So, is the answer then to err on the side of assuming they just had a ho-hum level of determination to obliterate the West? We're talking about jihadists, Mr. Clapper.The U.S. has made the same mistake in evaluating fighters from the Islamic State that it did in Vietnam -- by underestimating the enemy's will, according to James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.Clapper's comments came in a telephone interview Wednesday, in which he summarized the elements of a new "National Intelligence Strategy" released this week. Clapper also agreed to answer some broader questions about intelligence issues confronting the country.Asked whether the intelligence community had succeeded in its goal of providing "anticipatory intelligence" about the extremist movement in Syria and Iraq that has declared itself the Islamic State, Clapper said his analysts had reported the group's emergence and its "prowess and capability," as well as the "deficiencies" of the Iraqi military. Then he offered a self-critique:"What we didn't do was predict the will to fight. That's always a problem. We didn't do it in Vietnam. We underestimated the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese and overestimated the will of the South Vietnamese. In this case, we underestimated ISIL [the Islamic State] and overestimated the fighting capability of the Iraqi army. ... I didn't see the collapse of the Iraqi security force in the north coming. I didn't see that. It boils down to predicting the will to fight, which is an imponderable."
Friday, September 19, 2014
Feel safer yet?
And do you feel better about your hard-earned tax dollars going to post-America's so-called intelligence community?
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No worse than our hard'earned tax dollars going to the intelligence community when they insisted that Iraq had WMDs. Anyhow, it's their country after all. Wouldn't you be fierce (er) if they were actually invaded? I know I would. As it is. though it really seta you off, so far it's only a bombastic threat to murder us in our beds.
ReplyDeleteI think the upcoming midterm elections will (again?) tell whether your ilk's incessant carping is having a serious effect. I must admit, though, that you have (finally?) largely succeeded so far in again swaying public opinion (and actually even Obama's) in favor of more (idiotic?) military involvement in the Middle East. I view all this as endless folly myself. So do most of our allies this time around. If you don't win big you should consider cutting the carp, if not the crap. Then again, you carpers say Romney didn't do enough it on enough fronts.
ReplyDeleteThat's correct. My "ilk" consists of people who understand human nature and how it drives the behavior of nation-states and how that has played out in history. To put it a bit more concretely, in the last three centuries or so, we have seen a collection of representative democracies with, relatively speaking, free-market economies, strive to prevail over less civilized forms of societal organization. Once in a while, this tension has reached a point at which armed conflict has been inevitable. It is always hoped that that can be avoided; sometimes that is not possible.
ReplyDeleteSince Hiroshima & Nagasaki we must do more than hope that armed conflict can be avoided. It must be. Sadly, though, I realize that it will not be. There is a tao of the military and it's that if you build the weaponry, it will be used. Bombs away! Let's don't fool with crap like Operation Rolling Thunder in Nam though.
ReplyDeleteWhat a waste!
"Between March 1965 and November 1968, aircraft of the U.S. Air Force had flown 153,784 attack sorties against North Vietnam, while the Navy and Marine Corps had added another 152,399. On 31 December 1967, the Department of Defense announced that 864,000 tons of American bombs had been dropped on North Vietnam during Rolling Thunder, compared with 653,000 tons dropped during the entire Korean War and 503,000 tons in the Pacific theater during the Second World War. The CIA estimated on 1 January 1968 that damage inflicted in the north totaled $370 million in physical destruction, including $164 million worth of damage to capital assets (such as factories, bridges, and power plants). The agency also estimated that approximately 1,000 casualties had been inflicted on the North Vietnamese population per week, or approximately 90,000 for the 44-month period, 72,000 of whom were civilians. Due to combat and operational circumstances, 506 U.S. Air Force, 397 Navy, and 19 Marine Corps aircraft were lost over or near North Vietnam. During the operation, of the 745 crewmen shot down, the U.S. Air Force recorded 145 rescued, 255 killed, 222 captured (23 of whom died in captivity), and 123 missing.[114] Figures on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps casualties were harder to come by. During the 44-month time frame, 454 Naval aviators were killed, captured, or missing during combined operations over North Vietnam and Laos. Rolling Thunder had begun as a campaign of psychological and strategic persuasion, but it changed very quickly to interdiction, a tactical mission. Its ultimate failure had two sources, both of which lay with the civilian and military policy-makers in Washington: First, neither group could ever conceive that the North Vietnamese would endure under the punishment that they would unleash upon it. The civilians, moreover, did not understand air power well enough to know that their policies might be crippling it; Second, the American military leadership failed to initially propose and develop, or later to adapt, an appropriate strategy for the war. Along the way, Rolling Thunder also fell prey to the same dysfunctional managerial attitude as did the rest of the American military effort in Southeast Asia. The process of the campaign became an end unto itself, with sortie generation as the standard by which progress was measured. Sortie rates and the number of bombs dropped, however, equaled efficiency, not effectiveness. There is an argument that it was not even efficient since in order to increase the sortie rate sometimes eight planes were sent with small bomb loads when one or two planes could have carried out the same mission."
