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How Tech Almost Lost the War
An anonymous reader writes "Blame the geeks for the mess in Iraq? Wired says so. Networked troops were supposed to be so efficient, it'd take just a few of 'em to wipe out their enemies. But the Pentagon got their network theory all wrong, with too few nodes and a closed architecture. Besides, a more efficient killing machine is the last thing you want in an insurgency like Iraq."
The Republicans are to blame for this one.
More like blame the generals who shot spreadsheet "simulations" back and forth instead of large scale wargames to shake-out the technology. The networked battlefield went out untested with an expectation that it would work as promised. Which is a really dumb assumption for military hardware.
'Scuse me? If you've got insurgents setting up an ambush, blasting the frak out of them sounds like a good solution to me. Fire a DU round from a tank down the road, all the IEDs go "boom" and the insurgents waiting on the side go "slwooop" as the massive air pressure changes suck them inside out.
Efficient killing machine == Good when there are bad guys trying to kill you.
One might argue that the insurgents are not terrorists and are thus not our enemy. A reasonable argument, save for one missing piece of logic. If the insurgents would wait we'd already be out of Iraq and they could be dealing with the local, underpowered government. Instead, they decide to take on the most powerful military in the world. Even on our bad days, that's not such a good idea.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
JESUS! Help me KILL more people FASTER!!!
This is the answer to my prayer! KILL MORE! Kill FAST!
God, this give me a boner! Thank you, Jesus, for my fast, fast, fast killing machines!
This is the American f*cking dream! I can SMELL the baby corpses this thing makes FASTER than EVER! I worship this killing SPEED machine!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Our military doesn't have efficient networked killing machines? Go to liveleak.com and look for some AH64 Apache videos from Iraq or Afghanistan. They are killing people from 1-2 miles away with very accurate 30mm cannon fire all while communicating with the guys on the ground.
Wait...
So tech is bad because it didn't work and so the troops weren't efficient killing machines...
But tech is bad because we don't want the troops to be efficient killing machines.
Is that about the gist of it?
A president and Secretary of Defense who were concerned with creating popular support for a war are responsible. They ignored reports from military and civilian groups assigned to study the problems with a post-invasion Iraq, that the administration had themselves created, that a larger force would be needed to prevent the destruction of critical infrastructure. Even then, better deployment of available troops could have prevented much of the immediate post-war chaos. However, the current situation is more a creation of a corrupt system of bidding on construction contracts. Many of these contracts are wildly over budget and half-completed. I seriously doubt that you can blame a highly networked military for that.
See First, Shoot First, Kill First... It is to bad this motto is reserved for the F22. It should be for everything with the capacity to kill on the battle field.
Blaming the geeks is unacceptable, even if the technology was faulty. Generals get to those high positions by accepting responsibility for their decisions, and they decided to go into war with unproven technology, so it follows that it's their fault. If you're going to be a leader, you have to accept both the accolades on success and responsibility on failure.
Hire those geeks from South Korea, preferably their last WCG Starcraft champion, and you would see how network centric warfare should be...
Blame the geeks for the mess in Iraq
How about we blame Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the other "Hawks" for single-mindedly pushing a US foreign policy doctrine of preemption, which led to a war based on falsified "evidence" of a laughable "threat" to the US?
Networked troops were supposed to be so efficient, it'd take just a few of 'em to wipe out their enemies.
We did beat the "enemy"; only Saddam's core Republican Guard put up any sort of fight. The major fuck-up in the initial "war" was Rumsfeld repeatedly cutting supply lines and over-extending troops.
Then we failed to fill the power vacuum in a country with a history of sectarian violence even under a brutal dictator. Worse, we failed to keep the power, lights, and water going which left the door open for opportunists. Iraq fell head-first into a sectarian civil war, with both sides, most of the world, and half of the United States population agreeing on one thing: we need to get the fuck out of their country.
It's hard to "wipe out" your enemy when every day you create more just by your mere meddling presence. It's like standing in a bathtub holding a garden hose, wondering why the water's rising.
Please help metamoderate.
...that way you don't have to admit the galacticly stupid decision to invade in the first place.
I have a honest question, and I haven't been able to find a decent answer anywhere. Why, exactly, are our countries armies over there fighting in Iraq? Why did American even start this war?
I have yet to hear a politician actually say why, and I really can't seem to get a straight answer out of anyone.
everything gets screwed. Even when it's a high-tech efficient screwdriver.
Diplomacy FTW. Literally.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Oh dear, all that "it wasn't my fault" crap just to avoid saying "you were right, we screwed up. It was another Vietnam, after all".
Can we moderate this story "Troll"?
KILL! KILL! KILL!
I am good man! God loves the kill! Baby guts!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If you actually RTFA, it says that geeks came up with a solution to a particular problem, i.e. traditional warfare, which was then applied to a different problem (non-traditional warfare / insurgency, etc) and it didn't work so well.
But now a different set of geeks are coming up with new solutions that do work, whilst building on the previous solution.
IOW, Don't Blame The Geeks. Or the tech, for that matter.
|>
Here be Dragons
Because the Saudi royalty wanted Saddam taken out, and they are friends of the Bush family.
I would consider a good measure of 'efficiency' to be: killing the people you want to kill, with the exclusion of others. I fail to see how it could be considered a bad thing in a war zone.
The problem is that they have lost sight of one of, if not the, most critical role of the infantry - to take and hold ground.
Locating and identifying an opponent, killing them more swiftly, relaying this information to a command structure and recieving guidance in return may assist this, but when pursued as goals themselves lead to the sorts of problems currently being experienced.
Overcoming organised resistence was never a problem and is now even less so. Garrisoning a conquered nation, rebuilding its infrastructure while trying to provide some kind of interim support, dealing with an increasingly hostile population are all problems that the tech-centric focus has failed to address.
Reducing resources and underestimating the time needed to accomplish the goals (vague as they are/were) on what seems to be an over-reliance on technological superiority has compounded the problem.
At the end of the day, unless you want to kill everyone, you have to deal with people. That requires communication, understanding and building trust.
Militaries and generals are always very well geared up to fight the LAST WAR!
All those veteran soldiers of Gulf War I had seen a well-fought desert war between regular army units, and learned how to do it better. Problem is they had no idea how to fight in what came after that, a war of occupation.
From Dictionary.com
1. the state or condition of being insurgent.
2. insurrection against an existing government, usually one's own, by a group not recognized as having the status of a belligerent.
3. rebellion within a group, as by members against leaders.
Funny, the partisans in Iraq are rebelling against a foreign occupier, not their own government. However in the US the word "insurgent" has become the same as "terrorist"...
Oh mod me offtopic, but Iraq has had me sick for the past 4 years. How long did WW2 last again?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
We're being slowly bleed dry in Iraq right now because this administration can't see the difference between actual terrorists who have a grudge against America and insurgents who just want us out of their country. Blaming equipment or protocol would be laughable if it wasn't so shameful and arrogant. The blame for this on going catastrophe rests squarely on the shoulders of one very stubborn man who believes completely and sincerely that he is on the side of justice and that his every action is not only righteous, but indeed endorsed and guided by God himself.
You can't call these people we are fighting terrorists when WE are the foreign troops on their home soil occupying their country. The only justification Bush hasn't abandoned for this war (WMD was a criminal fraud, ousting Saddam already happened), the ludicrous idea that fighting the enemy "over there" makes us safer at home is so mind numbingly flawed at the most basic level that even a C student should be able to see there can be no victory the way the war is being prosecuted. The terrorists who would "follow us home" are doing so anyway, Iraq is diverting precious man power and resources away from stopping them. They are probably already here in fact. The 9/11 hijackers lived in the country for an extended amount of time before they carried out their attacks. Every dollar we spend on Bush's crusade is a dollar that could have went to pay more police officers, increase border security, inspect more cargo. The current plan we're on to get out of this hole is to keep digging until we get to the other side when the first thing you should do when you find yourself in a hole is STOP making it deeper! Violence, even when justified, against religious extremists only begets more violence. It's such an un-American concept to accept, there's no pride in it, no feeling of success but the only way to win is not to continue fighting. Every insurgent you kill insures his sons will be your next generation of enemies. There is a point, and we have long passed it, when someone strong has to stand up and say "Enough." accept the consequences to their reputation, and walk away.
