Post 311. Napoleon's advise for Afghanistan.
Let us turn the table on the guerillas-fighters in Afghanistan.
I have been reading Leon Tolstoy’s Book XIV in “ War and Peace ” where he writes about the guerrilla-warfare against the retreating Army of Napoleon at the end of the Russian Campaign of 1812.
Guerrilla can be defeated if not totally eliminated to a stage where it can be tolerated, in terms of losses of soldiers. Of course, if modern Democracies which are moderate, rational reproducers of their own populations, meaning that these are mainly replacing their deads, in the recycling process of Nature, wish to maintain their standards of living face to face the bludgeoning, escalating, irresponsible, criminal increases of population in the rest of the world, we must be prepared to loose soldiers in the performance of their duties as defenders. In the times of Napoleon losses of between 30,000
( Austerlitz) to even 80,000 in a two-days battle as at Borodino were accepted, while to-day Americans begin shitting all over the place at a loss of 50,000 in a five-years engagement in Vietnam.
Our soldiers to-day, are expecting a pension, and guaranteed old-age-retirement as the fulfillment of their military career.
This is pure UTOPIA my dear fellows!
.......................................................................................................
Although we have been doing much better than the mighty, chess-playing-world-champions, the Russians in Afghanistan, we are still engaging the Talibans in the wrong way and idiotically, uncreatively playing into their hands and cunning tricks. As Prince Andrei Bolkonsky explained to Count Pierre Bezhukov, the night before the battle of Borodino...............real war differs from chess-playing insofar as the chess-pieces retain their nominal power in the game, on an invariable chess-board, while human structured forces in the field are subject to the vagaries of psychological forces on the randomly changing battle-field...........Sometimes a regiment can be defeated by a mere battalion. Hence the need for rapid reactivity and creativity. When Tolstoy wrote " War and Peace ", the rate of fire from an unrifled blunderbuss was 30 repetitions a minute ( I believe Count Tolstoy made a too optimistic estimate! However he served as an Artillery Officer in the Russian Army at the siege of Sebastopol). Now we have 750 repetitions a minute. So reactivity and creativity are pushed to the limits! Perhaps to-day what is needed most is educated-trained intuition from an Officer, something akin to wisdom. I wonder what our West-Point, Annapolis, Duntroon, St.Cyr, Modena paper--warriors are learning in their military studies as they are showing no capacity for abstraction, creativity or originality at all-: Higher mathematics, ballistics, explosive-mathematics, PC-programming, technical specifications of a countless number of useless, wizardous weaponry, pornographic sciences,...................etc. Perhaps our officer-material to-day is the offspring from washerwomen or anorexic models of the de Laurent-type.
All looks, no substance, good for parades through the Arch of Triumph!
The key to a war engagement is logistics, morale, terror/fear ( General Patton knew this very well ).
That is what defeated Napoleon-: The use by Kutuzov of Nature against Napoleon.
In Afghanistan ( and to a greater and more hopeless degree in Iraq owing to a difference in the terrain ) we are like a besieged Army, besieged in the Capital or in our huge, vulnerable, heavily garrisoned bases from which we make raids in various directions there where the Talibans decide they wish to fight and have prepared themselves. Our movements are known, expected and there is no element of surprise. We behave and operate as sitting-ducks in a shooting gallery.
We are in short playing into our opponents hands.
The same way the Crusaders did at the Battle of the Horns of Hattin when the curdish leader of Islam Salah-El-Din interposed his Army between them and the water-supplies at Lake Tiberias (i.e. the use of Logistics and Nature again ). So there is a tradition of stupidity in relation to western military History.
Since we do not destroy their resources for bogus humanitarian hipocrisy, that enhances rather than diminish our opponents' contempt of us ( this stems from the islamic mentality of 'an eye for an eye ' ) the war is never ending and this saps our men’ morale, creating the myth the Talibans are superior and invincible.
