A couple of days ago, Max wrote a post on fighting inspired by an article I’d linked to on knife fighting earlier in the week. The thrust of both is that every Hollywood tough-guy fantasy you have about fighting is not only dead wrong, it could get you killed. From Max’s post:
Fighting contains so many variables that chaos theory reigns supreme.  The only way to inoculate yourself for the stress of combat is to put yourself in it.  This works just fine, if you have no reservations against being maimed or killed.  This is why martial arts have rules.  All martial arts start out the same way – with an attempt to create a systematic approach to combat to increase the odds of success.
MacYoung points out that martial arts don’t teach people about combat – they teach them how to duel.  The conditions are fixed.  The opponents square off.  You can see what’s coming.
This sort of thing works fine in a boxing ring, or a cage match.  However, I can’t think of a single street fight I was ever in that went longer than a minute.  In fact, most were over in less than fifteen seconds.  That isn’t braggadocio, it’s reality.  In a cage, fighters pace themselves.  They calculate, looking for opportunities.  In a street fight, you may not have the advantage of looking your opponent in the face.
I used the opportunity to quote Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in the comments:
All warfare is based on deception.
Read that again.
All warfare is based on deception.
All warfare is based on deception.
ALL warfare is based on deception.
I’m repeating that to make sure you get it, because I don’t want to have to do something drastic, like hunting you down and tattooing it on your forehead.
Now, here’s the full paragraph:
All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected. These military devices, leading to victory, must not be divulged beforehand.
When most people, particularly Westerners, think of war, they think big battles, evenly matched armies, fair play. This is a myth. As anyone who reads Gary Brecher knows, most war throughout human history is much messier and less glamorous. It’s less Patton and more Hotel Rwanda. It’s looting villages, raping women, slaughtering children, and burning everything to the ground. It’s nasty, ugly, confusing, and chaotic.
And most of all, war isn’t fair. The idea of two armies marching to meet each other on a field for a fair fight is a European conceit left over from the days when states were lead by monarchs, who treated the whole thing like it was a friendly duel. Did the Vietcong fight in the open? Do the Taliban? No – which is part of the reason why the former managed send the world’s most powerful empire running home crying with its tail between its legs, and why the latter will soon do the same. Fighting fair is only possible when both sides adhere to a mutually agreed upon code of ethics.
When one side is smart enough to not fight fair, the other side must resort to creative tactics if they hope to win. Whining about how your enemy won’t play by your rules is stupid. Why should they listen to you? Your rules are designed to benefit you and put them at a disadvantage. Of course, playing by their rules is just as dumb for the same reasons.
Conservatives, libertarians, gamists, men’s rights activists, anti-feminists, HBD enthusiasts, and the other social malcontents who read this blog should be paying attention. If you’re truly interested in social change and defeating your enemies, you can’t play their games and you can’t use their methods. You can’t march to the battlefield and expect to be victorious. And you DEFINITELY can’t play fair. You must base your wars on deception. How to do that is for you to figure out.
{ 57 comments… read them below or add one }
Deception, and the kinds of tactics that Sun Tzu advocated, are entirely the focus of 4th Generation Warfare. Even Napoleon advised never to take from the front what you could take by flanking. It’s warfare 101 – don’t go where the death is.
To our credit, the United States has made a name for bravery in brazen combat. Lt. Col. James Rudder took 3 companies of Rangers up Pointe-du-Hoc under withering fire. They lost more than 50 percent, but they accomplished the mission.
Then again, men like Ulysses Grant threw away lives on pointless frontal assaults. Lee did it at Gettysburg – Pickett’s Charge – and was devastated by Meade’s guns.
We go out looking for the enemy, we kill him 10-1, and the joke is on us because they aren’t fighting our military. They’re fighting for the Hearts and Minds of our civilian population, and they’re winning.
On a completely unrelated issue (sorry) where oh where has Virgin@50s blog gone? Gone forever without warning. This is a great disappointment, it has spoiled my lunchtime.
One can only hope the blog author finally got lucky (which of course would have made his blog title redundant, but he could always have changed the title, and his name – survival is dependent on change after all, I think Sun Tzu had something to say about this too)
Is the Islamic religion itself the greatest example of the precept that “all warfare is based on deception”? Islam is dedicated to conquering the world by propaganda if possible and violence if necessary — while proclaiming itself the religion of peace. Rayhana Bint Zayd was a Jewish woman, whom Mohammed captured after her tribe was totally butchered. She was known to be a woman of immense beauty. Mohammed kept her as a concubine. During Mohammed’s time a lot of barbaric wars were instigated by the Muslims, and Mohammed was always the receiver of at least one fifth of the booty. This booty included captured women and children.
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate/playboy.html
“You must base your wars on deception.” Islam is great psy-ops warfare, eh?
Your discussion also highlights the absurdity of referring to “the laws of war.” There are no laws of war – otherwise it wouldn’t be war.
Did the Vietcong fight in the open? Do the Taliban? No – which is part of the reason why the former managed send the world’s most powerful empire running home crying with its tail between its legs, and why the latter will soon do the same. Fighting fair is only possible when both sides adhere to a mutually agreed upon code of ethics.
We did not lose the Vietnam war on the battlefield. We lost it on the battlefields of Congress and College campuses. When the North Vietnamese began their renewed efforts in 1975, the U.S. had pulled out; the Democrat controlled Congress refused to provide funding to Vietnam so that it could defend itself.
[Yes, and how did that happen? From the start, the only way to win - genocide - was off the table. Yes, the leftists did their part to stab America in the back, but Johnson and McNamara did their part by trying to fight Vietnam like it was a "conventional" war. - ed.]
We are going to lose against the Taliban, not because we haven’t adapted – we have; but because neither the White House nor the Congress wants to win.
[We have not adapted. If we had, we wouldn't be chasing wild geese in the mountains, we'd be rounding up Afghani civilians and killing them en masse.]
The greatest deception has been practiced by our domestic enemies who have penetrated to this nation’s political core.
*sigh* I feel like this post is directed toward me. I do so hate to fight dirty, although I suppose the willingness to do so is a sign of the true adherence to a cause.
My husband feels the same way, I think. He wants things to change drastically, but is wary of the casualties necessary to achieve that. At the same time as his own side has corpses piling up behind him.
Humans are strange that way.
Deception, yes. But also ruthlessness.
I always find it amusing how in movie fights, everyone can take like fifty direct punches to the face. The hero gets thrown through a window, punched two hundred times in the face, hit by a car, and shot in the arm, and he just spits out a mouthful of blood and shakes it off. (That window he was thrown through, btw, was made of sugar… if you were thrown through a real glass window, you’d be cut to ribbons)
In defense of European set battles: They fought this way to avoiding killing civilians and keep infrastructure intact. When face by an foe that did not play by those rules they did things roman style (slaughter and destroy everything till the enemy gave up). This system had the benefit of mostly solders doing the dying while the wealth that nations built up was preserved. It also forced people to fight as civilized people if they didn’t want to be slaughtered like pigs.
Some good points, some stunningly ignorant and bad.
Frontal shock combat is the Western way of war. Avoiding frontal decisive combat has traditionally characterized non-Western forces.
What has made the Western armies irresistible is precisely this unique method of warfare, and why the West has conquered half the world, according to nearly all military historians.