This is a very trying time for the USA, and I fear that we will not long survive the ruinous path we are currently following. Our leader, and calling him that brings me an almost physical pain, will not change our path. He is too stubborn to admit defeat, even if that means dragging an entire country down with him. History will count him among the worst of our Presidents.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
DISCLAIMER: This post is not intended to serve as any sort of official statement on the part of the U.S. Navy; it is solely a personal appraisal of how technology affects certain aspects of warfare. Take my thoughts for what you think they're worth, since nothing here is endorsed by anyone working for the D.O.D.
:).
After reading the article, I had to go have a smoke and really collect my thoughts before replying here. I hope my perspective offers a bit of insight into "one man's view" of technology's role in modern combat. First a little bit of background information is in order...
I'm a 26 year old male, active duty enlisted in the Navy. I joined about 14 months ago, leaving a career in computing to serve in the submarine force. Prior to the Navy, I did several years of programming, database development, web application dev/support, and networking on Win32 and Linux/UNIX systems. Needing a change of pace, and generally feeling burned out after working full-time in I.T. since age 18, I woke up one day and enlisted in the service. My family and friends were a bit surprised, to say the least
Having been in long enough to form my own (albeit limited) opinion of computing/information technology's role in military systems, I have these thoughts:
(1) The military is mostly comprised of enlisted personnel. Enlisted men and women are, fundamentally, operators. This means they are trained to do a specific set of jobs according to a very specific set of guidelines. We don't make tactical decisions; our job is to inform officers in command of the status of whatever evolution is in progress, and obey orders handed back in response. This means we are trained on specific pieces of equipment, which is increasingly networked to allow for more efficient operations.
(2) It's no secret that the military (and government organizations in general) is a big fan of basing systems on "tried and true" technologies. We use what works, not what the industry is pumping out as the latest, greatest info-tech marvel.
(3) Our reliance on these systems means that we always have to be trained on multiple contingencies, i.e. "if doohickey X is broken, switch over to doohickey Y and proceed." Single points of failure are as much the enemy of fighting units as they are of networks in the civilian world. The human element is therefore still critical in avoiding situational breakdowns, hence the need for constant drilling to ensure proper performance under hostile or stressful conditions.
(4) Monday morning quarterbacking is an inevitable consequence of any large-scale conflict. It's always easy to look back and say "Wow, if only they'd done things this way, it's so obvious that things would have gone better." The military does make a concerted effort to learn from its mistakes; we have a saying that every rule we follow is written in blood, and we take that idea very seriously.
(5) In the final analysis, no amount of technology can prevent loss of human life in war. It's ugly, nasty, sad, but inevitable. Human beings will always defend whatever interests they consider crucial to the survival of their way of life. It's just our nature, the product of an evolutionary process that made us what we are today as a species. Since the dawn of time, we've been constantly incorporating new technologies into both civilian and military operations, with mixed results at every stage of innovation. Again, we learn from our mistakes and move forward.
I hope these thoughts can spark some dialog, and that my views might bring some new perspective to conversations on this topic. Thanks.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Being a leader means never having to take responsibility for anything until someone further up than you tosses you to the lions to cover their own ass.
Going by the same logic that says geeks are at fault for this...
I say let's outsource these jobs to Iran.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
You're a fucking idiot.
It's not the fault of the network-centric warfare, it is the fault of trying to fight an unconventional war with conventional tactics and strategies. In fact, the big irony of General Petraeus Iraqi assessment was that military counter-terrorism operations requires the opposite of network-centric warfare: the United States should be willing to have a lot of servicemen who are up to the notion of trading their own lives in turn for regional stability. Reemphasis on "a lot", because that is what will be needed. Tactics such as bombing targets are out of the question due to the collateral damage. And collateral damage is something that must be minimized as much as possible in order to build a trustworthy relationship with the local populace.
Properly curbing terrorism activity in a war zone scenario such as Iraq has an excruciatingly high servicemen casualty in return for stability rate.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
The pentagon didn't get it wrong - their jobs is to destroy the enemy's military force, and they did it well.
The problem is the REASON FOR THE WAR. We didn't go there to kick Iraq's butt, did we?! We went there to "neutralize" nuclear threat that didn't exist, and then shove down democracy on the populace who didn't even understand what that means and how it supposed to work (hell, it seems we don't even know how it works), and secure oil production that went to clusterfuck.
Military strategy was the least of our problem. There is a reason why we have State Department separate from Defense Department.
This reminds me the bumpber sticker I saw: "Bush makes miss Nixon."
I think it was personal. Saddam Hussein laughed after the 9/11 attacks and Bush went ballistic.
but the war is lost as we lost control of the country - and then lost the hearts and minds of the people.
... you need about 300,000 to 400,000 troops spread across the country to enforce military law until a new civil government is running. This is especially true in a country where factional populations live that were being held in check by a strongman ---- once unshackled anything can happen.
Rummy and the Pentagon wanted to test out Transformation --- that being total information integration between all the military branches right down to the soldier on the ground. And it actually worked pretty good ---- even though the total resistance to the invasion was light ---- the country was over thrown by a moderate military force.
Unfortunately - once all existing civil authorities are gone
Bush and Rummy were warned by several Generals that they needed "a lot of boots" on the ground. Apparently they thought that was "old school".
Its not the years, its the mileage
This war was executed with razor-sharp effectiveness. Not a single mistake was made, especially by our glorious leaders. Move along, nothing to see here.
What lost the war for the US/Coalition is the existence of a population that wants us out. How much more clear does it have to be before people come to realize that no army has the capability of controlling such a place?
Property is theft.
This is all Gaius Baltar's fault.
He is calling Hizbollah opeartives (Israel opponent in the 2006 Lebanon War) "primitive foe". That is as far from the trough as it could be. In fact Hizbollah won this war because it was more technically and organizationally sophisticated than IDF in ground war.
According to prisoners each Hizbollah anti-tank missile operator launched more than dozen missiles during the training. The Israel Army representative told that IDF "could only dream" about such level of training. BTW cheapest ATGM cost around 5k $. But Hizbollah also used some 9M133 Kornet (60k $ a pop). And Hizbollah had a lot of ATGM operators, so many that ATGM were used often against Israel infantry. Hizbollah operatives were well coordinated, using mobile phones and radio, well supplied and had had a network of concealed concrete bunkers, with communication lines, optic and stores.
It's plain stupid to call combatant capable of successful launch of modern anti-ship missile "primitive foe".
... who blames his tools.
The Atlantic ran an article about total information supremacy. They got an old marine commander to play the insurgent and the Pentagon ran a simulation. He kicked their fucking asses to the curb using low tech systems. He clearly showed that this concept and the Pentgon's current strategy was worthless. So what did they do the fuckers just changed the rules reset the board and tried again. Because they thought it was a cool idea they ignored the imperial data and the simulation.
None of this would have happened if Colin Powell was still alive.
Play Command HQ online
The press like Reuters who have been shown time and time again to be far to easily manipulated into showing what one side wants to be shown in exchange for exclusive access. It is just as bad when Reuters gets all friendly with Hezbollah as when Fox rides with the troops. The press is supposed to be objective but it ALSO supposed to be investigating, IS what I am being SHOWN the truth?
The simple fact is that Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon were different wars depending on which side you were following. The US (and allies) and Israel were fighting a military war, the Insurgents, taliban and hezbollah are fighting a media war. The military war can claim impressive casualty rates (number of enemy soldiers killed vs own losses) but the media war has proven far more effective, especially when the media shows military casualties as civilian. Civilians who take an active part in a war, for instance as a human shield,loose their civilian status and become legitimite targets, this is far too often ignored. When the media becomes so incompetent as to classify the living as death and accept that the same child was killed at multiple times and locations, well what hope does a military campaign have of getting the support it needs?
War is hell, Star Trek showed us that if it isn't, you have no reason to avoid it. The military know this, the press doesn't. They want to sell headlines (or rather the ads around the headlines) and so they write whatever they think will sell. The truth be damned. How many times has reuters been caught lying now?
Swallowing reuters propoganda is just as bad as swallowing US or Israeli propoganda. Yet far to many people are incapable of this and it makes the media war the most effective method of fighting today. I am not suprised that Wired tries to blame it on "the geeks", anything to switch the blame from themselves.
