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Chaotic Response of Korean Military
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Steelrails

Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System

Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 12:03 am Post subject:

How exactly has SK poorly reacted to NK provocations. In detailed analyses. Your number if accidents appears to be 2. One with a guy going postal and another with some Blue House Guard being reckless with his weapon. Doesnt seem like sufficient info to judge an entire military. Why dont you apply this same standard to any other military? As for army strength, you do realize that KJE would give his left nut to have an army as well trained and equipped as SKs, right? Or do you actually buy NORK propaganda that KJEs troops are some of the best trained and equippedin the world and the ROKMilitary is on the level of Gomer Pyle?

atwood

Joined: 26 Dec 2009

Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 12:35 am Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

How exactly has SK poorly reacted to NK provocations. In detailed analyses.

Your number if accidents appears to be 2. One with a guy going postal and another with some Blue House Guard being reckless with his weapon. Doesnt seem like sufficient info to judge an entire military. Why dont you apply this same standard to any other military?

As for army strength, you do realize that KJE would give his left nut to have an army as well trained and equipped as SKs, right? Or do you actually buy NORK propaganda that KJEs troops are some of the best trained and equippedin the world and the ROKMilitary is on the level of Gomer Pyle?

We save the detailed analyses for our paying subscribers. Show me the money, Sgt. Carter.

Gomer Pyle might be stretching it since, if you remember the show, Gomer usually came up with the solution for that episode's problem. I'd go with F Troop for a better analogy.

Well-trained according to who? Oh, that's right--you. Very Happy

BTW, the accident wasn't the guy going postal; it was the guys trying to catch the guy who had gone postal who started shooting at anything that moved.

EZE

Joined: 05 May 2012

Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 4:43 am Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

This again. If you cannot tell the difference between an insurgency and a war and how vastly different those are handled you are UNQUALIFIED to discuss military matters.

Anyways, my point is that people scream about how utterly dangerous and incompetent Korea is and how the North could smoke S. Korea and all this other stuff. But if they really were that worried, they wouldn't be here.

An insurgency is a type of war. But it doesn't matter. After WWII, we haven't been able to win even the wars you consider wars. The fact that we have lost to so many different opponents in so many different ways makes the slogan "the next one will be different" ring hollow. Since the '50s, our military has lost to the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Israelis, the Lebanese, the Somalians, the Iraqis, the Afghans, and it couldn't even defend the Pentagon against an unarmed plane on 9/11. The next one is always "different" from the previous one. Unfortunately, the result is the same all too often.

Of course I'm unqualified to discuss military matters, but so are you. The difference is don't pretend to be a general or an expert.

Just because some people think China and North Korea could successfully win a war in South Korea, it doesn't mean they're worried about it happening. Do you really think expats in Estonia believe the Estonian military could successfully defeat the Russian military? Nobody there thinks that. They just believe there's a reasonable degree of certainty the Russians won't actually invade Estonia while they're there.

DaeguNL

Joined: 08 Sep 2009

Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 5:34 pm Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

If you truly believed the ROKArmy was that incompetant, you wouldnt be here. People who truly view their army as incompetant and see an enemy over the horizon tend to do things like throw everything they can in a pickup truck and become refugees.

Anyways friendly fire is a fact of war, especially when the person is wearing the same uniform and not part of a large scale formation.

Calm down ma'am.

I think we all feel a lot safer with the US army here. also, I cant imagine many foreigners here view the ROK army as "their" army

Steelrails

Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System

Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 7:11 am Post subject:

EZE wrote:

We won the Cold War, you know, the big one for many of those. China is our biggest trading partner and has largely abandoned Communism to enter the global economy (which was the main grand strategic goal. Vietnam is similarly entering it and turning to us as a defense partner. Israel is a main ally of ours in the Middle East. The Balkans now send peacekeepers abroad. A tactical/strategic retreat to accomplish larger grand strategic objectives is no defeat.

