Civil War Doomsday Clock

[C-Mag]

Tommy Franks was one of our last really good general officers.
I really don't think much of the Patreaus, McCrystal, HR Puff n stuff crowd.

Problem is our current general officers are trained to run armies of occupation, not armies of conquest.

If only that were true. We've done fine with conquests, not so much with occupation where we've crawled away from disasters declaring victory.

The primary reasons I want to pull out of all these wars is that we are just there to occupy and maintain a presence. No goals for victory, no idea what victory looks like, all strategy, tactics, planning and training centered around limiting casualties and maintain logistics lines.

The Press is in on it, won't ask any tough questions, the Brass finds reasons to STFU and maintain in place, no one in leadership questioning why we are engaged all over central asia and Africa. The last battle of any note the US military engaged in was the 2nd Battle of Fallujah in 2004...…. 15 years ago.

All Congress can agree on is that Trump can't get out of Syria. Can't bring troops home, can't end this stupid goaless shit.

[The Conservative]

The military wouldn't fully go one side or the other. It would split.

I think they could very well stay out for a while, deferring to locals to figure it out.

Eventually the Army is going to take the government back. There's no telling when that will be, but all democracies either get whacked or implode and go back to some form of military rule.

A lot of people assume the military will just naturally take their side, which is farcical in my opinion. The Army is the only true source of government and will always take its own side.

If anybody really wants the Army to take the side of the people, then they need to start talking to others about reverting back to a militia with no meaningful standing army that exists unto itself. Which means a lot of lazy, entitled brats are going to have to learn how to fight, which ain't happening..

It's not a scenario I want to see play out.
There's plenty of Flag grade officers that are total deep staters. Over the past 15 years they have done a fantastic job of turning them into progs. These new generals support transgender bullshit and are choosing feminist reforms rather than merit and high standards. Those officers will gladly order troops to collect guns or whatever. However, there is going to be a very large core of the military that will tell them to get fucked or desert and resist tyrannical orders...…………. it would be fucking ugly.

This... is exactly my point.

[brewster]

Tommy Franks was one of our last really good general officers.
I really don't think much of the Patreaus, McCrystal, HR Puff n stuff crowd.

Problem is our current general officers are trained to run armies of occupation, not armies of conquest.

If only that were true. We've done fine with conquests, not so much with occupation where we've crawled away from disasters declaring victory.

The primary reasons I want to pull out of all these wars is that we are just there to occupy and maintain a presence. No goals for victory, no idea what victory looks like, all strategy, tactics, planning and training centered around limiting casualties and maintain logistics lines.

The Press is in on it, won't ask any tough questions, the Brass finds reasons to STFU and maintain in place, no one in leadership questioning why we are engaged all over central asia and Africa. The last battle of any note the US military engaged in was the 2nd Battle of Fallujah in 2004...…. 15 years ago.

All Congress can agree on is that Trump can't get out of Syria. Can't bring troops home, can't end this stupid goaless shit.

Perhaps the Romans had it right: there's wars of conquest, and wars of punishment, don't get the 2 confused. This is what you get when you let people who haven't studied history make policy like they did in the Bush Administration. Any historian (or Russian) could have told them occupying Afghanistan is a suckers game. Then after invading and watching the Taliban melt away into the hills, they were idiots enough to think that was it, over and done, and moved on to the next ill advised invasion.

[Speaker to Animals]

These were not true conquests.

A conquest would be invading China or something like that. Attacking dindus for various imperial interests is something else. Not sure there are good words for these concepts in English.

[brewster]

These were not true conquests.

I don't see that. It was not a helluva lot different than what the Romans would do. Invade, destroy the enemy army, and set up a Governor in charge of a co-opted local power structure. Apparently what we failed to do was enslave anyone who opposed us, and their families.

[C-Mag]

Perhaps the Romans had it right: there's wars of conquest, and wars of punishment, don't get the 2 confused. This is what you get when you let people who haven't studied history make policy like they did in the Bush Administration. Any historian (or Russian) could have told them occupying Afghanistan is a suckers game. Then after invading and watching the Taliban melt away into the hills, they were idiots enough to think that was it, over and done, and moved on to the next ill advised invasion.