Lets be honest here, how exactly is the US losing at the moment? So it has lost over 3000 soldiers so far. Is it running out? No, and while the war is costing a fortune it also means lots of people are making money from it. I am sure you could have calculated that WW2 cost the US a fortune, yet it is widely accepted that it also boosted the economy. The US ain't loosing because its enemies have shown zero capacity to wear it down. It ain't losing the military war, it is loosing the media war.
At most at a military level the current conflict is a stalemate and that is only because the US is constrained by the media war from going all out. The same thing happened to Israel in Lebanon, had they simply been able to ignore themedia they would have steamrolled across Hezbollah, the same as the lebanese army did afterwards. You noticed that the lebanese made sure to keep the media away when they shelled the Hezbollah stronghold including "civilians". No media, no outcry at this extremely brutal attack that saw Hezbollah as powerless as they really are when there isn't a camera present.
The US mistake is that they want to be popular and fight a war at the same time. You can't, it is the same mistake parents make when they want to be friends with their kids. When you fight a war you are saying, "don't fight, or we will kill you". You are NOT the nice guy. You can't be. When you fire a weapon you will be killing people, men, women, childeren and on a photo it is very hard to see a mangled corpse as one that minutes ago was "a legitimate target". How do you fight an enemy that knows this and puts its civilians around every possible target and hauls death bodies around for propoganda purposes? You can't.
This war is NOT about US military tactics, it is about propoganda, and the US just ain't good enough at it. But you won't hear Wired about that, it might just invite questions about their own reporting.
The chinese know this, they are fighting a very brutal war in Tibet, but since they don't give a shit about public opinion and have arranged the world so that the world cannot protest about it, they get away with it. The US and Israel can't just ig
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Wired's front cover asks, "What went wrong in Iraq?" and then adds, "Hint: blame the geeks".
Even before you read the article, there is the problem of the question being framed to project the existance of some plan, the assumption that we know what that plan was and that America's campaign in Iraq is failing to achieve the plan's objectives.
Reading the article, you stumble upon another problem with the phrase and that is that by, "What went wrong" Wired means, "Why aren't we winning" and not, "What the fuck happened to the WMD's?"
"Wrong" can mean so many things. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for KBR? Nope. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for General Dynamics? Nope. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for Joe Middle-class American? You bet. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for America's underprivilaged? Hell, yes. America is not a monolith of interest.
The general public doesn't know "the plan" for Iraq but it is not in the interest of the parties who do to start letting on that the general public doesn't know. Any fairy tale is better than a void. Informed people don't know the plan for Iraq either, but at least they can make educated guesses and validate or invalidate those guesses based on short term outcomes. One thing can be said with certainty and that is that the plan benefits those in the know. I would speculate that the plan didn't account for what is happening right now not because of oversight but because those aspects of what is going on are irrelevant to the plan. Case in point is what happened immediately after Saddam's regime was deposed. Rumsfeld described the massive looting as, "Stuff happens". But, apparently stuff DIDN'T happen at the Iraqi Ministry of Oil because it was magically secured.
I take issue with the article for using the prevailing mainstream media propaganda about Iraq to lash lower level functionary geeks for not winning enough. I take issue with the article for suggesting that a war of choice could be made "more ethical" by the application of lessons learned. As if the pure morality of the American ubermensch is not satisfied with a mere ethical war for freedom and democracy. All questions of immorality need to have ironclad answers that invoke incontinent convulsions of antipatriotism in any individual who even implied to ask them so that ten others may fear to ask in the future.
I would expect as much from the country's paper of record or any local bird cage liner so this raises questions about Wired's stake in this. Are they just another media outlet paroting the MSM for the sake of justifying extra real estate for revenue generating ads? Or, is there some super patriotic editor currying favor with his or her overlords?
Politicus
The iraq war has turned into a civil war. The US just stirred up a hornet nest that Saddam had managed to keep quiet, roughtly the same happened when the USSR collapsed. The US mistake was in thinking that countries that were at peace when ruled by a dictatorship would be at peace when 'liberated' from that dictatorship.
They were wrong.
Now as for how long this is going to last. I don't know, how long do other civil wars last? Like oh say, Korea, Ireland, baskenland etc etc.
If you think the insurgents are just fighting the US then arabs must be the most stupid people in history, it is generally accepted that you fight the enemy by blowing them up, NOT your own people. I am not quit sure the german blitzkrieg would have been that effective had they used it against their own lines. "Look frenchies, we just machine gunned half our own troops, are you ready to surrender yet!"
If you like Iraq has become a gangland with the US in the role of police, sure they are the enemy of every gang, but that hardly stops the gangs from fighting each other.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
>They were shooting at us. We shot back. That pretty much sums things up.
Yep and they raped your troops so they had to 'rape back' as well.
If they were so advanced, how come the lebanese army, who were smart enough to keep the press away, did manage to beat them? The simple fact is that Israel could NOT use its military might because of the media. Lebanon had no such concerns and simply shelled the hell out of the strongholds casualty rates be damned. They did it with old tech that these "advanced" missles you claim exist should have been able to take out easily. So how come the lebanese could use ancient troop carriers as the M117 to fire on the stronghold unopposed except some small arms fire? Had hizbollah used up all its advanced missles already?
No, Israel lost the media war, Reuters was the most effective enemy weapon and Israel has no weapon against that because there are always people like you that swallow propoganda whole.
If the hezbollah weapons are so advanced why are there missles incapable of hitting anything in terror strikers? They can only use them against civilian targets because they are the only big enough to at least have a change of hitting anything, if the weapons were so advanced they could try military targets instead.
No, keep dreaming kid. If Israel had been allowed to go all out, Hizbollah would have been dead within a week. When the lebanese finally did their job, even they managed it. The trick is to keep the media out of the way. Without a camera Hizbollah cannot fight.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Since when has the US won the war? It's over? *slaps forehead* I better go check the newspaper.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
And what have these heroic Democrats done to end the war since sweeping Congress?
A rational person would realize it's idiotic to blame the corrupt Republicans or the corrupt Democrats when it's obvious AIPAC, the 2nd most powerful lobby in the US, lobbied long and hard to get the US to fight Israel's war. This is the real reason we went into this war, and the real reason it continues on and on while nobody in Washington has the guts to go further than rhetoric by taking action and actually bringing our troops home.
War is worth a lot of money, so just follow the money. Is it any wonder that the Oil and big business that got elected wanted to make more money? No-bid contracts with Halliburton, Cheney's ex-CEO spot, worth billions. Closed energy meetings with Cheney, not even disclosing who was attending the meetings.
That's not even getting a tin foil hat out, those are simple facts.
Now for the tin foil hat : Right now the US establishes its presence mostly via Saudi Arabia. Now that we'll have long term bases in Iraq and Afghanistan it gives us more places to project our influence. Why keep our power base located within just one country now that we have so many weapons sitting right next to Iran. It's obvious why we royally ignored all attempts at diplomacy http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700727.html - war is very profitable.
On top of that OPEC still uses US dollars. Iran is vocal about wanting to use the Euro. If we control a few of the OPEC nations and are the 800 pound gorilla with bases all over the middle east we just might stop a total collapse of the US Dollar.
The Republicans deserve being kicked for their idiocy. Bush made one of the classic blunders: Never start a war when you are having diplomatic success.
The Republicans deserve to get whacked upside the head. The problem is that the Bush adminstrations leap to left was matched by the Democratic Party's wild flailing to the outer most fringes of the left.
Our problem is that that opposition party hasn't spent its decade in minority improving. So, we are in cycle where we will have politicians behaving badly for the foreseeable future.
I heard that their tech budget was actually low. Even heard of some servers in country running off laptops, thrashing and eventually killing those frail 2.5" drives. I suppose it may have differed in different regiments/troops or whatever the divisions are called (sorry not a military guy).
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
I think you just made a false assumption that geeks are, by definition, powerless workers. In this case, the geeks were at the top of the chain of command. The article notes:
The network design mentioned in the article came from the top. The workers who weren't comfortable with the idea and who thought that controlling Iraq would take more troops were silenced.
You have a valid point that the leaders should be the ones ladled with the responsibility. In this case, the geeks were the leaders.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
History considers Lincoln, the bloodthirsty tyrant that King George looks up to, one of our greatest presidents.
Bush will be regarded as the same. Not today, certainly not tomorrow. Give it a few decades.
Sooner or later, we're going to run out of Iraqis to kill. Either we're going to kill them all, or they'll get it into their heads that Americans are, by nature, the most stubborn people on the face of the planet. Once either happens, expect parades, the heralding of Bush as a great Decider and master of Strategery, et cetera.
