of whom possess the ultimate weapon.

Religious and economic strife + a huge beef against the developed world + proxy wars + no possible way for the actual actors behind international conflicts to act overtly = widespread and rampant terrorism, suicide attacks being a preferred method of terrorist groups for attracting attention to their causes.

The mistakes and issues coalition forces have faced in the last 7 years have been a result of the learning curve. The ridiculously violent posture terrorist groups have taken where they've killed any possible chance of garnering sympathy for their causes has also been indicative of a learning curve on their part as well.

[wip3outguy7]

You have earned an eye patch, Big Boss.

[Ack]

You have earned an eye patch, Big Boss.

He has, but the really disturbing part is that it is a kind of warfare that the US has been encountering for over a century, starting with military involvement in the Philippines. Some scholars even speculate that the Americans first used guerrilla tactics in the Revolutionary War as a means to fend off the much more powerful British.

And battles fought in previous times using weaker nations as proxy has generally led to future problems with the nation. For instance, OSS Deer Teams operating in Vietnam helped train the Viet Minh in tactics to take on the Japanese invaders. The equipment and training they provided were eventually turned on the French and then the Americans(and to an extent the Australians, who also had soldiers in Vietnam during the 1960s). Some of the anger in modern Afghanistan that has been encountered is in response to the Soviet invasion in the 1980s and America's limited support. In Iraq, some of it is in response to the US selling arms to both sides during the Iraq-Iran conflicts in the 1980s as well in an attempt to keep two regimes we didn't like busy killing each other and threatening each other to a point they wouldn't threaten the US or her allies in the region. It backfired when Hussein decided it would be a good idea to actually use some of the chemical weapons he'd managed to get his hands on against the Kurdish population and then invade Kuwait.

[Flake]

Exactly, Ack. Most of the root causes of the issues we face today are self evident after taking a glance at recent history.

It's how we move forward that is causing the big stir.

There are those that advocate dissemination of nuclear weapons to most states, using the logic that that if everyone has the bomb no one will be able to act. Asymmetric warfare issues confound this 'magic bullet'. While Neo-Realism requires the assumption that all states act in their own self interest in response to the anarchic international system, terrorist groups are not states and often act in ways that seem illogical or detrimental to their causes - they respond more to their religious leaders or financiers than pressure from the IC.

This makes finding their center of gravity VERY VERY difficult. We can kill a thousand of them and that won't make much of a dent. Given 6 months and some financing, you'll have 2000 more angry young men to take their place.

This is a huge part of why the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken so long. This isn't WWII where we can just bomb the shit out of the Japanese until they surrender in horror. This isn't the Franco-Russo war of 1812 where the enemies weakness is the army itself. We have to remove the causes that compel young Muslim men to fall in with terrorist cells - namely unemployment, hatred of the West, and the radical perversion of Islam that violent and self-interested Clerics have been using to recruit soldiers.

tl;dr verison: This shit ain't easy.