War has laws?

First off, I know that I am about 6 months behind in my reading, but Mark D just recently showed me the site, so I have a lot of catching up to do. Your overall premise is amazingly clear and painfully accurate. As a career soldier, I have long pined for the "good old days" when the Soviet Union was still the enemy lurking behind the trees in the Fulda Gap. I noticed back in 1991-1992 that the worst thing to happen to the Army was the loss of the enemy. You know, the one reason that we were so large; the reason that we had to have functional vehicles and weapons; the reason that we had to be prepared to go to the field 2 hours after an alert was called. As cynical as this may sound, since then, I have noticed that we (the Army, in general) have become way to focused on how things look as opposed to how things function. I call this the "style over substance" mentality, and it can be seen in the fact that we have vehicles that stay deadlined, but they are immaculate, sitting in the motor parks. I have often commented to new soldiers that we used to have EDREs (Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercises, for those of you that never had the pleasure of having 120 minutes from call up to roll out) that required us to be on line and ready to roll in 2 hours. The problem is that, today, I honestly believe that we couldn’t be ready to roll in 2 weeks. Unfortunately, without the spectre of a mass army ready to invade at any moment, we have turned into a politically correct group that is more worried about the political correctness brainwashing than we are about training soldiers to win the nation’s wars. All this leads me to my main issue, which is my opinion that there are two ways to fight, in a fist fight or in a war. Either you fight to win or you fight to lose. Basically, if you are fighting by rules, then you are fighting to lose. Ironically, the best fighting forces in the new paradigm will probably be mercenary style units that can set up their own support by subcontracting it out. The problem that states will have with these groups is the lack of control that they will be able to exercise over them. For example, a mercenary group will do whatever it can to achieve the objective of the contract as quickly and efficiently as possible, thereby protecting it’s profit margin. This will frequently conflict with the "Law of Land War" that politicians want them to follow in order to always appear to be the "good guy" in order to be re-elected. Here is the primary moral dilemma that we face, do we use terrorist style tactics to root out terrorists or do we keep the moral high ground and suffer the attacks? Both sides have arguments, however, since I tend to be rather goal oriented, I need to see results, which means that I simply want to be able to use whatever tactics will eliminate the enemy as quickly as possible. It’s a little cold-blooded, but hey, as a soldier, it’s my @ss on the line, not the blasted politician that sent me there in the first place. As an illustration, I give you Task Force Ranger’s experience in Mogadishu, where the troops on the ground needed and requested an AC-130 Spectre Gunship, but the POLITICS (turn my head and spit) of the situation dictated that they be refused the support that could have saved lives. My memory may be faulty, but wasn’t Aidid a POLITICAL target? Wasn’t that mission issued for POLITICAL objectives? Then screw the politics and give the soldiers what they need to win. Let the damned politicians become true "Statesmen" and Reach Out to the losing side after we win the damned war! G Political correctness is brainwashing.