The Romans did a pretty good job at keeping a huge empire together for a long time.

I'm down with wars of punishment. For instance, I feel strongly we should launch a punitive expedition against the cartels of Mexico and Central America. Knock the shit out of them, destroy their infrastructure, kill their members and keep them on the defensive. We should have Armored Cav and Drones on the US border ready to violently interdict drug and human smugglers. Yep, some fairly innocent berries pickers are going to get dead early on. But the cost of trafficking the border will quickly get to deadly to risk. There's nothing wrong with the US publicly stating ahead of time that on this dead, we start shooting smugglers.

Yeah, the Bush admin fucked up in Iraq. We were both around for 9/11 and the aftermath, there was a lot of pressure on Bush to act on Afghanistan. Kind of a tragedy catch 22 on that one.

What's painful is we are still making some of the same mistakes. Bush got us in 2 wars, then BHO says, 'that's nothing, hold my beer'.

[BjornP]

Tommy Franks was one of our last really good general officers.
I really don't think much of the Patreaus, McCrystal, HR Puff n stuff crowd.

Problem is our current general officers are trained to run armies of occupation, not armies of conquest.

If only that were true. We've done fine with conquests, not so much with occupation where we've crawled away from disasters declaring victory.

The primary reasons I want to pull out of all these wars is that we are just there to occupy and maintain a presence. No goals for victory, no idea what victory looks like, all strategy, tactics, planning and training centered around limiting casualties and maintain logistics lines.

The Press is in on it, won't ask any tough questions, the Brass finds reasons to STFU and maintain in place, no one in leadership questioning why we are engaged all over central asia and Africa. The last battle of any note the US military engaged in was the 2nd Battle of Fallujah in 2004...…. 15 years ago.

All Congress can agree on is that Trump can't get out of Syria. Can't bring troops home, can't end this stupid goaless shit.

"Maintaining a presence" is chronic victory. Why bother with old-fashioned conquests, when you can get your oil, your minerals, etc. and get them to buy certain goods exclusively from you, without needing to draft a million or so troops for a continuous occupation? Simply declare that the Islamic fundamentalist, child-molesting, torture chamber enthusiast president of Jihadistan is the grandest, bestest, and nicyest, super-dude in the world in public... and in private threaten him with supporting his enemies if he raises the price on what goods you need from him.

[brewster]

"Maintaining a presence" is chronic victory. Why bother with old-fashioned conquests, when you can get your oil, your minerals, etc. and get them to buy certain goods exclusively from you, without needing to draft a million or so troops for a continuous occupation? Simply declare that the Islamic fundamentalist, child-molesting, torture chamber enthusiast president of Jihadistan is the grandest, bestest, and nicyest, super-dude in the world in public... and in private threaten him with supporting his enemies if he raises the price on what goods you need from him.

But that was our "cold war" policy, and that's over. Right?

C-Mag, maybe I was in a coma but what did Obama do anywhere on a scale with what GWB did? He was left a big stinking turd in Afghanistan, and did what his generals told him to. He did not start a major ground war anywhere.

[C-Mag]

"Maintaining a presence" is chronic victory. Why bother with old-fashioned conquests, when you can get your oil, your minerals, etc. and get them to buy certain goods exclusively from you, without needing to draft a million or so troops for a continuous occupation?

We can get all that without continuous occupation.
I might even go for continuous occupation with some honesty. My current position is that I want Trump to threaten to pull out Troops unless Congress re-authorizes wars with declarations of war. Make Congress debate these foreign adventures.

If we had to go to war or occupy for resources, I might even sign off on that. But I want the truth.

Simply declare that the Islamic fundamentalist, child-molesting, torture chamber enthusiast

Their Not ?
Prove me wrong

[Fife]

C-Mag, maybe I was in a coma but what did Obama do anywhere on a scale with what GWB did?

That's a hell of of a good fucking coma you had there bud.

ZZZZZZZZZZ