On Recent Wars

Ma Deuce · Post by **Ma Deuce** » 2006-06-26 11:08pm

Dahak wrote:I really found it always quite interesting that one doesn't hear as much Bad News(TM) from the British troops in Iraq than their US colleagues.

In fairness, the British are stationed in the (relativly) quiet Shi'ite-dominated area around Basra, while the American-controlled area includes the infamous "Sunni Triangle" where about 80% of insurgent attacks occur. Even other US-controlled areas do not suffer the same level of violence of the Sunni Triangle.

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2006-06-26 11:58pm

The main thrust of the article withstanding, I'm not sold on his term 'warrior mentality' and I don't know if he put it up as his analogy on purpose or just out of coincidence.

A warrior mentality is anathema to a soldier and is considered the opposite to a well organized soldier. While I get the political jist of the comparison, and I agree there are a lot of glory hounds and stary eyed wannabe's, the self centered, personal honor oriented, self centered warrior mentality went the way of the do-do in the ranks a long time ago.

Post by **Simplicius** » 2006-06-27 12:16am

Knife wrote:The main thrust of the article withstanding, I'm not sold on his term 'warrior mentality' and I don't know if he put it up as his analogy on purpose or just out of coincidence.

A warrior mentality is anathema to a soldier and is considered the opposite to a well organized soldier. While I get the political jist of the comparison, and I agree there are a lot of glory hounds and stary eyed wannabe's, the self centered, personal honor oriented, self centered warrior mentality went the way of the do-do in the ranks a long time ago.

Upon reading the article, my first impression was that the author was particularly speaking of the armchair generals and fighting keyboardists and hawkish politicans - people who don't even walk the walk, so to speak - and pointing out the absurdity of that mindset. His points of concern are the sort of jingoistic swill that comes out of the mouths of pundits and politicos by the bucketful, whereas trying to link his Warrior to professional soldiery does not come nearly as naturally.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-06-27 02:47am

Knife wrote:The main thrust of the article withstanding, I'm not sold on his term 'warrior mentality' and I don't know if he put it up as his analogy on purpose or just out of coincidence.

A warrior mentality is anathema to a soldier and is considered the opposite to a well organized soldier. While I get the political jist of the comparison, and I agree there are a lot of glory hounds and stary eyed wannabe's, the self centered, personal honor oriented, self centered warrior mentality went the way of the do-do in the ranks a long time ago.

That's not the "warrior mentality" he's talking about. He's talking about the mentality of approaching geopolitics as if everything is a military mission. When the military is given a mission by its commander in chief, its job is to carry out that mission to the best of its ability, not to question whether the mission was a good idea in the first place. If the military has been told that there is an enemy out there, then its mission is presumably to defeat or destroy that enemy, and not complain about the costs, either in terms of collateral damage or its own casualties.

However, the civilian population is under no such requirements. It can and should think differently. Nevertheless, the hawks in the administration, the army, and much of society think that it should be under those same requirements. In essence, they think every single citizen of America should think and act like a member of the military, and that failure to do so makes you a traitor, just as you would be considered a deserter if you failed to do your duty in the military.

Post by **Coyote** » 2006-06-27 11:47am

And it's an outdated vision of the military at that. There are still a large number of Soldiers in the Army that were trained for the Cold War, most of them are now in the leadership positions, and they still fall back to that mentality of "stopping the Red Horde at the Fulda Gap" in a major force clash that would hearken back to World War 2.

But a great deal of troops and our equivilent of "middle management" (junior NCOs) never grew up with that and their approaching the problem differently. These are the "kids" that grew up watching brushfire wars with the media, the UN, and civilians involved from the get-go, and the only major war they experienced through TV growing up was the 1991 Gulf War Turkey Shoot, which was a 4-day blitzkrieg.

As for the "warrior" mentality, I typically see a "warrior" as sort of a individual fighter like something out of the Khan's horde, as opposed to a "soldier" who is a member of a disciplined organized and integrated team. But these subtleties are not widely contemplated in general society and words tend to be used interchangeably.

But on a positive note, one of our basic common tasks nowadays includes a block of instruction on dealing with the media, dealing with demonstrations, and other things that used to be considered too 'flower childish' by mainstream commanders. But more is needed, and that lesson is being hammered home, painfully.