Hey, it worked for Lincoln. The number of dead sustained in any conflict is insignificant when compared to the number of people furiously waving flags while enjoying a tasty snack of Freedom Fries. Murrica! Woo! Kick ass! RUMSFELD!
It wasn't all that foreign to the Japanese. They've already had at least half a century of practice with democratic structures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_constitution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_of_Japan
Actually the US armed forces are the most efficient bunch of people in history when it comes to killing other people quickly and en masse.
Their only shortcoming is that they aren't very discriminating about exactly whom they kill. Just as long as US casualties stay low - grotesquely low in terms of the history of armed conflict, although of course any casualties on your own side seem too many. That's a political necessity, when the commander in chief is also the elected president of a democratic state.
Traditionally, war has been "the continuation of diplomacy by other means" (as Carl von Clausewitz neatly observed). That meant exerting pressure on specific people whom you wanted to influence, and - if necessary - killing them and their supporters.
The USA has always been adept at the form of diplomacy that involves choosing partners iin foreign nations who are likely to further US interests, and supporting them by all manner of means. Unfortunately the subtlety of this approach breaks down when "continued" by the modern American way of war, which is basically to break into a territory and kill everyone in sight very quickly. That tends to be counterproductive, because it eventually pisses everyone off. As soon as "Shock and Awe" was mentioned, it was immediately obvious that it was essentially just 21st century Blitzkrieg. And despite all the rubbish about "precision targetting", it is about as selective as Blitzkrieg - in other words, not at all. Everyone within the blast radius dies. And the blast is not necessarily centred on the chosen target, and the chosen target is not necessarily what it is thought to be. Remember the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, or the 30-40 publicly announced bombings of "safe houses" where Saddam Hussein was allegedly hiding in 2003? All those bombs hit and destroyed their targets - although we later learned that Saddam was not in any of them. Want to guess who was?
Minimizing your own casualties, desirable as it is in terms of domestic politics, turns out to be disastrous in terms of foreign politics. War cannot be a continuation of diplomacy if it lacks subtlety and discrimination. Moreover, in the long run it will be disastrous domestically too - when even the US media can no longer suppress the truth about the real damage done to Iraq and its people.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Rumsfield fights wars like congress passes bills. Lots of promises and no sacrifices. Just like deficit spending comes at the expense of inflation: Fighting war without enough troops on the ground results in a successful insurgency and at the expense of a reasonable time table of withdrawal.
His vision of the soldier of the future is fine and dandy, but trial by fire to make it happen at America's expense is bullshit incompetance to the level of treasonous.
They could have just as easily swept over Iraq live a wave with covert black ops teams, killed everyone in their path, given guns to a friendly replacement, and left just as quickly. What good is "battlenet" whatever-the-fuck if the mission objective is "play sitting ducks?" They can do that with a pencil, paper, and a cell phone!
They're resisting an occupation, it is not just their right, it is their DUTY to resist a foreign occupation.
Don't like it? Just get the fuck out.
Eric Prince needs cash. Eric Prince is a good Christian. A good republican. And he makes a living selling killer (mercenaries) to the US government, not saving lives.
Who will pay campaign contributions to GOP Senators if Eric Prince doesn't make enough $$$?
... if the US wasn't making more money than both countries in the oil for food program.
No.
This war was started and is fueled by American politics. Don't try to shift the blame to the geeks. I and many of my friends are geeks, and none of us are residents of the USA.
Place the blame where it's due: The administration of the USA.
Why, yes! I AM new here.
Sorry this is OT, but I can't let the parent stand unchallenged.
AC has put heavy spin on his personal choice of facts. The way he puts it, you might suppose that the USA joined the war after 1.5 years (5.5 - 4). Actually, the USA commenced hostilities 2 years, 4 months, and one week after the outbreak of WW2 in the West. VE Day was 7th May 1945. VJ Day was 15th August 1945. So the European war lasted 5 years and 8 months (68 months), and the Pacific war lasted 3 years and 8 months (44 months). The USA entered both wars in December 1941 when first Japan, then Germany declared war on it. (In other words, it did not enter the war until it was actually attacked by the dictatorships - how's that for appeasement?)
So the USA fought for 40 of the 69 months in Europe (59%) and, of course, for all of the 44 months in the Pacific (100%).
To set the "appeasement" idea to rest: Britain and France had fought for the whole 4 years of WW1, suffering 994,000 and 1,698,000 dead respectively - plus far more wounded, and many civilian casualties. Much of northern France had been turned into a desert. The USA fought for the last 18 months of the war, and suffered 117,000 deaths - less than 5% of the combined British and French figure. Yet that experience was enough to turn American politics isolationist for the next 22 years!
It was quite natural, and much to their credit, that the British, French, and many others tried to make WW1 "the war to end wars". They disarmed, set up the League of Nations, and did their best to resolve disputes in a civilised way. Unfortunately, the scars of WW1 - which, by the way, killed over 4 million and wounded nearly 8 million in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire - combined with Hitler's unique demagogy, set Germany on a path for war. While Britain and France did appease the Axis powers, they declared war immediately Germany invaded Poland. Whereas the USA, which had previously done absolutely nothing, went on doing absolutely nothing while France and the rest of Europe were conquered, and Britain and the USSR came within a hairsbreadth of going under.
So please don't preach about "appeasement" any more. It's interesting that the USA avoided fighting Hitler - a very dangerous enemy - as long as it possibly could, but rushed to attack Saddam Hussein, whom it knew it could defeat easily.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"Actually, the USA commenced hostilities 2 years, 4 months, and one week after the outbreak of WW2 in the West".
Arithmetic has always been too hard for me. That should be "2 years, 3 months, and one week" (give or take). Sorry, guys!
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Proof: Israel bombed Beirut, where there's no, and has never been any Hezbollah. It bombed *on purpose* (that's what those LASER GUIDED MISSILES the US sold do) the Beirut oil refinery, leading to the biggest oil spill in history in the mediterranean sea. It bombed most bridges in the south of Lebanon.
Friends of mine got bombed in this war. They weren't part of Hezbollah. However, unsurprisingly when you have a couple more neurons working than your average likkudnik neocon, it made Hezbollah popular with those who used to oppose them in Lebanon.
Mission accomplished! Or rather, war crime accomplished! (Robert H. Jackson, chief US prosecutor at the Nurenberg trials)
They first tried to fight the was like command and conquer, where you can clearly identify you adversary by the color of the uniform the enemy is wearing. Later they discover that command and conquer is based on Dune (not dune II!) where you need a mentat (adviser) how to handle the locals.
/Afghanistan is not a game, but real people get killed for political reasons.
The difference is that Iraq
The war is already lost, Harry Reid said so. Of course Harry believes that there are 535 Commanders in Chiefs but maybe someday he will get to the point where he can clean that brown ring off his neck.
creating popular support for a war are responsible.
Support? More like:
Are you going to change my taxes - if not I don't care.
The popular position was 'meh' - it was not effecting their children or their wallets.
Expressing opposition got you on a 'list'
the US armed forces are the most efficient bunch of people in history when it comes to killing other people quickly and en masse
Sorry, but by those criteria my money is on the Roman legion.
I personally saw, worked on, designed, and utilized (all in different instances and places) tons and tons of open gear, systems and platforms. CentOS, DD-WRT, hundreds of open source apps, all working as force multipliers at best, inexpensive/secure substitutes for MS crap at least. Never forget that if you want to find something that DOESN'T work, you will not have to look for very long...there are plenty of examples out there. On the other hand, there are innumerable successes out there, many driven by grunts who use this stuff in their personal lives and come up with a better mouse trap which the military (perhaps a unit, a squadron or and entire command) adopts. Everyone like to point out the failures, but I've experienced first hand trying to get the media to take some interest in some of the awesome uses of OSS and open technologies only to have them shrug it off. They view it as 'human interest' like a cat with two faces. A few people will read it, but what people have been trained to expect is failure, death, etc.
The invasion of Iraq began March 20, 2003 and Baghdad fell on April 9. That was the duration of the war and it was not by any definition "nearly lost." Establishing peace in a country that really doesn't want it, well, that's another story.
"Written on the pages is the answer to the never ending story..."
How can there be 200+ replies and no-one has mentioned "Superiority" by Arthur C Clarke?