It's like saying U.S. Grant was a bad general because he "lost" all of his big battles against Lee during his Overland campaign. That may be true, but it was also irrelevant. He accomplished his strategic objectives by crossing the James and putting Petersburg under siege. The Vietnamese lost every battle against the U.S. but accomplished their strategic objectives. The U.S. lost strategically in Vietnam but accomplished its grand strategic objective of winning the Cold War and breaking China away from the Soviet Union. Also, failing to win does not necessarily mean that one has lost.

This is also beside the fact that the U.S. in most of these wars was prohibited to do things like firebomb and massacre the enemy because of its grand strategic objectives. It could have turned Hanoi and Haiphong into a modern Carthage, but to do so would have been counter to its grand strategy.

The North Korean military's grand strategy in a large-scale military confrontation with the US and SK would be to maintain the survival of its regime, the integrity of its borders, while keeping its military intact. It is highly improbable it would be able to accomplish that.

As for Afghanistan, just because the U.S. has failed to accomplish its objectives does not make "Afghanistan" the winner. Furthermore saying "Afghanistan" won is a completely ridiculous idea in a country that is highly fragmented around ethnic and tribal lines. Same with Iraq. About the only people "winning" so far in Iraq are the Kurds. The Sunnis have not reclaimed control over Iraq and the Shia do not control it either and have lost effective control over Kurdistan and the oil around Kirkuk.

Also, just because you are pointing out obvious and elementary flaws in someone's argument doesn't mean you are proclaiming yourself as an expert. If you point out a mistake in someone's formula for calculating the diameter of a circle, that doesn't mean you are claiming to be a mathematics expert.

Furthermore, cherry picking an incident like 9/11, which is as much a failure of airport security and intelligence and using to declare the U.S. military incapable of defending something is ridiculous. No military scientist in their right mind would look at that and say "Ah hah, the American military is incompetent, they are ripe for the picking!". It's like some guy storming a football stadium with an AK or flying in a drone and accusing stadium security of being incompetent and a failure. That's not really what they are set up to do.

May I ask, if the U.S. Air Force is so incompetent since they were unable to stop a plane on 9/11, by your estimation, why does no one dare challenge them? It's because the people who run the militaries in other countries aren't morons who arrive at that sort of conclusion based on something like 9/11.

I don't think you unqualified to discuss military matters. I just think your conclusions are incredibly faulty and very obviously so to even an educated amateur.

And China going to war and invading SK? Barring a regime of lunacy taking over either China or the US or SK, that's not bloody likely. This isn't 1914, this is 2014. You can't wholly discount the notion (regimes of lunacy do happen, as well as unintended consequences), but you don't base your conceptions of it since it is rather improbable.

And again, if you think for a second that KJE wouldn't trade his military for SKs in a heartbeat, you're either uninformed or delusional. But go ahead and believe in North Korea's Stormtrooper Death Legions and Sea of Fire on Seoul while thinking SK's Air Force is Randy Quaid in Independence Day and their army is a bunch of morons. You think that's what N.Korean and Chinese generals think?

Quote:

I think we all feel a lot safer with the US army here. also, I cant imagine many foreigners here view the ROK army as "their" army

Misspoke. "Their" meant Korea's Army.

Is it up to snuff with the U.S. or the British? No, but its not some ragtag collection like you see in a lot of countries.

TheUrbanMyth

Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired

Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 12:40 pm Post subject:

EZE wrote:

[ow. Since the '50s, our military has lost to the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Israelis, the Lebanese, the Somalians, the Iraqis, the Afghans, and it couldn't even defend the Pentagon against an unarmed plane on 9/11. .

The Chinese? If you are talking about the Korean War then consider that every major city except Busan was in the hands of the North at one point. Also the first U.S unit (24th Infantry Division) sent to help was a unit with antiquated equipment and that despite the U.S superior logistics ammunition remained in short supply for much of the war.

Despite this the U.N forces (which were mostly comprised of South Korean the U.S troops) were able to drive back the Chinese and North Koreans to the 38th parallel.

At worst that was a draw..

Vietnam? I'll give you that even though that was not a case of the military failing but of the political will to fight. Most of the major battles in that war were decisively won by the U.S military.

Israel? If you are talking about the Liberty...that was a case of friendly fire not a traditional military engagement. You are really reaching here.

