How Tech Almost Lost the War 679
An anonymous reader writes "Blame the geeks for the mess in Iraq? Wired says so. Networked troops were supposed to be so efficient, it'd take just a few of 'em to wipe out their enemies. But the Pentagon got their network theory all wrong, with too few nodes and a closed architecture. Besides, a more efficient killing machine is the last thing you want in an insurgency like Iraq."
Actually.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Actually.... (Score:4, Funny)
Only difference is that lives aren't at stake ( but how I wish they were...)
Re:Actually.... (Score:5, Funny)
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The issues aren't that simple when we go from taking cheese from the trap to getting backed into the corner. There is a lot of stuff we simply won't bring to the table. Some of this is Carpet bombing, chemical and biological agents, Nuclear agents and so on. when things start unraveling, and people start backing the rat into the corner, don't b
Re:Actually.... (Score:5, Informative)
Jeff Huber just put up an excellent essay [blogspot.com] on this which can be summed up by the two quotes by Clausewitz:
"Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa."
and
"If we do not learn to regard a war, and the separate campaigns of which it is composed, as a chain of linked engagements each leading to the next, but instead succumb to the idea that the capture of certain geographical points or the seizure of undefended provinces are of value in themselves, we are liable to regard them as windfall profits."
The most efficient "kill-chain" won't do squat unless there is a clear and achievable objective. The other problem is that the "kill-chain" that is being used is purpose built for set piece battles between great powers basically 2nd generation warfare (web 1.0) versus 4th generation asymmetric warfare [d-n-i.net].
You don't even need Clausewitz, Powell will suffice. To use a shortened version of the Powell doctrine:
- Do we have a clear attainable objective?
- Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
- Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
- Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
- Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
Re:Actually.... (Score:4, Funny)
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I just knew there was an Access back-end, too, I could sense its evil lurking there. And probably no regular backups.
Re:Actually.... (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with him. C is not easy. It is a language for programmers, not for people that are mainly into e.g. mechanical stress simulations. Granted, with appropriate libraries, and all that, you could make an environment suitable for mechanical stress simulations, using C as a base language. But unless you already have that environment, and are able to show it to him, there's no reason for him to start learning C.
I suggest you try to show him MATLAB instead, and see if he's more impressed this time. (And the matlab compiler makes this a "compiled" language too, if "compiled" is of importance to you (I assume it's totally unimportant to him)).
Re:Actually.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, as an Engineer using it now, let me throw a recommendation for GNU Octave. It's basically an open source equivalent to Matlab. (scripts are ~95% compatible between the two, well documented where they aren't) Gotta start getting away from closed source math, especially where science and technology needing peer review are concerned. Windows version is a Cygwin implementation, but they have a standalone installer that makes it transparent to the user. http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ [gnu.org]
I have used Matlab at work for years, recently switched to Octave, and haven't had any problems. That, and there's the free, open source thing. Save the taxpayers a few grand on another Matlab license.
Re:Actually.... (Score:4, Informative)
Geeks are to blame. (Score:4, Funny)
I say let's outsource these jobs to Iran.
Almost lost the war? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Almost lost the war? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Actually.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a crazy idea of mine that the govt would never consider.
How many people in Iraq (27 million and falling)?
There's that OLPC XO thing. Buy one for evreryone, That's a ridiculous amount of money but not as ridiculous as the amount they've already spent.
Set up some good international networking (actually I think they have that part already). The mesh will take care of the local.
Run a campaign in the US that it is duty of every American to talk to an Iraqi, get to know them let them get to know you.
"do you support the war? Talk to the Iraqis and help win it"
"against the war? Talk to the Iraqis and help end it"
There'd have to be support to cover the language barrier, but where there's a will, there's a way*.
Yep it's a crazy idea, but there's this bit in the back of my mind that says it's hard to fight a war against people you know.
* I guess that was the problem from the start, there was never really a will.
now politely ignore my sig just this once.
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Re:Actually.... (Score:4, Insightful)
here's another crazy plan. i'm gonna come to your house with 7 crips. we're going to kill your wife and rape your daughter before shooting her too. then we'll burn down your house and drag you off to prison, where you will remain until we feel like releasing you, hell maybe we'll rape you too. afterwards we'll give you a laptop with msn so some idiot can tell you how wonderful the war is for you and how you should just stop being so angry and see that it was in your best interests. and here's the REALLY crazy part. we'll be fucking *astounded* when it doesn't work and will declare you a muslim fundamentalist for fighting an invading army waging an illegal war.
at the risk of invoking godwin's law (in my defense this is a statement of fact) the very idea of trying to re-educate your victims even as you slaughter them is literally the same attitude nazi germany demonstrated in russia. again, they were SHOCKED that the russians didn't either give up or join them. after all, they didn't have a chance against the mightiest army the world had ever seen, right?
i'm not new here, i've been reading slashdot since 1999 (the first story i read was about the columbine massacre). yet i'm still amazed at how braindead some of the comments are. god help us, some of these people probably work for the department of defence. you just don't get it. you *cannot* win in iraq. maybe you could have, in a five minute window, but not now. you can kill every last iraqi and you'll still lose. i know there are plenty of people who read that last sentence and are thinking 'killing them all isn't losing!' which just reinforces my point that slashdotters just don't get it. war is not a deathmatch. after your inevitable defeat iraqis will have lost lives but gained a national soul, forged by a great victory against terrible odds. your country on the other hand will have lost good men and the last vestige of what made it great. i hope it's worth it.
