Will we EVER "win" a war?

[Peanut_Budder]

It's not because my dad fought in Vietnam(in my opinion, we would have won), or that I have a special place for the US Military in my heart, but it is my belief that American media is a victim of media and public perception.

I was doing some research for school, and I saw the latest news about some suicidal car bomb thing, and about how only 1 in 10 former Hussein Loyalists still work against the US. IMHO, that's pretty good i think considering what kind of country we're dealing with. We're dealing with a people who in my opinion, for the most part lived with some fear of being victimized by Saddam(i wont say a lot of fear b/c we really dont know that). Saddam was a cruel dictator who gassed the kurds, shot his own people for pithy reasons, his sons tortured the Iraqi olympic team if they didnt do stuff correctly, and the list goes on.

For the most part, I was pro-get rid of Saddam pre-Iraqi Freedom, but seeing how things were about the WMDs and stuff when the occupation began, I began to question why did we goto "war". However, im beginning to wonder why do I question that at all.

I'm not saying all forms of media is bad, but I think the less we know, the more we're doing for the country. Put yourself in Bush's shoes. The country was attacked, and the nation(and the world) demands retaliation. You as a nation's elected leader, must reflect the nation's wish to go and fight off the terrorists. So you do that. [Afghanistan]

Then once you're thick into the war, and you're beginning to see how sophisticated your enemies were, you start making connections. [Iraq] Iraq has a history of keeping WMDs, or atleast gasses which some of you will doubt as a WMD(imagine farting in your school's air conditioner). Imagine if they had some toxin in those planes like they did in the WTC bombing many years prior. Luckily, there weren't any on 9-11, but if Al Queda advertised their plans, im sure many Anti-US nations would gladly have devoted some packages with bombs, toxins, gasses, diseases and crap on the planes.

It is the President's job to protect us, and our freedoms. To do that, he must root out the evil no? I'm not saying we should goto war with anything that had ever said a bad word about the US but, with the events prior to Iraqi Freedom, the radio messages between the Iraqi officers in the military complexes of "substances unknown" that Powell played in the UN, wouldnt you as a leader of a nation under attack feel alarmed?

ok so we went to war. the "water has been spilled" (korean proverb) so there's no way you can return things to normal so we might as well stay there for the long run and do the job correctly.

If we do finish the job, and right now i think we should (so im kinda opposing Kerry i suppose), we should do it with as little information from Iraq as possible.

now i know it's our nature to know what's going on, and with modern technology, things come into our heads very quickly. in addition, everybody is looking for teh exclusive, so they dig deep into the military events and publish whatever they find, meaning even the smallest of incidents becomes headline news.

the Vietnam "Conflict", was the first real media "war", no? For the first time, we saw in full color and a lot of times, LIVE images of fighting how thigns went. War is a stress of human mental capabilities. you're sent to a battle to achieve objectives and in many cases, deal with death. that puts stress into one's mind and naturally, the faces of the individual soldier (especially since there are thousands) might not always reflect a winning face. shortage of food, a rough night's sleep, a shooting incident and etc. might effect a man's emotions for a particular day. the media sees this and they put it in their articles as part of "how the war is going".

to prove my point, i'll compare WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.

Vietnam first of all, IMHO, we should have won that. I mean, we won ever major battle in the field, and the kill ratio for the most part was in our favor. and i do not mean to view the draftees as unprofessional, but the man who is more enthusiastic aobut military service (the volunteer) is probably going to perform better in the field than the draftee who may not always support the military and w/e conflict they're involved in. i make this point b/c a lot of our guys there were just out of high school or college and pressed into service unwillingly. ok so we had a large amount of casualties, but wasnt it necessary? based on the policy of "Containment" started by Eisenhower, trying to stop communism from spreading, it was the gov't's idea and the people's idea to stop communism where it was. i understand nobody wants to lose relatives, and i dont either. my dad was a soldier and i can not possibly imagine what life is would be like w/o him.

getting back to the point, the media focused on the individual soldier (a lot of times the draftee who's tired, and somebody who might not support the war), and failed to grasp the whole picture. we WON the Tet Offensive militarily, but b/c of some freak incident about the VC taking over the US Embassy in Saigon for a few hours, we're LOSING the war? Is America ALWAYS supposed to win?

Next, I give you Korea. Now this I give out, b/c while there were other naitons in Korea was well, the US had a lot to bear and this was the first few SHOOTING battles in the cold war. i dont remember correctly, but i think i heard somewhere that KOREA had a higher casualty ratio PER YEAR than Vietnam, yet the public did NOT have so much a say against it as Vietnam EVEN THOUGH INITIALLY THE "ALLIES" WERE LOSING! PROBABLY b/c they did not see the horrors of war and the heroic views of war was maintained.

