We put an Army on the battlefield that I had been a part of for 37 years. It doesn't have any doctrine, nor was it educated and trained, to deal with an insurgency. ... After the Vietnam War, we purged ourselves of everything that had to do with irregular warfare or insurgency, because it had to do with how we lost that war. In hindsight, that was a bad decision. ... We have responsibility."

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/10/2088425

Sir:
The US military is unequaled in the world today. And I have no argument with your premise regarding the necessary changes (militarily) to fight the "Long War". But the "Long War" will never be fought. The American people won't allow it. Thus, the most powerful military in history will not be defeated, it simply won't be used!

The American people can barely tolerate the images they have of themselves currently as a people, culture, and a nation. We are losing this war and will be defeated in the end. We are not losing it on the battlefield but in our living rooms. And this is a continuation of a series of defeats that have been going on for some time already. Except now, this ability to thwart the "will" of the American people is much faster and effective. Our enemies are growing in number that understand that you don't need to defeat the USA militarily, you defeat the USA using it's very powerful media and subsequently America's "self image". From Mao, to Ho Chi Minh, to Saddam and a growing number of lesser foes (such as Somali War Lords) the lessons learned have shown over the last 30+ years that it works, and works well! I think it was Mao who said you defeat the USA by killing one soldier a day. Because you see that dead soldier will be in every American's living room that evening and someone on television will tell that American that thay are bad because of it.

The current cultural image (read self image) created by the gigantic US media has resulted in a people who define themselves not by the trial and error of cultural growth through history but by what the television tells them.

Watching television replicates a fundemental process of human learning and identification. It is called "modeling". It is the process of learning and identification that occurs when humans watch other humans. We've been doing it since the Stone Age. It's how we learn. Television has the incredible ability to replicate that process 24/7/365 AND to suspend our "critical judgement" regarding what we see. Thus, instead of the evidence of "trial and error", we simply absorb what we see. No other people on earth watch as much television as the American people. And no other media on earth attacks it's own culture as the US media.

The current self image via the media is:
1. America is a flawed nation.
2. America is responsible for the destruction of the environment world wide.
3. America is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people around the world.
4. America fosters poverty around the world.
5. American expliots or harms all peoples, races, cultures etc, etc etc.

You get the picture. We are already there unfortunately. You see the people who work in "journalism" if I may use that term, have been educated over the last 30+ years in colleges and universities that are filled with leftist thinking professors. Go on any campus today and look around for yourself. They have taught these young impressionable budding journalists the items I listed 1 - 5above. Over time this has shaped the US media and thus our images of ourselves.

The next wave in the US media is not going to be that we should all become fundelmentalist Islamist, but that we should dismantle the American culture and embrace a vauge "world culture" that will be spelled out by organizations such as the UN and various advocacy groups around the world that despise us.
We will simply defeat ourselves.

Juhlar:

You were correct in your assessment of the US military. But, you quite don't understand how the US media works. Censorship is alive and well in America today. I hardly watch TV and I certainly don't watch any news on the tube. It's all junk. And I don't read newspapers. I obtain my news from alternative sources.

The mainstream media today is controlled by the elite, including those connected with the Bilderberg group and the Council on Foreign Relations. Forget about the theory of leftist professors. You're way off the mark. Do you want to know who controls the world? Check out Bilderberg.org. This was a website created by a Brit named Tony Gosling. Great website. And I got bad news for you: it's all true.

Last but not that least, whoever controls the world - controls the military. There you have it. By the way, the elite is concerned about the Internet. Why? They don't like people who are truly informed. That's why they're implementing the Internet 2. That's ok. We'll get around it.

The media doesn't make policy Administrations do.

In David Halberstam’s (may he rest in peace) The Best and the Brightest it was the Colonels, Majors and Captains who knew what was going on and their vain efforts were often stymied by Command’s strategies and the Administration’s blind confidence in the Politics of Containment.

In these cases our brave armed forces are poorly used as instruments of policy. Poorly used especially when that policy was based on emotion and not fact, poorly used when planning is corrupted by belief in our own propaganda, poorly used when the Pentagon Management is reduced to Yes Men by the SECDEF and the Administration.

How little we learn from history.

Now justification to go on in Iraq sounds like Vietnam, to quote Halberstam, where “each dead American became the rationale for more dead Americans.”

We have lost the initiative, we have lost.

An Iraqi civil war and civil disaster will probably follow, come now or a year from now, and our nation's leadership and Senior Pentagon mangement and their strategy is at fault.

We have made more enemies than friends. We have employed the means of the enemy to our ends (Guantanamo, torture, rendition, suspension of Habeas Corpus, etc.) and lost the moral high ground. Worse, we have done what Saddam Hussein and his army could not do, we have won the Iran - Iraq war for Iran especially if we “stay the course.”

I agree entirely with the author who, in summary, states that we Americans must use our “Yankee Ingenuity” to re-invent our field forces (grunts) to deal successfully against any combatant in any envirornment anyplace on the globe. Being resourceful and possessing a necessary ability to rapidly improvise... are military tools that are unique to Americans.

This was the same view of an CIA-trained Army communications Specialst working directly under White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldemann who served in Vietnam as one of several information hunter/gatherers for President Nixon. Twenty years before the beret was adopted as standard Army headware this Army vet made this recommendation. He also recommended that because conventional (WW2 style warfare) was obsolete our military should and must convert to dealing with combat such as we fought in Korea and since.

An excerpt from this veteran’s Vietnam War authobiography:

Start quote ---

“During World War II it took three support GI's to back up one combat GI. During Korea, that number rose to six. During Vietnam's high point, between TET '68 and TET '71, the number rose to eleven. As America evolved from the industrial stage of national development into the technological, our military evolved with it. The fundamental tactical skills practiced by nations in their earth-bound, agricultural stage were left far behind as America's application of nuclear physics catapulted us far ahead of the third world. The increased amount of technology used in combat has required an increase in combat support GI's over the years. If that trend continues any major war the United States has to fight against third-world agro-nations with an abundance of manpower will go the way Vietnam did, in defeat. America lost the war in Vietnam because we no longer adequately trained and prepared our Army to fight a ground war. “

End quote ---

This Army veteran’s Vietnam assessment can be found at the following website. His book was highly praised by General William C. Westmoreland with whom he engaged in many retrospective discussions on their Vietnam experiences:

“CANNON FODDER: GROWING UP FOR VIETNAM”
by Phill Coleman
Full text online: http://members.aol.com/warlib/cf.htm

Roger Simpson (http://www.13105320634.com)
PIO, The American War Library
http://www.amervets.com

New enemies?
I think Pentagon is planning to fight China all these years.

If China is the major threat, anti-insurgencey is of secondary elsewhere is of importance.

hahahahaha, i ...................,i can only pray for peace !

"hahahahaha, i ...................,i can only pray for peace !"

I guess I know what you mean.
Thank you for a very revealing response.