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ORIGINAL: luckydog1

slvemike,  If Hitler had been stopped when he moved on the Alsace Lorraine, he wouldn't have enslaved a continent and exterminated millions for racial purity, not mention the millions dead to stop him.

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Saddam was hardly Hitler. Hitler was in charge of a large developed country with an enormous industrial base.

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Iraq in 1980 was comparable economically to Germany in 1933. 

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I am sure the peopel living in Germany then, had it economical better, then the ones living in Irak .

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

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Saddam was hardly Hitler. Hitler was in charge of a large developed country with an enormous industrial base.

Iraq in 1980 was comparable economically to Germany in 1933.  Saddam may not have had the murderous track record of Hitler, but only because his stalemated war with Iran and Bush I's refusal to back down when he occupied Kuwait kept him from building the sphere of influence Germany had prior to September 1939.

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

This is a joke right.No inteligent indivisual could compare the Bush/Chaney oil adventure on behalf of Haliburton with the liberation of Europe from Nazi occupation.....

        Not specifically a joke, Mike.  An extreme example, reducing or expanding the concept to an absurd, but theoretically accurate point.  If the particular choice I make in that gives you a grin, so much the better.


        Tell you what;  Check out this link about US troops getting their asses handed to them by Rommel.  Then imagine the 24/7 news cycle talking non-stop about...   "On February 15th, the Americans launched a counter-attack. By February 17th, they had lost a further 98 tanks, 57 halftracks and 29 artillery guns. As they withdrew, the Americans destroyed vital supplies but the Germans managed to get hold of a vital 5,000 gallons of aviation fuel."  Of course, this is happening in Africa and WTF are we doing there when it was the Japanese who attacked us anyway?  What would the polls have said?


        The only poll that matters when it comes to a war is the one they take in the US Congress.  They took one, we are in a war.  The power has existed for more than a year to take another poll that would matter, but that hasn't happened for some reason or another.

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

Heretic the analogy is still off the wall.Granted at some point in any war a poll might show a majority of the populace against said war.The difference being the unmistakable necessity of WW2 as opposed to the search for WMD /connection to 9/11 or whatever justification of the month you care to hang your hat on.Sadamm was one evil bastard ,granted but this isn't and should never be confused with the liberation of Europe from Nazi tyranny

Actually, the only reason the analogy fails is that Hitler, in accordance with his treaty with Japan, declared war on the United States, after we declared war on Japan.  In all other respects, analogies between Saddam and Hitler, between Iraq and the Third Reich, are quite appropo.

Moreover, the Lend-Lease Act was a wink-wink nudge-nudge way of circumventing significant US public opnion against being involved in the war in Europe.

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

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I am sure the peopel living in Germany then, had it economical better, then the ones living in Irak .

Germany in 1933 had been bankrupted by the inept Weimar Republic.  In terms of equitable wealth distribution, Iraq may have been far from perfect, but it arguably had a more robust economy in 1980.

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ORIGINAL: Sanity

Your way, which is just mob rule, would lead to government-sponsored public lynchings of any and all suspected members of whichever group fell out of favor at any given moment. Muslims, Gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Japanese, Socialists, Conservatives... might all get their turn at slow torturous deaths.
It would appear that someone failed to explain to you how a representative republic works. 
A government of the people,by the people and for the people is not mob rule.  The constitution rules and the people elect their representatives to do the peoples will.
Your making up definitions does not make them so.


This has never been a democracy, for that very reason. Mob rule does suck - could it be that Dick Cheney is smarter than you because he's well aware of that, while you aren't?
There are lots of smart criminals and shotgun Dick is one of them.

Public opinion is fickle, that's why we elect leaders (and always have).
I am sure you are just trying to have a little rhetorical fun...you know very well that we appoint presidents in this country.  We elect congress from an approved list of candidates.

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112
As undemocratic as it may sound, Cheney does have a point.

In late 1967, the United States arguably was winning the Vietnam conflict.  The massive bombing campaigns of North Vietnam during 1966/67 had devastated that nation's economy, straining its ability to support military and insurgency operations in South Vietnam:
I was in I corps from 65 to 67 and that is a crock of shit.  No one thought we were winning a fucking thing.
All the massive bombing campaign was doing was giving the North Vietnamese a lot of target practice.


The North Vietnamese gambled in January 1968 on sparking a mass uprising and general overthrow of the South Vietnamese government with the Tet Offensive.  Beginning on 30 January 1968, North Vietnamese forces attacked targets across South Vietnam, hoping to capitalize on the apparent unpopularity of the South Vietnamese government.  By most classic measures of the military success, the Tet Offensive was a total defeat for the North Vietnamese:
It is quite clear that when the short people came out to play our game they got their collective asses kicked...the downside was that the ARVN abandoned the countryside to fortify the cities and the short people took over. 
They also scored a huge moral and political victory.  No one at the top thought they were capable of that kind of military might.  The end result was that the doves in Hanoi were able to convince the party brass that now was the time for negotiations.  The U.S. saw this as an opportunity to extricate itself from the "Big Muddy"


Media coverage of the Tet Offensive, produced a much different perception in the United States:


While it would be foolhardy to argue with certainty that ignoring the shift in public opinion and escalating troop levels in Vietnam ("surge" perhaps?)  would have produced a dramatically different outcome and potentially success for the United States in Vietnam, the possibility cannot be discounted.
This was exactly what "Wastemoreland" wanted to do.  The downside was that for his whole time in country he kept saying just give me one more division....just give me two more divisions...
When I got in country we had about fifty thousand troops there...when I left we had almost a half million men in country.  The American people felt lied to by bits and pieces until they came to the conclusion that it would never end until we paved the fucking place and made it a parking lot.


