Warfare and the Will to Win
(September 29, 2009) | 
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| Harlingen, Texas, September 26, 2009
-- Another five American servicemen were killed in
Afghanistan yesterday. This was the same day the White
House announced our president might get around to
reading the report from General Stanley McChrystal
seeking thousands of new troops for that combat theater.
It has now been languishing in governmental “pending”
files for almost a month. At the same time, with each
passing day our forces find themselves waging warfare
under untenable conditions, instead of positions of
strength.
If one is to search for a definition of “war”, it will
be noted the term is sometimes defined as “An
interaction in which two or more opposing forces have a
struggle of wills.” This is a fitting explanation for
what is now taking place in Afghanistan. There are
opposing struggles of will...and the Taliban has far more
will to emerge the victor than a large segment of the
American population and their cowardly lackeys in
Congress.
If we ever have enough courage to truthfully examine the
actions of Americans during times of war, the case can
easily be made that our failures and losses in combat
can all be traced back to congressional actions, or
non-actions that resulted in the American forces defeat.
Anyone who fought in Korea knows that war story well. We
were inserted into combat following a period after World
War II when Congress reduced our military strength and
equipment to a level even lower than pre-war manning
levels. Still, the war in Korea could have been brought
to a successful conclusion if our forces had been given
the political will, manpower and equipment needed to
eliminate North Korean forces and convince China to
withdraw behind its own borders.
Instead, on a worldwide stage, our politicians
negotiated for weeks on the proposed shape of the table
around which they would confer, then talked us into a
so-called “cease-fire”. After 23,615 Americans were
killed in action and another 7,600 of our brave youth
died of wounds or were declared dead, we departed the
battlefield battered and without a victory.
Our ill-fated war in Vietnam is perhaps the premiere
example of political cowardice and mismanagement.
Restrictive political regulations stopped the pursuit of
the enemy. More political restrictions on everything
from combat actions to attacking known safe havens and
the political snake dance our Washington “leadership”
undertook with corrupt South Vietnamese officials placed
America in a position where we won every battle and lost
the war. 40,934 American KIA, another 6,300 declared
dead or lost to fatal wounds and that final scene of
people screaming and hanging on to the skids as the last
USA helicopter lifted off the roof of the American
Embassy was the ultimate portrait of defeat...and it was
painted by the anti-war crowd and Washington D. C.
Our actions in Afghanistan seem to mean we have very
limited objectives. If the goal is to contain everything
in its current configuration, then our restrictive
proportionality of force will accomplish that objective.
It will also assure there are many more American
casualties.
If the objective is to have a decisive victory, our
Cowardly Lions in Washington need to grow a backbone and
subscribe to the philosophy of overwhelming force. From
Disraeli in the 19th Century to Powell in the 20th
Century the established principle has been that the use
of concentrated overwhelming force is the key to
victory.
During World War I Frederick W. Lanchester formulated
Lancaster's Law that calculated “combat power of a
military force is the square of the number of members of
that unit so that the advantage a larger force has is
the difference of the squares of the two forces.”
In simple terms this means a two to one advantage will
quadruple the firepower and inflict four times the
punishment. A three to one advantage in strength will
have nine times the combat effect, etc. In a final
analysis, the more superiority one side has over the
other, the greater damage he can inflict on the other
side and the smaller the cost to himself. This was the
view of Disraeli, Lanchester, Powell and most military
strategists. This is also the view of this former Mud
Marine and combat scribe.
Nobody outside of Washington
has the knowledge of those great military minds that
fill the halls of Congress and the Executive Office.
They know just how to come up with a winning hand. After
all they have a blueprint right in front of them that
dates back all the way to 1951. | |
By
Thomas D. Segel
Tom@thomasdsegel.com
www.thomasdsegel.com
Copyright
2009
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