Lebanon? Wiki states that:

Quote:

The 1958 Lebanon crisis was a Lebanese political crisis caused by political and religious tensions in the country that included a U.S. military intervention. The intervention lasted around three months until President Camille Chamoun, who had requested the assistance, completed his term as president of Lebanon. American and Lebanese government forces successfully occupied the port and international airport of Beirut. The crisis over, the United States withdrew shortly after.

"successfully" is not generally an adjective employed when an military intervention failed.

Somalia? I'll give you that but like Vietnam that was not a failing of the military but of the political will to fight.

Iraq and Afghanistan? The U.S military destroyed both militaries with ease. The insurgencies that then occurred were far harder to put down but again those have to be counted as draws. The U.S military as a whole in those countries was certainly not defeated.

That plane only destroyed a part of the Pentagon...so only partially successful. And again that hardly qualifies as a military engagement.

andrewchon

Joined: 16 Nov 2008
Location: Back in Oz. Living in ISIS Aust.

Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 2:58 am Post subject:

Estonia is a bad example, I'm afraid. Estonia is a member of NATO. Russia is not going to invade a NATO country anytime soon. Try Belarus. That's another country ripe for Putin Style. Last edited by andrewchon on Fri Jul 25, 2014 4:08 pm; edited 1 time in total

EZE

Joined: 05 May 2012

Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 6:52 am Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

If you want to try to sugarcoat our military failures to say they were part of a more important economic victory, that rings hollow too. The USA has lost tens of thousands of factories that moved to China and Vietnam. The USA owes China over $1,300,000,000,000.00. The interest Americans pay to China finances most of China's military costs. For the USA, that's a strategic failure, not a strategic victory.

Steelrails wrote:

Israel is a main ally of ours in the Middle East.

They still made our Navy look like bumbling fools in 1967.

Steelrails wrote:

As for Afghanistan, just because the U.S. has failed to accomplish its objectives does not make "Afghanistan" the winner. Furthermore saying "Afghanistan" won is a completely ridiculous idea in a country that is highly fragmented around ethnic and tribal lines. Same with Iraq. About the only people "winning" so far in Iraq are the Kurds. The Sunnis have not reclaimed control over Iraq and the Shia do not control it either and have lost effective control over Kurdistan and the oil around Kirkuk.

The Pentagon didn't want Shiite guys like Sadr, the Kurds, and Sunni groups like ISIS to become lords of various fiefdoms in Iraq. But that's what happens when you hang a Mission Accomplished banner on your aircraft carrier, get thousands of your troops killed in the following years, and ultimately throw in the towel.

And the US military is losing a war to Afghans. For all practical purposes, it's all over but the crying. We have lost again.

Steelrails wrote:

Furthermore, cherry picking an incident like 9/11, which is as much a failure of airport security and intelligence and using to declare the U.S. military incapable of defending something is ridiculous. No military scientist in their right mind would look at that and say "Ah hah, the American military is incompetent, they are ripe for the picking!".

Yet that's exactly what happened. Some guys accurately identified a lack of preparedness on the part of the US military, exploited the weakness, and killed 125 people, including a US general, in the US military headquarters.

Steelrails wrote:

May I ask, if the U.S. Air Force is so incompetent since they were unable to stop a plane on 9/11, by your estimation, why does no one dare challenge them?

May I ask, if the North Korean and Chinese militaries are so weak, by your estimation, why do the combined South Korean and US militaries not dare roll across the DMZ and go see the Yalu River again?

Steelrails wrote:

And China going to war and invading SK? Barring a regime of lunacy taking over either China or the US or SK, that's not bloody likely.

That's my point exactly. I don't think China can't take over Korea. I just think they won't even try, not while I'm living here.

EZE

Joined: 05 May 2012

Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 7:19 am Post subject:

TheUrbanMyth wrote:

Despite this the U.N forces (which were mostly comprised of South Korean the U.S troops) were able to drive back the Chinese and North Koreans to the 38th parallel.

The Chinese didn't enter the war in earnest until UN troops were at the Chinese border. The UN forces were driven back to the 38th parallel.

