RANGER AGAINST WAR: My War <

Monday, April 30, 2012

My War

--h/t Deryle

"Quit smiling. What are you smiling for?

This is an arrest." This is your mug shot,

not your prom photo. I was smiling from
happiness;
my government will not disappear me
--Peace Demonstration
Maxine Hong Kingston

Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it
--George Santayana

Lt. Stanley McChrystal enters an army in the late 70's

that is broken, riddled with drugs and race problems.

The soldiers aren't very good:

a collection of drunks, dirtbags,

junkies and scammers.

--The Operators
, Michael Hastings (171)
___________________


Ranger has noticed a dismissive attitude toward the United States Army that fought in Vietnam, particularly at the Bad Boy lad's sites. He is not sure the reason for the snitty attitudes, but it seems like the lads doth protest too much. Their attitude ranges from supercilious to dismissive, implying that the U.S. experience in Vietnam is passe, and today's ranks are far superior in technology, doctrine, etc.

This arrogance of dismissing the recent past as Old School and no longer relevant is short-sighted and dangerous. Wars are not fought
ex nihilo, and that certainly holds for today's supposed efforts at Counterinsurgency (COIN) and Counterterrorism (CT).

Today's military can focus on Low-Intensity Conflict (LIC) and pretend that it is a real war, when it is actually (fill in the blank.) In fact, today's Army has slack that we did not have in the 1960's and 70's, despite the rhetoric of how the last decade's stress has been so professionally addressed.


The U.S. fought a war in the Republic of Vietnam while also being deployed to address the Warsaw Pact. My service in Vietnam was preceded by a line Infantry assignment facing this threat on the German border
-- these were real threats. Today, the U.S. faces no such opponent.

As for combat ability, today's Army (USMC) has not fought any battles against hardcore enemy Battalions, Regiments or Divisions. The RVN battles against enemy units with organic artillery and severe unit discipline are legend. Enemy supply columns actually rolled down the Ho Chi Minh Trail like rush hour traffic in downtown Baghdad.
The enemy had the "division slice" of support for their operations, to include timely and accurate intelligence on U.S. intentions and capabilities.

The enemy in Vietnam had the will, the capability and the intent to prepare the battlefield at higher echelons, something unheard of in the Phony War on Terror
(PWOT ©). The threat faced in Vietnam was real and vicious ... what equivalent did we see after the fall of Baghdad or the months following the invasion of Afghanistan? The Taliban has no Regimental or above combat capabilities.

Per U.S. forces, we had one echelon above Corps, meaning we had a real Theatre Army scenario, to include a Theatre Army Commander with Corps supporting. This means not only did we have Theatre - Corps - Division assets, but we also had the on-call abilities of the RVN forces including all of the usual suspects: Artillery, Aviation, Combat Support and Combat Service Support. We operated as an Army, not as door-kicking combat Brigades sans higher assets.


So what's the reason for the dismissive attitude toward my Army as being anything less than professional?
Where is the evidence that any draftee fought less professionally than did the forces in the PWOT? From whence this lack of fraternity?

The troops in the Vietnam War were largely draftees and they earned their battle streamers with the same valor as did troops in all previous U.S. wars. What battles in Afghanistan or Iraq demonstrated the level of violence experienced by the Infantry units in the Vietnam War?


Further, there is a logical fallacy built into the argument of the Old Army detractors who say the 60's and 70's Army was "amateurish". If that is so, then we must accept that the Warsaw Pact was neutralized by a bunch of quacks. The next illogical step is to believe that today's professional volunteer force is totally responsible for the defeat of al Qaeda, despite the fact that less than 200 al Qaeda operatives exist worldwide (per former Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta.)


Framing the argument qua the Andrew Exum crowd, a crowd of amateurs defended the U.S. against Warsaw Pact with thousands of tanks, artillery pieces and millions of soldiers, while we are now ably protected against a laughable threat by the New Warriors.