[What makes the West primarily superior is technological supremacy. If the Aztecs had been able to develop beyond the Bronze Age, to give an example, most of the world would have been exterminated. If European powers fought like they did against non-Western foes but without their technological edge, they would have lost every single time. - ed.]
It is thus amusing to see you specifically focus on VietCong guerilla tactics – no different from that practiced by any non-Western army – as particularly superior to the Western way of war. Amusing indeed.
[Not the specific tactics, but the INTENT behind those tactics. The Vietcong's strategy worked, the Western one didn't, which is why Vietnam flies the commie flag.]
It really should not need to be highlighted at this late date of history – and I`m really shocked that a generally informed guy like you should be ignorant of this – but the VietCong were smashed militarily. With a 3-1 kill ratio, the American army in Vietnam won every decisive battle and even the VietCong themselves admitted they were effectively defeated when the Americans lost the political will to fight.
[That's precisely my point. In irregular warfare, battles are meaningless. The fact that the American army couldn't win the war despite militarily outmatching the Vietcong is evidence of this.]
The Americans ran not for military reasons, but because the war became politically unpopular. I can`t believe this isn`t common knowledge by now.
[And HOW did the war become unpopular? It didn't happen in a vacuum.]
Read Keegans a history of warfare for some better prerspective.
Your larger point, though, that war is chaotic is of course true, although I`m not aware of anyone every denying that – you made a somehwat unwarranted leap from martial arts as duelling to warfare in general. Warfare since the Civil War has widely been recognized to be chaotic and disorganized and total. Warfare hasn`t been treated as a duel since the 18th century, and even then not completely.
[The popular concept of war revolving around battles is still around, and battles are a form of order. Every major war up to World War II was fought on that principle, though we got glimmers of reality with atrocities like Sherman's March to the Sea and the Rape of Nanking.]
As for martial arts as duelling, try Krav Maga – check out some videos of it. It is one of the most aggressive, dynamic, and practical fighting methods out there. It was developed for purely practical reasons.
I know this isn’t related to the topic of this post, but I’m sure you’ll want to see this.
http://newhumanist.org.uk/2249/going-to-the-ladies
That’s precisely my point. In irregular warfare, battles are meaningless. The fact that the American army couldn’t win the war despite militarily outmatching the Vietcong is evidence of this.
Guerrilla warfare seems to be about simply exhausting the enemy’s willpower to wage war. If we were really determined to win, we’d just flatten the whole country in a Blitzkrieg. The way we’re tip-toeing around denotes a lack of interest and investment in the outcome. How many people really care if we win? A show of hands, please.
It’s the same way with the fight against socialism and feminism. How many people really care if we win? FB is asking for a show of hands, I think.
Some good some bad.
The vietnam war was not lost. Every single US casualty was someone who thought it was a good idea to get on a plane and fly to a foreign country. Last I checked, the vietcong never bombed a single american city, or raped a single american woman in an american city. By limiting the war to their country, losing only those resources which you commited, and completely bombing them back into the stone ages, it’s clear to me that the US won that war. You didn’t get your perfect 100% victory in all objectives, but you bashed the shit out of them.
Taliban will lose, so long as the traitorous Left doesn’t make us commit suicide. The flypaper strategy has been working. The MOMENT that the domestic population wakes up to the true threat, and thus takes the same attitude to the jihadists that 1940s americans took to the Japanese, is the moment Islam is wiped from the face of the earth.
Your martial arts analogy is dead wrong. It is precisely because boxing / MMA is fought under rules that the combatants become fantastically skilled. The techniques are still deadly, they are just possible to scale in deadliness. A triangle choke will still kill a man, and a right cross will still knock them out. In a street fight I’d always put my money on the trained competitive fighter than the krav maga paper dragon who has never tried his techniques full power on a live resisting opponent. I think you fell for the classic traditional martial arts smokescreen there.
Krauser: The main point was not that martial arts do not teach useful skills. More important than the style is the accuracy with which the techniques are practiced as relates to actual application. So yes, MMA (might) have an advantage there, but not necessarily.
Anyone who has spent time on the mat will have learned more than a few moves that they will NEVER EVER USE. MMA has evolved as a sport to dis-include overcomplicated or unnecessary techniques. You don’t see even skilled grapplers busting out that Gogoplata they spent weeks practicing.
However, they also don’t practice things like eye-gouging. Don’t count on your conscious brain to think of it in a fight – it isn’t working – your lizard brain has to do the working. That is why the American military trains marksmanship skills under induced heart-stress conditions. Once the basic motor skills are practiced, the task needs to be practiced as close to “real” as possible. Eye gouging will shut an opponent down in a heartbeat and he will not have seen it coming . . .
Furthermore, MMA fighters train for distance and pace, and for a reasonably “fair” fight. Combat ain’t a fair fucking fight. It’s a guy doing anything he can to get the drop and un-even the odds. The baddest motherfuckers in the Octogon still go room temperature with their kidneys sliced out.
As for Vietnam; if you want to argue that it was a victory, then you are no student of history. Despite the fact that, militarily, we devastated the NVA/VC, they still TOOK OVER SOUTH VIETNAM. That was the objective, to stop the spread of communism. Last I checked, Vietnam is a unified Communist country who worships Ho Chi Minh as a liberator.
If you want to call bashing the shit out of them so that they could take the land they wanted and unite their country under a political system with which we were doctorinally opposed to a victory for the United States, then it is one Pyrrhic fucking victory.
And this is why those who maintain that we should fight feminists solely with logic and rational argument are completely wrong.
Inmala -
Unfortunately you are entirely mistaken – Western military supremacy began well before there was any kind of technological edge, and continued even after that edge vanished with the spread of Western military technology.
The Greeks defeated Persia and later conquered half the world without any technological edge – they did through a unique *Western way of war* that emphasized frontal shock combat. Even Persian kings later hired Greek soldiers because this special method of warfare made them almost unstoppable to cultures that wouldn`t embrace this ethos – read Xenophons acccount of the Ten Thousand, its fascinating. Most military historians agree this highly unusual and unique way of fighting began in ancient Greece.
Rome did much the same – no technological edge, yet world empire.
Technology did indeed play a role in many Western victories over non-Western peoples but in many it did not, and when non-Western peoples adopted Western technology Western supremacy persisted because these cultures couldn`t quite adopt the Wester military psychology.
Even the Aztecs were defeated not merely by weapons – the tiny number of Spaniards were simply not enough to physically overwhelm the Aztecs even if they were sporting heavy machine guns – but by the profoundly different Aztec approach to war, which was ritualistic and avoided frontal combat to the death and was more interested in *display*. The Aztecs simply could not adapt psychologically to the necessity of ruthless, to the death, frontal combat.
So your portrait of focusing entirely on a technological edge is entirely incorrect. Technology played a role, but it was minor.
Nor is what I am saying particularly controversial – this is the standard picture given in most military histories.
I thought your point was that from a purely military perspective non-Western ways of war are often superior, a point that is manifestly false. If your point is that despite overwhelming Western military superiority, which has its roots not in a technological edge but in a peculiar method of fighting difficult for non-Western peoples to psychologically adapt to, Westerners STILL often fail to achieve their non-military aims, you are quite correct, I couldn`t agree with you more.
In Vietnam our aims were not merely military, they were political as well. If your point is that military success only has a limited ability to influence political outcomes, you are undoubtedly correct – of course depending on what your political outcomes are.
