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Allen West: U.S. Must Understand 21st-Century Combat

For those who may have missed this excellent article by Allen West, I have decided to post it up here. As I have lamented before, it is a shame he is not running for higher office but I truly believe he will run when the time is absolutely correct for our country. This is something that Herman Cain is missing the train about. Americans, by and large no matter what their disgust with political parties or who is in the White House are quite loathe to vote for someone who has NO political experience for the office of POTUS.

I do not really need to remind everyone the current disaster we are now living through thanks to the mindless, ignorant fools who voted for dope and change and gave this country perhaps the WORST potus ever. The first muslim illegal alien potus, barack HUSSEIN obama.

Allen West is spot on in this article. Warfare has changed and technology has drastically altered the landscape of war, how it is waged and conducted. Our enemies are many are adept at using the internet and other means to attack us and those who oppose the spread of islam, sharia law and the freedom and liberty that this country has stood for since 1776.


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West: U.S. Must Understand 21st-Century Combat
By Rep. Allen West

Today’s paradigm of battle and combat operations is completely different from what I experienced in 1982 when I was commissioned as a young lieutenant in the U.S. Army. At that time, the battlefield was much simpler.

In broad strokes, there was the Soviet Union on one side and the United States on the other. We were familiar with their tactics and equipment, and they with ours. Both sides wore uniforms, and every now and then we would stage war games on border control missions.

That paradigm has completely disappeared, leaving in its place an asymmetrical battlefield with non-uniformed, non-state belligerents using unconventional weapons and tactics. If the United States is going to be successful in protecting its citizens and interests, it must quickly understand and adapt to this new battlefield and be prepared for success and victory.

While America may lack an appropriate strategic level perspective, we will never lose at the tactical level on the ground because the United States has the best soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen the world has ever known. But without the correct strategic and operational goals and objectives, we will find ourselves on the proverbial hamster wheel. No matter how much effort we exert on the wheel, we will not make forward progress.

To begin with, we must correctly identify our enemy. It is frankly naive to say we are at war with “terror” because a nation cannot be at war with a tactic. Imagine, if during World War II, the United States went to war against the “blitzkrieg” or the “kamikaze.”

Further, we cannot narrowly define the enemy as simply al-Qaida or the Taliban. It is just as ridiculous to say we declared war against the 12th German Panzer Division or the 55th Japanese Infantry Regiment in World War II or the 7th Guards Tank Division during the Cold War.

Before the rise of al-Qaida, the terrorist group which had inflicted the most damage on the United States was Hezbollah. Now Hezbollah has become a very capable military force, albeit one without state or uniform — so capable in fact, it has armed missiles within striking distance of every city in Israel.

The Obama administration has failed to identify Hezbollah as an enemy. On this 21st century battlefield we are not fighting against a single organization, leader or nation. We are fighting against the ideology of Islamic totalitarianism, manifested at a tactical level as terrorism, which knows no country and recognizes no borders.

Until we, as a nation, are able to correctly and openly identify our enemy, we will continue to put our men and women on the ground in harm’s way without a clear mission for success. Once we have identified the enemy, we must ensure we have clearly identified the specific strategic level objectives to effectively fight. I believe there are four:

1. Deny the enemy sanctuary. The number one asset our military has is strategic mobility. When that is curtailed by a focus on nation-building or occupation-style warfare, we eliminate our primary advantage, and worse, our military forces become targets. Because this enemy has no respect for borders or boundaries, we must be willing to take the fight directly to him.

2. Cut off the enemy’s flow of men, material and resources. We have to interdict the enemy’s flow of resources in order to prevent the ability to fund, supply and replenish his ranks.

3. Win the information war. Unfortunately, the enemy is far more adept at exploiting the power of the Internet, broadcast media and dissemination of powerful imagery. In addition, I fear our media now sees itself as an ideological political wing. If we cannot fully use our own national informational power as an asset, we will lose the strategic battle, if not our country.