Taking their argument to its logical ends, one must also believe the military leadership during the 60's was also incompetent, though carrying experience from two wars before assuming leadership in Vietnam. Contrast that with the present day Professional Army which sports a dearth of combat experience at the highest levels. The depth of experience was greater in Ranger's time frame than it is today, contrary to the hype.


And this is why we need poppy eradication programs in Afghanistan (though the Bushmills tap will always flow.)

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

18 Comments:

Blogger FDChief said...

I took down my link to the He-Man Muj Hater's Club some time ago when I kept losing my temper at the endless rounds of COIN-sterbation that seemed to go on there. "Is a sniper team better for overwatching than a mortar FO?" "Where's the best place to block off streets for a house-to-house clearance?"

The Exum crowd seemed - and still seems, IMO - fixated on THEIR war as the ultimate User's Guide To Armed Force, and that to the exclusive analysis of the lowest-end tactics and techniques.

This always reminded me of working with an engineer who proudly showed me the minute slope stability analysis he did for his shallow foundations on the Bonneville Landslide.

"You know that these ten-foot borings are in the top of a 200-foot-thick ancient landslide, right?" He seemed to find this merely intriguing, rather than an invalidation of all his painstaking data collection...

I think your main point needs to be the pure force-on-force mismatch these guys are missing. No where - not at Tora Bora, not in Ramadi, not in Fallujah, not anyfuckingwhere in Central Command's AO between 2002 and today - was there or is there the muj equivalent of the NVA 304th Division whose 24th Regiment attacked Lang Vei in 1968, or the 33rd and 66th Regiments that fought the 1/7th Cav to a standstill at Ia Drang three years earlier.

These guys have fought a bunch of raggedy-ass gooners and somehow think that because they're still standing "unbeaten" that they've gone fifteen rounds with Apollo Creed. In fact, they've managed to punch Adrian senseless but she's still hanging around central Asia making trouble when she can because these Rockys have missed that they're not IN a prizefight - they're playing three-dimensional chess, and a clenched fist is about as useful as a tactical nuke...

But good luck telling them that. Sorry, my man, but youre talkin' to the hand...

Monday, April 30, 2012 at 6:27:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger rangeragainstwar said...

Chief,
I find the Abu crowd as stuck in a platoon level mindset.
This art. is a response to Exum banging the VN era Army a few weeks ago.
jim
ps - the 174th NVA regt.was not slack.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 7:11:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger Terrible said...

Heaven help them if they ever find themselves in a war.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 7:50:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger Terrible said...

Special Forces Vietnam veterans taught me what professionalism was at a PCT course in 1981. Not specifically military professionalism but professionalism in general. Since then that knowledge has stood me in good steed on a personal level although I haven't noticed that it is especially recognized or respected in our society.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 8:26:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger FDChief said...

jim; All my NCOs were RVN vets when I was a privvit, and you could see that none of them thought that any NVA grunts were slack. They still hated their ass, some of them, but not a damn one was patting themselves on the back for being "bruised but unbroken".

In fact, I'd say that, in general, they had a saner attitude than the crew that Exum reports "...trust their senior leaders to make the right decisions for the Army." And that would be...why? IMO our "senior leaders" since Eric Shinseki have fucked this dog like a pound puppy all the way down the line.

Nope, my old platoon daddy and First Shirt knew that the Green Machine would fuck you up just out of pure stupidity, and that half a dozen "senior leaders" often didn't have half the brains God gave a bag of hammers. But they were soldiers, by God, and they served the country; they would no more have "...put the Army’s needs above their own." than they would have turned down a free lap dance. But they knew their work, they had learned it in a fucking hard school, and they knew that there might come a day when the country genuinely needed them.

I have to say, it makes me pretty cynical when I think the use my country put us to; facing the dreaded Grenadian, Panamanian, Iraqi, and various raggedy-ass wog colossi. Honestly - why we didn't send a dozen Chicago cops and just arrest the fuckeers I have no idea.