If America had wanted merely to conquer Vietnam and settle the land, it could have done so with ease, America could even have enslaved the Vietnamese population. What American military success could NOT have done was persuade the Vietnamese that they should adopt democracy, although even here the case is not clear cut – most indications are that the VietCong were on the verge of putting down their arms.
Of course the unpopularity of the war didn`t happen in a vacuum – it happened because left-wing forces in the country decided it was the wrong thing to do morally and ideologically, and at that period in history the left was culturally ascendant.
Bottom line – if your point is that military success has limited ability to achieve certain highly specific and quixotic changes in foreign cultures, you are quite correct, but if your point is that the unique Western way of war is less effective than those of many other societies who practice deception and avoid frontal combat, youi are quite mistaken.
Greg:
“Bottom line – if your point is that military success has limited ability to achieve certain highly specific and quixotic changes in foreign cultures, you are quite correct, but if your point is that the unique Western way of war is less effective than those of many other societies who practice deception and avoid frontal combat, youi are quite mistaken.”
I believe that Ferdinand’s point is the former – that the Western failure to fully embrace the realities of the (4GW) combat we are fighting is dangerous and highly detrimental to the cause.
Specifically, it is suicidal attempting to fight a “moral” war against an enemy that fights a) immorally and b) disheartens an enemy people to their own cause. If the enemy refuses to accept your “terms” – Rules of Engagement – then why bother? To win the Hearts and Minds of the locals who support the very enemy you are fighting?
There is no group worse at political warfare than Conservatives/Republicans.
They always let the left define the battlefield/parameters.
The left decides Gay Marriage is an issue, and conservatives fight that, rather than realize that the divorce industry is a bigger threat to marriage than gay marriage ever could be.
The left wants abortion, and Republicans let that be the battlespace to argue within. If I were running for office as a Republican, when faced with the abortion question, I would say :
“Let’s take the debate upstream. Why are so many unwanted pregnancies happening? Let’s address that issue, and examine it. Abortion is merely a downstream reaction to that, and thus should not be the focus.”
Such an approach would bait feminists to come out of the woodwork, and show that they really only care about avoiding consequences of their actions.
Of course, Republicans/conservaties let the Left define their agenda, and thus are less than useless in halting the march of leftism, even if they win elections.
And this is why those who maintain that we should fight feminists solely with logic and rational argument are completely wrong.
Agreed. In fact, we should not be engaging feminists at all.
We should be fighting manginas and whiteknights. In terms of misandric zeal, the hierarchy is thus :
Strident feminist > whiteknight/mangina > average woman.
The average woman just wants to side with whoever is winning. Nothing more.
Now, to fight each group, use the group that they opponent is too afraid to disagree with :
Use MUSLIMS to fight feminists.
USE anti-feminist WOMEN* to shame manginas/whiteknights.
Neither group will have any courage to fight their respective opponents.
*There are extremely few women who actually are fair advocates of Men’s Rights. Dr. Helen, Christina Hoff Somers, Tammy Bruce, Camille Paglia, etc. are the only names I know.
I agree that the US did not ‘lose’ VietNam. The US withdrew in 1973, while Saigon fell 2 years later.
It is the South Vietnamese that lost the country that they were handed.
To believe that the US ‘lost’ in VietNam is to accept the lefty narrative as fact, which the main article clearly says we should not do.
If we fast forward several decades, then today VietNam is a mostly peaceful country that participates in the global economy and is growing very fast.
North Korea, on the other hand, is still a disaster.
So from a long-term perspective, the VietNam War turned out to be a better outcome for America than the Korean War (still unresolved).
Max – Totally agree with you. I guess some of the examples and some of the conclusions given and made by Inmalafide were wrongheaded, but if that`s the central message, then it couldn`t be more correct.
We should never use our military might to achieve dubious and uncertain psychological and cultural shifts, and we should have no illusions about what it needs to decisively beat an enemy.
Deception, while useful in warfare without question, itself is useless if you are not willing to put up a direct fight.
Notice, if you will, that the culture which originated the idea that warfare is essentially deception is notably incompetent in war – the Chinese. The Chinese began to admire a particular kind of *cleverness* – not intelligence per se, but cunning, deceit, and using a persons ignorance against him – at a period in their history when they were becoming physically incapable of defending themselves.
I believe the modern Chinese admiration for *cunning* in war, business, and even personal relationships- often mistranslated as cleverness – had its origin in making a virtue of necessity, and draping fine cloth to over weakness. But it is remarkable that the results yielded both in war and business were not notably succesfull.
We have not adapted. If we had, we wouldn’t be chasing wild geese in the mountains, we’d be rounding up Afghani civilians and killing them en masse.
Not to gainsay you, but that only works if your opponent has tight tribal/ethnic/national ties with the civilians you round up. Given the international backgrounds of the various jihadists, your results would be mixed at best. The Russians tried the mass-slaughter route, and it worked poorly.
A better strategy would be to resurrect some of the tactics used by Pershing on the Moros of the Philippines–the fundamentalist Taliban will shit themselves if they think they will die ritually impure, so if they believe that Americans soldiers dip their bullets in goat’s blood, or that any mujaheddin killed will be buried wrapped in a pigskin, they’ll be a lot more reluctant to die for the cause.
I agree with Greg, and Ferdinand here is wrong, in that the traditional Western Way of War (which we are NOT following) is to basically kill so many of the enemy that he cannot indeed fight any more, because most of his fighting age men are dead.
This takes two big requirements. First as at Lake Tresimene, Cannae, and other horrible losses for the Romans, the ability to seek out the enemy to totally annihilate him, and take huge casualties doing it, even to the point of losing. True Fabian did practice scorched earth, guerilla warfare, but the Second Punic War was won when Scipio Africanus went to North Africa and destroyed the Carthiginians there in pitched battles.
The second is to seek out and destroy the enemy in climactic battles of shock annihilation. Traditionally non-Western forces that recognize this (like the Vietnamese) seek to avoid this at all costs and never concentrate forces where they can be destroyed. Some have done this better than others, the Western way traditionally has been to force the issue by doing things that must be opposed by the enemy.
The Romans were never troubled by the Carthaginians after their destruction, nor the Greeks the Persians. The West since the fall of Rome has generally lacked the resources to fully commit to a policy of annihilation, being internally divided and often squabbling.
Guerilla warfare is all well and good, in evading a superior enemy, but there comes times when you cannot trade space and time and must fight. This is more often than you think.
Finally, there are a number of arts, Penjat Silat, Escrima, Kali, that emphasize weapons combat with multiple opponents. The areas of SE Asia are filled with violent peoples, doing violent things, and the arts there are totally combat oriented, as indeed Savate, and many (now lost) European arts of stick, sword, and farm tool fighting were.
I’ll note that the Plains Indians and the Apache fought hard, bravely, and well, internalizing many of Sun Tzu’s precepts. Indeed Geronimo and Crazy Horse pretty much copied most of his precepts. The US Army, with mostly incompetent commanders and INFERIOR rifles (single shot trapdoor Springfields vs. lever action repeaters) still won. Because mass annihilation battles eventually won the day.
Good post Ferdinand. People forget that all that matters in any form of war is who wins. The side that is prepared to do whatever it can to win has a major advantage over those who won’t commit certain atrocities.
That ability to practice jus in bello is a luxury available only where both sides agree to it (and will hold to that agreement – but that is really a prisoners dilemma situation) or, more practically, where the side who practices jus in bello is much stronger than the side that doesn’t.
