April 1, 2012
The Onion Weighs In
I am by no means an avid reader of TheOnion, but this morning I happened to be passing by one of those things one finds on NYC streets these days that contain a veritable mall of newspaper boxes, and The Onion was there behind one window.
The following article caught my eye and I read it, getting a good chuckle, despite its profound irreverance.
U.S. Military Desperate To Be Handed Just One Solid War It Can Knock Out Of The Park
ARLINGTON, VA—Reportedly fed up with complicated and protracted operations overseas, top Pentagon officials acknowledged this week they were desperate to be given just one straightforward, no-nonsense military engagement they could really knock out of the park.
“Given all these messy, ambiguous conflicts we’ve been fighting against enemies you can’t even put your finger on, what we could really use right now is a plain old war against a clear-cut bad guy employing conventional tactics and weaponry,” said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “No roadside bombs or plainclothes militants hiding out among innocent civilians—just a fair fight where two sides shoot at each other and someone wins. That’s it.”
“If Congress or our commander in chief could pull a few strings to make that happen, I swear we could totally nail a war like that, no question,” Dempsey added. “The sort of thing where you go in, blow up a number of actual tanks and jets, declare victory, plant a flag, and then exit—that’s all we’re asking for.”
Citing the country’s long history of winning wars against sovereign nations with actual standing armies, the Pentagon’s top brass repeatedly assured reporters they would “completely wipe the floor” with such an opponent if given the chance, and promised they would make America “very, very proud.”
Additionally, military leaders said that engaging in such a conflict “would be a huge confidence boost for [them] right now.”
“We’d be really grateful if the United States became embroiled in a war requiring us to bomb munitions factories, engage in aerial dogfights, or torpedo battleships,” said Marine Corps commandant Gen. James Amos, noting that when it comes to facing actual armies with actual naval and air weaponry, the U.S. is “great at that stuff.” “I guarantee it would be an absolute slam dunk for us.”
“Come on,” the four-star general added, “we really, really need this.”
LOL….
I feel their pain….
http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/wp-trackback.php?p=1977
April 1st, 2012 at 10:08 am
I think the UK Defence Chiefs would agree with him, but I think they’d also add that it should be a one where the politicians keep their mouths shut, sit on their hands and let the military deal with the enemy - preferably without the threat of a bunch of “human rights lawyers” getting set to bring them all to trial for breaching the enemies “human right” to be, well, an enemy …
April 2nd, 2012 at 7:00 am
Gray Monk
…where the politicians keep their mouths shut, sit on their hands and let the military deal with the enemy…
This has been our problem since early on in the Vietnam war; In previous wars, the politicians gave the military a job: “go win us a war” and let the leaders and fighting men do their jobs, the jobs they were trained to do, without using every aspect of the conflict for personal and partisan political purposes. Without micromanaging and second guessing from Washington.
Before he retired from service with 36 years in, my husband predicted the mess we are now dealing with. He had been to the “sandbox” briefly before George W. Bush sent our forces in to topple Saddam, and he said he was glad he was going to be out of it, citing a complete lack of intelligence regarding the resistance we would encounter after what he called the “relatively easy job of kicking Saddam’s butt” was completed, the political garbage that would arrive from Washington to get American soldiers killed (he called it “murder by politicians”) and the additional complications that would be added via internal politics from the new leaders of Iraq.
He also noted, back then, that we’d face even worse problems in Afghanistan as we came to depend upon a treacherous ally in Pakistan.
So far, the big bad Wolf is right on the money.
April 2nd, 2012 at 1:11 pm
I’d have been surprised if the Wolf ad Seth weren’t ‘on the money.’ I suspect every military man worth the name would have been able to see it. I’m not military, but I could see it having worked with the people from that neck of the woods. I think the problem with the politicians is they simply do not understand that the cultures, the mindset and the resulting political thinking is utterly and totally different to their own.
Blair’s contribution to the “Iraqi Peace” - send a member of the feminist extreme to bring “women’s rights” and an end to “oppressive male dominance” to Iraq. If it wasn’t so stupid, I’d have split my sides laughing …
April 5th, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Gray Monk
Seth is always saying that, and I tend to agree with you and him that simply put, our politicians and diplomats are totally incapable of understanding the concept that people in the Muslim world, for a variety of reasons including but not limited to history, sense of fair play and religious beliefs, possess a completely different mind set from ours.
This leads them to feel that because something’s logical to them, it is logical to the Muslims as well.
This is why while ours are coming away from negotiations, peace talks, etc with Muslims, feeling as though they’d accomplished something, the Arabs are laughing behind their backs saying “stupid infidels” and preparing their first violation of whatever was agreed upon.
Here, however, is someone who would be much better qualified to deal with the Arabs, his way, of course:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWr_1uLjqic&feature=related