Re:Actually.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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your idea is based on two points: first, do something constructive instead of destructive, and second, encourage communication. both are excellent.
the military is actually doing some of the former, but not nearly enough. we did a lot of damage to infrastructure in Iraq during the invasion, and the standards there were ne
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I'm not one to be politically correct, but I think that a better term would be Islamic Fundamentalists can't get along. Plenty of Muslims can get along with us just fine. When lacking a convienent external enemy like us or Israel, they simply shift back to fighting each other. In many respects I compare it to the Catholic/Protestant fights back in the day.
While I know it'd involve huge amounts of graft and waste, I think that a massive employment program ala the marsh
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There's no need to read any more into it. The statement is silent on when you should start a war. And it's likewise silent on many other situations where you shouldn't.
If you want to understand the rationale:
1. The purpose of diplomacy is to get something you want.
2. The purpose of war is to get something you want.
3. If you're already getting what you want through diplomacy (ie, havi
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I would dispute that libertarians are pro-freedom, but then you have to start mincing over definitions. To bring it back into the nerdy scope that this site specializes in, I would submit that it's analogous to the difference between the GPL and BSD-style licenses. Which is more free? You'll hear lots of heated arguments on both sides, and it boils down to one philosophical difference:
If your syst
Blame the Geeks? (Score:4, Insightful)
More like blame the generals who shot spreadsheet "simulations" back and forth instead of large scale wargames to shake-out the technology. The networked battlefield went out untested with an expectation that it would work as promised. Which is a really dumb assumption for military hardware.
'Scuse me? If you've got insurgents setting up an ambush, blasting the frak out of them sounds like a good solution to me. Fire a DU round from a tank down the road, all the IEDs go "boom" and the insurgents waiting on the side go "slwooop" as the massive air pressure changes suck them inside out.
Efficient killing machine == Good when there are bad guys trying to kill you.
One might argue that the insurgents are not terrorists and are thus not our enemy. A reasonable argument, save for one missing piece of logic. If the insurgents would wait we'd already be out of Iraq and they could be dealing with the local, underpowered government. Instead, they decide to take on the most powerful military in the world. Even on our bad days, that's not such a good idea.
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:4, Informative)
== Bad when you create 2x more insurgents because of all the civvies you just collaterally damaged.
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:5, Insightful)
#2 - "A more efficient killing machine" in modern military parlance is a machine that strikes more of the right targets and fewer of the wrong targets. We already have the military might to simply wipe Iraq off the map. That would solve the problem, real quick. But it's not the goal. Ergo, more efficient killing machine == good.
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe we could stop killing them.
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:4, Insightful)
We invaded their country. Be glad they can't genuinely "reciprocate."
"They were shooting at us. We shot back"
Yeah, it's funny how people shoot at you when you violently occupy their nation. You'd think they'd be all hugs and kisses.
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That is actually a factually incorrect statement. The correct statement is, "...people shoot at you when you violently invade/overthrow their corrupt government, which they themselves hate, and peacefully occupy their nation." The difference being, had we "violently occupied their nation", as you state, it's very unlikely things where be anywhere near as bad as they are today. This i
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-09-26-insurgents_N.htm [usatoday.com]
Sour
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Iraqi insurgents don't look so dumb when the US will have had to spend upwards of $1 Trillion to kill those 20,000. That's $50 million per dead insurgent.
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:5, Insightful)
--jeffk++
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be more cost-effective to buy an apartment for every family in Iraq.
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Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:4, Insightful)
Add in the fact that the politicians in DC decided they could run the war better than the generals, and a lot of the setbacks were easily avoided. When you go to war, RELEASE the dogs of war.
Patton had it right - the object of war is not to die for your country, but to make sure the other bastard dies for his.
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:4, Insightful)
Total cost: $500,000,000,000 dollars and counting. Half a trillion dollars.
> As I said, even on a bad day, attacking the most powerful military in the world is a dumb idea.
If the most powerful military in the world is paying twenty-five million dollars a kill, and you have a million footsoldiers (assuming 99.9% the planet's billion-odd muslims are OK, and we're only after the 0.1% that are batshit crazy), it's not a dumb idea -- it's a tactic that's been proven successful on the battlefield, because it's the same way they beat the Soviets.
The fucking dumb idea is that we didn't learn the Soviets' lesson, even though we helped them invent asymmetrical warfare.