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Sorry, as far as pure body count over time goes, these guys can't compete with their modern counterparts. However, what they could publicly do to individuals makes Abu Ghoreib and Gitmo look like shining examples of humane treatment of captives.
"Southeast Asia Shiite and Sunni sects that dominate Iraq"
If that is your knowledge of the place, you deserve the defeat you will inevitably suffer.
"Unfortunately, the scars of WW1 - which, by the way, killed over 4 million and wounded nearly 8 million in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire - combined with Hitler's unique demagogy, set Germany on a path for war."
It was actually the Treaty of Versailles combined with a world economic recession that laid the groundwork for Hitler's rise to power and the subsequent militarisation of Germany. They had to pay vast sums in reparations to the French, were castrated militarily, and then ruined by the effects of the Great Depression, which led to massive unemployment, hyper-inflation, and general misery. Hitler may have been initially unpopular and gained power through a combination of violence and subterfuge, but his success in restoring the country's economy together with a willingness to break every condition of the humiliating Treaty Of Versailles ended up making him very popular.
NB: it's notable that the US opposed the Treaty Of Versailles from the beginning, and instituted the Marshall Plan after WWII to ensure that the conditions which Hitler exploited would not occur in that country again.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Armies kill things. Technology has made our military, man for man, the most effective and efficient killing machine anywhere. The invasion of Iraq and the annihilation of its military took 3 weeks and a handful of casualties, hardly more than we'd have had in almost any live-fire exercise on the same scale.
After that, however, and despite the fact that the military is a conveniently well-organized and broadly capable group of trained men and women that can be ordered to do just about anything, we didn't need a massively efficient and effective killing machine. We haven't for years now. IF we insist on the paradigm that it is our responsibility to rebuild any country we knock over, we NEEDED a wise, foresightful, thoughtful, and empathetic administrative POST-confilct authority. We didn't have it. What we got - charitably speaking - was a collection of hastily thrown-together policies based on really nothing but optimism, a lack of any strategic direction cognizant of the political, religious, and tribal realities, as well as ex-pat Iraqi opportunists who saw their chance to nab some power and wealth.
Think of the Army as a supremely well-balanced and perfectly crafted chainsaw - perfect for treecutting. Once you've cut down the forest, and want to try to build a city, is it any wonder if the chainsaw - no matter how wonderful - turns out to be nearly useless for digging wells, building homes, paving streets?
What they have accomplished is more a testament to the versatility, dedication, and skill of the individuals in our armed services who are willing to try to accomplish whatever they are ordered to do.
-Styopa
The problem is Kool-aid imbibers who latch on to clever presentation bullets and banners without the slightest analysis of what they're really saying, then repeat, embellish and distort them out of all proportion. Stroll down the street in Crystal City (the area around the Pentagon) some day and ask random suites questions about Net-centric. If they'll talk to you, you'll hear lots of enthusiasm, support, energy, and commitment, but very little understanding beyond an unspoken conviction that if you drink the Kool-aid your job is safer than if you question the Kool-aid.
The trouble is that, maybe, just maybe, there was a glimmer of an idea behind an original Kool-aid bullet or two, but the inside of a Pentagon shape is conducive to ricochet, reverberation and amplification. The seed of the idea is repeated, and embellished, and repeated some more, evolving far beyond its original intent, where any cogent intent existed in the first place. Once an idea becomes a Kool-aid flavor-of-the day it begins to be inserted exponentially by clever tuned-in staffers into their bosses briefings and policy memoranda (Senior Executive Service types compose neither briefings nor policy memoranda themselves, they just listen to them, approve them, put their names on them, and occasionally speak to them). The Kool-aid flavor-of-the-day begins to be used as justification for any idea, initiative, pet-project, or otherwise orphaned funding stream that can't be justified otherwise unless first soaked in Kool-aid.
Eventually even good ideas subjected to enough distortion become worthless, at best, and dangerous at worst. There are currently two big Kool-aid flavors in the Pentagon (well, more, but apropos this conversation, two): Net-centric and Global Information Grid (GIG). Both flavors have original intents that have great merit at their core. Having been subjected to nearly a decade of Power Point Rangers, astute Kool-aid Kommandos all, however, both are used mainly now to justify the most outlandish and wasteful schemes imaginable. Yet, Net-centric is a fantastic idea! Who can argue with an idea that more timely and effective information sharing may enhance operational effectiveness? Net-centric Kool-aid is another thing. Net-centric Kool-aid can be used to justify incredibly stupid ideas like, say, "we don't need armor on this thing - the GIG is our armor (!!!!)." It's the Kool-aid, the freaking Kool-aid.
The amazing thing to me is that having defeated the stupidity and evil of Communism, with all of their empty slogans, banal banners, and political supression, we're becoming more and more like them every day. Go figure.
http://www.amazon.com/Expedition-Earth-Arthur-C-Clarke/dp/0345430735
."
SUPERIORITY
"When the war opened we had no doubt of our ultimate victory. The combined fleets of our allies greatly exceeded in number and armament those which the enemy could muster against us. We were sure we could maintain this superiority. Our belief proved, alas, to be only too well founded . .
The introduction claimed it is (was?) required reading at MIT.
More from:
http://www.somefantastic.us/NRYSF_Reviews/Military_SF.html
"Perhaps the most fascinating story in the collection is Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority." Even though the story is a half-century old, and the oldest in the collection, it may have the most modern relevance of any story in the book. As in "The Scapegoat," the story is told from the viewpoint of a group finding itself in a war with an enemy of vastly inferior technology. Yet, because of the reliance on such high-tech weaponry, which is hard to produce in mass, and the continual attempt to make the weapons even more high-tech, the superior force ends up losing the war, thus making the reader consider what truly is important in maintaining superiority. While reading the story, it's hard not to think of the U. S. military and its reliance on extremely expensive, high-tech weaponry that takes time to produce. In fact, towards the end of the U. N. military intervention in Bosnia, the U. S. military started to report shortages of the missiles needed to equip our long-range fighters. Maybe the American leaders can find a useful lesson in this story when considering the new missile defense plan. "
"War Games" was a silly movie, but even with "Superiority", the conclusion remains true: sometimes the only way to win is not to play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
There's a quote by the theorists in the article "Nations make war the same way they make wealth." That's got to be the stupidest thing I've heard. The whole concept behind war is to destroy the enemy. To make wealth you have to create something. Now it may be true that some people in this nation have been making money by making war, but overall it's a loss. No wonder the troops in Iraq are loosing with people like this driving strategy.
then what happens? Oh yes. Cheers George. Here's to WWIII.
just stop trying to steal their oil?
too easy perhaps?
Discover a few years ago apparently got a Neocon evangelical editorial board and every new issue had to have interviews with Newt Gingrich or debates with creationists or articles like "The end of science" or cover headlines like "Why kids love Big Brother". Dropped the subscription and now I refuse to look at an issue on the newsstand. If their editorial board wants to destroy the pop science magazine, and who can say for sure that they don't, they have succeeded wildly with me.
I find Wired's "Blame the Geeks" cover headline equally offensive and _way_ over the line. Anyone with more knowledge, wisdom and culture than Conan the Barbarian knew invading Iraq was MORONIC _before_ it occurred. That isn't 20-20 hindsight, Bucky. That's the truth. And if you can remember waaaay back to 2003 literally _millions_ of people filled the streets of metropolises literally around the world from New York to London to Cape Town to Sydney in horror of the INEVITABLE quagmire (and perhaps yet worse to come) our moronic White House instituted in our name. Deal with it. Wired, don't excuse idiots with power by promoting limp revisionisms like "blame the geeks".
America won the war in Iraq, that was the easy part. Winning the peace is harder, and that's where they are failing.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
First of all, the U.S. rather decisively won the war. There is no question of that. We went into the country, wiped the streets with whatever parts of the Iraqi army that didn't just turn around and go home, and captured the leader.
What the U.S. completely and utterly failed to do was successfully occupy the country, provide any sustainable plan for self-governance, and provide any meaningful security or structure.
But, it's the liberals fault anyway. What lost the occupation was naysayers. People at home saying that occupying a country like the one we're in now is a bad idea demoralized the troops and caused them to fail (but I didn't say that, the liberals did. I would never say our troops failed at anything because that's a liberal thing).
