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Exclusive: Rumsfeld unloads

Give me a few examples of insurgencies or guerrilla movements that were ever successfully suppressed through the use of brute force, besides the one I mentioned above.

The Viet Cong, the Japanese occupation of Vietnam, Korea and China, German ocupation of most of Europe. How many more do you want?



That's true. AQ definitely hasn't "won" in any sense of the word given what OBL's original vision was. But neither are they easily defeated.

Just think of how, "al Qaeda", would be a dirty word in the ME, had we had them with the appropriate level of violence.

This is illegal in Germany, today.

300px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H13160%2C_Beim_Einmarsch_deutscher_Truppen_in_Eger.jpg


Care to take a guess as to why?
 
Fair enough; and you're right - I didn't say exactly what I thought to say. So my apologies for that. This isn't really something I'm going to get to passionate about, so I can concede that point to you.

Not a concession as much as middle ground, sir.
 
The Viet Cong, the Japanese occupation of Vietnam, Korea and China, German ocupation of most of Europe. How many more do you want?

Apart from perhaps the VC, I don't think any of the others qualify as "successfully suppressed." The Koreans and Chinese fought back, as did the Free French and Yugoslav Partisans, etc. None of them were ever really eliminated and remained problematic till the end.
 
Just think of how, "al Qaeda", would be a dirty word in the ME, had we had them with the appropriate level of violence.

This is illegal in Germany, today.

300px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H13160%2C_Beim_Einmarsch_deutscher_Truppen_in_Eger.jpg


Care to take a guess as to why?

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at, could you explain? You're saying AQ would be hated by the rest of the Middle East if only we used enough force? The German comparison doesn't really stand up to this, given that the governments of many ME countries engage in the same kind of fundamentalism (besides the violent part).
 
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Apart from perhaps the VC, I don't think any of the others qualify as "successfully suppressed." The Koreans and Chinese fought back, as did the Free French and Yugoslav Partisans, etc. None of them were ever really eliminated and remained problematic till the end.

And, without allied forces, they wouldn't have ever survived.
 
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at, could you explain?

Because we inflicted so much death and destruction on the German people, any and all Nazi symbolism is now illegal in Germany.
 
Because we inflicted so much death and destruction on the German people, any and all Nazi symbolism is now illegal in Germany.

I think that was more because we occupied and actively helped reshape and reconstruct their society, same with Japan. I don't see the entire Middle East as being a comparable situation to those two, are you saying we should just invade every ME country and somehow force them to not sympathize w/ AQ?
 
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And, without allied forces, they wouldn't have ever survived.

Maybe, maybe not, who knows? Maybe their will would have been broken eventually, maybe not. But I'll bet that more than a few of them would have remained problematic for a long time, and if they ever gave up it would have been exhaustion from their own fighting, and not because brute force works against insurgencies. Just like in Spain during the 1810s, Algeria in the fifties and sixties, Vietnam, many examples from Latin America, etc.
 
Do you have any actual input? If not; then carry on.

I have offered input. The fact you don't like it does not really matter.
 
We forgot how to fight a war after World War II.

I think we just forgot what constitutes a valid reason for going to war.
 
We started fighting wars "humanely", which is used against us by the opposition, which doesn't give a crap.

When you fight a war, you bomb the crap out of everything in sight and kill tons of people. You use the same reasoning as when we hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then, you win. We don't do that anymore, which is why we don't win anymore.

Impressive, the only country to ever use nuclear weapons against citizens! Whoohoo!!! Makes you want to stand up and wave the flag over that one!
 
Great man Rummy, and his bit about not wanting to be in the same foxhole as Clinton, Kerry, Biden is a kind way of saying they're treasonous, politically motivated back stabbers.

Rumsfeld was never in a foxhole with anyone. He served in the navy during peacetime.

Speaking of politically motivated back stabbing...

rumsfeld-hussein.jpg


How the left voted to send troops for political expediency, and then when things got tough...

By getting tough do you mean the lies about WMDs came to light?

Should prove an interesting read, especially for the Leftists here and abroad.

Bookstores should stock this one in the fiction or fantasy section.
 
There are two options for actors in a war. 1) they can officially surrender, because they lost their will and means to carry on the fight, or 2) they can just cease to exist, because they've lost the will and means to carry on the war.

Remember, as new angery people join the fight, angry over what has been done to those they love and what they care for, having them lose the will is more difficult than beating a nation. How long have Israel and Palistine been going at it? To borrow from somethng I read once, if force alone could end this type of thing, Israel would have ended that conflict long ago. Perhaps sometimes you have to be smart more than powerful.
 
Really? Are you claiming that politics did not figure heavily into WW2 strategy?

I don't think I ever said that, but hey, believe what you want.
 
I think we just forgot what constitutes a valid reason for going to war.

And, what would that be? Wait until things are totally out of control and the war costs tens of millions of lives?
 
And, what would that be? Wait until things are totally out of control and the war costs tens of millions of lives?

How about a country that presents an actual threat to us?
 
How about a country that presents an actual threat to us?

Even, if we wait until things are totally out of control and the war costs tens of millions of lives?

That's what we did prior to WW2 and nearly a half million Americans died. Now, hindsight being 20/20, do you think it was a good call to wait?
 
Remember, as new angery people join the fight, angry over what has been done to those they love and what they care for, having them lose the will is more difficult than beating a nation. How long have Israel and Palistine been going at it? To borrow from somethng I read once, if force alone could end this type of thing, Israel would have ended that conflict long ago. Perhaps sometimes you have to be smart more than powerful.

The more angry people that fight against us, the more people we'll have to kill, until they don't feel the need to be angry, anymore.

History shows that your strategy doesn't work.
 
Even, if we wait until things are totally out of control and the war costs tens of millions of lives?

That's what we did prior to WW2 and nearly a half million Americans died. Now, hindsight being 20/20, do you think it was a good call to wait?

You're comparing Iraq to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan... Those countries, even with their technology of that day, could have still beaten the Iraq you beat in 2003 :coffeepap

They were no threat to you. Where's the WMD's?
 
You're comparing Iraq to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan... Those countries, even with their technology of that day, could have still beaten the Iraq you beat in 2003 :coffeepap

They were no threat to you. Where's the WMD's?

One thing's for sure, Iraq will never, ever be a threat to us, again.
 
One thing's for sure, Iraq will never, ever be a threat to us, again.

It was never a threat to begin with... :coffeepap

They barely had enough spare parts to keep a tank in operation, let alone WMD's...

But if you found them, please do let us know, Mr. Rumsfeld would sure like to know too...
 
One thing's for sure, Iraq will never, ever be a threat to us, again.

They were never going to be to start with. So, we spent billions, spent thousnads of lives, tens of thousands of civilian lives (some 100,000), to face the little more than we were facing to begin with. Now that's what I call a great statergy. Really smart stuff. :roll:
 
They were never going to be to start with. So, we spent billions, spent thousnads of lives, tens of thousands of civilian lives (some 100,000), to face the little more than we were facing to begin with. Now that's what I call a great statergy. Really smart stuff. :roll:

You don't know that. Saddam had already attempted to assissinate Bush Sr. You have no idea what was going to happen, if Saddam remained in power.
 
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