4. Cordon off the enemy and reduce his sphere of influence. We must shrink the enemy’s territory, but we are not being effective. We are allowing, if not welcoming, the enemy into the United States. What happened with Maj. Nidal Hasan, the alleged Fort Hood shooter, should not have happened in this country. We must not turn a blind eye to a very bold enemy who is telling us exactly what he wants to do and is willing to bring the battle to our doorstep.

We must recognize that Afghanistan and Iraq are not distinct wars, but combat theaters of operation. It is up to our elected leaders and our senior military officials to identify and agree on the correct strategic goals and objectives in order to be successful on these battlefields and others. When we have a proper national security strategy, we will have a focused national military strategy, preparing the defense-industrial base to develop the right weapons systems for victory.

We must be mindful of the wise words compiled by Sun Tzu in “The Art of War” more than 25 centuries ago, “to know your enemy and to know yourself and to know the environment and countless amounts of battles, you will always be victorious.” If we do not understand this simple maxim, we face dark days ahead.

For the sake of our nation, and of all nations who seek freedom for their citizens, we must clearly identify the 21st century battlefield and ensure we are victorious on it.

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a retired Army lieutenant colonel, serves on the Armed Services Committee.

1 Comments - Share Yours!:

Zenster said...

At day's end, one simple fact remains; even if only 10% of all Muslims are jihadis, that leaves us with 160 million terrorists in this world.

We have already seen trillions of dollars squandered even while America has moronically allowed shari'a governments to be set up in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Those two countries have a total population of around 66 million people. The estimate of 160 million pro-terrorist Muslims is exceptionally conservative.

How then is this world supposed to deal with a number of terrorists that is almost three times larger than the combined populations of these two countries? Is there anyone in their right mind proposing that the West should expend another nine trillion dollars to go after triple the number of people?

Please recall that these 160 millions terrorists are scattered throughout the global Muslim population. The actual expense of prosecuting military actions in so many different countries easily would soar to over one hundred trillion dollars.

This is a serious matter and one that nobody is willing to confront.

To date, there has been invented only one technology that can cost-effectively counter the threat of some 160 million enemy forces.

That technology is nuclear weapons and no one, not anybody, has the courage to admit that Islam is painting itself into a coffin corner as it pursues global jihad.

Liberal hand wringers, instead, keep trying to foist all blame upon the West for its inadequate understanding and lack of respect shown towards Muslim "sensitivities". The only end result of such nonsense will be more terrorist atrocities that are likely to make 9-11 resemble a Sunday picnic.

Must we wait until then to read Islam the riot act? Who will benefit from such foot dragging? Certainly not the West and not even Islam will gain from it.

All that will have happened is an opportunity for this world to spiral down further towards an ultimate calamity which could easily see a major fraction of humanity perish in nuclear fire.

Most disgusting of all is how avoidable this entire situation really is. Instead, we are daily treated to the spectacle of media and politicians alike deeming this situation intractable or in need of further "outreach" and "dialogue"; all of which has produced exactly nothing, precisely according to Islam's plans.

Muslims must be made to realize that they are risking total and permanent annihilation by continuing this farce. The charade of "moderate Islam" is meaningless pap intended for consumption by only the most gullible and incompetent to deal with this issue.

Those who are competent are the exact same individuals who will have no compunction about crippling Islam to the point where its continued existence is called into question.

This is the grim harvest that awaits Muslims who continue to sow the hydra's teeth, even as they shriek and wail about "racism" and "Islamophobia". It is a fate that they will have struggled in earnest to bring upon themselves and countless other Muslims.

Most despicable of all is that Islam refuses to learn from its own textbook. History is strewn with countless cultures that have fallen to Islam and, thereby, ceased to exist.

How is it that Islam deems itself in someway immune to this exact same outcome? Especially when Muslims are driving all events in that precise direction? It defies sensibility, reason and logic all in equal measure. Nature has always reserved the most devastating consequences for those who remain oblivious to the very simplest and predictable outcomes.

Islam will not prove to be any sort of exception.