Netcentric warfare is a great way to break things and kill people on the cheap. It's a crappy way to win hearts and minds. When we started this little adventure, it was the right tactic, because we believed in good faith that their hearts and minds didn't need changing. We were wrong; they're not a bunch of repressed people looking for freedom, they're a bunch of fucking tribal shitheels. Half a trillion dollars later, it's time for us to either shit or get off the pot. Either abandon the place and let 'em go back to butchering each other (and we'll buy the oil from whichever side wins the civil war), or we just dust off an nuke the site from orbit, because it's the only way to be sure.
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Iraqi tribal leaders turning on Al Qaeda, assisting the coalition [nysun.com]
Maysan province [100webcustomers.com] and Karbala province [dailylobo.com] turned over to Iraq. In fact we've turned over 8 of the 18 provinces to Iraqi control. Baghdad is at a 21 month low in terms of rocket and mortar attacks [syracuse.com].
I know it doesn't fit the Left's view of "QUAGMIRE!", but guess what? The surge worked VERY well, Iraq is stabilizing, they are taking control of their own country, we are withdrawing, and in general the po
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You have to remember that there are anywhere from 0.5 to 1.3 million dead Iraqi civilians.
From this alone, the only rational conclusion of any humane person is that the aftermath of the invasion has been an unmitigated tragedy and disaster.
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:4, Informative)
The "iraq body count" guys are just counting dead listed in press releases.
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With surveyed reports, if you asked the ~85 people on my street if they knew anyone who died in the last 6 months, you'd get 85 positive results. ONE of our neighbors passed away about 4 months ago, and everyone knows it. With a survey, you would extrapolate that to 85 deaths, when in fact morgue and ho
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However, bragging about Baghdad violence being at a 21 month low is, well, setting the bar PRETTY GODDAMNED LOW, isn't it? I mean, it certainly wasn't all kittens and roses 21 months ago, was it?
I hope, for once, that Bush and his advisors get something right and things start getting Good over there (as opposed to "Not as bad as it could be"), but so far,
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True, but with the modern US Army soldier almost on the level of something from an old science fiction movie in terms of his ability to do massive amounts of killing, the "virtue" of striking terror in the hearts o
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:5, Informative)
We should've sent the guys who said we were going to be greeted with candy and flowers.
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:5, Insightful)
The basic problem is that the problem is not the insurgency-- it is the lack of law and order in Iraq. The insurgency is one manifestation of that, but the lack of law and order allowed them to grow and consolidate from a few hundred tiny groups to several larger networks (see the International Crisis Group's works on the insurgency). We are in a situation in Iraq where the US military is very good at killing people but not very good at fighting the insurgency because we can't do what we need to in terms of controlling the situation on the ground.
You don't want a smaller number of more deadly soldiers. You need a larger number of policemen. We can't do it and we don't train our army to do it. So yes, one has to blame the generals.
However, the issue from the IEEE article was that the insurgent groups are able to use methods that look an similar to those found in the open source community to adapt their tactics much faster than the US military can (the US military is at least an order of magnitude slower in this regard due to standardization, procurement practices, etc). By the time new tactics are underway, the insurgent groups quickly adapt and those tactics are less useful.
The second issue is that for every expensive weapon, there is a cheap and easily available countermeasure. Note that HARM's aren't used much since Kosovo because it is now common knowledge that there are sub-$100 countermeasures using commercial off-the-shelf parts for them (cheap microwave ovens have the same RF as the anti-aircraft radar and HARMS cannot distinguish between them). The Serbians may have lost but I wonder how much damage they caused US military R&D with that one.... Smart bombs also could be conceivably confused using inexpensive jamming devices. In the end, unless you are willing to commit the people to the ground
In short, I personally do not believe that the war in Iraq is winnable under the conditions that W has set out. We will lose that one unless we can make some very difficult choices before the patience of the American people wears out.
In short one needs lots of police on the ground relying less on military weapons technology. We need to stop using American mercenaries (like Blackwater) because they have an inherent conflict of interest. And we need to be willing to withhold our support for the Iraqi government if certain basic measures are not met. These things are not going to happen so we are not going to win.
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:5, Insightful)
As for your ridiculous bravado about our military, wake up. It's being stretched so thin that we can't even take care of our own citizens in case of a natural disaster because all the National Guard units are gone. If the Iraqi insurgents were World War II Germany, then yeah, we'd be suited to fighting them. But our military is simply not geared toward urban warfare. Our troops simply don't have that kind of training. They went in without knowing dick about local customs, and we fired Arabic translators because they were gay and that's icky. We'd be better off dropping the NYPD or LAPD in there. Cops are trained to get to know neighborhoods, learn who to make friends with and whose arms to twist. Soldiers, in the classical sense, aren't.