Greg is clueless in regards to war and fighting. I’d bet he is a neo-con.
The idea of two armies marching to meet each other on a field for a fair fight is a European conceit left over from the days when states were lead by monarchs, who treated the whole thing like it was a friendly duel.
It didn’t really ever happen that way. There was plenty of deception in European warfare when monarchs ran things.
From the start, the only way to win – genocide – was off the table.
We didn’t need genocide to win. In fact, we were winning without genocide, when as njartist49 says, we were stabbed in the back. I agree with him further that we’re going to lose against the Taliban because neither the White House nor the Congress wants to win, and the greatest deception has been practiced by our domestic enemies who have penetrated to this nation’s political core.
What makes the West primarily superior is technological supremacy. If the Aztecs had been able to develop beyond the Bronze Age, to give an example, most of the world would have been exterminated. If European powers fought like they did against non-Western foes but without their technological edge, they would have lost every single time.
Technological superiority of the Conquistadores is overstated. Cortes won not through technological supremacy but through deception, allying with the enemies of the Aztecs, and through the weakness and folly of the enemy leadership. This formula (ally with the second strongest to defeat the strongest) was repeated many times in wars of colonial conquest.
Isn’t guerilla/militia warfare life intensive? Hence Ben Franklin boasted “Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed 150 Yankees this campaign, which is £20000 a head . . . During the same time, 60000 children have been born in America. From these data his mathematical head will easily calculate the time and the expense necessary to kill us all.” Wasn’t the Vietnamese general criticised for his reckless use in soldier’s lives against the Americans? Many times he used the tactic of British generals – keep sending in soldiers and hopefully you’ll overwhelm the enemy. Likewise we have the tactics of suicide bombers – it’s work if the bomber actually takes out soldiers and equipment.
While reading The Art of War the first time, one thing that came to mind was that if victory was desired by Amerca, we probably wouldn’t televise our wars and would shoot (or worse) any reporter that tried to get bleeding heart ratings.
Ruthless, but understand that while our Generals and Soldiers are able to stomach the long march to the enemy’s complete annihilation, for some reason your typical citizen wants the whole thing done in 6 months or less and we “no bloodshed”. Subconsciously they probably realized people are dying, but as long as they don’t have to see it or for long, they probably don’t care.
On the other hand, knowing that a war has gone on longer than five years is too much for regcitizen to handle and they want to throw in the towel at what they now view as “impossible to win because it’s not done by now”.
On that note, should Wars really be “democratic” in nature? Overall, a citizen has some long term power in the war, in that they can vote in a backstabber midstream to force a lose.
Really more or less, is it necessary to televise wars, do you think?
@ Amatuer Strategist:
“You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win” – Ho Chi Minh
America’s own citizens prevent our winning of any war. We tie our own hands with the masses who are too ignorant to get that we will lose if we take the “higher moral ground”. I could never be a soldier but both grandfathers of mine were along with two uncles. They all vouched that they struggled with first firing their weapon but it then became survival of the fittest quickly for them. The various government branches they each were in had instilled that they (as soldiers) will be shot at so they must leave behind any ideas they may have to not shoot back without hesitation, or they will die.
On a social issue such as feminism, I will say it isn’t quite the same, but there are plenty that will argue against that. It becomes more personal. Some people don’t like getting dirty and some love it. Those that love it tend to take it there whether it was required for the situation or not. These particular men and women would most likely test with high testosterone levels I suspect. Some have been on so many “tours” that they are no longer assessing a situation but projecting their dogmatism onto everything and everyone they encounter.
The west cannot win big wars because it no longer has a functional technological edge over others, and it is itself very vulnerable to disruption. The lack of a common ideology is another problem that many idiots cannot appreciate.
>Did the Vietcong fight in the open? Do the Taliban? No – which is part of the reason why the former managed send the world’s most powerful empire running home crying with its tail between its legs, and why the latter will soon do the same.
Think about what would happen if you were playing Starcraft and you chose not to directly engage your opponent’s military. He would destroy all of your buildings and your economic units and you would lose. That points to the counter to guerrilla warfare.
Yeah well coldequation – imagine your only Starcraft strategy is to Zerg Rush your enemies. Such a strategy is a game of chance – maybe you’ll overwhelm your enemy, maybe not.
@ coldequation: Pretending starcraft is actually valid in the real world is laughable. If it were that simple in real life Afghanistan and Iraq would have been over in weeks.
Starcraft is a fiction with set rules that each team must follow. There is no such thing in Starcraft as getting funding and resources from outside parties, as enemy soldiers hiding amongst civilians whom you are forbidden to kill, of the enemy building homemade bombs and using them on your own civilians.
>Pretending starcraft is actually valid in the real world is laughable. If it were that simple in real life Afghanistan and Iraq would have been over in weeks.
Starcraft isn’t real, but it’s a reasonable, very simple model of war as it was practiced by sane (pre-liberal) people – you destroy the enemy and his capacity to wage war, and then you win.
>There is no such thing in Starcraft as getting funding and resources from outside parties, as enemy soldiers hiding amongst civilians whom you are forbidden to kill, of the enemy building homemade bombs and using them on your own civilians.
“getting fund and resources from outside parties” – I assume you mean that the media will destroy you politically if you wage war the real way – the Starcraft way. That’s true, but that’s an artifact of the media we have in the west. That wasn’t true in the past, when the liberal media didn’t yet exist yet or actually wanted us to win (WWII, when the enemies were on the right). It still isn’t true in other countries. Look at the 2nd Chechen War, for example, which was won when the Russians sent in their siege tanks and basically destroyed Chechnya. As the tank driver guy says, “Outstanding!”
“enemy soldiers hiding amongst civilians whom you are forbidden to kill” – a fictional rule that we made up for ourselves, and didn’t apply when we were firebombing Dresden or nuking Hiroshima (again, when the enemies were to the right), neither of which even had worthwhile military targets.
“the enemy building homemade bombs and using them on your own civilians” – Our enemies’ right to run around in our territory blowing up our civilians is another fictional rule that we made up recently. We hadn’t thought of it yet when we were rounding Japanese-Americans and politically questionable Germans in WWII and putting them in camps (again, the rules were less restrictive when the enemies were to the right).
All in all, I would say that you would learn more about military strategy by playing Starcraft than imitating the US military, with the restrictions imposed on it by the left, post-1945.
I’d thought I’d make a few comments.
Firstly, America did loose the Vietnam war. Sure, it won all the tactical battles but it sustained a strategic defeat. It’s strategic goal of stopping South Vietnam falling to the communists failed. In the end your strategic goals matter, not your tactical ones. As Ho said
“You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win†– Ho Chi Minh
Secondly, America’s weak spot is the psychology of its democracy: The public can’t keep focused on long term goals. Indeed one of the reasons Truman dropped the bomb on Japan was that the U.S. public was becoming war weary and difficult to motivate post the victory in Europe. America is a country motivated by sentiment, not reason. The way to beat Modern America is to irritate it for the long haul; when it becomes bored with you it leaves you alone.
Thirdly, what’s with all this slaughtering all the men, women and children shit? None of you seem to bother about what sort of person you become when you start practicing this sort of stuff. A lot of the guys who do this sort of stuff come back home seriously fucked up. War is usually best fought when its fought honourably, not stupidly. To bad that many of the honourable are stupid.
