Wednesday, April 14, 2004
On The Acme of Skill
To win without fighting is the acme of skill.
--Sun Tzu
One Marine Staff Sergeant has some pointy things to say about the Army:
"Marines like to be on the offensive," said Staff Sgt. Steve Marcil. "We're not like the Army. Our job is to move."
Call me quaint, call me old-fashioned, call me an old stick-in-the-mud. But somehow the Army was able to operate in Fallujah all these months. It was a team of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach county police officers from my own battalion--the Florida National Guard's 1st Bn, 124th Infantry--who managed trained hundreds of Iraqi police officers in downtown Fallujah last December and January.
Sure, the Army screwed up in rotating five different battalions through Fallujah by the end of the year. And it was always a rough neighborhood for American troops. (No, it didn't help when some jittery troops who had just arrived in country killed 8 Iraqi Police officers and managed to shoot up the Fallujah hospital, either, but that's another story.)
But before the USMC starts to throw a lot of rhetorical ordnance at the Army, it might be wise to consider this question:
Wouldn't the acme of skill be in not getting our asses kicked out of Fallujah in the first place?
Splash, out
Jason
--Sun Tzu
One Marine Staff Sergeant has some pointy things to say about the Army:
"Marines like to be on the offensive," said Staff Sgt. Steve Marcil. "We're not like the Army. Our job is to move."
Call me quaint, call me old-fashioned, call me an old stick-in-the-mud. But somehow the Army was able to operate in Fallujah all these months. It was a team of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach county police officers from my own battalion--the Florida National Guard's 1st Bn, 124th Infantry--who managed trained hundreds of Iraqi police officers in downtown Fallujah last December and January.
Sure, the Army screwed up in rotating five different battalions through Fallujah by the end of the year. And it was always a rough neighborhood for American troops. (No, it didn't help when some jittery troops who had just arrived in country killed 8 Iraqi Police officers and managed to shoot up the Fallujah hospital, either, but that's another story.)
But before the USMC starts to throw a lot of rhetorical ordnance at the Army, it might be wise to consider this question:
Wouldn't the acme of skill be in not getting our asses kicked out of Fallujah in the first place?
Splash, out
Jason
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