It's amazing to me how this maladministration constantly crows about how this is a "different kind of war", but they want to fight it like it's World War II, only not, but kind of. They declare "war" on the tactic of terror (without any Congressional votes), and then they refuse to provide a list of goals that we have to achieve. (And no, "eliminating terrorism" isn't a goal; it's a pipe dream.) So we declare war on terror, and then the president says, "We're at war! I need to expand the executive branch's power and make government waaaaaaaay the fuck bigger!" So what city do we have to capture for the war on terror to be over and for the executive branch to return to its proper size and scope in the government? Who has to surrender? Funny, there are no answers to either of those questions. It's a perpetual war, meant to expand the powers of the presidency beyond any sane interpretations of the Constitution.
Meanwhile, while all this bullshit is going on, you sit there are cheerlead this insane, utterly incomprehensible state of affairs. Yeah yeah, you love the troops, whatever. Someone who supports the troops wouldn't send them to die for nothing in that fucked up sandpit. This administration is a disgrace to the military. They love to talk about how much they support them and what a great job they're doing, but at the end of the day, the army is an instrument which they use to further their own political ends. And the saddest part is that the military laps it up because they get lip-service. Servicemen and women will still vote for these assholes time and time again, and they die for nothing for their trouble. It's a god damn tragedy.
Okay, rant over.
Re:Blame the Geeks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of it is, sure, but a lot of it relates to centuries of real injustice. I don't even remember the details (there's too damn many), but the book "Battle For God" by Karen Armstrong details how these groups have, through many massacres and assassinations, gone far beyond the point where either would back down. That kind of retributive behavior is common human nature. In that regard the Iraqis are no more ridiculous than us.
Figuring out how to end a centuries old blood feud is left as an exercise to the reader.
Cheers.
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What do you believe, a politicians words or the 100 billion dollar permanent bases they are building ? Bases in Iraq are about the only strategic reason for the war that makes any sense, even though it's an evil reason that in the long run probably cannot work.
AH64s are efficient killing machines (Score:4, Informative)
Catch-22 (Score:3, Insightful)
So tech is bad because it didn't work and so the troops weren't efficient killing machines...
But tech is bad because we don't want the troops to be efficient killing machines.
Is that about the gist of it?
Tech didn't lose the war (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tech didn't lose the war (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame the geeks? (Score:2)
Don't be silly (Score:3, Funny)
They hired the wrong geeks... (Score:2, Funny)
Or we could blame pre-emption (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame the geeks for the mess in Iraq
How about we blame Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the other "Hawks" for single-mindedly pushing a US foreign policy doctrine of preemption, which led to a war based on falsified "evidence" of a laughable "threat" to the US?
Networked troops were supposed to be so efficient, it'd take just a few of 'em to wipe out their enemies.
We did beat the "enemy"; only Saddam's core Republican Guard put up any sort of fight. The major fuck-up in the initial "war" was Rumsfeld repeatedly cutting supply lines and over-extending troops.
Then we failed to fill the power vacuum in a country with a history of sectarian violence even under a brutal dictator. Worse, we failed to keep the power, lights, and water going which left the door open for opportunists. Iraq fell head-first into a sectarian civil war, with both sides, most of the world, and half of the United States population agreeing on one thing: we need to get the fuck out of their country.
It's hard to "wipe out" your enemy when every day you create more just by your mere meddling presence. It's like standing in a bathtub holding a garden hose, wondering why the water's rising.
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lol j/k, I blame Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Cheney.
Re:Or we could blame pre-emption (Score:5, Insightful)
However, in the the void of a government of Iraq, and undefended borders, you get the rise of insurgents. Military solutions don't really work there. You need diplomatic solutions to convince the local political and religious leaders to stop insurgents, fundamentalists, and terrorists. You need to convince them via ideology to lay down weapons and rebuild their homes.
It has taken 3 years to hunt down a couple thousand insurgents, and how many more are waiting in the wings, waiting to die in the name of their beliefs? We're not just talking about from the possible pool of 30 million Iraqis, but the entire Mid East. (Note, I'm not saying all Arabs are fundamentalist, but rather we're fighting insurgents from several nations right now. Fundamentalists are almost always a minority in any group, but often the most visible).
We can't fight this war forever, and that isn't the fault of the military or technology, but rather the fault of diplomats and politicians to not finish what they started, and I'm not pointing my finger at any one party. Both parties voted to go in, both parties continue to fund this, and both parties blame the other party as a means to make their party look better, while neither party are presenting solutions to actually finish the conflict. That is a travesty that no one speaks of.
Re:Or we could blame pre-emption (Score:5, Insightful)
There was another *huge* problem with the Bush Administration's single-minded push for war in Iraq-- basically it left our interests vulnerable to interference from third parties. I don't know if you saw this but shortly before the invasion (in fact, right when the AUMF was being debated in the Senate), there was a water-rights crisis between Lebannon and Israel. Lebannon calculated (rightly) that the US could not afford for Israel to attack and opened up a new large pumping station. Israel was threatening war (Sharon was stating that it was a cause for war and that it was no different from the 1967 war which he categorized as about water rights). The US sent a mediation team in really fast.... In the end an agreement was reached (largely under US pressure) which allowed Lebannon far more water rights than they had previously exercised.