All those "...professional fighting men and women..." with nothing out there to fight but a passel of raggedy gomers in dashikis.

Whereas you "...amateurs and conscripts..." only went toe-to-toe with the little hard men who had beaten the Japanese and the French and were hell on rubber-tire sandals.

No wonder you guys are so fucked up; you didn't fight the right guys!

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 6:31:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger FDChief said...

Just FYI, I left this comment on his site:

Unbroken? Now there's a shock - who would "break" this Army? The 1st Iraqi SS Panzer Divizion? The Taliban's 309C Regiment?

No where - not at Tora Bora, not in Ramadi, not in Fallujah, not anydamnwhere in Central Command's AO between 2002 and today - was there or is there the muj equivalent of the NVA 304th Division whose 24th Regiment attacked Lang Vei in 1968, or the 33rd and 66th Regiments that fought the 1/7th Cav to a standstill at Ia Drang three years earlier.

All those "...professional fighting men and women..." with nothing out there to fight but a passel of raggedy gomers in headscarves whereas the "...amateurs and conscripts..." only went toe-to-toe with the little hard men who had beaten the Japanese and the French and were hell on rubber-tire sandals. Their problem isn't that they didn't "trust their senior leaders" (probably since they'd gone where their "senior leaders" sent them and seen how useful farkling about smartly in the middle of a foreign civil war was for the foreigners who were told to farkle there...) but that they fought the wrong damn enemy. Had they been matched up against the Babe Ruth-league enemies we've faced over the past decade; no echelons-above-squad, no heavy artillery (or even much in the way of mortars), no decent intel, no Red Ball Express rolling down the Cambodian border...we might not be talking about how tall we're standing.

Hey, I loves me some Army - the eagle crapped in my pocket for 22 years - but I'm not gonna get all chesty and cocky because my boys bitchslapped a bunch of raggedy-ass muj around central Asia for a decade trying to recreate Churchill's Malakhand Field Force in pursuit of a geopolitical impossibility. The strategic "thinking" behind this muddle has all but invalidated our tactical prowess; as the apocryphal Vietnamese general said; "Yes, you won every battle. And your point is...?"

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 6:45:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger rangeragainstwar said...

Chief,

Thanks for your well--spoken thoughts, and your supporting fire. Your comment ought to get you some attention from the occasional thinkers that are there.

It's mostly all bullshit over at abu m and socnet.

jim

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 7:27:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger rangeragainstwar said...

Chief,
I'm getting senile-my reference was the 274th nva regt which roamed the area around Saigon.
Separate regts were similar to soviet guards organizations which means highly distinguished in prior battles and wars.
I was thinking aabout the 70's when we trained to fight soviet OMG's in our Corps rear areas IF they broke through the flot and deep penetrated the corps rear.
The omg was a large level unit designed for such penetrations.
The Corps was tasked to fight rear area protection and to provide their own rear area security.
Do guys like Exum have any experience like this?
jim

Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 7:58:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger rangeragainstwar said...

Wednesday, May 2, 2012 12:48 AM
Ranger,

As a Afghan War vet, I have two comments on what you wrote.

First, you are 100% correct. I was stationed in Kamdesh and Kunar for my deployment and it was violent. The enemy up there is committed, clever, and ballsy as fuck. But at the end of the day, they are all amateurs. They could mass 300 guys, but never for more than a few hours. They could coordinate indirect and direct fires but their supply situation was always near desperate. I was scared constantly up there, but in no way shape or form would I trade fighting in Afghanistan with fighting in Vietnam.

Second, I really appreciate the anger and frustration with the military and government that you express on your blog. I can relate to it. Do you think that it is a product of your time as a soldier or just because the situation is all fucked up? I got out of the Army a year ago and am I trying to transition fully to a civilian. I keep giving a shit, though, about the AO. I read about and look it up online. I get mad about the bad reporting and the stupid shit that's going down. I don't have a ton of veterans where I am, and none of them are from the previous generation. I read your blog regularly, so I thought I'd ask if what I'm describing is normal and if it ever goes away. When can I stop caring?