TheUrbanMyth wrote:

Vietnam? I'll give you that even though that was not a case of the military failing but of the political will to fight. Most of the major battles in that war were decisively won by the U.S military.

We lost.

TheUrbanMyth wrote:

Israel? If you are talking about the Liberty...that was a case of friendly fire not a traditional military engagement. You are really reaching here.

We were completely dominated.

TheUrbanMyth wrote:

Lebanon? Wiki states that:

Quote:

"successfully" is not generally an adjective employed when an military intervention failed.

It was 1983, not 1958. The Marines guarding the barracks didn't even have their guns loaded. That's a lack of preparedness. That's incompetence. Hundreds of Marines, sailors, and GIs were killed by one man and the US pulled out of the Lebanese Civil War as a result.

TheUrbanMyth wrote:

Somalia? I'll give you that but like Vietnam that was not a failing of the military but of the political will to fight.

We lost.

TheUrbanMyth wrote:

Iraq and Afghanistan? The U.S military destroyed both militaries with ease. The insurgencies that then occurred were far harder to put down but again those have to be counted as draws. The U.S military as a whole in those countries was certainly not defeated.

The US military wasn't destroyed, but we're certainly throwing in the towel and abandoning those lands to the Islamic soldiers defending it.

TheUrbanMyth wrote:

That plane only destroyed a part of the Pentagon...so only partially successful. And again that hardly qualifies as a military engagement.

They 100% destroyed Gen. Timothy Maude and 54 other US soldiers. That was a 100% failure on the part of the US military. It was a lack of preparedness. It was incompetence.

Steelrails

Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System

Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2014 10:22 pm Post subject:

Quote:

THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. The system set up post-WWII in order to confront Communism was that the US would rebuild Western Europe and democratic East Asia. Those countries would develop their economies while we provided security. The amount they spent on their militaries would substantially decrease. Security was our export and this was paid for by them buying up our debt. We took this system and applied it to China. This was so we could build and promote the Chinese economy, break them away from the Soviets, and kick Communism to the ash heap of history. China "purchases" our foreign security export, you know going into dirty places where the PLA can't go and engaging in "nation building", and doing so by purchasing our debt. It is an extension of the same system we had with Western Europe and Japan/Korea.

As for "lost factories" that's what happens when you have free trade which was a part of creating global connectivity. Certain countries will become more efficient at producing certain goods. In a finance, service, and information driven economy, where factories are is irrelevant. It may be a turd sandwich for the average blue collar worker, but its been good for the upper class.

Also, 1.3 trillion dollars is a drop in the bucket for the US. And the US military is stronger than the Chinese by several orders of magnitude.

Quote:

They still made our Navy look like bumbling fools in 1967.

Only to you. No one else really thinks so, certainly no one credible. There's lots of questions about the USS Liberty incident, none of them relate to an incompetent US Navy. You saying that they are bumbling fools doesn't make it true.

Quote:

Again, you are missing the grand strategic objective. It wasn't to put Ahmed Chalabi in charge and have all of Iraq sing kumbaya. That was just some statements and measures.

The grand strategic goal was to fundamentally transform the nature of the Middle East from 1970s era strongmen and the same problems of old and undemocratic regimes and upset the order that had existed. That grand strategic goal has largely been met.

Quote:

And the US military is losing a war to Afghans. For all practical purposes, it's all over but the crying. We have lost again.

And again, you fail to grasp the nature of the conflict. Afghanistan is largely an international political construct. Practically speaking there is no "Afghans". There are various ethnicities and tribes within them. all with competing goals and ideologies. Saying we they won implies that they are all unified with each other against us, which is NOT the case.

You aren't grasping the full nature of these conflicts, you are taking an incredibly simplistic and uneducated view of things.

Quote:

Pulling off a sneak attack, particularly during peace time, and one side getting caught does not result in the entire military of the other side getting branded as incompetent. By that logic, every military around the world is incompetent.

What you think your vaunted "Afghans" have never been caught with their pants down and lost 125 dudes with AKs? Doesn't that make them incompetent?

