Afghanistan.

[DukeNukeEm]

No, I'm saying a guerrilla campaign on territory we don't control against an enemy with strong internal and external support, regardless of where that support comes from. Afghanistan from the 1980's is yet another great example. You're pretending these conflicts didn't exist.

The 80's support of the Afghans had absolutely nothing to do with Afghanistan at all, just who they were fighting. We were scared to fight the Russians and the Russians were scared to fight us, so we tit-for-tatted in guerrilla wars. The names, dates and places change but from 1945 to 1991 the reasons pretty much stayed the same.

[Balta1701]

The 80's support of the Afghans had absolutely nothing to do with Afghanistan at all, just who they were fighting. We were scared to fight the Russians and the Russians were scared to fight us, so we tit-for-tatted in guerrilla wars. The names, dates and places change but from 1945 to 1991 the reasons pretty much stayed the same.

And the type of war pretty much stayed the same as well. And it's a type of war in which the F-22 is essentially useless.

 

The F-22's purpose is maintaining air superiority over Europe as Russian Tanks march across the German plains. Outside of that...it is remarkably inflexible

[DukeNukeEm]

are you seriously saying no one saw the middle east as the biggest threat 10 years ago? Give me a f***ing break, Iraq was a huge topic in the debates, and in the clinton administration. Even your mentors Kristol and Friedman wanted Iraq pre 9/11

We had concerns, the embassy bombings in Kenya and <I forget the other place off the top of my head>, plus the USS Cole. But after neutralizing Saddam the first time we didn't have much to worry about other than another intifada.

[Balta1701]

We had concerns, the embassy bombings in Kenya and , plus the USS Cole. But after neutralizing Saddam the first time we didn't have much to worry about other than another intifada.

Which is of course why we bombed the country of Iraq for a week in 1998, why we maintained regular no fly zones covering 1/2 the area of the country, why we maintained a UN presence on the ground for 7 years after the war, and why we were regularly exchanging fire with radar installations inside Iraq. Because we had nothing to worry about.

[DukeNukeEm]

And the type of war pretty much stayed the same as well. And it's a type of war in which the F-22 is essentially useless.

Yea, but the threat of a different, nastier one still lingered.

 

The F-22's purpose is maintaining air superiority over Europe as Russian Tanks march across the German plains. Outside of that...it is remarkably inflexible

The purpose of it is to show-off to other countries so they know not to f*** with us. If it actually came down to using a 5th generation fighter the F-35 will be a lot more capable in a combat role.

 

[Balta1701]

The purpose of it is to show-off to other countries so they know not to f*** with us. If it actually came down to using a 5th generation fighter the F-35 will be a lot more capable in a combat role.

So, your argument is that this country has spent $50 billion on an airplane that it has no use for because it makes us feel like our penises are larger.

[DukeNukeEm]

Which is of course why we bombed the country of Iraq for a week in 1998, why we maintained regular no fly zones covering 1/2 the area of the country, why we maintained a UN presence on the ground for 7 years after the war, and why we were regularly exchanging fire with radar installations inside Iraq. Because we had nothing to worry about.

That sounds like the kind of stuff you'd like fairly modern stealth aircraft for?

 

We were just keeping Saddam where we wanted him, not because he was a threat in 1998, but because we didn't want him to become one again like he sort of was in Kuwait.

[DukeNukeEm]

So, your argument is that this country has spent $50 billion on an airplane that it has no use for because it makes us feel like our penises are larger.

*makes other countries feel like their penises are smaller.

[bmags]

That sounds like the kind of stuff you'd like fairly modern stealth aircraft for?

 

We were just keeping Saddam where we wanted him, not because he was a threat in 1998, but because we didn't want him to become one again like he sort of was in Kuwait.

 

which is why we invaded 5 years later even though his military had not been rebuilt. Because we had him right where we wanted and hadn't been obsessed with him for more than a decade.

[DukeNukeEm]

which is why we invaded 5 years later even though his military had not been rebuilt. Because we had him right where we wanted and hadn't been obsessed with him for more than a decade.

The people who really wanted to do it finally had the political capital to go all in. Mix it with some dubious intelligence and it became relatively justifiable to a lot of people.

 

Bring up the question of why we didn't just do it all back in the early 90's, but that doesn't change any of the realities surrounding the '03 invasion.

Edited April 7, 2010 by DukeNukeEm

[Rex Kickass]

The people who really wanted to do it finally had the political capital to go all in. Mix it with some dubious intelligence and it became relatively justifiable to a lot of people.

 

Bring up the question of why we didn't just do it all back in the early 90's, but that doesn't change any of the realities surrounding the '03 invasion.

 

Because George HW (Poppa) Bush realized a weakened Iraq with a stable totalitarian regime was better for the world than an unstable Iraq with relatively little government in an area that has a hotly sought after natural resource (oil.) I believe the theory is that its better to have a stable something awful that isn't really threatening to an unstable not much of anything that weakens the states around it, or invites other states (read: Iran) to play a larger regional influence than what was in the United States' interest.

