US-infantry, any good?

reply to post by devilwasp

Devilwasp, I don't mean to make this personal, but some of your posts pertaining to the military make as much sense as a pay toilet in a diarrhea ward.

You're right. The Army doesn't just kill. And that's the entire problem. The military is supposed to be a war machine. Like it or not, the definition of war is two sides killing each other until one side is unable to kill further, or is unwilling to be killed further.

In war, when you kill enough, the other side quits. It's just that simple. War is brutal and bloody if you do it right, and by injecting other ancillary duties or considerations into the equation, all you do is to extend the conflict, which results in many, many more casualties on both sides.

To be most merciful in war, you must be most brutal.

The military is supposed to be a war machine to kill as many enemy in the greatest concentrations, as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible, in the greatest numbers possible.

The military are almost the exact antithesis of the police. Different weapons, different tasks, different mind-sets, different training, different goals. Never, ever, have soldiers perform police duty. They are uniquely unsuited for the task.

You need police, hire police. You need ambassadors, hire ambassadors.

One side needs killing? Use the soldiers, hit as hard as you can on the front end to make it as bloody as possible, completely destroy the enemy and what he holds dear, completely break the hearts and will of the enemy with complete authority, the war is over, and you save lives.

Fight hard, win, and let the soldiers go home.

The soldiers are fine. The generals on the other hand haven't personally fought in combat themselves, they distance themselves from the battlefields, their troops and thus victory, and are nothing more than politician/managers in uniform. The US generals, quite simply, don't know their trade.

We need blistering, counterintuitive warriors to lead warriors - for war. No more politicians whose climb up the ranks have been determined by their pristine performance reports, conflict avoidance, crease smooching, and success working the Washington cocktail circuit.

The soldiers are fine. No one else know what the hell they're supposed to be doing.
One side needs killing?

reply to post by dooper


I understand your point. However I would have to disagree with the sentiment that soldiers can't police. We're not ideally suited to the task of day-to-day internal security in permissive environments. Unfortunately in the majority of post-warfighting areas of operation the environment is less than permissive.

The police don't have the skills, will or desire to take on the threats that present themselves in areas such as Iraq. The Army does. Hence the Army works in conjunction with the police forces in order to allow them to do their job with a degree of protection, safe in the knowledge that if the baddies try it on they will have a section or two of highly trained infantrymen to contend with.

The US Army are still learning the trade of cross-jurisdictional work that the British Army have developed to an art form in the last 50-odd years. Sometimes the police can't handle the job. The army can. Saying that "it's not what they're trained for" simply identifies a training deficit.