Only a rank, simpleminded, uneducated amateur would arrive at such a laughable conclusion that because the US got hit on 9/11 that makes their military incompetent.

You do realize that if you spouted off your views to any military historian, military scientist, or professional soldier in any military around the world, they would laugh at you, right?

Quote:

May I ask, if the North Korean and Chinese militaries are so weak, by your estimation, why do the combined South Korean and US militaries not dare roll across the DMZ and go see the Yalu River again?

Well China is the X factor because no one is quite sure what role they want to play, particularly in the cleanup.

And the reason they don't go over is because they are waiting for Soviet-style regime collapse, which is likely to be less costly than a massive war. Duh, obviously. It's called patience. Deploying troops overseas, particularly large numbers of them, is expensive. In fact it is so expensive that the U.S. is the only country and military able to do so for an extended period of time and for a massive number of troops.

Here's how the US military is superior to such a significant degree compared to other forces. PLA's biggest solo overseas deployment was like 2,000 guys to Haiti for the summer. England? 30,000 to the Falklands for a journey. The U.S. put 500,000 in Europe, 500,000 in Asia, with another 500,000 at other places. And they did it for 50 years. While they scaled down a bit now, they still deployed massive numbers of troops overseas. No one comes close to that kind of capability. It is an exponentially greater capability than anyone else.

Quote:

They 100% destroyed Gen. Timothy Maude and 54 other US soldiers. That was a 100% failure on the part of the US military. It was a lack of preparedness. It was incompetence

The preparedness necessary to deal with such a threat would cost such an amount of resources as to be impractical. It would mean building, funding, manning, and maintaining, a string of air defense posts designed for to meet the threat of some sort of internal airspace incident where an enemy plane emerges from within the U.S. This would mean having planes on standby and people monitoring the situation ala the Cold War, only for some hijacking that may occur. Of course money doesn't grow on trees so every dollar spent on this system would be a dollar taken away from something else.

You are confusing incompetence with impracticality and unaffordability.

The only thing incompetent is your imagination regarding the nature of US airspace, amount of budget availability, and likelihood of an incident.

yodanole

Joined: 02 Mar 2003
Location: La Florida

Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 8:05 am Post subject:

It pretty much is the de facto army of all while here ..... For whatever you think of the USFK and their relationship with all & sundry on the peninsula, they are stretched too thin to be of much immediate advantage.

Captain Corea wrote:

Steelrails wrote:

If you truly believed the ROKArmy was that incompetant, you wouldnt be here. People who truly view their army as incompetant and see an enemy over the horizon tend to

Do many posters on this forum view the ROK military as "their army"? Confused

EZE

Joined: 05 May 2012

Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 5:51 am Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

The amount they spent on their militaries would substantially decrease. Security was our export and this was paid for by them buying up our debt. We took this system and applied it to China.

China's military spending hasn't substantially decreased. It has substantially increased. And the interest the USA pays on its debt to China finances most of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China#mediaviewer/File:China_Military_Budget_2012.png

Steelrails wrote:

As for "lost factories" that's what happens when you have free trade which was a part of creating global connectivity. Certain countries will become more efficient at producing certain goods. In a finance, service, and information driven economy, where factories are is irrelevant. It may be a turd sandwich for the average blue collar worker, but its been good for the upper class.

Since you're from Michigan, I'm especially surprised you think the loss of factories has been a good thing. Detroit used to be one of the wealthiest cities in the world when it manufactured things. Today, it produces nothing and it's a dump.

Just yesterday, the NY Times published an article saying the median net worth of households in the USA has fallen 36% over the past decade. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/business/the-typical-household-now-worth-a-third-less.html?_r=0

The countries where the factories went, including China, have become wealthier as a result.

Steelrails wrote:

Also, 1.3 trillion dollars is a drop in the bucket for the US. And the US military is stronger than the Chinese by several orders of magnitude.

If it was a drop in the bucket, we wouldn't have to borrow it. But we're the biggest debtor nation in the history of the world. Our military was stronger than China's when they pushed us halfway down the Korean peninsula.

