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

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (147853)	10/14/2004 2:51:55 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 281500

That is not all that I meant. I am amazed out how much trouble you are having here. I am saying that defeat is not a matter of being overwhelmed by force, primarily, but of having the will to resist broken. Sometimes it takes so much force that the distinction can seem trivial, but often not. Often it is just a question of how much blood and treasure you are willing to expend, and when it is no longer worth it to you, you stop fighting. Where hubris comes in beats me. The value in noting the role of will has to do with the way you wage war. The North Vietnamese knew that an indecisive war of attrition favored their cause, and that they had a tacit ally in the anti- war movement. We knew that the average Iraqi conscript had no will to fight, and therefore that we would generally encounter weak resistance, and could concentrate on the elite forces. Even MAD relied on the principle, that is, that neither side had the stomach to engage in a massive nuclear exchange targeting population centers, and therefore the mere disposition of forces sapped the will to offensive action.