Do Democrats have absolutely no sense of military strategy?

Question

You do not gradually pull soldiers out of battle. That means the people left remaining at the front are butchered because their flanks are exposed, and the "gradual withdrawl" becomes a full-on rout.

Wars begin when you want them to, but do not end when you want. You cannot just one day decide you are done fighting and then turn your back and slowly leave. Such a plan utterly failed in Vietnam.

Besides look what happened when the British left that town. It immediately came under heavy attack. If the US left Iraq the entire country would be torn apart as each faction fights to survive, and ultiamtely one of those factions might win and come to dominate all the others not much different than under Saddam.

You go after the allies of your enemies, and you make friendships with the enemies of your enemies.

Answer 1

Of course you gradually pull troops out of battle -- it's called a phased withdrawal or a structured retreat.

It's a technique that has been used by every army at one time or another since the concept of having an army was first devised.

Whether it's a good idea here or not is a debatable issue. And yes, doing it the way you suggest with leaving a thin shell of forces in front with no flanking support is absolutely the wrong thing to do. But the statement that a gradual withdawal is never done is just flat out wrong.

And yes, obviously, if we pull out, the factions that are fighting will continue doing so -- and one might eventually achieve dominance. Again, that's how conflict has always worked. Such is the nature of any battle.

And yes, obviously, given that the factions are not willing to peacefully co-exist and refuse to all participate in a common govt -- which means that whatever faction achieves dominance, whether it's the new Iraq govt or any other, will have to maintain strict control to prevent any flare-ups of violence. That's the only way it's going to happen any time in the next few decades.

Answer 2

Pulling troops out gradually is the only possible way to do it. We have something along the lines of 170,000 troops in Iraq, with probably twice that number in contractors and other assorted support personnel. Add vehicles and other equipment and you're looking at a process that cannot be completed in less than a year, though two years is probably closer to the mark. It is logistically impossible to pull everything out at once. Do you plan on calling Scotty and asking him to beam everyone and everything home in one fell swoop? Maybe you should study military logistics a little bit before you insult the strategic sense of the majority party of the United States Congress. Many of them have military experience and they might just know a thing or two, or are at least advised by people who do.

It's true that this process can be extremely messy, even disasterously so, if things get too ugly on the ground. However, to me that just means that you really shouldn't go around starting stupid wars when you have little or no possibility of formulating a clean exit strategy. That is, if you have any choice in the matter. A truly justified war would not begin when you want it to. Rather, it would begin when you were attacked by a hostile nation and end whenever one side was defeated or a truce was reached. If the war begins at your own initiative, that means you are most likely the aggressor.

I agree that the government Iraq ends up with when all is said and done will probably be very much like Saddam's, or even worse, but that was the most likely outcome from the beginning and we never had much hope of creating a western-style democracy there. Bush's intentions in the region were really never much more than his own private fantasy, and a way for Halliburton to make more billions. After you're done studying logistics, go study some political science to learn why this is the case.

Attacking the ally of your enemy and supporting the enemy of your enemy is all well and good if you're involved in the Napoleonic Wars, but the situation in Iraq is infinitely more complex. One of these days, you may even have the academic background to understand it.

Answer 3

Let's talk about military strategy just for a minute, shall we?

Before the invasion Bush was told it would take 500,000 troops to stabilize Iraq. Who told him this?

1. Every general and expert at the Pentagon.

2. An expensive study by the Rand Corp.

3. His own sec'y of state who had won a recent war in the same exact area

4. HIS OWN DAD!

Who did Bush listen to? None of the above. He listened to political ideologs who had no experience or knowledge of fighting wars.

All during the run-up to the war I waited for someone in the administration to answer the question of how we would hold Iraq together with three factions that hate each other--Sunni, Shia and Kurd. We had the recent example of Yugoslavia to go by, diverse groups who hate each other held together by a 'strongman' dictator, when the dictator is gone the country falls apart. Nobody ever addressed this question before the invasion. Years later I find Bush didn't even know there were different kinds of Muslims!

