Fog of War

Longtime Shot in the Dark correspondent Fingers - an officer serving on active duty - writes in the comments re the mysterious disappearing explosives:

I've been meaning to thump this in and post it....

We have a saying in fighter aviation: "Knowing that you have no SA (situational awareness) is great SA!"

I keep thinking this everytime I hear people bandy the word "incompetent" around.

Monday morning quarterbacks always have the big picture (even captured in slo-mo in most cases) while the players on the field must deal with the situation as it presents itself by absorbing data, processing, making a decision, formulating a plan and acting upon that plan while being prepared to react to, and counter setbacks or misperceived/false data.

Military action, like sports action is the same thing except there usually aren't as many rules (eg. set parameters that one can use to filter data) and people die if the wrong decisions are made, the plan is flawed, or if it is executed poorly.

I know, where are you going with this Fingers?

1. As much as we try to avoid it, stuff happens. Because some grunts in the field moved on from one piece of ground to another and operational neccessity didn't bring other grunts back for 3 minutes or days or weeks, it certainly isn't the CinC's fault. If we want to go that route...it is time to concede what Mitch has been saying all along: "The boss has put together one hell of an unbeatable team." In fact, if Vietnam teaches us nothing else, the only foe we have to fear is us!

2. GW is a pretty bright guy in my opinion. When it comes to military operations he has let the experts do their work while refusing to undermine their hardwork and sacrifice to appease the smarmy bastards who want an apology. Do we think that will happen from the self-proclaimed 'better choice to lead our military?'

Fingers overestimates the opponent - as, perhaps, a military officer should.

George W. Bush could have presided over one of them most successful campaigns in military history; the campaign could have liberated a large country at exceedingly low cost, and engaged a huge percentage of the worlds terrorists in a battle that could have only one winner from a military perspective...in fact, he did. War is messy; enemies try to throw your plans off. Yet the fundamental things apply; Hussein is gone (leaving us to quibble about 380 tons of RDX rather than millions of tons of that and worse), Iraqis are being killed but they have the ability to defend themselves (and they're doing it!), and terrorists are sitting in mosques in Najaf and suqs in Fallujah getting pounded by bombs and killed by snipers, rather than planning more productive and destructive attacks against defenseless people elsewhere.

Most importantly - they're fighting a rear guard action. Every bomb they set off at an Iraqi police recruiting station is aimed at trying to prevent democracy from breaking out; their attacks stand no chance of retaking Iraq - barring the US doing something stupid, like electing a hamster like John Kerry to office.

Posted by Mitch at October 27, 2004 05:54 AM | TrackBack