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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (147806)	10/14/2004 12:32:29 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Neocon, your statement that: I have no idea why this is so difficult a concept for you. I did not focus on American will anyway, but on the will of the British and the Soviets. If they had had a failure of will, the war would have been lost before we entered it. The reason the concept is so difficult for me is because your initial statement was based on the faulty concept that wars are won by those who have the "will." Will is but one of the factors that determine who will win a conflict. There are many others including logistics, firepower, the will of the opposition, whether the "mission" is humanly achievable and a host of other factors. Many of those factors are much more important than any relative advantage one side might have in terms of "will." That's why I pointed out that the Germans and the Japanese in the big war had tremendous will. When you point out that they eventually lost their "will" to fight, you simply point out that will is a changing factor so that as more important factors come into play, will changes. Let's make it so simple that anyone, even a neocon, can understand. If Riddick Bowe and a 150 lb accountant with the most "will and determination" in the nation are given gloves and placed into the boxing ring, will it be the one with the greatest "will and determination" who prevails? If we attack another third world country, will it be the country with the greatest "will and determination" that wins the conventional war? Of course not, it will be the one with overwhelming power. But what if we occupy another country and, at the point of a gun, attempt to force its people to conform to our view of how they should live? CAN WE make them live the way we want? Can we make them like it? Can we make them stop resisting us? Can we move among them without fearing deadly retaliation? The answer to each of these questions is absolutely not, no friggin way, never, "NO." So the lesson is that you can be the big power and have all the will you want, but you better pay attention to the doability of the "mission," and you'd best not forget what it is that you CAN'T do without suffering the "death of a thousand cuts." Cause remember, the other guy has "will and determination" too.