Now we are in a position where we are tied up. Our troops are generally needed either at home for emergency management, in Iraq or Afghanistan, or in half a dozen places around the world defending US interests against military threats. We don't have the capacity for another war on this scale without abandoning vital allies somewhere in the world. If we were attacked by, say, Iran, would we respond even if it meant being unable to defend South Korea or Taiwan? Iran and Syria know this, which is why their interests at the moment are best served by keeping us tied up in Iraq and not attacking us in other ways (we can't do anything serious against them using conventional warfare unless we either are freed up in Afghanistan or Iraq, or we are willing to potentially abandon allies. Nuclear options are out unless we are attacked first with nuclear weapons).
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However, in the the void of a government of Iraq, and undefended borders, [...]
Something weird happened between those two sentences. What was it?
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Whats even funnier is how Bush kee
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How about we blame Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the other "Hawks" for single-mindedly pushing a US foreign policy doctrine of preemption, which led to a war based on falsified "evidence" of a laughable "threat" to the US?
Keep in mind two things: the intelligence coming out of the end of the Clinton administration indicated that Saddam had WMDs - Clinton himself has said so - and furthermore, Saddam was trying to make it seem like he still had WMDs because he feared the threat of war from Iran.
In terms of mismanagement of the first half of the war, though, I agree with you that Rumsfeld should catch a lot of the blame. He was touting the leaner meaner military at the time, and it became clear later that substantially high
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This does not refute the parent's assertion about the evidence of a threat to the US not being there. Saddam used WMDs in the Iran / Iraq war, and domestically on Kurds, and in both cases, the WMD technology and its delivery systems
Sure, blame the geeks... (Score:4, Insightful)
Honest question (Score:4, Interesting)
I have yet to hear a politician actually say why, and I really can't seem to get a straight answer out of anyone.
Re:Honest answer (Score:2)
Re:Honest question (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure there were many reasons we went to war. They all point to money and power.
When all you have is a screwdriver (Score:3, Insightful)
Diplomacy FTW. Literally.
{citation needed} (Score:3, Insightful)
Look! A three-headed monkey! (Score:3, Insightful)
Story moderation (Score:4, Funny)
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Can we moderate this story "Troll"?
Definitely, this summary screams "Say it's all George Bush's fault please!". And you guys just go for it, arguing and stuff. It's sickening.
Bad summary (Score:4, Interesting)
But now a different set of geeks are coming up with new solutions that do work, whilst building on the previous solution.
IOW, Don't Blame The Geeks. Or the tech, for that matter.
Insurgency? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. the state or condition of being insurgent.
2. insurrection against an existing government, usually one's own, by a group not recognized as having the status of a belligerent.
3. rebellion within a group, as by members against leaders.
Funny, the partisans in Iraq are rebelling against a foreign occupier, not their own government. However in the US the word "insurgent" has become the same as "terrorist"...
Oh mod me offtopic, but Iraq has had me sick for the past 4 years. How long did WW2 last again?
What to Blame (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't call these people we are fighting terrorists when WE are the foreign troops on their home soil occupying their country. The only justification Bush hasn't abandoned for this war (WMD was a criminal fraud, ousting Saddam already happened), the ludicrous idea that fighting the enemy "over there" makes us safer at home is so mind numbingly flawed at the most basic level that even a C student should be able to see there can be no victory the way the war is being prosecuted. The terrorists who would "follow us home" are doing so anyway, Iraq is diverting precious man power and resources away from stopping them. They are probably already here in fact. The 9/11 hijackers lived in the country for an extended amount of time before they carried out their attacks. Every dollar we spend on Bush's crusade is a dollar that could have went to pay more police officers, increase border security, inspect more cargo. The current plan we're on to get out of this hole is to keep digging until we get to the other side when the first thing you should do when you find yourself in a hole is STOP making it deeper! Violence, even when justified, against religious extremists only begets more violence. It's such an un-American concept to accept, there's no pride in it, no feeling of success but the only way to win is not to continue fighting. Every insurgent you kill insures his sons will be your next generation of enemies. There is a point, and we have long passed it, when someone strong has to stand up and say "Enough." accept the consequences to their reputation, and walk away.
This is a very trying time for the USA, and I fear that we will not long survive the ruinous path we are currently following. Our leader, and calling him that brings me an almost physical pain, will not change our path. He is too stubborn to admit defeat, even if that means dragging an entire country down with him. History will count him among the worst of our Presidents.
An enlisted perspective. (Score:5, Interesting)
After reading the article, I had to go have a smoke and really collect my thoughts before replying here. I hope my perspective offers a bit of insight into "one man's view" of technology's role in modern combat. First a little bit of background information is in order...