I cannot resist from laughing whenever I see the small, skinny, hemaciated, starved Talibans, hobbling around in their sandals, holding their deadly rockets comparing them to the huge, strongly-booted, armour-vested, bacon and eggs-fed Marines, overloaded with high-tech-gear including night-seeing-apparatus on their helmets.
What a fucken charade! Then I feel ashamed at our stupidity and at the possible ending of our still potentially brilliant civilization!
No, I do not feel sorry or guilty for or about the Talibans since they have been an outpost of Islam at the gates of India, imperialistic foreigners, since 1000 AD, threatening the Christian West and the Hindus Religion or any other religion, in their arrogance!
My Ultimatum to them is-: Hand out Al Qaeda or die!
I have been reading Leon Tolstoy’s Book XIV in “ War and Peace ” where he writes about the guerrilla-warfare against the retreating Army of Napoleon at the end of the Russian Campaign of 1812.
Guerrilla can be defeated if not totally eliminated to a stage where it can be tolerated, in terms of losses of soldiers. Of course, if modern Democracies which are moderate, rational reproducers of their own populations, meaning that these are mainly replacing their deads, in the recycling process of Nature, wish to maintain their standards of living face to face the bludgeoning, escalating, irresponsible, criminal increases of population in the rest of the world, we must be prepared to loose soldiers in the performance of their duties as defenders. In the times of Napoleon losses of between 30,000
( Austerlitz) to even 80,000 in a two-days battle as at Borodino were accepted, while to-day Americans begin shitting all over the place at a loss of 50,000 in a five-years engagement in Vietnam.
Our soldiers to-day, are expecting a pension, and guaranteed old-age-retirement as the fulfillment of their military career.
This is pure UTOPIA my dear fellows!
.......................................................................................................
Although we have been doing much better than the mighty, chess-playing-world-champions, the Russians in Afghanistan, we are still engaging the Talibans in the wrong way and idiotically, uncreatively playing into their hands and cunning tricks. As Prince Andrei Bolkonsky explained to Count Pierre Bezhukov, the night before the battle of Borodino...............real war differs from chess-playing insofar as the chess-pieces retain their nominal power in the game, on an invariable chess-board, while human structured forces in the field are subject to the vagaries of psychological forces on the randomly changing battle-field...........Sometimes a regiment can be defeated by a mere battalion. Hence the need for rapid reactivity and creativity. When Tolstoy wrote " War and Peace ", the rate of fire from an unrifled blunderbuss was 30 repetitions a minute ( I believe Count Tolstoy made a too optimistic estimate! However he served as an Artillery Officer in the Russian Army at the siege of Sebastopol). Now we have 750 repetitions a minute. So reactivity and creativity are pushed to the limits! Perhaps to-day what is needed most is educated-trained intuition from an Officer, something akin to wisdom. I wonder what our West-Point, Annapolis, Duntroon, St.Cyr, Modena paper--warriors are learning in their military studies as they are showing no capacity for abstraction, creativity or originality at all-: Higher mathematics, ballistics, explosive-mathematics, PC-programming, technical specifications of a countless number of useless, wizardous weaponry, pornographic sciences,...................etc. Perhaps our officer-material to-day is the offspring from washerwomen or anorexic models of the de Laurent-type.
All looks, no substance, good for parades through the Arch of Triumph!
The key to a war engagement is logistics, morale, terror/fear ( General Patton knew this very well ).
That is what defeated Napoleon-: The use by Kutuzov of Nature against Napoleon.
In Afghanistan ( and to a greater and more hopeless degree in Iraq owing to a difference in the terrain ) we are like a besieged Army, besieged in the Capital or in our huge, vulnerable, heavily garrisoned bases from which we make raids in various directions there where the Talibans decide they wish to fight and have prepared themselves. Our movements are known, expected and there is no element of surprise. We behave and operate as sitting-ducks in a shooting gallery.
We are in short playing into our opponents hands.