While North Vietnam lost the military battle of Tet, the political/diplomatic aspects were a clear victory for North Vietnam, based upon the reaction of the American public to news footage of the offensive.
And the total and complete surprise of the brass hats who got caught with their knickers down. 
"Wastemoreland" never tumbled to the fact that Khe Sanh was a diversion even when Saigon was under attack.


Public opinion should be used to set government policy and to guide evolutions in government policy.  Public opinion is a most dangerous vehicle for crafting and executing even the broadest military strategy.
I could not agree more.

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

Germany in 1933 had been bankrupted by the inept Weimar Republic.  In terms of equitable wealth distribution, Iraq may have been far from perfect, but it arguably had a more robust economy in 1980.

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ORIGINAL: meatcleaver
Not at all. Germany was an advanced developed country that had state of the art weaponary, military stratagists that were amongst the best in the world and a potential industrial base that could out produce all the countries around its borders. There is absolutely no comparison between pre- war Germany and 1980s Iraq.

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u
This is a joke right.No inteligent indivisual could compare the Bush/Chaney oil adventure on behalf of Haliburton with the liberation of Europe from Nazi occupation.....

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

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ORIGINAL: meatcleaver
Not at all. Germany was an advanced developed country that had state of the art weaponary, military stratagists that were amongst the best in the world and a potential industrial base that could out produce all the countries around its borders. There is absolutely no comparison between pre- war Germany and 1980s Iraq.

meatcleaver:
Germany's claimed advantages did them little good once they lost the advantage of the "sucker punch".
It only took the Russians about six months to take their measure.  The "state of the art" German military strategists put their head in the noose that Zhukov and "Uncle Joe" prepared for them at Moscow.  After Moscow it was essentially a foot race to see who could get out of Russia first.
thompson

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ORIGINAL: meatcleaver

Operation Barbarosa ran into the ground because Germany couldn't produce enough munitions and keep their front lines supplied.
So it would appear that you are saying that the "state of the art" military strategists of Germany forgot to figure out how many bullets they would need to conquer Russia?  Isn't that a lot like going to an ass kicking contest without your boots on?
If I remember my history correctly they also ran out of oil for their second rate tanks. Didn't they also run out of food clothing and shelter for their men?  Had they never read about the Frenchman who had once tried the same thing?
Guderian out ran his infantry and got his southern flank mauled,would that would be some more of that high powered German planning and leadership.
The same reason why the German counter offensive petered out in the Ardenne, they were't so much beaten as they literally ran out of bullets.
Bullets,fuel,manpower and brains were all lacking in that ill conceived fiasco.


But yes, the Russian willingness to sustain 15 men killed to every 1 German meant the Germans were running out of men pretty quickly.
The Russians only lost about 8 million soldiers, this is hardly a 15:1 ratio...The Germans murdered about 17 million civilians.

It wasn't so much tactics that beat the Germans but the lack of ability of their home front to keep their promises and keep their front line supplied and the Russian's willingness to sustain casualties that most western nations would find unacceptable.
If the Russians had not been willing to "do what it takes" to stop the Germans then the war in Europe would have a had a much different outcome.

It wasn't so much German tacticians that failed but Hilter's refusal to listen to them.
Just what was it that Hitler did that was counter to what OKW and OKH wanted?
Hitler,initially, was against taking Moscow in 41 he wanted to wait till 42 because he perceived the trap that had been laid for him.  Guderian and Halder "pimped" the Moscow for Christmas plan and Hitler allowed his own propaganda to convince him of the weakness of the Russians.  Which was the Russian (Zhukov/Tomishinko) plan all along.

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ORIGINAL: Sanity

Cheney's right when he says that we can't govern by public opinion polls.

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ORIGINAL: MmeGigs
Politicians say that polls don't matter when they show that the public doesn't agree with their position.  When the polls show that the public agrees with their position, politicians consider them an important reflection of the will of the people.   

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ORIGINAL: Sanity

Politicians with weak character lick a finger and put it up in the air to see which way the breeze is blowing at a given moment in time, but true leaders can act like a rudder in a sea of chaos.

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ORIGINAL: MmeGigs
Politicians say that polls don't matter when they show that the public doesn't agree with their position.  When the polls show that the public agrees with their position, politicians consider them an important reflection of the will of the people.   

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ORIGINAL: MmeGigs

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ORIGINAL: Sanity

Cheney's right when he says that we can't govern by public opinion polls.

Politicians say that polls don't matter when they show that the public doesn't agree with their position.  When the polls show that the public agrees with their position, politicians consider them an important reflection of the will of the people. 

We were seeing that here in MN a few years ago in a big way.  The public clearly and unequivocally said that they did not want tax dollars used to build a new ballpark for the Twins.  The politicians' response to this was that the public didn't really have a say - that we elect representatives to make these decisions for us and have to trust them to do what's in our best interest, even if we don't agree.  They even prevented a local tax referendum from taking place, deciding that in this instance the voters had no say in a tax increase.  At the same time, some of these same politicians were having trouble pushing a marriage amendment through the legislature and were bawling about how important it was that the public should decide this directly, that the will of the people must be not only heard but obeyed. 

It was pretty sad. 

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The same reason why the German counter offensive petered out in the Ardenne, they were't so much beaten as they literally ran out of bullets.