You preach the baseness of human nature, but our greatness lies in overcoming the baseness and recognize it for what it is.
ReplyDeleteConsider the Heart Sutra, a millennia and a half old, I know you've read it before, here it again in a new translation by, so timely to the topic, none other than the Vietnamese Tich Nacht Hanh:
The Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
Avalokiteshvara
while practicing deeply with
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore,
suddenly discovered that
all of the five Skandhas are equally empty,
and with this realisation
he overcame all Ill-being.
“Listen Sariputra,
this Body itself is Emptiness
and Emptiness itself is this Body.
This Body is not other than Emptiness
and Emptiness is not other than this Body.
The same is true of Feelings,
Perceptions, Mental Formations,
and Consciousness.
“Listen Sariputra,
all phenomena bear the mark of Emptiness;
their true nature is the nature of
no Birth no Death,
no Being no Non-being,
no Defilement no Immaculacy,
no Increasing no Decreasing.
“That is why in Emptiness,
Body, Feelings, Perceptions,
Mental Formations and Consciousness
are not separate self entities.
The Eighteen Realms of Phenomena
which are the six Sense Organs,
the six Sense Objects,
and the six Consciousnesses
are also not separate self entities.
The Twelve Links of Interdependent Arising
and their Extinction
are also not separate self entities.
Ill-being, the Causes of Ill-being,
the End of Ill-being, the Path,
insight and attainment,
are also not separate self entities.
Whoever can see this
no longer needs anything to attain.
Bodhisattvas who practice
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
see no more obstacles in their mind,
and because there
are no more obstacles in their mind,
they can overcome all fear,
destroy all wrong perceptions
and realize Perfect Nirvana.
“All Buddhas in the past, present and future
by practicing
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
are all capable of attaining
Authentic and Perfect Enlightenment.
“Therefore Sariputra,
it should be known that
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
is a Great Mantra,
the most illuminating mantra,
the highest mantra,
a mantra beyond compare,
the True Wisdom that has the power
to put an end to all kinds of suffering.
Therefore let us proclaim
a mantra to praise
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore.
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!”
So kick back, here is the lovely Deva Premal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NpB6ORqoZQ
ReplyDeleteThere's no overcoming our baseness. There's only asking Jesus for forgiveness for it.
ReplyDeleteAnd the only reason I can conceive of for you to bring up Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Vietnam is that you wish the West had decisively lost those conflicts and that you wish we were living under some form of the freedom-crushing vision those regimes had in store for us.
Well, here's some lovely Gregorian chant for you then: Da Pacem Domine
ReplyDeleteGive peace, o Lord, in our time
Because there is no one else
Who will fight for us
If not You, our God.
Hear more at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eud9WCEvYA
Regarding your accusation that I wish the West had decisively lost World War II I thought you agreed with most of the world how terrible nuclear war is nd how we should do all in our power (and even more in God's) to avoid their use again. Since WW II, as we know, numerous other countries have them (terror sells and makes arms mavens richey rich) , even empires that are no longer empires. That would obviously be our final fuck up, so to speak). And my Jesus, if not yours, told us a couple thousand years ago to turn the other cheek.
DeleteRegarding Nam years after, yes, Jesus probably still loves us." In two and a half short years, in a country slightly larger than our New Mexico:
ReplyDelete"approximately 1,000 casualties had been inflicted on the North Vietnamese population per week, or approximately 90,000 for the 44-month period, 72,000 of whom were civilians."
Much more force should have been used right off the bat in 1965. We're going to run into the same thing this time with these oh-so-calibrated airstrikes over Iraq / Syria.
ReplyDeleteYou are so strong and tough. Shoulda killed more civilians too, right?
ReplyDeleteInstead you blame Conkrite.
ReplyDelete