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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (237509)	6/17/2005 6:19:43 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578334

The only sustained offensive here has been your argument... You do recognize the difference between conceding a point and just ending argument right? Or actually in this case an offer to mutually end the argument. Apparently one which you rejected. an offensive (Iraq insurgency) The Iraqi insurgency isn't an offensive. Not only because its a guerilla operation, but also it isn't an offensive in the same way that WWII wasn't an offensive. It's a war were both sides have a number of offensives. Even on the defense you have counter attacks. The Japanese forces on many Islands counterattacked our forces, but such counter attacks are not usually called "offensives" certainly not "sustained offensives". They where however often more serious attacks than anything the insurgency has done. The majority insurgencies operations are tactically defensive. They defend a position, or plant some mines, maybe they spring an ambush when a patrol moves through. Occasionally they actually do make an attack against American positions, but the result is normally either the insurgents melting away with few casualties on either side, or the attack getting turned back with heavy losses. Usually such tactical attacks, esp. ones which achieve no objective except killing a handful of enemy soldiers, wouldn't even be called "offensives". Nor does the fact that you have a number of them happening at various places amount to an offensive at all. To be an offensive they would have to be a coordinated series of attacks (or one massive powerful attack) that seeks to destroy enemy units or take control of territory. I doubt that the insurgents attacks against American soldiers and marines even have that aim, if they do have that as their aim then they all fail miserably. The only time there has been serious battles, has been when we have gone on the offensive. I wouldn't say that our offensive has been very sustained either, but we have sustained offenses for much longer than the insurgents have. If you like Vietnam comparisons, Tet, Khe Shan, and the Eastertide Offensive, where all offenses by the enemy. All of them failed in military terms (the communists lost more then the Americans and South Vietnamese did, they didn't take a lot of territory and the territory they did take they couldn't hold), but they (esp. Tet) had success in political terms, partially because the military and the administration had been telling Americans that the communists where close to finished, so it was a shock that they could mount an operation like Tet even if it did fail. Those where offensives by the communists, but the whole period of time when they happened was not a sustained offensive by the communists. The closest they came to that was after we left and they took over the south by force. That would have been a sustained offensive except it was successful quickly enough that it probably wouldn't be called sustained. I'm sure your not going to agree with any of this. If your reply actually has some new idea or argument I probably will respond to it. If it does not, I might not. Tim