I'm a 26 year old male, active duty enlisted in the Navy. I joined about 14 months ago, leaving a career in computing to serve in the submarine force. Prior to the Navy, I did several years of programming, database development, web application dev/support, and networking on Win32 and Linux/UNIX systems. Needing a change of pace, and generally feeling burned out after working full-time in I.T. since age 18, I woke up one day and enlisted in the service. My family and friends were a bit surprised, to say the least
Having been in long enough to form my own (albeit limited) opinion of computing/information technology's role in military systems, I have these thoughts:
(1) The military is mostly comprised of enlisted personnel. Enlisted men and women are, fundamentally, operators. This means they are trained to do a specific set of jobs according to a very specific set of guidelines. We don't make tactical decisions; our job is to inform officers in command of the status of whatever evolution is in progress, and obey orders handed back in response. This means we are trained on specific pieces of equipment, which is increasingly networked to allow for more efficient operations.
(2) It's no secret that the military (and government organizations in general) is a big fan of basing systems on "tried and true" technologies. We use what works, not what the industry is pumping out as the latest, greatest info-tech marvel.
(3) Our reliance on these systems means that we always have to be trained on multiple contingencies, i.e. "if doohickey X is broken, switch over to doohickey Y and proceed." Single points of failure are as much the enemy of fighting units as they are of networks in the civilian world. The human element is therefore still critical in avoiding situational breakdowns, hence the need for constant drilling to ensure proper performance under hostile or stressful conditions.
(4) Monday morning quarterbacking is an inevitable consequence of any large-scale conflict. It's always easy to look back and say "Wow, if only they'd done things this way, it's so obvious that things would have gone better." The military does make a concerted effort to learn from its mistakes; we have a saying that every rule we follow is written in blood, and we take that idea very seriously.
(5) In the final analysis, no amount of technology can prevent loss of human life in war. It's ugly, nasty, sad, but inevitable. Human beings will always defend whatever interests they consider crucial to the survival of their way of life. It's just our nature, the product of an evolutionary process that made us what we are today as a species. Since the dawn of time, we've been constantly incorporating new technologies into both civilian and military operations, with mixed results at every stage of innovation. Again, we learn from our mistakes and move forward.
I hope these thoughts can spark some dialog, and that my views might bring some new perspective to conversations on this topic. Thanks.
Re:An enlisted perspective. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Iraq is that we think that we can enforce democracy on a country that simply isn't interested in it. My apologies to any civilized Muslims that read this blog, but Southeast Asia Shiite and Sunni sects that dominate Iraq are not interested in allowing people to have an influence in the government. They desire and will ensure that they have full domination over the population. The truth is the population is just fine with that. They are very dedicated to their tribes and will do whatever their respective Sheik tells them to do. I personally think that if you want to solve the problem in Iraq you should allow whatever form of government that works best develop from the ground up. Stop trying to impose democracy. I don't know of any government that has successfully imposed democracy on another country. Democracy will either develop over time from the inside out or it will not develop at all.
Re:An enlisted perspective. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An enlisted perspective. (Score:5, Insightful)
The US/Allies imposed democracy on the Axis powers of Japan, Italy and Germany after WWII. While it can be argued that Italy and Germany had some democratic traditions (however the Weimar Republic was really broken), it was foreign to Japan.
That said, it is pretty hard to come up with many more successful examples...
Re:An enlisted perspective. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's very much a Navy view: "Enlisted men and women are, fundamentally, operators." In the Navy, the basic combat unit is the ship. Tactical decisions are made at the ship level, not below. A hundred to several thousand people serve the ship; a few officers make the tactical decisions.
Ground troops need a completely different mindset. The basic combat unit is far smaller, a squad or platoon. Individual soldiers make tactical decisions. Marines are especially big on this. It's Marine doctrine to equip the Marine, not man the equipment. The US Army likes to fight with bigger units, but can break them down into small, independent units when necessary.
Rifleman Dodd (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullseye. I got my print copy of Wired yesterday (guilty shrug). I skimmed the article. Batshit loony garbage.
I left the Marines 10 years ago. We were just getting digital radios, just getting the first GPS units, and just getting laptops. No intrasquad comms (unless SEALs had them, maybe...) and the laptops were basically just for tracking inventory and leave request admin crap. The GPS units were brand new to everyone...and very cool.
The rest is all crap. Extra weight. To the infantryman: weight is evil unless it is in flavors of 5.56 or 7.62. Everything else is garbage. The radios will break, NVG batteries will die, and you may get stuck without things as basic as fuel or MRE re-supply. Our indoctrinated response to such calamity? MISSION ACCOMPLISHMENT. My GPS broke! Tough shit, break out the lensatic and find the target. My radio is busted! Tough shit...you better stretch those quads, Private.
I understand the quoted Naval "operators" point of view. Its accurate. I know this from experience working with squi---er--sailors aboard ship and my brother's experience as a naval officer. The officers don't learn the tasks, they learn how to manage the enlisted ranks to accomplish tasks to complete the mission.
