http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100213/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan


Can someone tell me why if this is such a big offensive, why is it on every news outlet? "The U.S. troops will be in this area at this time...etc. etc." WTF? Why are they telling our "enemies" (whoever they may be) about this? So much for the element of surprise-which when I was in the service, they told us that was the best strategy.



Cat

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100213/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan


Can someone tell me why if this is such a big offensive, why is it on every news outlet? "The U.S. troops will be in this area at this time...etc. etc." WTF? Why are they telling our "enemies" (whoever they may be) about this? So much for the element of surprise-which when I was in the service, they told us that was the best strategy.



Cat


I'm with you on this one Cat.  I have no idea why our government seems to feel the compulsion to announce offensives in advance.  I seemed to notice this problem starting way back during Desert Storm 20 years ago and it has continued.

If I were an Afghan, I would find the U.S. offensive.
::)

Can someone tell me why if this is such a big offensive, why is it on every news outlet?


It's applying the "surge" technique - which (to my pleasant surprise) worked out pretty darn well in Iraq.

Part of that is that we want the locals to know we're coming, so that we can ask them please not to shoot at us or we'll have shoot back. 

The other part of it is that we also want the bad guys to know we're coming, so we have plenty of targets.  (Surprise is still an advantage... and it's much easier to come by when you have an unlimited supply of drones at mumblethousand feet in the air, looking for any sign of movement on the ground.)

Old and busted: "Anybody who moves is a VC.  Anybody who doesn't move is a trained VC!"
New hotness:  "Anybody who shoots at us is a target.  Anybody who keeps their head down and minds their own damn business is not."

(Finally, because if it was something important, we'd want to be able to issue some disinformation and have it believed by both sides until it was too late for the bad guys to do anything about it.  Observe the smackdown Geraldo got in 2003 for talking out of turn when - the opening hours of the invasion of Iraq - it was important.  Nothing has actually changed, we're just more careful about the sorts of things that get embedded reporters.)

In the end, we do this because we're not trying to take territory in the conventional (WW 1/2) sense of the word.  It would have been easier (and cheaper) to win if it were total war, but it's not.  WW2 was supposed to end, even if it we reduced Germany and Japan to ashes in the process.  We did that within six years using 70-year-old tech.  This war isn't supposed to end, but the benefit is that casualties are measured in thousands instead of millions.  In Iraq and Afghanistan, that's just not how we roll. 

(P.S.  Iran, if you actually build that damn thing and manage to deploy it on US soil, we didn't say we wouldn't change our minds.)

The Axis forces also stood a good chance of beating us.  Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan does.  Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo were a hell of a lot scarier than any of those tinpot dictators and warlords prancing around the Middle East nowadays.  The comparisons of Saddam to Hitler were not apt!

Now, when the REAL World War III roles around, we'll lose because we sent all our economic power overseas.  Not that it's going to happen in the foreseeable future, but if China, India, South Korea, and Japan ganged up against us, we'd be f**ked.  I suppose we could nuke 'em all, but that's cold comfort!
:o