Now we’re in the ‘game’ and decisions have to be made, real ground has to be covered and there are real casualties.

Apparently AQ is sticking very close to the Taliban and I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if they weren’t assisting with leadership. Think of the Hole in the Wall Gang with Butch & Sundance leading the idiots. Not easy to catch!

However, team work, patience, endurance and resources can get it done.

You have to find their vulnerability. It might vary depending upon where they are and what resources are at their hands. In the Swat valley they would be exposed to drone attacks. In the mountains they wouldn’t have great cover, but would blend in. Strafing attacks would hit exposed elements until they hid sufficiently. In tunnels they wouldn’t have mobility, but they might have some stored resources. They would feel more comfortable if we had to go low-tech and face them one-on-one. We should resist that particular urge. This is where their mobility slows their escape and gives us time to use a slower patient picking away at their defensive position. Unless they have an escape they are eventually doomed. The attack just has to be patient and not expose troops unnecessarily. Specific tool & techniques would depend upon the place.

This is why it’s so important to look at the battle-ground after the initial fighting and decide what their situation is and how we need to adjust to hit them in the next phase (see Bruce Lee).

Napoleon said no battle plan survives the first skirmishes. I think all our commanders today know that. In Iraq there was quite a discussion about the enemy adjusting to our tactics and we have to creatively adjust too.

In a way, if the Taliban and AQ move into more remote areas it will be safer for the Pakistanis. If they stay in the Swat valley our forces won’t have to re-adjust constantly, but a lot of civilians will have to leave.

What further discussion has gone on here, this evening, is most worthwhile. I would go so far as to say it is a most necessary part of this discussion, placing an important ‘perspective’ and understanding around our nation’s penchant for warfare as an easy (and profitable) solution to all kinds of ‘problems’, genuine or ‘perceived’ simply for blatant political gain and ‘advantage’.

In spite of Raven’s misgivings about whether he is appreciated on Suin’s threads, what he brings to the broader discussion on these threads (when he is willing to stay and ‘engage’) is certainly appreciated by all who value the process of learning from the experience of others. Because Raven is willing to share, even his doubts as well as his painfully gained insight and his completely unfair burden of guilt and shame, his voice has genuine authority, humanity, and justice behind it.

I have a feeling that Raven and Clovis and others like them, who have been “there”, are going to be nothing less than life-lines for many who will be returning from the “endless” war with the growing realization that they were sacrificed on the altar of greed and to the whims, the petty, perverted ambitions of several, or even a bunch of sociopaths … who do not value life, humanity, justice, truth, or peace.

Raven went to Vietnam because he was given the ‘choice’ by a judge …
Vietnam or someplace a lot more confining … he was young (and probably cocky) but made the ‘best’ choice possible under the circumstance. What he learned subsequently, a “learning” shared by many others, happens to matter very much, because it is, apparently, the quintessential “learning” which each American generation must be put through, simply because the older (if not, in any way, wiser) generation insists upon it …

Being a bit older than Raven, Dru, when I was confronted with the older generation’s ‘orders’ to report for ‘induction’ to go to Vietnam, I deliberately chose not to ‘obey’ and refused to be inducted. I fully expected that prison would be my fate and had prepared myself (as well as one might “prepare”) for that eventuality. As it turned out, “they” didn’t want me that badly. Well, they did try to ’sweeten’ the offer by saying that they would make me an officer and (presumably) a gentleman, but I guess that ‘they’ just couldn’t understand that if I didn’t intend to put myself in the position of killing people that I had nothing against on the mere say-so of a government most decidedly NOT of, for, and by the people (a ’situation’ which has not ‘improved’, by the way), I certainly wasn’t going to put anyone else in that spot. Surprisingly, from my perspective, the military ultimately decided that they were no more interested in me than I was interested in them. I guess “they” somehow figured that it would be more trouble than it was worth to make a good soldier of such a poor (and cocky) prospect.

I lost too many friends, Dru, in Vietnam, to not absolutely appreciate Raven, Southern Dragon and all the others, here, who ‘went’ and I value whatever any of them care to say about their experience or whatever they have come to understand through that experience.

DW