I was in Vietnam; and I can say, the Middle East is infinitely more dangerous for our troops ( combat wise ). In Vietnam, when you hit the ground, you were more often than not, out of sight. The jungle is so thick, you can squat down & be hidden from someone 5 feet from you. In the Middle East, when you hit the ground, there you are, laying in the sand.
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When the government is factually and functionally restrained to only a few powers it’s hard to enumerated powers you don’t have to worry as much about shenanigans compared to when power is unlimited, representatives self-enriching and corrupt and laws convoluted and vague.
Here’s a thought. Maybe we ( America ) should totally disarm, as a gesture of good faith. Perhaps the entire world will follow our lead. I’m sure all terrorist groups will be the first to turn weapons into plowshares.
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That’s a very generous assessment from my predecessors. I try not to compare myself to that generation of fighters, because the enemy there (from what I’ve gathered) seemed intent on winning in the jungle, rather than only trying to wear us down in the deserts/mountains.
I get what you are trying to say but you may want to edit that for clarification.
In short I agree with you, the more power we give to gov’t the more they will inevitably abuse it.
In Vietnam most of our casualties were from gunshot, in Iraq and Afghanistan both the majority were from IED’s.
The latter two were also much longer range engagements than we’d seen as a rule in prior conflicts.
I have some experience in both jungle and desert environments and I’d say Jim is right on, you guys were in a high threat environment constantly where in Vietnam there was relative safety at the fire bases most of the time as well as in the urban environments.
In Vietnam the high risk times were rather short and well defined making it a totally different war.
I just wanted to point out, there is more cover in thick jungle. Still, there is only one degree of death.
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My father was with OSS 101 - CBI. Look up OSS 101. 15,000 enemy killed or wounded - American deaths 27. They must have been doing something right. Detachment 101’s greatest effectiveness was in the new, cutting edge field of guerrilla warfare. The unit’s members pioneered the use of air and radio communications to support and coordinate guerrilla warfare activities. They recruited, organized, trained, equipped, and led more than 10,800 guerrillas in effective support of conventional military operations. Detachment 101’s guerrilla forces killed 5,428 members of the Japanese army, wounded and estimated 10,000, and captured 78 Japanese prisoners. Their own losses were 27 Americans, 338 native guerrillas, and 40 espionage agents killed. My father told me, Gurkha troops were usually in charge of prisoners; so not many prisoners. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My father was an expert military tactician. After WW2 he was offered a commission & asked to teach jungle warfare. He declined. Had already disgested enough human misery. He was dead against our involvement in Vietnam; and not because we were there; but because of how it was handled. He told me it could have been laid to rest in 3 or 4 months. He quoted Monty Python concerning the tactics used in Vietnam ( too many politicians ). He called it: “The hundred yard dash for people with no sense of direction”. He was spot on.
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Any of our anti-semite posters here missing?
Do you ever notice that the supposedly all powerful The ■■■■ can’t manage to find patsies to do their dirty work that don’t want to kill ■■■■ at some point?
Often wanting to do so sooner than later.
Seems kinda sloppy if you’re so powerful.
I’ve never seen any of these Anxiety Closet types explain that.
I admire the courage of the Israelis; and I admire the fact, ■■■■ believe in education. There are about 14,000,000 ■■■■ on the planet; and about 1,500,000,000 Muslims on the planet. That being said, Muslims should eat ■■■■ alive when it comes to Nobel Prize awards. Ever do that research? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This map shows some some ( JUST SOME ) of the countries comparing the Muslim world to Israel. Notice that speck called Israel? If you combine every Muslim country, including the ones not shown, they “all totaled” have not contributed a fraction of the positive technology in the 1,400 years of Islams existence, that ■■■■ have contributed in the 75 years since Israel stepped into the world. [
Political Map of Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran …
www.atlapedia.com/online/maps/political/Saudi_etc.htm
](http://www.atlapedia.com/online/maps/political/Saudi_etc.htm)
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Despite the treacherous praises of Western nitwits who insist Islam somehow saved knowledge (instead of destroying a very high percentage of books), the reality of it is captured by that one fellow who was to have essientially said whatever is in the Koran too is not needed, burn them, whatever is not in the Koran is heretical, burn it.
That’s not to say Muslims cannot be successful academics, they can be, but the Koran itself is what set the stage for destruction of those libraries and the malaise that followed.
Not to mention other dire accomplishments of Islam like the depopulation of a once prosperous North Africa and disruption of commerce and society through constant warfare, piracy and slaving that caused the dark ages.
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I’m still amazed that approximately 1/513th of the world’s population manages to secretly run the entire planet from the shadows.
Frigg’n amazing people those sneaky little Joooos!
Hats off to your dad and all of his brothers, they did some utterly amazing work under the very worst possible conditions and with almost nothing to work with other than what they could scrounge and did it in hellish conditions.
My father told me, the British & Americans adapted quickly; but the Gurkhas were the most fearless warriors he had ever encountered. The Japanese lived in absolute terror of them. He said they moved like a fog through the jungle. [
Kukri - Wikipedia
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That’s ridiculous. We could have continued containing him, or just bombed the hell out of him. Invading Iraq and taking ownership of that hellhole was a guaranteed disaster, it destabilized the entire region, gave Iran a clear path to regional hegemony and cost us a trillion dollars and several thousand troops.
And still people quibble over WMD. He could have had a mountain of WMD and it wouldn’t have justified invading and owning that hellhole. The only way it would have been successful is if we were prepared to kill 75% of the people there.
Thank you all who served, even joooo influenced wars.
We’d been bombing them for over a decade and all that accomplished was to help Saddam consolodate his power. He was prepared to start reaching beyond his borders again and starting to build relationships with several terrorist organizations.
There were two major mistakes made. We tried to do the war on the cheap failing to secure the borders and handing control of the civil gov’t back over to the Iraqis before they were ready under a constitution that didn’t adequately protect minority rights.
We should have split it up into either three or five different republics based on ethno-religious lines allowing only a weak centralized gov’t heading the confederation of independent states.
Saddam and his boys were a cancer that had to be removed.
The final straw of course was the withdrawal of US combat troops which ended exactly as many of us had predicted from the start.
Iraqis have no national loyalty or identity because it’s a state fabricated by the British as “Great Britain” was crumbling and they could no longer afford the cost of maintaining their empire.
But Cheney and Rumsfeld and dubya, they had it all figured out. They walked into it with their eyes wide shut.
Because of this, by 2006 the GOP had a reputation in tatters and we got speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid, then Obama two years later. The GOP was always the party that had judgement in foreign policy, and they became the flaky dreamers trying to make Iraq a democracy.
It ended as I expected, and I only blame Obama for about 25% of the disaster. Dubya and his braintrust made it inevitable, no matter how many republics they tried to create. A brutal puppet was the only way the invasion would have worked, and they tried to create a democracy.
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Which was dumb since we already had our brutal puppet in place. It’s not like we actually gave a shit about the Kurds before. We don’t really give a shit about the Kurds now. It was all bullshit.