It had nothing to do with:
1. Splitting the defensive force between two unstable nations with long histories of internal strife, tribal in-fighting, and culturally-ingrained vengeance.
2. Ignoring the need to quickly establish a visible presence in all major sections of the country to shut down uppity warlords and factional warfare.
3. Failure to quickly restore the basic infrastructure on which any stable society is founded (because, clearly, freedom is more important than basic necessities like running water, electricity, or police protection).
4. Failure to provide a structured foundation for business so that capitalists could safely enter the country and provide a mechanism for Iraqis to provide for their families that didn't involve crime.
And, of course, the lack of any significant punishment for things like Abu Ghraib and the numerous Blackwater scandals didn't have any effect on the psyche of the Iraqis, and didn't in any way cause their view of the U.S. and it's presence in their country to sour.
Nope, it was all libs and their liberal bias and their liberal media. Yup. That's what I believe, and the facts are just hippy liberal moonbat crap anyway.
Blame the libs: because taking responsibility for your massive, unrelenting failures is no fun.... especially when those damn libs warned you this was going to happen all along.
Perspective 101 for Defeatists.
Better get that white flag up fast before the US wins.
I wish I had mod points for your comment. How can anyone think what is going on is Peaceful from ANYONE's point of view? The USA has been responsible for more deaths on the Iraqi side than they have against us so it would appear that simply by the numbers we are in face NOT peaceful. Heck was anyone listening to what the surge was supposed to do? It was to attain military improvement. That is inherently non-peaceful.
The failure here isn't with the technology as much as it is with management and procurement. I spent a decade in the US Army, only to see one horrible tech implementation after another get approved by the highest ranking dude, who knew nothing about tech. In the military, the highest ranking guy makes the decisions, not the smartest. That high ranking guy doesn't have time to become an expert in tech, so he caves to special interests and the good-ol'-boy system of procurement.
Just don' work !
;p
Nice hefty spears - with lots of irregularities and rough spots, to reduce manipulation slippage and increase target attrition. That's what we need !
On the same note :
And Systems Analysis / General Systems Theory is to blame for losing, er, I mean, aborting ahead of schedule, the Vietnam War.
Tech-happy generals and high-level politicians screwing things up by applying not-quite-mature technology to problems without technological solutions? Unpopular war where people against it are accused of helping the enemy? Inappropriate meddling by the President in how the war is to be fought? A belief that insurgencies are best fought by killing insurgents?
Iraq sounds more like Vietnam every day.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You're not using enough of it...
but I have to point out that wiping Iraq off the map would not solve any problem at all,
I'd tend to think that it'd solve the need for the occupation rather nicely. Given that the most efficent method would be nuclear, we wouldn't even have to worry about somebody else moving in and causing trouble for a while.
would cause a host of new problems the likes of which America has never seen.
What, other nations would stop screwing around with us?
I'm a bit weary with our arrogance. It's worth noting that military power did not forever save any of the previous empires that fell apart.
In my reading of history, a lot of times it was a decline in military might that resulted in empires falling apart - Rome started hiring mercenaries because they were cheaper, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
The entire Iraq mess can be laid at the feet of our 43 president.
He is commander in chief, that is his military to command. Sure, president Bush has advisers, both technical and military, but ultimately, at the end of the day, after all the intelligence has been analyzed, he is responsible for ordering the troops to war.
Everyone else can finger point and double-talk, but the orders come from the top. With great power comes great responsibility.
I don't care if everyone beneath him fucked up their jobs - it is his responsibility to weed out the incompetents and poor performers, not protect them because they are "loyal".
If you want someone to blame, look no further than our President.
-ted
Oh, my first appeal to moderators, I only wish that this person had not posted anonymously, your comment is one of the best I have seen in a while.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Just about anytime they fired up a laptop in the field, incoming enemy fire (i.e. artillery shells) would start raining down on their location within 15 - 20 minutes. Others who served in the Kosovo Campaign relayed similar stories only about US forces zeroing in on an enemy's position using similar SIGINT techniques. I remember interviewing one former translator who just remarked, "It's eeiry to be listening to a radio conversation between two parties and then hear the bomb go off in the background followed by static a second later."
I had lunch with an Army Major and a Captain two weeks ago about working with the local Gaurd depot on a project. We got off on the topic of wargames, simulations, and the like when they started discussing a series of wargames they participated in a few years ago where their were Opfor and abandoned their technology for 18th century methods of communications (i.e. couriers, flags, etc.) They were both laughing that how they didn't win, they proved to be far more effective than what any of the "Spreadsheet" simulations projected. (I've heard this story before from another NCO's or at least a similar story.)
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
nm
I think that perhaps you may have meant successors. It is a little difficult for someone who has come and gone before you, to finish what you started. Can your great-great-great grandfather finish painting your house?
I am not stubborn. I am right!
Britain, France, and the USA waited as long as they could before engaging Hitler. It's just that the US was considerably farther away, so could wait longer. And we supported Britain, France, and Russia from the beginning, even though it took Pearl Harbor to get us to full war.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The sad thing here is that we already knew high-tech would lose in this situation.
In 2000, the Joint Chiefs conducted the millenium games, where they simulated a conflict in the middle east.
The commander of the enemy force won using techniques like bike messengers for communication.
So....they fired him, and put someone in charge who would play by 'the rules' and declared it a huge success.
Thesis: Tech Almost Lost the War
Premise: Networked troops are efficient
Implementation flaw: Pentagon had too few nodes and a closed architecture
Consequence: less networked, less efficient troops.
But the author actually thinks this failure is good, because...
Statement: "Besides, a more efficient killing machine is the last thing you want in an insurgency like Iraq."
Corollary: we want less efficient, i.e., less networked troops.
Conclusion: failed implementation of "tech" is helping win the war.
The post stimulated many comments perhaps because it is so vague.
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
* * *
Searching for patterns in the ocean of Internet traffic flowing through the agency's peering point snooper wasn't Craig's idea of a good time, but at least it was better than sitting through yet another of Mr. Kulya's endless lectures. The life of a spook trainee, he mused, was much like that of a newbie in many other fields. The fact that his drudgery involved violating the privacy of unsuspecting citizens, rather than simply being responsible for their lives, as a medical intern would be, or their livelihood, had he been a law clerk, left a sour taste in his soul. Still, there were compensations.
"You okay, Craig?" a woman's voice said close to his left ear. "You've been staring at that IP registration for about three minutes now."
He blinked self-consciously and roused himself. "Oh. Hi, Kelly. I guess I was daydreaming."
She pulled up a chair. "About what?" After glancing at the screen, she added, "Did you just catch Congressman Fox in something?"
* * *
You can read the whole story here:
http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/short-story-vocal-threat/
The sequence began with "Motivation", which is here:
http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/short-story-motivation/
It doesn't sound to me like it was the geeks who blew it. The geeks designed a system, which very well might work if it were deployed as designed; the suits got cheap and undersized the deployment.
Doesn't matter, they accepted the responsibility for winning it when they accepted their positions.
You may be incapable of completing a job that you don't want to do, but some people are professionals.
For the war it was designed to fight. Network centric warfare can't create national identity or diffuse serious political deadlocks such as those created by the Hussein regime and its fall. The war was fought well, but there was basically no attention paid whatsoever to the social dynamic of the "nation" of Iraq.
By this definition, they are insurgents.
And for your reference, "usually" doesn't mean "always". Your definition says "usually", but you pretend it means something along the lines of "always".
Why act like precision in definitions matter to you when you're obviously willing to play fast and loose when it suits you?
A lot of what the Bush administration started in terms of net-centric transformation hasn't been deployed yet, and won't be for years (particularly JTRS, which is where computer networks meet military radios and will be a huge part of the change). Blaming this on a philosophy that is at best half-implemented is silly. Even if JTRS were complete and deployed, I don't know that it'd help reduce manpower needs for the types of missions they're running at this nation-building stage.
The best way to fight a war like this, for the global audience, is to value the civilians more than your own soldiers, which will obviously cost far more of "our" lives than "theirs". The opposite way is best for the domestic audience, but does fantastic damage to the cause, the aggressor, and their actions.
To sum up - if a fight is worth fighting, fight like you mean it. Otherwise, don't even bother, as you're just making things worse.
W.O.P.R. the "geek created" machine was wiser than the entire republican war feed-money-to-haliburton scheming machine 20 years before this particular war.