Steelrails wrote:

I'm sure navies around the world use it as a shining example of how to deploy and defend a naval vessel. Laughing

Steelrails wrote:

That grand strategic goal has largely been met.

If the "grand goal" was to have ISIS romping around Iraq, we should hang up the Mission Accomplished banner at Times Square and have a victory celebration.

Steelrails wrote:

Regardless of their tribe or faction, we are losing to Afghans. It's not necessary for all of them to be united against us.

Steelrails wrote:

What you think your vaunted "Afghans" have never been caught with their pants down and lost 125 dudes with AKs? Doesn't that make them incompetent?

If the Afghans throw in the towel before we do, I'll be the first to say they bit off more than they could chew. Unfortunately, I think we'll throw in the towel first. We usually do.

Steelrails wrote:

Only a rank, simpleminded, uneducated amateur would arrive at such a laughable conclusion that because the US got hit on 9/11 that makes their military incompetent.

We have an air force base 10 minutes from the Pentagon. No planes took off despite the highjackings in NYC happening long before. The pilots who crashed the plane into the Pentagon outworked, outhustled, and outperformed the USAF.

Steelrails wrote:

You do realize that if you spouted off your views to any military historian, military scientist, or professional soldier in any military around the world, they would laugh at you, right?

Professional soldiers disagree with you. Norman Schwarzkopf said that when he heard about the fall of Saigon, ""I cried like a baby, and I got out a bottle of scotch and I got drunk."

Steelrails wrote:

And the reason they don't go over is because they are waiting for Soviet-style regime collapse, which is likely to be less costly than a massive war. Duh, obviously. It's called patience. Deploying troops overseas, particularly large numbers of them, is expensive. In fact it is so expensive that the U.S. is the only country and military able to do so for an extended period of time and for a massive number of troops.

Here's how the US military is superior to such a significant degree compared to other forces. PLA's biggest solo overseas deployment was like 2,000 guys to Haiti for the summer. England? 30,000 to the Falklands for a journey. The U.S. put 500,000 in Europe, 500,000 in Asia, with another 500,000 at other places. And they did it for 50 years. While they scaled down a bit now, they still deployed massive numbers of troops overseas. No one comes close to that kind of capability. It is an exponentially greater capability than anyone else.

China has no reason to deploy troops all over the world. They're content to let our military bankrupt America. Your abandoned factories in Motown can't finance our military at its current size indefinitely. China's factories can finance its military, but that's a small task since the interest payments on the national debt almost cover China's military expenses.

kimchi_pizza

Joined: 24 Jul 2006
Location: "Get back on the bus! Here it comes!"

Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 6:14 am Post subject:

I dislike getting involved in DESLC hot potatoes, but this thread is, I gotta say, pretty funny. An unknown poster starts a thread about 'friendly fire' and disappears and a number of popular posters start firing upon one another. Wow, awesome~ and the o.p. is a likely troll. Good one! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgiR04ey7-M Show me a truly competent army and I will show you world peace or one under world domination, either highly EVER likely to happen.

Steelrails

Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System

Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 7:33 am Post subject:

Quote:

China's military spending hasn't substantially decreased. It has substantially increased. And the interest the USA pays on its debt to China finances most of it

While it is increasing its spending, they do export their security to us in exchange for purchasing our debt. What they aren't doing is engaging in a Cold War level arms race, unless you are one of those people who looks at their purchase of an aging Soviet carrier and thinks China is the next Soviet Navy.

They may not be our ally, but they're a lot closer to us than the Soviets ever were and our trading links are absolutely vital for both countries.

Quote:

Oh I agree, hence why I said it was a turd sandwich for blue collar workers, but for policy elites, that was fine with them.

Quote:

1.3 Trillion is a drop in the bucket for the US economy.

And that same Chinese military stalled at the 38th parallel and was really stretching its logistics. Hence their mutual satisfaction with a negotiated settlement.

Quote:

I'm sure navies around the world use it as a shining example of how to deploy and defend a naval vessel. Laughing

Navies around the world treat it as a diplomatic incident, not a military one. We're talking a surveillance vessel in the 1960s in a single incident.