If Bush really thought we could win the war, he would recognize that what we're doing isn't working and would come up with some new strategy. Instead he just keeps insisting that what we're doing is working. Nobody is fooled.

I really think Bush's strategy now is to keep the war going until it's taken out of his hands by the next administration. Then his supporters will say that we were winning the war but the Democrats made us surrender. And you will believe it.

Answer 4

But we only have limited number of soldiers. We're kind of running out because they are forcing troops on extended tours and cutting vacation, home stays shorter and shorter to force this 'surge'. From what I heard it will get bad towards next spring. Even Gen Petreas said that is the 'broken army' deadline. Unless they want to call for draft and get more men ready to go they should start planning how to withdraw troops.

Sure it's not good to just turn back, but why aren't we drafting men if it is that important? That's what I want to know.

If it is that so super incredibly important why aren't we drafting men? What do they think these volunteer troops are bunch of super heroes? Or because it will hurt their reelection chance? Or was this war all about politics & personal ideology from day 1?

In Vietnam they left because they failed. Not failed because they left.

Democrat shouldn't take the blame for mess Bush administration created. They're only trying to minimize further damage to American citizens living today. And not protecting some hypothetical scenarios.

Answer 5

The problem is that the people running this war--the bush administration is not listening to our military commanders, and our men in uniform who have actually been there. I like to listen and read a lot. Last week on NPR (Democracy Now), NPR interviewed many soldiers who had been in Iraq. If you listen to our soldiers, many of them will tell you that our ability to be effective in our hope to spread democracy and freedom ove there is not longer functional. Each veteran gave his/her own explanation. But the overwhelming majority said that the US presence there is causing more damage then fixing the violence. Let me summarize what a soldier said...Lets imagine you (soldier) were with your squad patroling and suddenly in a marketplace there were gunshots. You the soldier do not know who exactly shot off a gun but have a general idea where the bullets were coming from. So, you return fire at the direction you here the shots, but in the process you kill a little girl. Now, do you think the family of that little girl care that you were trying to to stop insurgents or trying to spread freedom? Heck no! All they know is that they would still have their girl if he US was not there.Now imagine this scenerio happening 10 THOUSAND fold. Two thirds of all casualties have been innocent people--families who all they wish is that they could put food on their table. Don't you think they have any right to be mad at the US? and this is just one example.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

No. Their political "well being" is more important to them than any military member or even the country. Winning an armed conflict has not been the goal of the Democrats since Truman and Korea or Johnson and Viet Nam.
Can't understand why any group of politicians in this country want to, once again, see American lives squandered and leave the field of battle without winning. Departure without victory means the life of every casualty in Iraqi was wasted.

Answer 8

Democrats understand military strategy, and they understand that Bush has had none for over 4 years in Iraq. There is no Democrat proposal to "gradually pull soldiers out of" a heated World War II style "battle" with a "front" and "flanks" fighting for a field in France or an island in the South Pacific. Troops can be pulled back in an orderly way from the urban areas and redeployed to their bases in Iraq and elsewhere in the middle east. You've framed the issues and the facts incorrectly.

"you make friendships with the enemies of your enemies" That may be a catchy catch phrase, and on the very surface it may have worked in Anbar province, but there is a problem. We've armed Sunni tribesmen and militia, but the Sunnis in Iraq are also our enemies. They can turn on us at any time. One more detail. Supporting the Sunni tribesmen also undermines the Shiite Maliki government.

Answer 9

Hmmm. WWII was FDR. Last I heard, FDR was Democrat. HMMMM. Nixon gave us "peace with honor" in the 'Nam. Can you say "Nasty Commie Hunter"???? Nixon was one pathetic Repuke.

Without a formal, legal declaration of war and a hand-off to the generals to take charge, your arguments, I would say, don't hold much water.

Answer 10

You hit the nail right on the head. The democrat's "plan" for Iraq is completely insane.