Imagine not starting a pointless and unjustified war, and I can imagine not losing one no matter the means.
The article makes it clear that the technology works as advertised, but the technology may have mis-applied. That is not the fault of the people who developed the technology.
As US vet, and having worked for years for a major defense contractor, and 28 years in IT; it looks to me like another case of people at the top knowing what they are doing.
Can we like, ALL please stop using the word "insurgent" to discribe the fighting going on in Afghanistan and Iraq? These people arn't insurgents. WE are!
Can you have an indigenous insurgent?
Slashdot editors, I expect more clear thinking than this!
Flawed premise. We are opposed effectively because our wars are unjust and the local populations know it and will not surrender. We aren't up against "jihadists" or "terrorists" or "insurgents". We are up against people who want us out of their countries and will not submit to empire.
Afghanistan is a failure because, contrary to America's deeply held belief, it did not attack us on 9-11-01. The Taliban did not blow up the towers. Al Qaida did, and they booked from Afghanistan in the 30+ days it took for Bush to set up the annihilation of that country. We bombed brown people who kinda looked like Al Qaida and who were living in the same country that the outfit formerly camped in. We killed tens of thousands of people, occupied the place, and not coincidentally made our new puppet government sign the gas pipeline deal the Taliban government refused.
Iraq, well, well. A pack of lies to invade a helpless, non-hostile nation. We killed 100,000 outright and another 900,000 died from the effects of the occupation. Two million are homeless and at least a million of those have fled their own country. Girls are selling themselves in Syria to feed their families bak home. We are being opposed because we are bastards, not because we haven't "social networked" properly. We murdered their country. What would YOU do if someone wiped out three percent of all living Americans and then stole everything not nailed down, then dictated a constitution and installed a puppet government? Would social networking make you feel better after your wife and kids were incinerated?
2. insurrection against an existing government, usually one's own, by a group not recognized as having the status of a belligerent. ... Funny, the partisans in Iraq are rebelling against a foreign occupier, not their own government.
Man, that is an incredibly partisan and misinformed statement. There was an election in Iraq, they have a government, and the officials of that government (leaders and police) are routinely targeted by insurgents. It takes time to train an army and a police force, and the US military is handing over security for regions as quickly as local army and police become proficient enough. Sadly, that is taking place way too slowly. The insurgents make great efforts to interfere with this process, for example bombing lines of people waiting to apply for the police academy. Casualties among the Iraqi officials far exceeds that of US forces. The word "insurgency" fits the current situation quite well.
Being anti-war is fine. It is good to insist that a government explain why soldiers are sent into harms way, many US soldiers feel this right is one of the things that makes the US worth defending. But don't let anti-war zeal blind you to reality. Groupthink and propaganda is not the exclusive domain of the far right, the far left is quite adept at it as well. Denying that there is an insurgency against an elected government suggests that you may want to broaden your sources of information. There are many problems with the war, but if you can't see its true nature you are likely to be blown off and unable to be part of a real solution.
However, in the the void of a government of Iraq, and undefended borders, you get the rise of insurgents. Military solutions don't really work there.
"Diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means." — Zhou En Lai
It was a failure in the planning, where they didn't make plans for what happens after they're abruptly running the country... or even worse, look at the old set of contingency plans from Desert Storm.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
"Individual soldiers make tactical decisions. Marines are especially big on this. It's Marine doctrine to equip the Marine, not man the equipment."
Bullseye. I got my print copy of Wired yesterday (guilty shrug). I skimmed the article. Batshit loony garbage.
I left the Marines 10 years ago. We were just getting digital radios, just getting the first GPS units, and just getting laptops. No intrasquad comms (unless SEALs had them, maybe...) and the laptops were basically just for tracking inventory and leave request admin crap. The GPS units were brand new to everyone...and very cool.
The rest is all crap. Extra weight. To the infantryman: weight is evil unless it is in flavors of 5.56 or 7.62. Everything else is garbage. The radios will break, NVG batteries will die, and you may get stuck without things as basic as fuel or MRE re-supply. Our indoctrinated response to such calamity? MISSION ACCOMPLISHMENT. My GPS broke! Tough shit, break out the lensatic and find the target. My radio is busted! Tough shit...you better stretch those quads, Private.
I understand the quoted Naval "operators" point of view. Its accurate. I know this from experience working with squi---er--sailors aboard ship and my brother's experience as a naval officer. The officers don't learn the tasks, they learn how to manage the enlisted ranks to accomplish tasks to complete the mission.
On the ground it is different. Marines have it pounded into them that it basically takes one Marine to overcome an enemy division. "Rifleman Dodd" was on the required reading list. It tells how a Brit sharpshooter gets isolated in Portugal during the Napoleonic Wars. The concept to be conveyed to the enlisted ranks is basically you are the Corps. One Marine. One Rifle. Accomplish The Mission. Lacking the rifle you accomplish it with a knife, an e-tool, a sharp rock, your fists, or harsh language. End of story.
If every technological gizmo had failed at the outset of the war we still would have kicked their collective asses. The difference was not just technological advantage but human will. Iraqi units would get crushed or fade into the dust because: A: our troops hit what they aim at & B: our troops have individual initiative to complete mission objectives. Its the lesson of Thermopylae writ over and over again: enslaved souls make poor soldiers.
The same point is true of the insurgency. Human will. They want us the hell out. Just like the Viet Cong (remember that one?!?!), just like the Mujahedeen, and just like every other insurgency of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Vietnamese were essentially able to muster the social will to absorb any number of casualties. American society did not have that will. We withdrew, and the conflict resolved itself. The Iraqi insurgency remains in question, since, according to some, it appears that people are growing tired of dying for religious fanatics and Baathist stooges. But the question has nothing to do with technology.
It has to do with will. And the most egregiously ill-conceived and poorly planned military occupation in American history.
"Britain, France, and the USA waited as long as they could before engaging Hitler".
You see, you're doing it again. Britain and France waited until Hitler invaded a country whose integrity they had guaranteed. They had hoped he wouldn't, and they weren't at all happy about the prospects, but nevertheless they put their money where their mouths were. It didn't even do Poland any good, because it was on the far side of Germany - and was being attacked from the other side by the USSR at the same time anyway. But they went to war because they felt they couldn't let Germany run riot without doing anything about it.
The USA, on the other hand, didn't fight until Japan and Germany actually declared war on it - at which point it had no alternative at all. The salient difference is that Britain and France declared war on Germany because it attacked Poland - whereas the USA was clearly never going to go to war to help anyone else, waiting until it was attacked itself.
Incidentally, the main reason Britain and France had to appease Hitler was that they had disarmed. And guess who was the main advocate of universal disarmament after WW1? Woodrow Wilson!
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I absolutely love the shower of eager excuses that the administration, the bureaucracy and the military have been vomiting into the public arena. It's not our fault -- it's the tech! It's not our fault -- it's the foreign fighters! It's not our fault -- it's the funding!
Saying that misapplication of technology caused our failure in Iraq is like blaming hydrogen gas for the Hindenberg disaster -- it may be technically true, but it's misleading because it fails to address the root cause of the problem.
I'm not old enough to remember the Vietnam war, but I wonder what excuses were made at the tale end of that debacle. Did the military apply similar rhetoric? Were we always "winning by a large margin" until the day we withdrew? Was there constant talk of "just beginning to make progress" and "just starting to see changes" from the President, even as the casualties mounted?
One thing I DO know is that, during the closing days of Vietnam, many fingers were pointed at the troops themselves. To the left, they were incompetent, mind-controlled baby killers; the right painted them as lazy, incompetent doped-up slobs.
Wanna know what bugs me? The class of Americans who drive around town with a yellow ribbon "support our troops" bumper sticker stuck proudly to their SUVs, when in fact the message they are trying to send is "support our war."
When we announce our withdrawal from Iraq, I wonder how long it will take before these fair-weather patriots wipe their bumpers clean and begin pointing the finger of blame at the troops they once supported.
It wasn't Rumsfeld's fault -- it was Lynndie England's! It wasn't Blackwater's fault for shooting civilians -- it was the Marines' fault for getting themselves into a jam!
I guess, in some ways, the finger-pointing has already begun.
They'll drive the US military out of Iraq.
Just you wait and see.
Except, the argument is basically that the geeks did everything as advertised and the technology worked flawlessly, it was the decision-makers (geeks or not) misunderstanding the battle they were walking into that caused the problems.