And navies around the world use us as an example by participating in things like RIMPAC to train with the best navy in the world.

Quote:

If the "grand goal" was to have ISIS romping around Iraq, we should hang up the Mission Accomplished banner at Times Square and have a victory celebration.

The grand goal was to upset the status quo in the Middle East. Something that is certainly going on right now.

Now, I am against these whole nation building enterprises, but to say that whats going on isn't in a broad sense what the Bush administration intended- Messy Democracy vs. Stability, is ignoring things.

Quote:

Regardless of their tribe or faction, we are losing to Afghans. It's not necessary for all of them to be united against us.

Having a disruptive political situation vs. losing militarily are completely different things and you aren't grasping the distinction.

Losing militarily means things like having armies routed and annihilated and having your facing the prospect of invasion. None of those things have even come close to happening in any of your examples.

But yes, Central Asia has been a grand strategic failure unlike the Middle East. That doesn't mean you want to bet against the US in a conventional war against North Korea.

Quote:

Oh please. A hijacked civilian airliner over crowded US airspace does not in any way lead to conclusions about the capability of the US Air Force in a combat situation. Lax airport security had way more to do with this situation than any failure by the US Air Force. What you, think a pair of F-15s could take off from Langley and just start shooting civilian airliners out of the sky? "Hey, we've got something on radar, fire away". Rolling Eyes

What would you have done, good sir? Let's hear your detailed technical analysis of CAP over US Airspace and ROE for a shootdown of a civilian jetliner.

Quote:

Professional soldiers disagree with you. Norman Schwarzkopf said that when he heard about the fall of Saigon, ""I cried like a baby, and I got out a bottle of scotch and I got drunk."

Stormin Norman and everyone else got over it when they realized that China was breaking away from the Soviet Union and entering the market economy. The fact that Vietnam now looks to us as an ally would soothe those feelings.

Anyways feel free to bring up your "analysis" of US military capability to military scientists, historians, and officers. I'm sure they'd pull you up a chair and say "Oh my goodness, we've been wrong all along. EZE has shown us the way."

Quote:

America could slash its military budget by 75% and still dwarf China's.

Anyways, if you were the leader of China or North Korea or Iran, would your defense policy be "The American military is a bunch of incompetent bumblers, we can do whatever we want, we won't lose, and we'll kick them back across the Pacific"? I'm sure your generals would take a real sympathetic view towards that and not like, stage a coup and shoot you in the back of the head behind the palace.

The only people who don't have that fear are insurgents and transnationals because they aren't bound by the normal rules. Their goal isn't to defeat the U.S. militarily in any sense of the word, its to force political change and foment popular unrest.

EZE, you can make a case that US political objectives regularly end in defeat and we have incompetent leaders, heck in another context I'd agree with you, but applying those failures to make a judgement about military competency and capability is a grievous mistake.

Lastly, you keep failing to answer this, if falling into an ambush or having a friendly fire incident is grounds to declare a military incompetent, then isn't every military incompetent, since every military has had that happen. Who exactly in the last 50 years has "won"?

Would it be the North Vietnamese who have since turned to America as an ally and want to purchase our weapons and train with our soldiers? Is it the Lebanese who sit upon a wrecked country? The Shia or The Sunnis in Iraq who fight back and forth? The various tribes in Afghanistan where "winner" seems to shift every month? Cuba, where everyone is just waiting for the Castros to die off? China, which may talk a big game but would see massive upheaval and revolution if it became antagonistic to the US and its trade collapsed with us? North Korea? A nation flying 1950s era MIGs and having its soldiers double as farmers?

You're mistaking stalemate or strategic redeployment with defeat and victory.

The U.S. on the other hand has defeated Communism, except for a few remnant pockets, brought much of Eastern Europe into union with Western Europe, and seen the global economy based on US standards expanded to cover something like 70% of the world. It's military IS the most feared on the planet. It is more capable by several orders of magnitude than its next nearest competitor.

In declaring it incompetent frankly you come across as sounding like Germany and Japan in November 1941. Actually if it sounds like anything, it sounds like climate change deniers- "Scientists have been wrong before, therefore scientists are incompetent, that means there's no global warming!" Ignoring the sheer volume of competency that scientists (the US military) show day in and day out from the highest to the most basic levels.

