And for my tribute to 9-11, I don't want to do some candle light vigil, I don't want to do some lets-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbayaa. I just wanted to point out the cold hard truth to all the terrorists who thought it would be a grand idea to kill 3,000 Americans (and the leftists that seemingly cheer them on) that it was the dumbest mistake you've ever made. I just wanted to point out to all the radical terrorist nutjobs out there, who think you've done some amazing thing, that 9-11 was the equivalent to not only shooting yourselves in the foot, but pretty much shooting yourselves in the head. I know the media won't admit it. I know the left and Obama supporters here in America are reluctant, if not ashamed to acknowledge it, but we are not only winning, we are hands down kicking your ass.
Although the data is a year old, US troops have been killing you no-point-to-life losers at a rate of 6 to 1.
You want to do this all day? Fine, we can accommodate that. We can go all night long because it will bring about your end and we fully intend to.
But the larger point is this. Currently 4,155 US troops have died in this war to avenge those we lost on 9-11. And while they look down from above and certainly appreciate the candle-light vigils, and prayers and moments of silence, I think they're sitting next to God on big comfy leather couches with beers and brats watching the game, and are more concerned about the score. And if there's anything putting a smile on their faces, and vindicating they certainly did not die in vain it's to see their buddies kicking ass on the field. They may be out of the game, but those 4,155 took one for the team.
Thank yOU! Finally someone has the courage to print what we feel.
ReplyDeleteI hate to use a crude analogy, but everytime we hear, 3 more soldiers died today...its like reporting sports scores like this "..the Buffalo Bills allowed 14 points today." The fact they scored 42 is never mentioned.
No. The US learned in Vietnam that bodycounts aren't a measure of success. The goal is not "to kill as many terrorist scumbags as possible", the goal is to create stable governments which can co-operate with us on the global stage, and can control and police their own populace.
ReplyDeleteYou don't stop fix a flood in your basement by continually bailing it out - you fix it by plugging the crack or damming the flow. We can keep killing terrorists for the next thousand years and it won't mean a damn unless we can stop new recruits from joining their ranks.
With that said, it certainly is nice to know that we're kicking their asses with such efficiency.
I agree with everything Alex said, and would like to add, does this include the number of people who were killed on 9/11/01?
ReplyDeleteNo Alex, the lesson we learned from Vietnam and you should learn is that you don't walk away from victory. We learned that our evil enemies didn't embrace 'peace' after we left - they finished their invasion.
ReplyDeleteThe Captain's analysis and the other gentleman's football analogy are spot on. He does not even mention the 50,000 plus insurgents and terrorists we have incarcerated in addition to those killed!
In terms of lives lost per day, this is the least costly war in US history.
The only way we lose this war is by quitting. That's Obama's plan.
Alex is right. Bodycount doesn't mean much. And by the way, if you're not pulling at least 10 to 1 in a counterinsurgency, you're not winning, and even that doesn't mean much. The US pulled far better odds in Vietnam and still lost.
ReplyDeleteHere's a question: what's the birthrate in nations where Muslim fanaticism gets its recruits? Since 2001, we've killed about 2,500 people per year. Are we putting any significant dent in their numbers? Absolutely not. Just killing people accomplishes nothing unless you do it on a literally genocidal scale. What matters is influencing people's opinions; winning hearts and minds and all that. Have we made progress there? Are people more or less likely to hate us since our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan?
I'd argue that there are more people who are willing to risk their own lives to kill us today than there were 7 years ago. That's not progress.
You don't like it that the news doesn't report enemy casualties? Well, there's a couple reasons for this. One, most mainstream news outlets hate the war, so they'll have biased reporting. That's not the only reason, though. Reported enemy casualties when the enemy and their civilian population are identical are meaningless. Even if all of the people we're killing are terrorists (heh, yeah right), these are people who are willing to kill themselves to kill us. They don't care if they die, why should we?
By the way, the 4,000 listed doesn't include the ones who died on 9/11.
My freaking God, no wonder the terrorists are emboldened! What is this pansy ass crap I am hearing? Seriously. If George Patton were alive he'd launch the 5th army against all of you.
ReplyDeleteCan you none of you just let yourselves enjoy the fact we're killing the bad guys at a rate at six times what they're killing us?
I know we've all been brainwashed to shun violence and shun revenge, but while I still have the slightest bit of testosterone and hatred for the enemy, I'm going to be damn happy we're killing these scumbags faster than they are us.
Jesus freaking Christ. Can the soldiers just get an occasional "thanks for kicking ass"? Can they? Or does there have to be some public-school indoctrinated caveat about the statistics and then some moral qualm about killing evil people?
I will out of sheer piss-offedness no longer post comments on this thread that are anything BUT praise, adulation and gratitude to the success of the military. And the reason why is you can get otherwise elsewhere and I'm sick of hearing "otherwise."
Just cheer, hell, ACKNOWLEDGE the freaking good guy without a godamned string attached once in a while, will ya?!
What matters is influencing people's opinions; winning hearts and minds and all that
ReplyDeleteThe tenets of Islam make that impossible. What do you suggest we do?
Alex, I beg to differ: You do both. You kill the bastard that is pumping water into your basement and you fix the hole where the water is coming in. What Vietnam demonstrated was that we did not have a strategy to win nor did we have the political will to implement it. It also demonstrated that the press was incapable of realizing that the Tet offensive destroyed the VC and was a huge defeat for the North.