The relatively humane treatment of the Germans by the Americans meant the Germans were more willing to surrender to the U.S than to the Russians, where they would frequently fight to the death. Le May’s–America’s Sun Tzu–bomber leaflet had the effect of sparing civilians and weakening the Jap’s manufacturing capacity, he only needed to bomb one town, the rest of people in the other towns ran for their lives–thereby stopping war production–because they knew he delivered on his threats. BTW LeMay–who killed many civilians throught collateral damage–never turned into the arsehole that Robert McNamara did. If you want to find the source of America’s military “weakness” a study of the biography of his life– and the Kennedy Administration–is more than enough.
Fourthly, the sanctity of civilian life has been elevated to a plane where it never was before. Traditional theologians permitted “collateral” damage where it happened in pursuit of the destruction of legitimate military targets. It’s only in modern times that the accidentally killing a civilian in war time is immediately assumed to be a war crime. Grown up people recognise that some unavoidable shit happens when you are trying to do the right thing.
The West’s weakness is its modern culture, not its capacity to wage war. Were the West to return to its conservative foundations, the rest of the world would shit their pants.
Coldequation 1:13am — everything you say is exactly right.
Thirdly, what’s with all this slaughtering all the men, women and children shit? None of you seem to bother about what sort of person you become when you start practicing this sort of stuff.
The kind of person you become is “the winner”.
The relatively humane treatment of the Germans by the Americans meant the Germans were more willing to surrender to the U.S than to the Russians, where they would frequently fight to the death.
And yet after Germany surrendered, the US amped up the brutality and treated captured German soldiers and German civilians with extreme brutality.
The Germans typically didn’t surrender to the US or British unless they had absolutely no choice. The vast majority of German prisoners that the US and UK captured were captured in 1945, when the German army collapsed.
>Coldequation 1:13am — everything you say is exactly right.
Thanks for noticing!
slumlord – being harsh in war has nothing to do with being harsh in peace. The usual practice of the more successful empires has been to give the enemy reasonably good surrender terms – good enough that they’re preferable to death, at least – but to be harsh on recalcitrant enemies. America/UK fit this description in WWII, which is why Germans wanted to surrender to Americans and Britons rather than Russians despite the fact that it was the English-speakers, not the Russians, who were slaughtering German civilians with bombers.
being harsh in war has nothing to do with being harsh in peace.
Harshness is not the issue. If you’re going to war, then go all out, it’s just that deliberately targeting non combatants is militarily dumb. The strategic bombing campaign against Germany–where civilians were particularly targeted,by the British–was a failure. German war production actually rose during most of 1944, it’s only when military significant targets were being hit, as opposed to residential areas, that war production started being affected.
Secondly killing the women and kids of your enemy just motivates him further. Most normal people can recognise a collateral death in pursuit of a military target and a deliberate killing of a civilian; people don’t tend to forget that sort of shit. That’s the whole purpose of guerrilla warfare, get the enemy to kill the non-combatants and thereby swing the population against him. The strategy of Kill-em-all and let God Sort it out worked really well in the Vietnam war, didn’t it. What really put the hurt on the Vietcong was the Pheonix program: targeted assassination and neutralisation of the Vietcong cadres, not just shooting indiscriminately.
Showing some discrimination in your harshness in war time is smarter than killing them all.
deliberately targeting non combatants is militarily dumb.
It wasn’t dumb in WW2. In fully mobilized societies, there are few true noncombatants.
The basic principle of classical international law is that every citizen of an enemy state is a legal enemy (see this).
German war production actually rose during most of 1944, it’s only when military significant targets were being hit, as opposed to residential areas, that war production started being affected.
You have to compare what they produced to what they planned to produce. Bombing significantly reduced planned production, and diverted much of what was actually produced into defensive efforts.
killing the women and kids of your enemy just motivates him further.
That must explain why German and Japanese guerrilla resistance defeated the Allied occupation and forced them to leave in 1946. We had so motivated the Germans and Japanese by killing their women and kids that there was no way in hell they were ever going to quit.
The strategy of Kill-em-all and let God Sort it out worked really well in the Vietnam war, didn’t it.
In fact this strategy was never ever pursued during the Vietnam War.
The “kill everybody who opposes you until the enemy quits” strategy worked many, many times against guerrillas before 1945. A great many victorious armies would have laughed their asses off at the idea that guerrillas thought they could win by getting their opponents to kill civilians. They were going to kill whoever they needed to kill, “civilian” or not, until the enemy quit.
Wars against guerrillas are lost by excessive tenderness (too much “hearts and minds”). not excessive brutality (too much “kill ‘em all”).
The U.S bombing policy in WW2 was to deliberately try to spare innocent civilians. Even LeMay, who originated the firebombing of Tokyo–the most destructive single military act in history–targeted the industrial areas of Tokyo, he never deliberately targeted civilians unconnected with the war. In fact in his biography, he made efforts to deliberately avoid kennels, I shit you not.
The one thing that U.S. commanders learned was that bombing civilians deliberately did nothing to reduce a country’s capacity to wage war. Bombing its factories, communication systems, refineries and electrical capacity did. Germany at the end of 1944 was a militarily stronger country than it was in 1942, despite two years of bombing, sure it wasn’t as strong as wanted to be, but it was not weaker.
In fact this strategy was never ever pursued during the Vietnam War.
It was never officially deliberately pursued because it was universally recognised that it was a stupid idea, no matter how hard certain U.S. and South Vietnamese commanders tried to prove the opposite. The ineptitude of the U.S in winning hearts and minds is not due to the concept being faulty, rather the U.S. couldn’t execute it. Part of the reason Germany was quickly pacified was because the U.S there weren’t pricks. Contrast this to the Soviets, who will still fighting Baltic irregulars into the 50′s. Russia’s kill all the Chechens policy doesn’t seemed to have worked either.
Smart commanders have recognised that guerrilla warfare is a policing exercise which demands a high degree of discrimination. Here’s some light reading matter.
In fact, when the Joint Cheifs of Staff were asked in the early 1960′s–remember these were the guys that fought WW2–whether the U.S. should become involved in Vietnam, they almost all said no, since the war wouldn’t be fought on terms the the U.S. was used to. In the end the Kennedy and Johnston administration overruled them and replaced the JCS with politically compliant officers. The rest, they say is history.
Ultimately the military strategy you’re advocating is genocide. If you haven’t got a problem with that, then you have a problem.
I’m not saying that it’s always necessary to attack civilians, or that they should be attacked before military targets in every war with no exceptions. It’s the counter to guerrilla warfare, where the enemy is using them for support and blending in to them. WWII was a conventional war with real armies to fight.
The Allies took a hard line against German guerrilla activity. But there wasn’t much guerrilla activity. Maybe that’s partly because the Germans saw that it would have been futile. But if we fought with the same rules we fight with now, Hitler could have simply let the Allies take Germany unopposed and then worn them down with protracted guerrilla war.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&p=1447157
Describing US strategy in Vietnam as “kill ‘em all and let God sort em out” is beyond ludicrous. We didn’t even try to invade the North, and didn’t do more than a half-assed secret attempt to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos.
The U.S bombing policy in WW2 was to deliberately try to spare innocent civilians.
That was the official party line. It was not what they were actually doing, and they knew it. When your aim point is a “marshalling yard” in the center of town, and you drop on the leader (i.e. every plane drops its bombs when the leader does), and the leader is dropping through clouds based on a vague radar image, you are not trying to spare civilians. What you are doing is carpet bombing a city. This is the opposite of deliberately sparing civilians.