EZE

Joined: 05 May 2012

Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 9:09 am Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

While it is increasing its spending, they do export their security to us in exchange for purchasing our debt.

We're not exporting security to China and we don't have the money to lend to them. We have to borrow from them.

Steelrails wrote:

Oh I agree, hence why I said it was a turd sandwich for blue collar workers, but for policy elites, that was fine with them.

When the median household net worth falls by 36% in a decade, that's a national failure on the USA's part. It's not a national victory.

Steelrails wrote:

1.3 Trillion is a drop in the bucket for the US economy.

We have to borrow it. We're not wealthy enough or productive enough to cover our expenses with our revenue from production.

Steelrails wrote:

And that same Chinese military stalled at the 38th parallel and was really stretching its logistics. Hence their mutual satisfaction with a negotiated settlement.

They still shoved us halfway down the Korean peninsula. The UN forces got overwhelmed by the sheer amount of Chinese manpower.

Steelrails wrote:

Nobody elected ISIS. That's not democracy. And the Taliban runs most of Afghanistan. After we throw in the towel, they'll control it all. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Laughing

Steelrails wrote:

What you, think a pair of F-15s could take off from Langley and just start shooting civilian airliners out of the sky? "Hey, we've got something on radar, fire away". Rolling Eyes

Dick Cheney was evacuated from the White House based on the information regarding Flight 77. He was in his security bunker by the time the plane hit the Pentagon. Dick Cheney was a faster thinker than our guys in the USAF and he even moved faster than the USAF's mach 2 planes that were sitting still. There was no reason to shoot down multiple planes, as the highjacked flight had been identified.

Steelrails wrote:

Stormin Norman and everyone else got over it when they realized that China was breaking away from the Soviet Union and entering the market economy.

That's not true. He said he didn't get over the Vietnam War until the Gulf War. It's a bitter pill for any Vietnam veteran I've ever been around.

Steelrails wrote:

Anyways feel free to bring up your "analysis" of US military capability to military scientists, historians, and officers.

Notice this presentation by the US Army War College is titled "Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam." Notice it says lost and not won. Listen at the 13:50 mark. The guy says the same thing I say. He doesn't talk about trade with China and how Vietnam was a great military victory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6LR-UJsYRc

Steelrails wrote:

America could slash its military budget by 75% and still dwarf China's.

America could slash its military budget by 99% and still dwarf the Taliban's. We're going to lose to the Taliban anyway.

Steelrails wrote:

Lastly, you keep failing to answer this, if falling into an ambush or having a friendly fire incident is grounds to declare a military incompetent, since every military has had that happen. Who exactly in the last 50 years has "won"?

The Vietnamese and the Taliban come to mind. They have a strong track record. Ours is weak. The Taliban have to deal with drones, various forms of high tech surveillance, and aircraft. It shouldn't be unexpected for them to get ambushed. Nonetheless, they're still going to win their war.

If they start doing what we did in Lebanon and start guarding their bases with unloaded rifles, resulting in hundreds of deaths, and end up throwing in the towel, I'll say they're as incompetent as we are.

Steelrails wrote:

You're mistaking stalemate or strategic redeployment with defeat and victory.

If the NVA gate crashing the US embassy in Saigon is your version of victory, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Steelrails wrote:

The U.S. on the other hand has defeated Communism

Communism defeated itself. Production in the Soviet bloc was too low for Moscow to cover its socialist and military expenses throughout the Soviet bloc. The USA is following in the USSR's footsteps in those respects. We cannot finance our military and other vast public spending in its current form indefinitely. Production and revenue are not keeping up with expenses, causing our debt to skyrocket.

Steelrails wrote:

In declaring it incompetent frankly you come across as sounding like Germany and Japan in November 1941.

Actually, you sound like the delusional German ultranationalists of that era. They boasted about how the German military was capable of whipping the Soviet Union and its very large population and how easy it would be when Germany's recent track record in war was already poor.

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