Since every country now knows that guerrilla warfare is the best way to fight the US military is there any....

Question

need for: tanks, artillery, $100 million fighter jets, Billion dollar subs, 1000s of nuclear weapons, etc... Does the US military use any of that stuff in Iraq/Afgahistan?

And take all that money and put it into US Special forces/intelligence instead?

Answer 1

The only end game of guerrilla warfare as outlined by everyone from Caesar to Mao is open confrontation with the military force of the occupation. No one ever wins with guerrilla warfare the best you can hope for is that the other side will give up. The history of the IRA is a good example of what happens when the occupying power just will not go away.

Answer 2

Every country has already known guerrilla warfare is great, I can cite references from pre-Vietnam (Starting with the US revolution from England)
America definitely needs it's jets and subs and tanks, why? If we ever go up against a competent army we'll need to destroy their jets and subs and tanks

Though I am for the redistribution of funding to accommodate for counter-intelligence, Special forces, and cultural intelligence superiority

Additionally, for all you know-it-alls out there, yes the US spends more than any other country in the world, there's a reason for this, we DO more than any other country in the world.

At this very second; the coast guard is stopping a drug boat off the coast of Ecuador, the Air Force is monitoring ATC over Germany, wars are being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, peacekeeping forces are being maintained world-wide, the National guard is training to stop border crossings, humanitarian missions are being served in the Congo, etc.

National security is a journey, not a destination. People think because they're safe for the moment that we can't be attacked, think again.

Also, the new generation of jets means air superiority for the next 50 years

Answer 3

I think you're completely right, except I think you're looking at it through the wrong end of the binoculars.

It's not that guerrilla warfare works best, it's just that it's the only choice to fight the US. You can't put an army together to stand up to the US on the battlefield. And it's not that guerrilla insurgencies always work--they don't sometimes--but they're the only kind of military action that does work because we are so badly prepared to deal with them.

We can see now what a lot of us suspected all along, that the purpose of those billion-dollar weapons systems had very little to do with defense all along.

The real purposes were:

1. To reward campaign contributors
2. To provide 'pork' for legislators to take home to their districts.
3. To pump money into the US economy.

It was always easy to sell big defense spending items because anyone who disagreed could be made to look 'weak on defense' or even treasonous. Anyone old enough can remember that Eisenhower sold us the Interstate Highway system based on defense. Also childhood vaccinations, and even school lunch programs were based on growing a new generation of kids healthy enough to be cannon-fodder.

We spend more on military and weapons today than the whole rest of the world combined, and 20 TIMES as much as all the nations who might ever give us trouble, put together. But Republicans (and even some Democrats) don't believe it's enough! We have unquestioned air superiority anywhere in the world but we still need to spend tens or hundreds of billions a -new- generation of supersonic fighter-bomber, how crazy is that?

Answer 4

hippypaul, a good argument could be made that the IRA got a lot of what it wanted, if not everything.

You will always need a conventional force, that's just how it is. I agree we should spend our money a little more wisely though. I argued 10 years ago that we should set up peacekeeping and peace enforcement divisions in the military, with a heavy mix of civil affairs, mps, engineers, state department civilians, and some specially trained conventional combat forces. If we had a couple of those and had sent them into Iraq after the 4th ID, we might have had a lot less problems in the long run.

I still think this is a good idea in the long run. Democrats will keep sending us off on peacekeeping missions, and Republicans will keep having their interventions. Forces like these would greatly aid either.

Answer 5

Don't be too sure that guerrilla warfare is the best way to fight. History makes more of an underdog's victories than their defeats. There are a lot of guerrilla wars that didn't turn out well for the guerrillas.

Answer 6

You say to put that money into special forces, but the fact is that the special forces need those things for support too. Its a lot easier to sweep up an insurgent hideout thats been wiped clean by those million dollar jets and smartbombs.

Answer 7

Then the f'ing Chi com army will sail into San Francisco and march to Washington. Since the PLA has almost 300 million troops under arms that makes the other stuff necessary.

Answer 8

We need to have all of these weapons because the US is not allowed to fight the dirty gurilla warfare that other countries do. We are inhibited by political correctness. We can't torture or do the things they do, or our people start screaming that we are cruel and inhuman. If our people would let the military go in and fight the fight the way the other countries are, we would be home by now.

Answer 9

I highly doubt that the US is going get involved in any more nation building for awhile. Destroying the Afghanistan and Iraqi armies was easy. Trying to help them rebuild their nations is not. There's just no way to stop Iraqis from killing each other if that's what they want to do. I imagine any future wars that the US gets involved in will more closely resemble the total destruction of WWII than any of these nation building wars. And for total destruction, the US needs the big guns.

Answer 10

Well that is not exactly right. Every country knows that if they use guerrilla warfare they will get the whiny bag Liberals to start crying and whining and keep us from fighting and winning a war. Having been to a war, Viet Nam, I know you can’t fight a civilized war and that what Liberal knot heads want to do. You fight a war to win, not be a nice guy; you can do that after you kick their ***.