Even LeMay… he never deliberately targeted civilians unconnected with the war.
That’s just bullshit and everyone knew it. Before they incendiary campaign started they estimated it would cause 580,000 civilian deaths, and they decided to do it anyway. What they would have done if they’d openly targeted civilians was, um, exactly what they did under the supposed policy of “not targeting civilians”, i.e. burning down cities with incendiary bombs.
If you believe LeMay was not deliberately targeting Japanese civilians, then you also have to believe the British were not deliberately targeting German civilians, because Bomber Harris used the exact same logic as LeMay – he said the RAF was targeting worker’s housing, not the workers themselves – and he used the exact same methods as LeMay – night incendiary raids.
Germany at the end of 1944 was a militarily stronger country than it was in 1942, despite two years of bombing,
Nonsense. Germany at the end of 1944 was a hell of a lot weaker than it was at the end of 1942 solely as a result of bombing.
It was never officially deliberately pursued because it was universally recognised that it was a stupid idea, no matter how hard certain U.S. and South Vietnamese commanders tried to prove the opposite.
So wait, “everybody” recognized it was a stupid idea except for the commanders who wanted to try it?
It was not attempted for the reasons mentioned above: treason in the US itself.
The ineptitude of the U.S in winning hearts and minds is not due to the concept being faulty, rather the U.S. couldn’t execute it.
The concept is faulty and it can never be executed successfully. War means fighting, and fighting means killing. There is no way around this!
Part of the reason Germany was quickly pacified was because the U.S there weren’t pricks.
Wrong. We were major pricks. Read Giles MacDonogh’s After the Reich. We deliberately starved civilians, used POWs as slaves, and shot anyone who misbehaved. (And I do mean “we” the USA – the Soviets were even worse.)
Contrast this to the Soviets, who will still fighting Baltic irregulars into the 50’s.
That proves my point, not yours. The Soviets put down the irregulars in the Baltics, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe with utmost brutality, and it worked. The only reason it went on as long as it did was there were still a lot of arms and ammo lying around from the war, and also the US supported the irregulars. Otherwise it would have been over much sooner. “Hearts and minds” does not in any way describe the Soviet approach.
Russia’s kill all the Chechens policy doesn’t seemed to have worked either.
In fact it has.
Smart commanders have recognised that guerrilla warfare is a policing exercise which demands a high degree of discrimination.
“Smart commander” = dummies sucking up to their political masters. They know the only way to get promoted is to attempt to implement a stupid, impossible policy, even if it results in lots of dead US soldiers to no purpose.
Ultimately the military strategy you’re advocating is genocide. If you haven’t got a problem with that, then you have a problem.
It is not genocide, because the enemy usually quits long before you have to kill all of him. (But, if that’s what it takes, so be it.) This method is in fact more humane than the “hearts and minds” method, because you do most of your killing up front, then you have peace and order, rather than protracted guerrilla war that winds up killing more people over a longer time.
Many, many insurgencies were suppressed over many centuries using the opposite of “hearts and minds” (kill who you need to kill until the enemy quits). Few if any of these counter-insurgencies resulted in genocide. Compare this with the dismal record of success of the “hearts and minds” approach since 1945. If you can’t see that “hearts and minds” doesn’t work, you have a problem.
Coldequation:
I agree that the current rules of engagement are stupid, you have no quibble with me on that point. I don’t have a problem with civilian casualties sustained in the destruction of legitimate military targets. If an armaments factory is near a hospital, the factory does not get spared even though the hospital may be damaged in the process. But I do have a problem deliberately targeting the hospital. Yeah, the end result may be the same but there is a world of difference in the morality and of the type of individual who performs each act.
There was no such thing as precision bombing in World War 2. The CEP of bombs dropped towards the end of the war was about 3000ft, anything was fair game in that circle, but you can only use the tools that you’ve got.
And that was LeMay’s point. Going after legitimate military targets was going to kill lots of civilians but it was price he thought was worth it and he felt it was worth it. But the point to remember is that factories producing war material are legitimate targets. He didn’t go blowing up Japanese villages for the sake of it. He discriminated to the degree in which he could as opposed to Harris who made no effort at all at any discrimination.
The strategic bombing survey found that bombing cities per se did not materially contribute to the weakening of the military. Bombing his energy supply, communications and transportation networks did the trick. Terror raids were counterproductive. Dresden is an embarrassment to all concerned.( Churchill even thought it counterproductive at the time)
Describing US strategy in Vietnam as “kill ‘em all and let God sort em out†is beyond ludicrous.
6.7 million tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam/Indochina as opposed to 3.4 million tons of bombs Germany/Europe/Japan in WW2. America’s failure was not from a want of an application of force. The problem was that the force was poorly directed an appalling applied. U.S tactics in Vietnam served to alienate the population. Your allies in that war, who frequently had lots of successful experience fighting guerrillas were both quietly appalled and ignored by the U.S. Military. One American who did “get it” was John Vann but He to was not listened to except at the very end.(He was held in high regard by your allies) Paul Harkins was the first major U.S. general to command in Vietnam-He was Patton’s deputy chief of staff and experienced in European style “tough love”–completely fucked up his assignment, as did Westmoreland and Abrams. Different wars require different solutions. The smart money was on discrimination in killing.
Tarl:
Re Russia’s successful military policy.
In fact it has
Fancy a trip on the Moscow metro?
“Smart commander†= dummies sucking up to their political masters.
The commanders appointed to run the Vietnam wars were all “old skool” guys. The guys who wanted to try novel ways of fighting were all marginalised by the the U.S. Military and the Democrat Presidencies. Yarborough, who was the first special forces commander(New skool) was passed over so that Harkins could get the job runnining the Vietnam War. In fact, have a good read of Dereliction of Duty, by H.R. McMaster to show you some of the internal dynamics of JCS at the time. The smart commanders were marginalised.
Wrong. We were major pricks.
There were numerous instance of Allied criminal action and activities after the allies had subjugated the Germans Nearly all these actions were unnecessary since they occurred after the war was won. This discussion is on how to win a war, not how to behave after you have won it. Yeah the Allies were tough on the Germans immediately post war, but there was no process of systemic terror as was practiced by the Commies. Allied “harshness” was of a different league to Soviet harshness.
Genocide? (But, if that’s what it takes, so be it.)
You judge a man by his actions. I rest my case.
Sorry Ferdinand.
I should have closed the href after Moscow Metro. My bad.
Damage to Axis civilians in WWII was not just the result of bombers missing factories and military installations.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II :
“The attack during the last week of July, 1943, Operation Gomorrah, created one of the greatest firestorms raised by the RAF and United States Army Air Force in WWII,[2] killing roughly 50,000 civilians in Hamburg and practically destroying the entire city. As with the bombing of other cities, the RAF and USAAF bombings of Hamburg employed a number of revolutionary[citation needed] strategies, including bombing the city center first in order to draw in the city’s entire fire-fighting force, then dropping delayed action high-explosives in a concentric ring around the center, filling the streets with rubble and trapping the firefighters while they worked, ultimately incinerating them. This was followed by the dropping of further napalm and white-phosphorus incendiaries in a second concentric ring outside the first, facilitating unhampered burning in the remaining outer city. The circular bombing pattern[citation needed], combined with a few days of unusually warm weather, was fundamental to creating the necessary vortex and whirling updraft of super-heated air needed to create the 1,500-foot-high tornado of fire.”