ReplyDeleteI AM a soldier, so cut the appeal to emotion. Sure, it's nice to kick ass. It's better to know that you've made a difference. We're not just mindless killers looking to pile up the bodies - modern soldiers are a bit more nuanced. The fact that violence has gone DOWN in Iraq and that everyday people are finally able to go about their lives without having to worry about being killed ... that's worth more than any bodycount can ever be.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong Cap, I respect your opinion, and I appreciate you trying to showcase the accomplishments of the military. But you're wrong on this one. The main reason the military doesn't publish bodycounts any more is because we know it's not a good predictor of success.
The people getting twerked up over the fact that we had a higher kill rate in Vietnam are forgetting that the real reason we lost that one was due to so little political support for the war that there was nothing the government could do right there until it quit. As long as they're dying faster than us and faster than they can recruit, we're winning.
ReplyDeleteTake heart, CC, and don't listen to the naysayers.
ReplyDeleteI welcome an argument, but I think the number of terrorists killed is more significant than the body count against a sovereign nation. Terrorists are more often individuals bound within a looser organization. Every one that dies is a mark of success.
Great to see this perspective. I often think of it myself.
There's a great example in Mark Bowden's book "Black Hawk Down," where one of the American Rangers gets indignant about someone dwelling on the U.S. casualties when the Americans inflicted hundreds of casualties on the "skinnies."
-Idler
Spot on, Cap'n. Like Patton said (I'm going from memory), you don't win wars by dying for your country, but by making the other guy die for his.
ReplyDeleteAs for the question, "Are people more or less likely to hate us since our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan?" The ones that hate us will not change their attitudes no matter what we do. What will change is their ability and/or willingness to put their hate into action against us.
If you hate bears and kick one when it's asleep, and it doesn't get up and defend itself, you'll keep on kicking it. But if the bear wakes up and opens up a can of claw-ass on you, you're much less likely to kick the next bear you see, no matter how much your hate increases.
Speaking from the perspective of the bear, I've got to maul this attacker to death precisely because he hates me so much. If I let him go home and grab his .303 after a half-mauling, I'm toast.
"The goal is not "to kill as many terrorist scumbags as possible", the goal is to create stable governments which can co-operate with us on the global stage, and can control and police their own populace." (Alex)\
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That is pure unadulterated bullshit!
And only someone who wasn't directly impacted by 9/11 could say that.
We ignored Islamic radicalism for nearly a decade before 9/11/01. From February of 1993 (the FIRST WTC bombing) radicalized Islam was at war with the U.S.but we refused to fight back.
Former CIA operative and author of Imperial Hubris, Mike Scheuer, has clearly and correctly stated that "In the War on Terror (WoT) we just aren't doing enough. We aren't killing enough of them."
For people to be expressing sympathy for our enemies on this day is revulting. Even the focus on heroism is all too often mis-directed, concerning 9/11/01 and I worked in a South Bronx firehouse for 15 years before that day and spent much of the nest two months shuttling between tours at the firehouse and at Ground Zero like the rest of the FDNY.
Yes, there was a LOT of heroism displayed that day...and not merely by first responders, but by people in those buildings who simply stopped to help others, of people who went back up to make sure others got down...
So there was THAT....and that's inspiring from a human perspective....
BUT there's also the FACT that America were attacked that day....that those deaths were a "war crime," that those people were MURDERED in the first salvo in the ongoing war between the forces of Liberty and the forces of Islamic radicalism...so there's also THAT.
PLEASE! Let's cease this "sensitive man" crap....it's making our enemies cry!
They're laughing so hard, they're crying.
I'm sorry about the brothers you lost that day, "jmk", I know how it feels. I've lost quite a few of my own overseas. However, being "directly impacted" by the event doesn't make you wiser or give you a better perspective. It just makes you mad. And, as anyone who's ever had an argument with a girlfriend can tell you, being mad just causes you to do stupid things.
ReplyDeleteAs for your comment ... I'm not sure what "sensitive man crap" you're referring to, and I have no idea who you're talking about when you say that they're "expressing sympathy for our enemies". In fact, re-reading your comment a second time just now, I realized that I'm really not sure what point you were trying to make. Apparently you think my statement was bullshit ... but the rest of your comment does nothing to explain your belief.
Alex, you're parroting the Liberal line, that "we should look at our own policies pre-9/11, to see what our role in provoking those attacks was."
ReplyDeleteThat's the standard leftist line and it's complete bullshit.
What the industrialized West, especially America DID was create the wealth the Mid-East has benefitted from.
There were NO U.S. policies that directly "provoked" any righteous outrage from the people of the Mid-East.
One COULD argue that Jimmy Carter's abandoning the Shah of Iran, which led to the takeover by the Ayatollah Khomeini and giving Islamic radicalism a base it previously didn't have, logistically aided Islamic radicalism and the forces of terrorism.
What is NOT in dispute is the FACT that the proper response to 9/11/01 WAS indeed a Military ONE.
We'd tried the "criminal justice" approach for a decade previous to that, DESPITE the fact that James Fox (the Director of the FBI's NY Office) said, in the wake of the 1993 WTC bombing, "The U.S. Criminal Justice system is inadequate to the task of dealing with state-funded international terrorism."
Fox was, without question RIGHT about that.
The subsequent wars, though costly in terms of both lives and treasure are worth the sacrifices this country's made - they are, as much as WW II's horrific costs, part of "the price of defending Liberty" in a world that is fundamentally hostile to freedom.
The American Left, which has blamed America and called the subsequent wars against terror-supporting nations "irrational and unjustified" is a seditious movement.
And those who've engaged in blaming America and opposing those military actions have undeniably "given aid and comfort to the radical Islamists" and THAT is indeed "expressing sympathy for our current enemies."