<So here the US comes into play with its widely dispersed tracking and defense installations >
I am hearing a lot of techno-babble, by hammers who only see nails. All the advantages you think will win the WarOnTerrorism, are the same advantages we had in Vietnam: overwhelming superiority in firepower, mobility, logistics, communications, hardware. Didn't work then; won't win now.
Here's how we could have won in Vietnam (this model was briefly tried, then abandoned even though it worked, because it was too strange to be accepted by the military/civilian decision-makers):
1. Send a squad of U.S. soldiers to every village, and every neighborhood in every city, in Vietnam (today, Afghanistan). Begin with the areas that don't yet have any significant guerrilla activity, and spread slowly into the guerrilla strongholds.
2. Our soldiers will live in the village. They will eat what the villagers eat, shit the way the villagers shit, and soon smell the way the villagers smell.
3. Their job will be to defend the village. When not doing this, they can build a school, repair the local road.
4. They will (and this may take a few years), (1)recruit, (2)indoctrinate (=idealogical recruitment) , and (3)train a local militia. Of those three tasks, the ideological recruitment is the most important, because if it fails, the other two will also.
5. Enforce the strictest standards of behavior on our own soldiers. For instance, the village chiefs should be given the power to arrest, try, and execute U.S. soldiers who rape local women.
6. When the local militia can reliably defend their own village on their own, all over the country, the U.S. declares victory and our soldiers come home. |
