We seem to still realize that our soldiers are our best comodity. No matter how advanced our weapons systems are you have to have a trained, willing, smart person to run them and support them. This is key. Thankfully, we have never lost sight of that. However, the evolution of wartime tactics, due to the cold war, seems to have changed our wartime thinking. We have shifted from a willingness to kill in order to win to a willingness to limit the opponets ability to strike.
While battlefield superiority is desireable and a decisive factor in most engagements, we are not removing the enemies most valuable assets from the field when we do this. We are not removing his men.
Weapons don't kill, men firing weapons kill. That concept seems to have lost it's anchor as we have seen war altered by the terminology of preventitive power. In nukes we have a weapon that is so destructive that we realized that in order to win an all out conflict they either had to be ruled out of conflict by preemption or prevention. Every other weapon paled to the nuclear threat. Now that the threat of the Soviet Union has decreased, this concept of weapons systems denial doesn't serve us well in assymetrical warefare. 1 man with a AK-47 can kill as many as a smart bomb with less cost and less detection. This cannot be combated solely by technology. This type of battle must be approached with a willingness to either assymetrically disarm the enemy by eliminating his means to continue conflict or by the elimination of his will to fight. I don't see how either can be done from a defensive stance. Defensive stances are reactive and not proactive, allowing for the fatigue of matience to be carried by only the defenders side.
For this reason, I hope that a evaluation of the American fighting forces soon comes to a conclusion that the answers to these questions have allready been answered. Our history has shown us stalemates and losses, but they have also shown conflict that lead to a decisive win. In the form of hard, agressive leadership Patton included these lines to the 3rd Army in his speech. The language is colorful, as it should be, because the acknoledgement of the situation was honest.
"We want to get the hell over there. The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit.
Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin. I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!
When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!
I don't want to get any messages saying, "I am holding my position." We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!"
"From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, "Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana." No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, "Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!"
I know that we tried to cut the head off of the snake in Iraq and that worked to some degree. The body still thinks that it's alive. That's why it still thrashes against us. However, I hope that we evolve from this to see that we would be better suited to crush the snake one painful inch at a time so that both the body and the head know that they are defeated.
We tried to fight a war without large scale killing and now the people don't grasp that they were defeated. Next time lets not leave that up to question or we'll be back again and again. The idea being that you fight in such a way that the enemy never even dreams of taking you on again because they fear you might take them up on it.
