Not, almost certainly, directly related to McKiernan-out/McChrystal-in, but not un-related either, in the larger sense:
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va., May 12, 2009 – The Army will require a different type of leader in the fight against terrorism and other kinds of irregular warfare, the Army’s top troop trainer said here today.Not too many years ago, senior Army leaders were taught to combine speed with massed conventional forces to beat a similarly equipped, conventional enemy, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of U.S. Training and Doctrine Command, told attendees at the 2009 Joint Warfighting Conference, held here today through May 14.
The object of battle strategy then was to quickly defeat the enemy through attrition of his forces, Dempsey explained.
Now, I added the emphasis on “attrition” in the hopes that one of our Army brethren can confirm or deny that the Army sought to win a battle of attrition rather than a battle of maneuver in the recent past. I really hope that that the reporter got it wrong.
While we preached maneuver warfare, in practice it was he had the most toys won!
Isn’t the point of a battle of manuever to get around and to an enemy to be in the best place to quickly attrit him?
Attrition without a doubt. While officers may have used the word “maneuver warfare” as some sort of “hey look at me, I’m a cool guy because I buy into maneuver warfare”, they still spent billions on cannon systems and high-tech gadgets… and still do.
They simply don’t get it. Senior leadership micromanages junior leadership. They still count bodies and enemy weapons caches found as a yardstick of success.
You CANNOT out-attrite the Muslims. Can’t be done. Any enemy who will strap bombs to themselves and detonate in the middle of a market full of civilians CANNOT be defeated in the traditional manner. I don’t care how many tanks you have. I don’t care how many napalm canisters you drop on them. In the end, you will lose.
I have hopes for McChrystal… but, snake-eater or not, at the end of the day, he’s a general. And you don’t get to wear stars by going against the Big-Army mindset.
Actually, I still think you CAN out attrit them, but it’s someplace we as a nation, and as a civilized people don’t want to go
Lets face it – you turn the whole place into a glass parking lot, and you’ve out attrited him
I believe attrition is being used in the proper context, such as wearing down the enemey with superior firepower and through manuever.
We did this to the Iraqi Army in 1990. Attritted it through air power then crushed it via manuever warfare.
After we’ve turned it into a glass parking lot, from whence shall we get the oil we so desperately need?
And are you SERIOUSLY comparing hard-core jihadists with a bunch of amateur wanna-be professional army Iraqis? This isn’t Desert Storm.
Besides which, your enemy has to want to fight the kind of war you want. And, like the Army quickly discovered in the summer and fall of 2003, the enemy won’t conveniently sit there and let you bomb them. Nor will they charge head-on with a tank.
Both solutions nil. You still CANNOT out-attrite them. Just as we couldn’t out-attrite the Vietnamese communists.