Now take WWII. This was a major effort of the world to stop evil dictators. from 1939 to i guess 1942, the Allies were doing horrible. Western Europe except for Spain and England(well, Spain was Hitler's "friend") was taken, and Russia looked like it was going to fall as well. Until Stalingrad(the miracle at stalingrad, teh first major military victory against the Nazis) it looked as if the allies would lose. why didnt the US(or the world) rise up and protest against THAT? what's so different about communism and Nazism and Facism? is it b/c if it's not my nation, i wont give a hoot in hell?


so to make a long story short, lets watch the news and be careful of our protests. the media is looking for "exclusives" and may not always deliver info correctly as well. and besides, they always give info about just ONE incident in an entire NATION OF DISILLUSIONED PEOPLE. four casualties when we're dealing with a whole new nation? i think that's not somehting we should look in horror, but we should admire our capabilities.


ideas?

http://gallery.cybertarp.com/albums/userpics/17045/BWPBSig1JPG.jpg

[Peanut_Budder]

It's not because my dad fought in Vietnam(in my opinion, we would have won), or that I have a special place for the US Military in my heart, but it is my belief that American media is a victim of media and public perception.

I was doing some research for school, and I saw the latest news about some suicidal car bomb thing, and about how only 1 in 10 former Hussein Loyalists still work against the US. IMHO, that's pretty good i think considering what kind of country we're dealing with. We're dealing with a people who in my opinion, for the most part lived with some fear of being victimized by Saddam(i wont say a lot of fear b/c we really dont know that). Saddam was a cruel dictator who gassed the kurds, shot his own people for pithy reasons, his sons tortured the Iraqi olympic team if they didnt do stuff correctly, and the list goes on.

For the most part, I was pro-get rid of Saddam pre-Iraqi Freedom, but seeing how things were about the WMDs and stuff when the occupation began, I began to question why did we goto "war". However, im beginning to wonder why do I question that at all.

I'm not saying all forms of media is bad, but I think the less we know, the more we're doing for the country. Put yourself in Bush's shoes. The country was attacked, and the nation(and the world) demands retaliation. You as a nation's elected leader, must reflect the nation's wish to go and fight off the terrorists. So you do that. [Afghanistan]

Then once you're thick into the war, and you're beginning to see how sophisticated your enemies were, you start making connections. [Iraq] Iraq has a history of keeping WMDs, or atleast gasses which some of you will doubt as a WMD(imagine farting in your school's air conditioner). Imagine if they had some toxin in those planes like they did in the WTC bombing many years prior. Luckily, there weren't any on 9-11, but if Al Queda advertised their plans, im sure many Anti-US nations would gladly have devoted some packages with bombs, toxins, gasses, diseases and crap on the planes.

It is the President's job to protect us, and our freedoms. To do that, he must root out the evil no? I'm not saying we should goto war with anything that had ever said a bad word about the US but, with the events prior to Iraqi Freedom, the radio messages between the Iraqi officers in the military complexes of "substances unknown" that Powell played in the UN, wouldnt you as a leader of a nation under attack feel alarmed?

ok so we went to war. the "water has been spilled" (korean proverb) so there's no way you can return things to normal so we might as well stay there for the long run and do the job correctly.

If we do finish the job, and right now i think we should (so im kinda opposing Kerry i suppose), we should do it with as little information from Iraq as possible.

now i know it's our nature to know what's going on, and with modern technology, things come into our heads very quickly. in addition, everybody is looking for teh exclusive, so they dig deep into the military events and publish whatever they find, meaning even the smallest of incidents becomes headline news.

the Vietnam "Conflict", was the first real media "war", no? For the first time, we saw in full color and a lot of times, LIVE images of fighting how thigns went. War is a stress of human mental capabilities. you're sent to a battle to achieve objectives and in many cases, deal with death. that puts stress into one's mind and naturally, the faces of the individual soldier (especially since there are thousands) might not always reflect a winning face. shortage of food, a rough night's sleep, a shooting incident and etc. might effect a man's emotions for a particular day. the media sees this and they put it in their articles as part of "how the war is going".

to prove my point, i'll compare WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.

Vietnam first of all, IMHO, we should have won that. I mean, we won ever major battle in the field, and the kill ratio for the most part was in our favor. and i do not mean to view the draftees as unprofessional, but the man who is more enthusiastic aobut military service (the volunteer) is probably going to perform better in the field than the draftee who may not always support the military and w/e conflict they're involved in. i make this point b/c a lot of our guys there were just out of high school or college and pressed into service unwillingly. ok so we had a large amount of casualties, but wasnt it necessary? based on the policy of "Containment" started by Eisenhower, trying to stop communism from spreading, it was the gov't's idea and the people's idea to stop communism where it was. i understand nobody wants to lose relatives, and i dont either. my dad was a soldier and i can not possibly imagine what life is would be like w/o him.

getting back to the point, the media focused on the individual soldier (a lot of times the draftee who's tired, and somebody who might not support the war), and failed to grasp the whole picture. we WON the Tet Offensive militarily, but b/c of some freak incident about the VC taking over the US Embassy in Saigon for a few hours, we're LOSING the war? Is America ALWAYS supposed to win?

