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Originally Posted by HaplessOperator
I'm largely referring to our conventional buildup, focuses on strategic threats, and the military industrial complex.
Overestimating for downstream overmatch is what gives us F-22s and F-35s when the world's second army is installing wood screws and bare metal cockpit interiors on "stealth" aircraft.
Also, for what it's worth, I've never seen an adversary in Iraq that could match us in a stand-up fight. There was political and strategic underestimation of what would be required, and the simple fact is that unless we were prepared to kill every man, woman, and child in the country, the lack of a uniformed enemy more or less necessitates that the men in camouflage are eventually going to go home and life is going to continue - more or less - as it did before they came.
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I hope that I didn't offend with my comment re Iraq. I totally get what you're saying, and I understand very well how guerilla forces can win a strategic victory against a much stronger nation that's doing its best to follow the civilized laws of war. War becomes a lot more difficult when you're fighting with one hand tied behind your back against an enemy that refuses to follow any rules. What surprises and offends me is how US policy-makers haven't internalized and applied the lessons the country so painfully learned in Vietnam.
As for underestimating a near-peer adversary, the USA has made that mistake before. Even after its shocked-the-world victory over Russia in 1905, Japan's military capabilities and competence were sneered at by the USA and its western allies, much to their detriment in 1941-'42. Just a few years later, Douglas McArthur underestimated the Chinese* prior to their entry into the Korean Conflict and the result was a stalemate along the 38th parallel.
*To consider the PLA a near-peer adversary in 1951 is being very generous.
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