I realize that this is an odd email, so no need to respond. Just thought I should say that I appreciate what you do and am glad that someone is articulating the hard truths. When Obama was talking at the Washington Correspondent's Dinner he got more applause for ending DADT than for ending the war in Iraq. Can't believe I got shot at for all those selfish assholes.
note to readers-Ranger deleted the signature on this ltr since it was personal in nature.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 8:02:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger rangeragainstwar said...

Thanks for writing, and i'm glad to talk to you.
My bitterness goes back a life time-1970.
I seriously doubt that i will ever lose this nastiness, but as a former officer i embrace it and use it to fuel my writing.
I can't sleep w/o these intrusive thoughts , and this leads to my writing.
I can't write unless i'm pissed.
A FINE WAY TO LIVE.
Rest assured that we are the same creature- just different generations.
jim hruska

Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 8:04:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger FDChief said...

jim: re: OMG's and Exum - if you go to the original AM post and go down about two comments there's Gian Gentile pretty much asking Exum just that; does he SERIOUSLY think that a stand-up fight in central Germany against the GSFG would have been "simple"?

My heartburn with the AM crowd in general and Exum in particular is this whole business of getting all Prussian about the Army tactical success in central Asia. Yes, I'm sure (as your commentor above notes) the locals are tough fighters. Yes, I'm sure it's scary out there - I don't give a shit whether your in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge or getting ambushed by four fuckheads in West Buttfuckistan - getting your shit shot at is scary, period.

But that's not the point.

The point IS that the experience the Army is getting fighting squad- and platoon-level actions in mujistan says nothing - less than nothing - about the ability of Exum's "professional" Army to perform in a conventional war, which is about 80% of a national Army's tasks.

If anything, the only historical parallel I can think of is less reassuring, and that's the situation of France and Britain in 1914. In both cases the two countries had professional long-service volunteer armies (the Brits much more so) which had long and successful experience fighting small colonial wars. In fact, if anything, I'd say the the British Army of 1914 was in better shape than ours in 2012, because the Boers of the early 20th Century were a damn sight better all around that the Afghan muj or Sunni insurgents of the early 21st Century.

And that Army was blindsided by the German invasion. It took probably 3-4 years for the senior Brit commanders to figure out how to fight a combined arms conventional war.

Luckily we just don't have a peer enemy the equivalent of the Germany of 1914. But for Exum to get all groiny about how super-cool and nifty our Army is? Ridiculous. Super-cool and nifty at fighting an imperial cabinet war, but...why the hell as a citizen of a supposedly-peaceful republic would I WANT to fight more than one of those a century or so?

Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 1:41:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger rangeragainstwar said...

Chief,
I hate to be tacky ,BUT- how does Exum finance his life?
He makes money playing second fiddle. All the pro war dudes are sucking the gov't tit.ALL.
Exum is criticized in Hastings book for E's undeclared conflicts of interest in his writings. He fails to qualify that he's a shill.This is relevant info when considering opinion pieces.
Yesterday i was reading that cold war pilots were trained to fly thru nuclear clouds etc... Now that's bending a bit.
Bottom line- the kiddies are starting to get it - they lost their wars before they even deployed.
jim

Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 3:31:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger FDChief said...

I guess you can look at it as continuing a great tradition. Look at fuckers like Harry Summers, who pimped the notion that we "won" Vietnam because we beat the gooks in the field, like that mattered. Or VD Hanson. Or Ricks. Have any one of those bootlicking bastards missed a paycheck for being dead wrong?

And yet the Ellsbergs and Paul Vanns and (though I didn't agree with the guy a lot, he walked the walk) Dave Hackworths got bupkis for telling the truth to the ringknockers and asskissers.

Just remember what Cassandra got. Telling truths most people don't want to hear has always made you the least popular kid in school.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 5:06:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger rangeragainstwar said...

