Battlefield is where you find the battle.

[Xavier_Onassis]

you must not often discuss the conduct of war.


===============================================
I don't have any need to do this.

[Plane]

If you lived on the velt , never speaking of lions would not enhance your safety.

The people who make decisions regarding war should understand the stuff , and the people who choose these decision makers need to know the basics.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I do not believe that my not knowing what a "cat's paw" is  renders me incompetent to vote against politicians who are intent on mongering useless wars.

[sirs]

Useless.....in your opinion perhaps.  Not in fact

[Plane]

I do not believe that my not knowing what a "cat's paw" is  renders me incompetent to vote against politicians who are intent on mongering useless wars.

Yes it does.

First tell me about the useful wars.

Now imagine that you are going to eat mushrooms gathered by someone who does not know what the poison ones look like.

Did you vote against Carter?

If you are going to vote on the leader of our military (the strongest the world has ever known)and you want to be competent , you should know the basics so that you can tell in some small measure the difference between a useless warmonger and a wise defender.

This particular bit of jargon may not be particularly important, only if it is a piece of a larger willful ignorance would the incompetence be a reality.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I voted for Carter twice, because (1) Ford was a dolt and (2) Reagan was an asshole.  I imagine that Ford would have done the same crap to savage Afghanistan, because this is the sort of CRAP that US presidents since Eisenhower engage in. I was not consulted, what happens was not my fault in any way.

Knowing arcane silly military jargon is of no use to me. I can look up anything I do not know any time I feel the urge.  WWII was probably a useful war, the Cold War was  at least as much the fault of US poor leadership as it was Soviet poor leadership.

In all the time I have been reading history, newsmagazines and such, I recall not hearing or reading even one of your silly phrases. One can understand what is going on without them. I observe that although you seem to have known zilch about Brzenzski's enlisting the Saudis in a religious war against the Soviets, I heard about it about a year after it was apparently planned.

I observe that  pretty much all the career military people I have known are misinformed and fanatical to the point of paranoia, and running around blathering about  how the military is huge and mean but needs to be even bigger and meaner. I am not impressed.

[Plane]

   Our military is big enough and mean enough when our enemies respect us enough to avoid war with us.


       You know that Poland was not truly asking for invasion by killing a bunch of ethnic Germans, this event might have been staged, Poland asked to be invaded by maintaining a too small defense force to repel attack.

   France had plenty of military , but they managed it poorly enough to leave a back door open, that was inviting too.

     The Soviets were imperialist and succeeded in establishing hegemony over half the population of the world at some points. What would better US leadership have done than the leadership we had did?

[Xavier_Onassis]

What twisted logic.

If the State Department in the Truman administration had sent the proper message to the Koreans and refrained from political assassination of the anti-Japanese partisans after WWII, the Korean War would have been avoided.

If John Foster Dulles had not spurned Ho Chi Minh and aided in returning Indochina to the French, Vietname would have easily been avoided.

Had the US told the Brits and the oil companies to go fuck themselves when Iran democratically elected Mossadeagh in the 1950's, we would not have the horrible relations with Iran. Overthrowing a democratic government and putting the nasty little Shah in his place resulted in much of the mess we now see in the Middle East.

Had Olebush not sent Ambassador Glespie with what was seen by Saddam as an open invitation to invade Kuwait, the entire series of Iraq wars would have been avoided.

Had the US not overthrown the Arbenz government in Guatemala, the massive genocide of Maya Indians that followed would have been averted.
Instead, we provoked wars and at best only got a stalemate and made millions of people hate us.

[Plane]

  So Stalin , Kruchev, Bresnev , Andropov , Kim Ill Jong , Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, and all the others of that ilk, were only acting in reaction to US aggression and were crazy for no other reason?

I can see why my logic seems twisted to you.

[Plane]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/obama-to-double-number-of-troops-serving-in-iraq/ar-AA72jG8

   I hope this is an amount of "trainers" able to protect themselves.


     No one is telling me the strategery , really I am just guessing.

     But what I think is going on is flypaper.