[lostfan]

Peace, man. *SUCKS AIR IN*

 

Seriously, you don't get that? You don't get weapon programs, especially air force weapon programs? Considering, you've got China, Russia, and others developing more technology as we speak?

 

It's ok, though, I see ya'lls point. Nothing will ever happen, and the world is a safe, beautiful place. Dismantle it all and stop the spending. It's unnecessary. We need all that money for social programs so that the redistribution of wealth can continue from the private sector... i.e. the government decides where to put money. Defense spending included, of course.

Nowhere in my post did I, or anyone else for that matter, say anything about that... hell, I am in the same dirty, unholy industry as you, and of course I want an overwhelmingly powerful DoD. But there is a point of diminishing returns or just plain overkill. Defense industries are powerful, and they provide a lot of jobs scattered across the country - intentionally - so they have a lot of senators and representatives willing to go to bat for them. But where does their profit come from? Government spending, that s*** isn't free. It makes no sense at all to have 5 times (arbitrary number I threw out btw) as many next-gen aircraft as our nearest competitors do, and we can barely fund our current, ACTUAL operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unless someone thinks Russia or China is an imminent military threat in which case I'd say there is a very strong case for that being bulls***.

[lostfan]

The 80's support of the Afghans had absolutely nothing to do with Afghanistan at all, just who they were fighting. We were scared to fight the Russians and the Russians were scared to fight us, so we tit-for-tatted in guerrilla wars. The names, dates and places change but from 1945 to 1991 the reasons pretty much stayed the same.

But it was still a guerrilla campaign. One that we tossed aside like a used condom when we got what we wanted out of it too, but still.

 

By the way, to your earlier post about why the military didn't completely overhaul the ground forces, actually they were. That started in the late 90s when Clinton was still in office and started to really get in full swing in Bush's first term. The process takes a long time, and is expensive, the military is actually still going through it.

 

There really aren't a whole lot of scenarios that I can think of in modern warfare that would require you to send in 3 heavy divisions with 500 tanks to fight another 2 heavy divisions - yeah you're gonna want to keep your Abrams and Bradleys just in case some s*** goes down (just like your F-22s) but generally speaking the Army and Marines want to stay light, mobile, and lethal.

[bmags]

The people who really wanted to do it finally had the political capital to go all in. Mix it with some dubious intelligence and it became relatively justifiable to a lot of people.

 

Bring up the question of why we didn't just do it all back in the early 90's, but that doesn't change any of the realities surrounding the '03 invasion.

 

no, that doesn't bring up the question...it just goes to show my point that YES, indeed ten years ago if you asked who we were most likely to go to war with, Iraq would have been numero uno.

[kapkomet]

Nowhere in my post did I, or anyone else for that matter, say anything about that... hell, I am in the same dirty, unholy industry as you, and of course I want an overwhelmingly powerful DoD. But there is a point of diminishing returns or just plain overkill. Defense industries are powerful, and they provide a lot of jobs scattered across the country - intentionally - so they have a lot of senators and representatives willing to go to bat for them. But where does their profit come from? Government spending, that s*** isn't free. It makes no sense at all to have 5 times (arbitrary number I threw out btw) as many next-gen aircraft as our nearest competitors do, and we can barely fund our current, ACTUAL operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unless someone thinks Russia or China is an imminent military threat in which case I'd say there is a very strong case for that being bulls***.

 

 

LMAO. That's awesome. That s*** ain't free, unless it's for health care or some other government entitlement.

[lostfan]

LMAO. That's awesome. That s*** ain't free, unless it's for health care or some other government entitlement.

You act like I'm being inconsistent when I say that. Come on... don't lump stuff I say in with generic Democratic talking points, you know better than that

Edited April 8, 2010 by lostfan

[NorthSideSox72]

http://www.globalfirepower.com/aircraft-total.asp

That is aircraft. I like how you slid F-22s, to fighter aircraft, to war planes, to all aircraft. How many Hueys or Starlifters the US military has is irrelevant to the discussion of air superioriity aircraft like the F-22 - which is what I assumed you meant by war planes.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

You act like I'm being inconsistent when I say that. Come on... don't lump stuff I say in with generic Democratic talking points, you know better than that

 

kap stopped trying a while ago.

[DukeNukeEm]

That is aircraft. I like how you slid F-22s, to fighter aircraft, to war planes, to all aircraft. How many Hueys or Starlifters the US military has is irrelevant to the discussion of air superioriity aircraft like the F-22 - which is what I assumed you meant by war planes.

I was referring to Balta's post suggesting the Russians and Chinese could just throw hordes of crummy planes at us and win by sheer numbers. Obviously, we would win that battle of attrition.

[DukeNukeEm]

But it was still a guerrilla campaign. One that we tossed aside like a used condom when we got what we wanted out of it too, but still.

 

By the way, to your earlier post about why the military didn't completely overhaul the ground forces, actually they were. That started in the late 90s when Clinton was still in office and started to really get in full swing in Bush's first term. The process takes a long time, and is expensive, the military is actually still going through it.