On the ground it is different. Marines have it pounded into them that it basically takes one Marine to overcome an enemy division. "Rifleman Dodd" was on the required reading list. It tells how a Brit sharpshooter gets isolated in Portugal during the Napoleonic Wars. The concept to be conveyed to the enlisted ranks is basically you are the Corps. One Marine. One Rifle. Accomplish The Mission. Lacking the rifle you accomplish it with a knife, an e-tool, a sharp rock, your fists, or harsh language. End of story.
If every technological gizmo had failed at the outset of the war we still would have kicked their collective asses. The difference was not just technological advantage but human will. Iraqi units would get crushed or fade into the dust because: A: our troops hit what they aim at & B: our troops have individual initiative to complete mission objectives. Its the lesson of Thermopylae writ over and over again: enslaved souls make poor soldiers.
The same point is true of the insurgency. Human will. They want us the hell out. Just like the Viet Cong (remember that one?!?!), just like the Mujahedeen, and just like every other insurgency of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Vietnamese were essentially able to muster the social will to absorb any number of casualties. American society did not have that will. We withdrew, and the conflict resolved itself. The Iraqi insurgency remains in question, since, according to some, it appears that people are growing tired of dying for religious fanatics and Baathist stooges. But the question has nothing to do with technology.
It has to do with will. And the most egregiously ill-conceived and poorly planned military occupation in American history.
An unconventional war with conventional means (Score:3, Interesting)
Properly curbing terrorism activity in a war zone scenario such as Iraq has an excruciatingly high servicemen casualty in return for stability rate.
"Lost" (Score:3)
Author can't get his fact straight (Score:5, Informative)
According to prisoners each Hizbollah anti-tank missile [wikipedia.org] operator launched more than dozen missiles during the training. The Israel Army representative told that IDF "could only dream" about such level of training. BTW cheapest ATGM cost around 5k $. But Hizbollah also used some 9M133 Kornet (60k $ a pop). And Hizbollah had a lot of ATGM operators, so many that ATGM were used often against Israel infantry. Hizbollah operatives were well coordinated, using mobile phones and radio, well supplied and had had a network of concealed concrete bunkers, with communication lines, optic and stores.
It's plain stupid to call combatant capable of successful launch of modern anti-ship missile [wikipedia.org] "primitive foe".
War crimes (Score:4, Interesting)
Proof: Israel bombed Beirut, where there's no, and has never been any Hezbollah. It bombed *on purpose* (that's what those LASER GUIDED MISSILES the US sold do) the Beirut oil refinery, leading to the biggest oil spill in history in the mediterranean sea. It bombed most bridges in the south of Lebanon.
Friends of mine got bombed in this war. They weren't part of Hezbollah. However, unsurprisingly when you have a couple more neurons working than your average likkudnik neocon, it made Hezbollah popular with those who used to oppose them in Lebanon.
Mission accomplished! Or rather, war crime accomplished! (Robert H. Jackson, chief US prosecutor at the Nurenberg trials)
Framing the issue (Score:3, Interesting)
Even before you read the article, there is the problem of the question being framed to project the existance of some plan, the assumption that we know what that plan was and that America's campaign in Iraq is failing to achieve the plan's objectives.
Reading the article, you stumble upon another problem with the phrase and that is that by, "What went wrong" Wired means, "Why aren't we winning" and not, "What the fuck happened to the WMD's?"
"Wrong" can mean so many things. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for KBR? Nope. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for General Dynamics? Nope. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for Joe Middle-class American? You bet. Is something going "wrong" in Iraq for America's underprivilaged? Hell, yes. America is not a monolith of interest.
The general public doesn't know "the plan" for Iraq but it is not in the interest of the parties who do to start letting on that the general public doesn't know. Any fairy tale is better than a void. Informed people don't know the plan for Iraq either, but at least they can make educated guesses and validate or invalidate those guesses based on short term outcomes. One thing can be said with certainty and that is that the plan benefits those in the know. I would speculate that the plan didn't account for what is happening right now not because of oversight but because those aspects of what is going on are irrelevant to the plan. Case in point is what happened immediately after Saddam's regime was deposed. Rumsfeld described the massive looting as, "Stuff happens". But, apparently stuff DIDN'T happen at the Iraqi Ministry of Oil because it was magically secured.
I take issue with the article for using the prevailing mainstream media propaganda about Iraq to lash lower level functionary geeks for not winning enough. I take issue with the article for suggesting that a war of choice could be made "more ethical" by the application of lessons learned. As if the pure morality of the American ubermensch is not satisfied with a mere ethical war for freedom and democracy. All questions of immorality need to have ironclad answers that invoke incontinent convulsions of antipatriotism in any individual who even implied to ask them so that ten others may fear to ask in the future.
I would expect as much from the country's paper of record or any local bird cage liner so this raises questions about Wired's stake in this. Are they just another media outlet paroting the MSM for the sake of justifying extra real estate for revenue generating ads? Or, is there some super patriotic editor currying favor with his or her overlords?