But don't read the article or anything crazy like that. I'd hate to have something like a little bit of insight into the subject ruin your righteous indignation, Conan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_desert_shield#Diplomacy.2FOperation_Desert_Shield
The US peacefully occupied Saudi Arabia. Being ignorant and tossing around "Orwell" sure seems to get rated pretty high around here.
No, a study that has been repeatedly criticized and debunked was done by Johns Hopkins. No part of it was "authoritative" unless you mean it was an "authoritative" example of how to totally fuck up a survey.
No, that is wrong. If you plan to discuss the subject, and not seem like you're intentionally lying, you should educate yourself. As it is, you appear to be intentionally lying.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/lancet100000/
NOT press releases. The difference is easily understood and obvious. Usually at least.
Here's what I know. If a country invaded my country, and I wanted them out, I'd do what they asked until they left. Acting like shooting at our troops is ok because they claim they want us to leave ignores the reality that they could get us to leave just by playing along and then change things after we left.
They claim they want us to leave. They are lying, and you're too thick to see it.
They DO NOT want us to leave, because if we did, they wouldn't have anyone to blame for the mess that their country is. Right now they have a convenient scapegoat.
The failure of management, the vapor promises from marketing .... DoD has a very good concept/idea [ISE/NetCentric] proposal-model for FCSs "GoToWar" Biz-Processes. Any FUBAR network theory was all defense industry (not DoD) bullshit wanting more money not FCS performance success. Yep, in the news, they got paid for piles of shit-failures and a few successes. DoD will eventually define ISE/NetCentric architecture. Wired is on target .... .... IOW: Get the architecture right for ISE/NetCentric, then build weapon/security systems that will deliver cogent function with facile legacy interoperability after the firm architecture is known. ... a/o catastrophic) resource attrition.
...), (2) germane inclusive practical application experience, (3) strong venture/mission community collaboration skills (4) the ability to [a] detect obscured implicit knowledge, [b] design atypical synergistic relationships/processes, and [c] define manageable mission complexity components and delegate to a specific venture collaborative community, and (5) verifiable and vetted gainful consensus decision performance.
....
=======
Foundations are critical for ISE/NetCentric:
00. Venture Architect responsible for performance and delivering systems/products for ISE/NetCentric architecture, not parochial demands of special interest, security
01. Content Management Systems (CMS), syntax exact, recycling of established and assured content.
02. Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) providing prompt heuristic-semantics translation of vital tacit and transient experience with, prior distinct, allied explicit knowledge.
03. Relationship Management Systems (RMS) to stabilize synergy in volatile collaborative communities with a virtually prescient mitigation of (expected
04. Objective Systems definitions with (Technology-Change-Management) highly probable "technology innovation" weapon systems evolutionary guides.
What is a Venture Architect: A nexus professional with (1) extensive understanding of "Venture Charter" [AKA: mission/project] funding and requirements (in science, research, development, technology, engineering, and/or
BizMang is always full of BS and no real experience or knowledge to make complex or theoretical systems into applied technologies.
BizMang should manage business (Venture Architect) processes/money. For best value get a Venture Architect for anything with S&T, R&D, ventures, or production.
Okay, this crazy-man is gone
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT. Are you happy now? I'm ashamed of you. Go to your room.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
He's the one who wanted a "hi-tech" force, anyway, and as I recall, has himself never been in combat so the "fog" really snowed him good...
No one cares about your opinion since you're not willing to stand behind it coward.
"The brass calls these futuristic command posts... well, it calls them command posts of the future, or CPOF. (Grunts call them the command posts of the right now -- C-PORN.)"
Sign up for the Military and C-PORN all day!
Rumsfeld was very right in understanding that 'Transformation' was the right path for military endeavors, but he didn't really understand the core principles. The core idea is that with superior intelligence gathering and precision tools you can eliminate a threat without risk and without wasted effort or excessive collateral damage. Using the principles of Transfomation the correct path was to find any weapons of mass destruction that Iraq might have posessed and perform a precise strike to eliminate them.
The essential problem is that there was no concrete intelligence of weapons of mass destruction and the goals of the war were not self defense or even to eliminate a threat. The goal was nation building. Transformation does not apply to nation building. It's like hammering a nail with a scalpel.
Keep in mind to - 'they' have recently been using the term 'surge' as well to describe the 'troop surge' in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you keep hearing over and over again about a 'surge' of armed forces coming 'in' to the counrty ... then its not surprising to think 'in'+'surge' when hearing 'insurgent'. Do check it out - notice how many times you hear the word "surge" on the news these days, its just not normal.
.. go google for info on it, there are some great sites out there about the book and its bizarre relevance to what is happening now. I love the job the protagonist Winston has with the Ministry of Truth - his job is to go through copies of old newspapers and edit old stories to make them 'true' - sort of like Wikipedia run by the government. Cameras on every street corner, constant wars in the distant triangle, old newspapers and histories that get edited after the event, newspeak, groupthink, doublethink, alliances that constantly change (but appear to be timeless and stable), the illusion of a constantly improving standard of living, 'unpeople' detained indefinitely without trial ... and the occasional bomb to be heard falling on your city, courtesy of your own government. A daily terror alert rating courtesy of free TV, followed by a calming, mindless soap opera and pop melody.
... DONT BACK OFF AND LURK, partake in anything and everything !! Its all good.
Im getting a bit old now (check my user id for instance), and remember quite well having the same problem understanding what was really happening back when Afghanistan was a hot potato. Honestly thought that me and my mates would eventually be sent to go fight there. But back then, it was the Russians (the Evil Empire) who were the invaders.
Its quite laughable in retrospect - we would watch the news at night, and they would show "The Brave Mujihadeen Freedom Fighters", and they would cheer to reports that these same freedom loving Taliban warriors had the latest stinger AA missiles, and had shot down patrolling helicopters, or blown up a column of tanks with improvised explosives. Cheer Cheer Cheer all the way on the news.
We get the exact same recycled footage on TV now, but the commentary has done a 180. I kid you not - some of the video being played is, I swear, the same video footage they played in 1984. Its almost like re-reading that old Orwell classic "1984", and think to yourself "The Eurasians are our allies, they have always been our allies in this war against the East Asians". Its also interesting to note that all the wars in 1984 are perpetually conducted in far away parts of the world that make up a triangle between Africa, the Middle East and SouthEast Asia.
Another interesting thing that was happening on the news in 1984 (the year, not the book), is watching footage of Saddam Hussein, our freedom loving ally in the Middle East, and his brave but tiny army take on the Evil Iranians. Constant talk of how we had to pitch in and help build up the army of democratic freedom loving Iraq to help stem the hordes of Persia from overunning the civilised world. Yes - there were glowing reports on the news in 1984 about how we would help equip Saddam with advanced weapons and chemical artillery shells to fight for freedom.
One of the interesting concepts in 1984 (the book not the year, although its all getting rather muddled now) is "Newspeak", which is an ongoing program by the 'Ministry of Truth' to simplify the existing body of language, and at the same time to reverse the meaning of some terms to suit the current political situation. So we have the real life 2007 example of taking the word INSURGANT, and making it IN-SURGE-NT, which serves to both make it etymologicaly simpler to grasp and reverse the meaning at the same time.
So you are not the only one thinking the same thing about this word, and you are right about the media's careful application and overuse of this word. The media is, after all, an instrument of the 'Inner Party' to which the 'Outer Party', or elected government, is answerable to.
Not a bad effort for a book written in 1948
And lastly
The fact is, we could launch air strikes. But the fact is, just as in Desert Storm, air strikes don't accomplish a lot on the ground unless you also have ground pounders to back them up.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
See... slashdot is not a geek site, its a bitter, hateful, liberal site.
Just look at the anger!
A minor point of contention about the start date of the war with Japan, The Sino-Japanese war started in 1931 so the Chinese had been fighting for 10 years (note of interest here, an All-Volunteer air force of American pilots fought with the Chinese against the Japanese for some of that time). The Japanese also invaded French Indo-China in 1940 (modern day Vietnam). The Japanese never attacked the Allies until December 1940 where they launched a simultaneous assault on the naval base at Pearl Harbor and British holdings in SE Asia.
As for when the war with Japan started depends on your perspective. But I agree that non-confrontation!=Appeasement, no one blames Switzerland for being neutral.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I meant to say December 1941, Typo
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.