They purposely burnt down an entire city. It doesn’t get any harsher than that.
I’m not trying to say that killing civilians is the only way to win a war, or that it should always be done. I’m saying that it’s a (not “the only”, but “a”) sure-fire way to beat guerrillas.
As for the Soviets, how harsh can they have been if they are allowing Chechen terrorists to run around on their subways? The US rounded up Japanese civilians, some of whom probably actually were more loyal to Japan than the US.
I don’t really know a lot about the American view of WWII because I usually read books about it in German. But I’ve spoken to my relatives who remember what it was like, living through it in southern Germany.
My uncle told me about how his mother would make Knoedel. The first and second day they’d eat the dumplings, the third and fourth day they’d eat the water. When the Americans rolled into town, nobody was frightened. Rather, they crowded around, cheered, and begged for food. They were really, really hungry and everyone knew the Americans ate well.
My aunt worked (still works) at an orphanage near the French border. After the Amis arrived, they were inundated with unclaimed half-American children, of all colors. It was true that some of the women had been raped, and others were prostituting themselves for food and other goods, but many of them tried (unsuccessfully, of course) to get an American to marry them and take them back to America. That was the dream, sort of like riding off into the sunset. Everybody wanted to be American!
Then there was the Berlin air campaign that sealed the deal. Amis risking their own lives to save German ones. They were like cowboys, and all of the boys idolized them.
My grandparents were living in Bohemia (Sudetenland). When the Russians came and “liberated” Sudetenland, the women ran and hid in fear. They raped everyone they could get their hands on, and everyone knew it. Women killed themselves or jumped into the rivers in fear. There was no food to be had from them. Just vodka and abuse.
Unlike the Amis, who were just there to win, the Russians were there for revenge. They despised the Germans (the Eastern Front was particularly brutal and most of the war was waged there), and encouraged the native Czechs to abuse them and finally chased them out of their homes. They made my grandparents pack up and leave in the middle of the night. They had to leave everything behind and had to walk over the border to Bavaria. My grandmother was heavily pregnant and had to march for days on end.
When they got to Bavaria, the Amis were waiting for them. They clothed and sheltered them, protected the unmarried women from abuse, and fed everybody. They got the economy running again, and the men had work and their dignity.
My point: The bombings — even the Dresden horrors — didn’t anger people that much, shocking as they were. It was understood that there was some sort of strategic point to it. It was the raping of the women and starvation of the children that horrified everyone the most. Even during war, most people can tell the difference between collateral damage or even blanket-bombing versus pure cruelty and degradation.
It’s still common enough for German women to marry Americans, but they usually stay away from the Russians. They still haven’t forgotten that.
BTW, most Germans that I know don’t care that much about D-Day and all that. For them, Germany began to lose at Stalingrad. It was the Russians who slaughtered their military, took their capital, raped their women, and resulted in Hitler finally offing himself.
To them, it seemed like the Amis served as more of a diversion and rolled in with chocolate bars and jazz. That’s why there’s so little animosity.
Cold Equation:
Here’s the wiki link to the history of bombing raids on Hamburg. .You will note that the Americans bombed specific targets during the day whilst the British targets were non-specific during the night. The Americans did not try to plaster a whole city like the Brits did.
Alte:
You’re absolutely correct. Most Americans have no idea of the charnel house that Eastern Europe was and the brutality with which the war was fought over there. 65 Years after the end of the Second World War everyone still hates the Russians.
“When lenity and cruelty vie for a kingdom, it’s the gentler gamester which is the soonest winner.” Henry V, Shakespeare.
My grandfather and 3 of his brothers were at Stalingrad. My grandfather came back whole after a stay in a Russian camp but seriously crazy, one brother came back missing one arm and the other hand didn’t have 3 fingers (they froze off). The other two never made it back. It was absolute hell out there, for both sides.
Most Germans hoped that their sons would be sent to fight the Allies. It seemed like a cushy job in comparison. At least you didn’t starve and freeze to death, or go absolutely insane.
I used to live with my aunt, and there were wealthy Russians coming to the men’s clothing store I worked at. They used to try to flirt with me. I told her about it and she said, “If you spread your legs for the filthy Russen mafiosi than I will throw you out on the street like the whore you are.” No kidding. She is a very nice lady, but she doesn’t play.
They still really hate them. It’s one of the things that makes so many West Germans distrustful of Easterners.
Anyway, I’m derailing the thread a bit, but I just want to say that the reason that the Amis got away with so much is because the Germans were mostly focused on a different enemy.
Going after legitimate military targets was going to kill lots of civilians but it was price he thought was worth it and he felt it was worth it. But the point to remember is that factories producing war material are legitimate targets. He didn’t go blowing up Japanese villages for the sake of it. He discriminated to the degree in which he could as opposed to Harris who made no effort at all at any discrimination.
This is utterly preposterous. LeMay did exactly the same thing to Japan that Harris did to Germany, for exactly the same reasons and with exactly the same effects. Harris also believed he was going after “legitimate industrial targets” and denied he was pursuing indiscriminate terror bombing. If LeMay gets a pass, Harris gets a pass. In my view, neither of them should get a pass from a moral standpoint. If you’re against killing civilians, you have to be against both these guys, not just one of them.
Incidentally, the British made a considerable effort to bomb “discriminately”, and by the end of the war were entirely capable of night precision bombing against selected high-value targets. Their error was to continue pursuing area attacks even after they could do precise night attacks.
The strategic bombing survey found that bombing cities per se did not materially contribute to the weakening of the military.
The US-conducted bombing survey found that British bombing did nothing? Go figure. In fact the RAF attacks on the Ruhr in 1943 had a serious effect on steel and armaments production.
Terror raids were counterproductive.
They were not counterproductive. They did not make the enemy stronger. They just weren’t as productive as other possible uses of airpower.
6.7 million tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam/Indochina as opposed to 3.4 million tons of bombs Germany/Europe/Japan in WW2.
Most of the bombs dropped in Vietnam landed in unoccupied jungle; most of the bombs dropped in WW2 landed on cities. We were not deliberately trying to kill civilians in Vietnam, and indeed we bent over backwards trying to avoid civilian casualties.
U.S tactics in Vietnam served to alienate the population.
What alienated the population was America’s lack of determination to win, reflected in our unwillingness to apply force as needed to get the job done. Vietnamese peasants were not stupid – they knew we weren’t serious and we would go away before the Communists did.
Vietnam was winnable, but not via the “hearts and minds” approach.
Fancy a trip on the Moscow metro?
Doesn’t alter the fact that Chechnya is pacified. And that’s even assuming the Chechens were behind it at all.
The commanders appointed to run the Vietnam wars were all “old skool†guys.
And yet they obeyed the stupid, tie-one-hand-behind-your-back orders of the politicians in Washington. They should have quit rather than fight that way.
There were numerous instance of Allied criminal action and activities after the allies had subjugated the Germans Nearly all these actions were unnecessary since they occurred after the war was won. This discussion is on how to win a war, not how to behave after you have won it.
You are the one who brought up post-war brutality. Germany was pacified quickly because we were pricks.
Yeah the Allies were tough on the Germans immediately post war, but there was no process of systemic terror as was practiced by the Commies. Allied “harshness†was of a different league to Soviet harshness.
Allied harshness was systematic and the product of deliberate policy. Read up on JCS 1067.
