OT:
Bruce,
I'm always interested in learning things.
Just one follow up question to your post:
"I noted your comment that "shock and awe" might only have been "a psy op ploy." I disagree. It is only my opinion, but I feel there is a substantial body of opinion in the American military (both active and retired) that believes in a strategy that I call "American Steamroller." This is the strategy that we employed in Vietnam and this was strategy we employed in Gulf I (bombing for 39 days, "degrading" the enemy from a distance before the first engagement, etc.)."
My point was not that the military didn't have, as part of its cards in hand, the ability to use "shock and awe," but rather that by advertising it endlessly (face it, when somebody named Kodiakbull knows a strategy, how likely is it to be a real strategy?) it ended up as a feint through which they actually did their lightning run to the capital. Imagine how quickly they would have gotten there without the 3 day sandstorm.
Like a clever boxer faking a left jab and coming under with a right hook, it seems to (nonmilitary) me that faking a massive air campaign (always in the offing), then reporting disgruntled commanders in the field and stretched supply lines might have been the strategy all along.
We might not know the answer for several years, and then we'll probably get several answers.
No doubt Sun Tzu has some tasty dictum lying about about generalship and skillful leaders, but it doesn't come to mind. I think taking a country the size of California in a few days without destroying many of the people or the assets and causing a 300,000 man army to simply evaporate must, eventually, be lauded by military historians as a great and good achievement. But of course I prefer the greatest military achievement of the 20th century which was Ronald Reagan's dismantling of the Soviet empire (with lots of help from within) without firing a single shot, unless you call the oil strategy and words like "evil empire" and "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," bullets of a different sort.
Kb |