The same way the Crusaders did at the Battle of the Horns of Hattin when the curdish leader of Islam Salah-El-Din interposed his Army between them and the water-supplies at Lake Tiberias (i.e. the use of Logistics and Nature again ). So there is a tradition of stupidity in relation to western military History.
Since we do not destroy their resources for bogus humanitarian hipocrisy, that enhances rather than diminish our opponents' contempt of us ( this stems from the islamic mentality of 'an eye for an eye ' ) the war is never ending and this saps our men’ morale, creating the myth the Talibans are superior and invincible.
I cannot resist from laughing whenever I see the small, skinny, hemaciated, starved Talibans, hobbling around in their sandals, holding their deadly rockets comparing them to the huge, strongly-booted, armour-vested, bacon and eggs-fed Marines, overloaded with high-tech-gear including night-seeing-apparatus on their helmets.
What a fucken charade! Then I feel ashamed at our stupidity and at the possible ending of our still potentially brilliant civilization!
No, I do not feel sorry or guilty for or about the Talibans since they have been an outpost of Islam at the gates of India, imperialistic foreigners, since 1000 AD, threatening the Christian West and the Hindus Religion or any other religion, in their arrogance!
My Ultimatum to them is-: Hand out Al Qaeda or die!
In a mountaineous country such as Afghanistan with a number of re-supply-routes which cannot be infinite, there must be locations high up on the mountain ranges, which can be accessed only by helicopter, on which we can locate vertical-take off reconnaissance and combat-aircrafts.
These locations could become unassailable, safe, cheap, communication and assault--bases from which to simultaneously observe, police, harass everywhere, across their re-supply-routes, the opponents.
Their villages could be likewise regularly observed, inspected, and intelligence gathered making the movements of Talibans and hostile people extremely
difficult, demoralising them, breaking their resolve and arrogance. An important aim is to make it extremely difficult for a Taliban or guerrilla-fighter to revert to the looks of an ordinary villager once he/she has taken part in a guerrilla action and hide his/her weapons.
The key words are simultaneously and everywhere.
These bases would be extremely useful to the Afghanistan Forces in the eventuality of our handing over the war to them, which I doubt it would work.
The unassailabilty, non-accessibility of these places means that there would be no need for large garrisons.
Start using your brains oh fattened western military before it is too late!
Our motivation in these contained wars is the avoidance of global catastrophic ones and the strategical/tactical truth that it is better to fight on someone’s else territory than wait until the 'grongoes' land on our shores.
To our well-meaning pacifists, I say to them to ask all these opponents to show their good will first. Stop guerrilla and terrorism which is costing the free-world a great waste of resources and generating increasing poverty and want by escalating costs of living.
Else go to HELL!
These locations could become unassailable, safe, cheap, communication and assault--bases from which to simultaneously observe, police, harass everywhere, across their re-supply-routes, the opponents.
Their villages could be likewise regularly observed, inspected, and intelligence gathered making the movements of Talibans and hostile people extremely
difficult, demoralising them, breaking their resolve and arrogance. An important aim is to make it extremely difficult for a Taliban or guerrilla-fighter to revert to the looks of an ordinary villager once he/she has taken part in a guerrilla action and hide his/her weapons.
The key words are simultaneously and everywhere.
These bases would be extremely useful to the Afghanistan Forces in the eventuality of our handing over the war to them, which I doubt it would work.
The unassailabilty, non-accessibility of these places means that there would be no need for large garrisons.
Start using your brains oh fattened western military before it is too late!
Our motivation in these contained wars is the avoidance of global catastrophic ones and the strategical/tactical truth that it is better to fight on someone’s else territory than wait until the 'grongoes' land on our shores.
To our well-meaning pacifists, I say to them to ask all these opponents to show their good will first. Stop guerrilla and terrorism which is costing the free-world a great waste of resources and generating increasing poverty and want by escalating costs of living.
Else go to HELL!
posted by Templar @ 8:28 PM
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