You judge a man by his actions. I rest my case.
Your case, as so often happens when liberals argue, involves constructing a crude dichotomy between your preferred policy and your opponent’s supposed Nazism. Gosh, you’re right, to oppose you is to be just like Hitler, and there is no policy in between “hearts and minds” and genocide that can lead to victory over guerrillas. Except there is – i.e. the same policy that Europeans employed for 450 years to conquer and maintain colonial empires. They did not even require gigantic militaries with satellites, GPS, and jet aircraft to do it, and most of the time the wars were over quickly, without genocide. They fought to win, and they generally did not have treasonous opponents at home.
The Americans did not try to plaster a whole city like the Brits did.
Wrong. The Americans could, and did, plaster cities indiscriminately, and not just in Japan, also in Germany. 61% of all US bombs dropped on Germany were dropped through the clouds by radar (and they used a high proportion of incendiaries when they did so, a clear sign that the purpose was indiscriminate killing). This was blind area bombing no different from what the British did, and in some ways even less accurate since the British were better at it. At the end of the war, the US was openly committed to terror bombing, i.e. plastering undefended, industrially and militarily insignificant cities and towns in an effort to shock the population into surrender.
Tarl:
1)Incidentally, the British made a considerable effort to bomb “discriminatelyâ€, and by the end of the war were entirely capable of night precision bombing against selected high-value targets. Their error was to continue pursuing area attacks even after they could do precise night attacks.
I’ll concede the point. I’ve read up further on the matter and the Americans did practice area bombing. Point to you.
2) The strategic bombing survey found that attacking urban targets did little to weaken the enemy, attacking the the enemy’s means of production was the key to beating him.
3)JCS 1067 was America’s attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The effect of a such a stupid laws was slowly to make Germany ripe for a communist takeover. Patton–He was a liberal pansy wasn’t he?–thought it stupid, as did Lucius Clay, the military governor of Germany. The wiki entry pretty much spells out the idiocy of the policy.
4)Gosh, you’re right, to oppose you is to be just like Hitler
Um no. I don’t see any problems with a vigorous prosecution of war. I have no problem with collateral damage in the legitimate pursuit of military targets. I have no problems with targeted assassination of guerrillas. But I do have a problem with deliberately going out of your way to kill innocents, people in no way connected with the war. War involves killing, but what separates the civilized man from the fucking barbarian is discrimination in the application of force. Yes and to oppose this principle does make you like Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin, et al. This is not a crude attempt at reconstructing the argument as a dichotomy: IT IS A DICHOTOMY. You’re the one who were prepared to commit genocide. Quote:
But, if that’s what it takes, so be it.)
I’m sorry if you don’t like the company you keep.
But I do have a problem with deliberately going out of your way to kill innocents, people in no way connected with the war. War involves killing, but what separates the civilized man from the fucking barbarian is discrimination in the application of force.
That discrimination can take place in hand-to-hand combat (raping women and murdering children comes to mind), but it doesn’t work as well in a bombing campaign.
Carpet-bombing doesn’t just kill innocents. There were many soldiers posted strategically all over Dresden, for instance, and often housed in churches or with civilians. They had weapons factories and supply storage in basements. To spare the civilians, you would have to spare the enemy combatants.
Remember how the British evacuated London? The Germans didn’t evacuate Dresden or Hamburg for a very specific reason: they knew that the presence of the civilians would reduce the chances of the city being bombed to hell. They were wrong. The Brits and Americans were sick of the war and wanted to end it quickly.
It’s a bit like with Afghanistan now, they hide specifically among the civilians to make it more difficult for the opposing military. If the civilians don’t want to be bombed, they should throw the soldiers out. That they (usually) don’t speaks volumes.
Carpet-bombing doesn’t just kill innocents.
That’s true. That’s why carpet bombing may be legitimate in certain instances, despite the civilian casualties. The question to ask is are the civilian deaths worth the cost of the destruction of the military objective? Paradoxically, you’re more likely to have less discrimination on the urban battlefield than in aerial warfare, a frightened soldier who has just had his friend killed is less likely to be able to exert discrimination than someone sitting thirty thousand feet above. Nor is it sensible to expect a soldier to make perfect decisions in the heat of battle. In the end it doesn’t matter what you or I think, what matters what were the results of the bombing. The Strategic Bombing Survey found that attacking primarily urban non-industrial targets was relatively ineffective.
It’s a bit like with Afghanistan now, they hide specifically among the civilians to make it more difficult for the opposing military. If the civilians don’t want to be bombed, they should throw the soldiers out. That they (usually) don’t speaks volumes.
Well perhaps it might be smarter not to go into a shooting war over there. What does Afghanistan possess that the West needs? It only exports terrorists. Why not cordon the country and just shut it off. If the public there want to live under the joys of an Islamic republic then let them do so. In Iran they’ve had the pleasure for the last 40 years and internal ferment is brewing. In another 20 years or so start supporting with arms and money the opposition parties. Let them fight it out. Use your cruise missiles to bomb the shit out of any facility that you suspect is producing weapons of mass destruction and sit back. A very low intensity and cheap war that can last for decades, but that’s the time it takes for cultural shifts. Populist politicians cant do this sort of stuff though.
In the end it doesn’t matter what you or I think, what matters what were the results of the bombing. The Strategic Bombing Survey found that attacking primarily urban non-industrial targets was relatively ineffective.
Where do you get that out of the report? A minimum of 305,000 killed and 780,000 wounded, 40% of all buildings destroyed or damaged in 50 cities, 7,500,000 people homeless doesn’t sound “ineffective” to me. It also says, regarding RAF attacks on cities, that
We should also note that the USSBS Pacific War Report argues that area attacks on Japanese cities had a significant effect on Japan’s economy and on the health and morale of the Japanese people. Night area attacks and precision daylight attacks on specific targets complemented one another (and it stands to reason that if this was true for Japan, it was also true for Germany).
JCS 1067 was America’s attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The fact remains that we were pricks and this was the result of a deliberate policy of treating Germany harshly. We may also note that the Germans have been convincingly cured of any desire to go to war over the past 65 years. Would this have been true if the Allies had not destroyed their cities, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, and then brutally occupied them? Probably not.
I do have a problem with deliberately going out of your way to kill innocents, people in no way connected with the war.
That would be great if you could determine who those people were. In a state-on-state war, that category includes essentially nobody in the enemy country. In a guerrilla war, that includes far fewer people than you think it does.
what separates the civilized man from the fucking barbarian is discrimination in the application of force
Who then was civilized before 1945? By your standards, the European colonial powers from 1492 to 1945 were “fucking barbarians”, and every country that fought in WW2 – including the US – were “fucking barbarians”.
o oppose this principle does make you like Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin, et al. This is not a crude attempt at reconstructing the argument as a dichotomy: IT IS A DICHOTOMY.
It is a crude and stupid effort to reconstruct the argument as a dichotomy because to call for attacks on enemy civilians when required to win the war is not to call for attacks on enemy civilians at all times and as the central purpose of waging war. The European colonial powers sometimes pursued “Nazi-like” policies of collective punishment of civilians, and sometimes implemented this on a large scale. It worked. Generally they didn’t have to do anything like this because the enemy knew that resistance was futile and that trying to hide among the population was ineffective.
We lost Vietnam. We have to face it.
We won battles, but the Vietcong ruled and rule Vietnam. All of it.
Winning wars is not the same as winning battles.
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