Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame
Cap, I love your arguments and knowledge of politics and war, but when has the "strike first, ask questions later" approach ever worked for the Americans? Both Vietnam and Iraq were of this nature, and the ideological objectives were never really solved in this manner.
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Its levels of degree, I posted Lemay stuff because first of all the guy was a hyper aggressive cold warrior with a streak of insanity a mile wide.
you could argue that from the late 20th century through to today, the whole first strike ask questions mentality of the U.S. has been to a point half a$$ed.
The air campaigns in Vietman were carefully planned to avoid civilian casualties where they could, same with the operations over Iraq.
When the troops were deployed in the first Desert Storm they showed a lot of restraint in terms of in the end even reducing military casualties. Helicopters taking prisoners was unheard of.
When you say Strike first and ask questions later. I think you have it backwards. The American sentiment and especially with the politicization of the senior levels of military commands means that they're not thinking as much of the sheer application of force and more about the strategic application of force to force your enemy to surrender as opposed to the overwhelming application of force to destroy your enemy force him to submit and ensure no future threat.
A lot of the leaders that came out of the Second World War were hardened by war and fearful of the next threat and the application of power to prevent the next step.
Thats why you had Lemay proposing to boil the oceans to deal with the soviet submarine threat and first strike Russia before they got their bearings and became a greater threat. You had Douglas MacArthur advocating the nuking of the Chinese as a valid strategy to not only prevent Chinese intervention and resupply but to reduce the potential threat of a strong Chinese Nation.
I guess if you were going to turn your phrase, these men strongly believe that the formula was Strike First, destroy your enemy completely, let historians debate the questions 100 years from now.
I'm not advocating any such strategy anymore, its effectiveness while possibly highly effective in the early days after WW2, probably wouldn't be as effective now.
But we've never ever seen a true strike first with the intent of winning a war with no consideration of the politics or fallout.
As many old vets have said about Vietnam.
"If we had kept the politics and politicians out of the war and fought it to win and not to tie, we probably would have won that war fairly easily"
Oh and by the way, one drunken night, and I can't find the quote, Lemay advocated dropping a nuke on the UN building.