Whatever happened to the McCarthurs and the Pattons

Originally Posted by iamthewalrus109

The type of talk that Marchiko is using is exactly why we can't earn a decisive victory in Iraq. It comes down to the man in the field now. George Bush and the Congress of the United States are responsible for deploying the troops, not generals. They need to wage the war they see fit once deployed.

The kind of talk I used is from the law of armed conflict and is part of basic training for officers and most NCO's, as well. It is not some liberal hype or peacenik diatribe. It comes from both international law and a US doctrine known as the Bellum Americanum that hinges on precision-guided bombs, standardized targeting, accepted levels and types of collateral damage, and higher bomb flight altitudes. Officers who "wage the war as they see fit once deployed" are going to face court martial or worse if they overstep certain boundaries and break the laws of armed conflict.

Originally Posted by iamthewalrus109

I hate to say it but we are descending into a Vietnam style mess up here. We need decisive action from a non-partisan soldier, period. None of this, "Well what will these people think?"

In other words, you want a soldier to commit an act of insubordination against the Commander in Chief and the upper level brass in the Pentagon. Do you have the faintest understanding of what would happen to such an individual? He could kiss his career good-by, and that's just for starters.

Originally Posted by iamthewalrus109

The new invesitgatiion into the oil for food program shows that France, Germany, and Russia may all be implicated in this scandal, hmmmm, isn't that strange, the same bozos who didn't want to topple Saddam. Besides the fact that if all these countries could they would have been selling the guy nuclear secrets and missle guidance systems.

hmmmm, remember that 2nd rate Hollywood actor who starred in "Bedtime for Bonzo"? What WAS his name? Oh yeah, Reagan. Reagan sent arms and munitions to Iraq and Saddam until the country was abristle with weapons. People (and countries) who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Originally Posted by iamthewalrus109

The bottom line: We now find ourselves in a precarious situation in Iraq obviously. Pulling out is going to earn us any respect anywhere, decisive victory is our only recourse. With Iraqi popular sentiment turning towards outside combatants I think there needs to be a non stop offensive effort by commanders in the field, not Washington, to kill and or neutralize these fighters, period.

In other words, we have met the enemy and he is us. Let's be as ruthless or more so than Saddam ever was. Since it's difficult to distinguish civilians from combatants, let's kill 'em all. Poison the drinking war, use nuclear weapons, engage in biological warfare that would make the 7 plagues of Egypt seem like a bunny hop by comparison and find a second General Sherman (to hell with MacArthur and Patton - they had too much integrity) to lead a scorched earth march to the sea. The US has almost zero credibility in the MidEast, anyhow, so what do we care whatever what is left of them will think? And our allies can go to hell because we're Americans, and, by definition, America does no wrong. Right.

Originally Posted by iamthewalrus109

Finally, in regards to the UN's standards of a "just war" are simply outdated and irrelevant in today's context. These standards are just as irrelevant as the Leauge of Nations standards were in 1933. This goes for the Geneva standards as well. We are fighting an enemy that recognizes nothing but Allah. Western conventions, and civilities are only going to end up getting us all killed. There needs to be some sort of logical and coherent suspension of these "play nice" rules to root out this plauge on humanity, once and for all.

-Walrus

"Sweet is war to him who knows it not" - Pindar, Fragment, 110 (500 B.C.) Again, these are not just the UN's standards of a "just war". They are also (in theory, anyhow) a part of US standards, as well, and derive from the thinking of various statesmen and philosophers going back to Clausewitz and Grotius (who wrote De Jure Belli ac Pacis in 1625) and as recently as 1998 when Schmitt formulated the Bellum Americanum. Soldiers are not just stupid fighting machines as you seem to imply. Upper level officers are well aware of the fact that when world opinion or the tides of war turn the wrong way, it is the commander in the field who will go before the world court, not the politicians. This was true in recent history in the war crimes trials in the wake of the Rwandan and Kosevo conflicts.

Your desired course of action for some US commander is both inhumanitarian, illegal, and impossible.