Next, I give you Korea. Now this I give out, b/c while there were other naitons in Korea was well, the US had a lot to bear and this was the first few SHOOTING battles in the cold war. i dont remember correctly, but i think i heard somewhere that KOREA had a higher casualty ratio PER YEAR than Vietnam, yet the public did NOT have so much a say against it as Vietnam EVEN THOUGH INITIALLY THE "ALLIES" WERE LOSING! PROBABLY b/c they did not see the horrors of war and the heroic views of war was maintained.

Now take WWII. This was a major effort of the world to stop evil dictators. from 1939 to i guess 1942, the Allies were doing horrible. Western Europe except for Spain and England(well, Spain was Hitler's "friend") was taken, and Russia looked like it was going to fall as well. Until Stalingrad(the miracle at stalingrad, teh first major military victory against the Nazis) it looked as if the allies would lose. why didnt the US(or the world) rise up and protest against THAT? what's so different about communism and Nazism and Facism? is it b/c if it's not my nation, i wont give a hoot in hell?


so to make a long story short, lets watch the news and be careful of our protests. the media is looking for "exclusives" and may not always deliver info correctly as well. and besides, they always give info about just ONE incident in an entire NATION OF DISILLUSIONED PEOPLE. four casualties when we're dealing with a whole new nation? i think that's not somehting we should look in horror, but we should admire our capabilities.


ideas?

http://gallery.cybertarp.com/albums/userpics/17045/BWPBSig1JPG.jpg

[xROGUEx]

I think just about all that you said is true. Who cares that we're rebuilding the infrastructure of an entire country, when a roadside bomb goes off and injures a soldier? I'm probably not the best person to discuss Iraq with, for a couple reasons. Right now I have a friend in the Marines who is going to be in Iraq for the next reason. Also, when we were gearing up to go to war, I wasn't so much concerned with the WMD or Iraq's military threat to us (we pretty much decimated them in the Gulf War), but rather with getting rid of Saddam and his regime. In my opinion, anyone who treats their people like that should not have the priviledge of running a country. The UN could have, and should have, taken care of him numerous times in the past.

As for the media, I do think they tend to put a negative spin on things. A guy in one of my classes recently returned from Iraq, and he said if there is one thing that people hate there, it's the media. They also tend not to report things that are of actual consequence, like the fact that we are rebuilding a nation into a democratic state. Instead, they still ask questions like "Why are we here?" I think that people need to get off of that one already. We invaded, for better or worse, and are currently working to rebuild the country. If we had invaded, captured Saddam, and withdrew, we would still be hearing negative media reports, but probably more to the key of "Iraq now a lawless training camp for terrorists." If we had simply withdrawn after toppling Saddam's regime, Iraq would, in my opinion, be worse off.

As for the real topic of this post, I do believe we can win wars. We need to structure the military correctly, though. Take Iraq, for example. Right now we have Marine divisions and Army Armored divisions patrolling a country where the heaviest opposition they are likely to come up against is lightly armed insurgents, who would love a target as big as an Abrams tank to pop an RPG off at. Maybe light infantry, or mechanized infantry would be better? But in Afghanistan, where the casualty rate is much lower, we are generally fighting the insurgents by playing their own game. Lightly armed Special Forces troops and light infantry are doing wonders against Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters. So yes, we can win wars, but we need to tailor our forces to the threat faced.

[crtChunk72]

Heard on the radio this *very* morning from a mother who has two sons currently in Iraq. She told the radio host that her son was watching a news report, on an area where he was stationed, and he didn't even recognize it because the report was so slanted! It reported of death and destruction, and he was in disbelief because his area was quite calm! Didn't even recognize his own post... that, to me, says the media is definitely overlooking the big picture and only reporting the bad news.

Another example that you left out would have been the American experience in Somalia. There's a lot of different finger pointing that could go on about that, but in the end, America sent soldiers to a foreign country to arrest a "gang leader", and when they successfully pulled off the capture of two of the top men, America withdrew their troops, releasing the two men that 19 American soldiers died capturing!! Why?? Because dead American soldiers were shown on TV... being brutalized by an angry Somali mob. That also shows the impact of the media reporting on American military activity and the effect the media (used to) have on military policies.

What was considered a military victory was called an overwhelming failure in the American media and that ended up making the deaths of 19 American soldiers meaningless.

http://www.bigbutton.com.au/~evilazz/crtChunk72.jpg

[kllr-teddy]

I am a little bit frustrated for the reasons of Iraq war, but I dont complain, because now I only hopw that it ends soon and we can bring our soldiers back.

-kllr-teddy
The teddies are the last of thier kind. Bred for combat,built for war,Teddies are the masters of any weapon, and pilot of any vehicle..... and fear no enemy.