 

There really aren't a whole lot of scenarios that I can think of in modern warfare that would require you to send in 3 heavy divisions with 500 tanks to fight another 2 heavy divisions - yeah you're gonna want to keep your Abrams and Bradleys just in case some s*** goes down (just like your F-22s) but generally speaking the Army and Marines want to stay light, mobile, and lethal.

The focus of my argument is that nobody wants to actually engage the United States in pitched conflict because we'd murder them. These massive programs that everyone calls wasteful keep a relative amount of peace going.

[lostfan]

I was referring to Balta's post suggesting the Russians and Chinese could just throw hordes of crummy planes at us and win by sheer numbers. Obviously, we would win that battle of attrition.

I don't think this is actually being disputed

[bmags]

The focus of my argument is that nobody wants to actually engage the United States in pitched conflict because we'd murder them. These massive programs that everyone calls wasteful keep a relative amount of peace going.

 

And as I've said over and over, the spending differential between the US and the next biggest spenders is HUGE. And you are saying we can't cut anything still. Because if we cut one program they know they are only 3/4 of a trillion dollars away!

[Balta1701]

LMAO. That's awesome. That s*** ain't free, unless it's for health care or some other government entitlement.

 

Dude, you're crazy. Defense spending is free. Take a look at this guy arguing that defense cuts are always silly and should be ignored when considering tax rates and such.

 

Peace, man. *SUCKS AIR IN*

 

Seriously, you don't get that? You don't get weapon programs, especially air force weapon programs? Considering, you've got China, Russia, and others developing more technology as we speak?

 

It's ok, though, I see ya'lls point. Nothing will ever happen, and the world is a safe, beautiful place. Dismantle it all and stop the spending. It's unnecessary. We need all that money for social programs so that the redistribution of wealth can continue from the private sector... i.e. the government decides where to put money. Defense spending included, of course.

 

[Balta1701]

It took 5 years to figure this out?

More than 40 U.S. troops have been killed, and scores more wounded, in helicopter crashes, machine-gun attacks and grenade blasts in the Korengal Valley, a jagged sliver just six miles long and a half-mile wide. The Afghan death toll has been far higher, making the Korengal some of the bloodiest ground in all of Afghanistan, according to American and Afghan officials.

 

In the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday, the U.S. presence here came to an abrupt end.

 

...

U.S. troops arrived here in 2005 to flush out al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. They stayed on the theory that their presence drew insurgents away from areas where the U.S. role is more tolerated and there is a greater desire for development. The troops were, in essence, bullet magnets.

 

In 2010, a new set of commanders concluded that the United States had blundered into a blood feud with fierce and clannish villagers who wanted, above all, to be left alone. By this logic, subduing the Korengal wasn't worth the cost in American blood.

[Balta1701]

So, it appears we have an insubordinate military commander running things in Afghanistan. Or at the very least, one who is very inarticulate in his choice of language used publicly to describe his civilian superiors.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan has been summoned to Washington to explain derogatory comments about President Barack Obama and his colleagues, administration officials said Tuesday.

 

The move came hours after General Stanley McChrystal apologized for comments by his aides insulting some of President Barack Obama's closest advisers in an article to be published in Rolling Stone magazine.

 

In the magazine profile, his aides are quoted mocking Vice President Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

 

The first victim in the growing controversy was the Pentagon's PR official who set up the interview with McChrystal. NBC reported that Duncan Boothby, a civilian member of the general's public relations team was "asked to resign."

 

...

The interview describes McChrystal, 55, as "disappointed" in his first Oval Office meeting with Obama. The article says that although McChrystal voted for Obama, the two failed to connect from the start. Obama appointed McChrystal to lead the Afghan effort in May 2009. Last fall, though, Obama called McChrystal on the carpet for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops.

 

"I found that time painful," McChrystal said in the article, on newsstands Friday. "I was selling an unsellable position."

 

The article also reported:

 

* McChrystal has seized control of the war "by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House."

* One aide called White House National Security Adviser Jim Jones, a retired four star general, a "clown" who was "stuck in 1985."

* Obama agreed to dispatch an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan only after months of study that many in the military found frustrating. And the White House's troop commitment was coupled with a pledge to begin bringing them home in July 2011, in what counterinsurgency strategists advising McChrystal regarded as an arbitrary deadline.

* The article portrayed McChrystal's team as disapproving of the Obama administration, with the exception of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who backed McCrystal's request for additional troops in Afghanistan.

* It quotes a member of McChrystal's team making jokes about Biden, who was seen as critical of the general's efforts to escalate the conflict and who had favored a more limited counter-terrorism approach. "Biden?" the aide was quoted as saying. "Did you say: Bite me?" Biden initially opposed McChrystal's proposal for additional forces last year. He favored a narrower focus on hunting terrorists

Link

 

Private disagreements and even private jabs/insults/outright loathing, fine. But doing that in front of the press? I don't know how that isn't a firing offense.