Don't forget the facts! (Score:3, Insightful)
Minimizing your own casualties frustrates the aim (Score:3, Insightful)
Their only shortcoming is that they aren't very discriminating about exactly whom they kill. Just as long as US casualties stay low - grotesquely low in terms of the history of armed conflict, although of course any casualties on your own side seem too many. That's a political necessity, when the commander in chief is also the elected president of a democratic state.
Traditionally, war has been "the continuation of diplomacy by other means" (as Carl von Clausewitz neatly observed). That meant exerting pressure on specific people whom you wanted to influence, and - if necessary - killing them and their supporters.
The USA has always been adept at the form of diplomacy that involves choosing partners iin foreign nations who are likely to further US interests, and supporting them by all manner of means. Unfortunately the subtlety of this approach breaks down when "continued" by the modern American way of war, which is basically to break into a territory and kill everyone in sight very quickly. That tends to be counterproductive, because it eventually pisses everyone off. As soon as "Shock and Awe" was mentioned, it was immediately obvious that it was essentially just 21st century Blitzkrieg. And despite all the rubbish about "precision targetting", it is about as selective as Blitzkrieg - in other words, not at all. Everyone within the blast radius dies. And the blast is not necessarily centred on the chosen target, and the chosen target is not necessarily what it is thought to be. Remember the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, or the 30-40 publicly announced bombings of "safe houses" where Saddam Hussein was allegedly hiding in 2003? All those bombs hit and destroyed their targets - although we later learned that Saddam was not in any of them. Want to guess who was?
Minimizing your own casualties, desirable as it is in terms of domestic politics, turns out to be disastrous in terms of foreign politics. War cannot be a continuation of diplomacy if it lacks subtlety and discrimination. Moreover, in the long run it will be disastrous domestically too - when even the US media can no longer suppress the truth about the real damage done to Iraq and its people.
If all you have is a hammer.... (Score:3, Insightful)
After that, however, and despite the fact that the military is a conveniently well-organized and broadly capable group of trained men and women that can be ordered to do just about anything, we didn't need a massively efficient and effective killing machine. We haven't for years now. IF we insist on the paradigm that it is our responsibility to rebuild any country we knock over, we NEEDED a wise, foresightful, thoughtful, and empathetic administrative POST-confilct authority. We didn't have it. What we got - charitably speaking - was a collection of hastily thrown-together policies based on really nothing but optimism, a lack of any strategic direction cognizant of the political, religious, and tribal realities, as well as ex-pat Iraqi opportunists who saw their chance to nab some power and wealth.
Think of the Army as a supremely well-balanced and perfectly crafted chainsaw - perfect for treecutting. Once you've cut down the forest, and want to try to build a city, is it any wonder if the chainsaw - no matter how wonderful - turns out to be nearly useless for digging wells, building homes, paving streets?
What they have accomplished is more a testament to the versatility, dedication, and skill of the individuals in our armed services who are willing to try to accomplish whatever they are ordered to do.
Technology, EM, and SIGINT on the battlefield (Score:3, Interesting)
Just about anytime they fired up a laptop in the field, incoming enemy fire (i.e. artillery shells) would start raining down on their location within 15 - 20 minutes. Others who served in the Kosovo Campaign relayed similar stories only about US forces zeroing in on an enemy's position using similar SIGINT techniques. I remember interviewing one former translator who just remarked, "It's eeiry to be listening to a radio conversation between two parties and then hear the bomb go off in the background followed by static a second later."
I had lunch with an Army Major and a Captain two weeks ago about working with the local Gaurd depot on a project. We got off on the topic of wargames, simulations, and the like when they started discussing a series of wargames they participated in a few years ago where their were Opfor and abandoned their technology for 18th century methods of communications (i.e. couriers, flags, etc.) They were both laughing that how they didn't win, they proved to be far more effective than what any of the "Spreadsheet" simulations projected. (I've heard this story before from another NCO's or at least a similar story.)
Cross posted from WIRED: not a war - invasion (Score:3, Insightful)
Afghanistan is a failure because, contrary to America's deeply held belief, it did not attack us on 9-11-01. The Taliban did not blow up the towers. Al Qaida did, and they booked from Afghanistan in the 30+ days it took for Bush to set up the annihilation of that country. We bombed brown people who kinda looked like Al Qaida and who were living in the same country that the outfit formerly camped in. We killed tens of thousands of people, occupied the place, and not coincidentally made our new puppet government sign the gas pipeline deal the Taliban government refused.
Iraq, well, well. A pack of lies to invade a helpless, non-hostile nation. We killed 100,000 outright and another 900,000 died from the effects of the occupation. Two million are homeless and at least a million of those have fled their own country. Girls are selling themselves in Syria to feed their families bak home. We are being opposed because we are bastards, not because we haven't "social networked" properly. We murdered their country. What would YOU do if someone wiped out three percent of all living Americans and then stole everything not nailed down, then dictated a constitution and installed a puppet government? Would social networking make you feel better after your wife and kids were incinerated?
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