Chief,
I never accepted the theory that we won the war militarily.
HOGWASH.
The same arguments will be recycled for AFGH/IRQ. Throw in Somalia, Yemen etc..
Here's a fact of UW/GW. Any Cdr. worth his salt will conserve his forces until the exact time to deal a death blow to the invaders. Examples include Washington and Sam Houston.
After Khe Sanh the NVA conserved forces for the 72 and 75 offensives. They think in years/decades and we think in terms of tours and 6 month ticket punching.
If anyone reads the history of Cu Chi it's clear that we NEVER cleared that area, and it was a stones throw from Saigon. What about war zone c and d? Samo.
What about the 274th nva being in strength 2kms from Bearcat/Long Thanh in 70&71??! This was arty distance from Saigon=122mm.
The higher one was in the C in c ship the more rosy and clean the war looked.
The bottom line is that we had our asses handed to us b/c we just can't shoot it out rifle to rifle with any 4th world gun fighter organization.
I was not involved in heavy ground combat , but i've been in jungles and denied areas and we were the hunted. This is a undeniable fact.
jim

Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 7:46:00 AM GMT-5  
Anonymous Blackhawk said...

"Ranger has noticed a dismissive attitude toward the United States Army that fought in Vietnam, particularly at the Bad Boy lad's sites."

I haven't visited the BB site and it's best I don't. The men I fought along side with in Vietnam war, 66-68, RA or draftee, were magnificent bastards. For any to Rambo GEN X'er imply any different, well, I challenge them go to one of our reunions and start 'trash talking'. Hair might might white, but I loves to fight.

The fighting during TET in Cu Chi lasted three weeks and was equal or worse to the hedgerow fighting at the kickoff of the Normandy invasion. Go tell the Bad Boys to operationally expect 2000 to 3000 US KIA's and 30,000 WIA's and watch their balls shrink.

I might add that Cu Chi was cleared inch by bloodstained inch in three weeks of murderous village by village fighting, but as usual as soon as it was over the next round of fun was beginning.

Friday, May 4, 2012 at 5:28:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger Grung_e_Gene said...

Ranger,

I respect you but allow me to be blunt; there is an easy answer.

The soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen of today have been raised to believe in a warrior ethos.

They choose to be in the Military, they are warriors, all previous generations were regular guys not warriors.

In the awful movie 300 there is a scene were Leonides is upbraided for bringing so few warriors The Spartan asks the other Greeks what their professions are they respond, 'Potter, Farmer, etc...' He asks his men and they give a warrior cry. Leonides proclaims "See I've brought more warriors than you..."

The Founding Fathers and following Generations ideal of the Citizen-Solider is now viewed as naive/passé/dumb. But, they knew what they were doing back then in curtailing a standing army.

This fantasy that the modern volunteer, the current generation is the real warrior is tawdry. It's ignorant. But, it's the reason (understood or not).

Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 7:15:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger Grung_e_Gene said...

Half my comment vanished, I'll recreate it a bit:

I'm reminded of the Irish protest song Come out you Black and Tans

Come tell us how you slew them poor Arabs two by two,
Like the Zulus they had spears and bows and arrows;
How you bravely faced each one,
With your 16 pounder gun


No one recently has faced a well disciplined military with supply, espirit de corps, intel and motivation.

Your comment about the balls shrinking when faced with real casualty numbers is 100% accurate and we'll see it when the warmongers succeed in getting us to face the fanatics in North Korea

Or when a carrier gets sunk in the Strait of Hormuz because of our posturing by a volley of Iranian ASW missiles.

Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 7:33:00 AM GMT-5  
Blogger rangeragainstwar said...

Gene,
i'd be disappointed if you were anything but blunt.
i'm so opposed to the concept of warrior hood that i tire myself with my essays on the topic. If we believe the warrior bullshit then we are no longer a liberal, democratic , humanistic society.
jim

Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 8:00:00 AM GMT-5  

Post a Comment

<< Home